Free Crackdown by Bernard Cornwell Page A

famous boat, eh?”
    “What’s left of her.”
    “She’s surely pretty, Nick.” He walked to the stern where her name was lettered in gold. “Sounds like a tribute to your father’s profession, Nick.”
    “She was called Masquerade when I bought her. It’s said to be unlucky to change a boat’s name.”
    He gave me a shrewd look, clearly suspecting that I would have changed the name had I dared defy the superstition. He said nothing about his suspicion, instead asking me to remind him of how Masquerade had become damaged.
    “Some swine stole her and ran her on to a coral reef,” I said, “and I’m spending the next two months mending her.”
    Crowninshield walked a few paces in silence until he was standing under the palms which edged the lagoon. “So you’re mending your boat instead of taking my twins sailing?”
    “You got it.” I mimicked his slow accent, and the mimicry made him turn and stare at me, and the look on his face instantly made me regret my mimicry. He was a man whose approachability made him seem so very affable, but no one, however wealthy, becomes a Presidential hopeful without some steel in the soul, and it was that sudden steel that I now saw in the senator’s eyes. I had offended him, and the look he gave me was positively frightening. I tried to back away from my levity. “Someone else will take your kids to sea, senator. There’s a fellow called Sammy Meredith who’s every bit as good a sailor as I am.”
    “But I want you.” He had evidently forgiven my mimicry. He now took a pair of sunglasses from his shirt pocket and pointed them at me. When I made no response he turned and gazed at the far line of coral reef that was marked by a fret of white breaking water. I could see Bonefish and his sons working the lateen-sail of their skiff way beyond the reef, perhaps looking for turtles which they could sell to the men who exported the rich flesh to the Japanese. The sun was flat and hard and brilliant on the nearer water, forcing Crowninshield to turn back to me. “I need your help, Nick, because my only son is dying and my only daughter is following his example, and I need a strong man who will save them.” He said the words in the same light tone of voice he had used when speaking of my boat, and somehow the discordant contrast between the tone and the message threw me. I was not certain I had heard aright, then knew I had, and I suddenly felt a very British rush of embarrassment because of the senator’s frankness.
    “Your son is dying?” I responded inadequately.
    “Rickie is a drug addict,” he explained gently.
    I said nothing for a few seconds. “Oh, shit,” I then said, because that was how I felt and because I suddenly knew that the next few minutes were going to be extraordinarily difficult.
    “Specifically Rickie is addicted to cocaine,” the senator continued, “but I can’t say he’s particular in his tastes. He uses crack and cocaine and amphetamines, then more crack and more cocaine and perhaps even a speedball to round things off. You know what a speedball is, Nick?”
    “No.”
    “It’s an injection of cocaine mixed with heroin. It’s real big boy stuff”—the senator’s voice was very bitter—”and all of that garbage is washed down with alcohol and pickled in nicotine. My son is a dying junkie, but he doesn’t want to die alone so he’s encouraging Robin-Anne to keep him company and now she’s become addicted to cocaine and it won’t be very long before she’s smoking crack and trying speedballs.” The senator spoke with a sudden and incredible venom, and I realised it was only that angry force that was keeping him from weeping for his two children. “It seems,” he went on in a calmer voice, “that Rickie and Robin-Anne are among the sizeable minority of the population that is peculiarly prone to severe addiction.”
    I wondered why McIllvanney had not told me that Rickie and Robin-Anne Crowninshield were drug addicts, then I