Night Over Water - Ken Follett [121]
On his left the radio operator, Ben Thompson, was transcribing a Morse code message, his bald head bent over his console. Hoping it would be a forecast of better weather, Eddie stood behind him and read over his shoulder.
The message astonished and mystified him.
It was from the F.B.I., addressed to someone called Ollis Field. It read:
THE BUREAU HAS RECEIVED INFORMATION THAT ASSOCIATES OF KNOWN CRIMINALS MAY BE ON YOUR FLIGHT. TAKE EXTRA PRECAUTIONS WITH THE PRISONER.
What did it mean? Did it have something to do with the kidnapping of Carol-Ann? For a moment Eddie’s head spun with the possibilities.
Ben tore the page off his pad and said: “Captain! You’d better take a look at this.”
Jack Ashford glanced up from his chart table, alerted by the urgent note in the radioman’s voice. Eddie took the message from Ben, showed it to Jack for a moment, then passed it to Captain Baker, who was eating steak and mashed potatoes from a tray at the conference table at the rear of the cabin.
The captain’s face darkened as he read. “I don’t like the look of this,” he said. “Ollis Field must be an F.B.I., agent.”
“Is he a passenger?” Eddie asked.
“Yes. I thought there was something strange about him. Drab character, not a typical Clipper passenger. He stayed on board during the stopover at Foynes.”
Eddie had not noticed him, but the navigator had. “I think I know who you mean,” said Jack, scratching his blue chin. “Bald guy. There’s a younger fellow with him, kind of flashily dressed. They seem like an odd couple.”
The captain said: “The kid must be the prisoner. I think his name is Frank Gordon.”
Eddie’s mind was working fast. “That’s why they stayed on board at Foynes: the F.B.I., man doesn’t want to give his prisoner a chance to escape.”
The captain nodded grimly. “Gordon must have been extradited from Britain—and you don’t get extradition orders for shoplifters. The guy must be a dangerous criminal. And they put him on my plane without telling me!”
Ben, the radio operator, said: “I wonder what he did.”
“Frank Gordon,” Jack mused. “It rings a bell. Wait a minute—I bet he’s Frankie Gordino!”
Eddie remembered reading about Gordino in the newspapers. He was an enforcer for a New England gang. The particular crime he was wanted for involved a Boston nightclub owner who refused to pay protection money. Gordino had burst into the club, shot the owner in the stomach, raped the man’s girlfriend, then torched the club. The guy died, but the girl escaped the fire and identified Gordino from pictures.
“We’ll soon find out if it’s him,” said Baker. “Eddie, do me a favor. Go and ask this Ollis Field to come up here.”
“Sure thing.” Eddie put on his cap and uniform jacket and went down the stairs, turning this new development over in his mind. He was sure there was some connection between Frankie Gordino and the people who had Carol-Ann, and he tried frantically to figure it out, without success.
He looked into the galley, where a steward was filling a coffee jug from the massive fifty-gallon urn. “Davy,” he said, “where’s Mr. Ollis Field?”
“Compartment number four, port side, facing the rear,” the steward said.
Eddie walked along the aisle, keeping his balance on the unsteady floor with a practiced gait. He noticed the Oxenford family, looking subdued in number 2 compartment. In the dining room the last sitting was just about finished, after-dinner coffee spilling into the saucers as the gathering storm buffeted the plane. He went through number 3, then up a step to number 4.
In the rear-facing seat on the port side was a bald man of about forty, looking sleepy, smoking a cigarette and staring through the window at the darkness outside. This was not Eddie’s picture of an F.B.I., agent: he could not see this man with a gun in his hand bursting into a room full of bootleggers.
Opposite Field was a younger man, much better dressed, with the build of a retired athlete putting on weight. That would have to be Gordino. He had the puffy, sulky face of a spoiled child. Would he shoot a man in the stomach? Eddie