Grave Descend Page 11

  He dropped down on the grass, hidden behind the car. There was another burst of machine-gun fire, then silence.

  He picked up the speargun and crawled away. There was total silence in the small garden around him. He could not see the front of the house, but he heard a man shouting to another.

  He moved quickly toward the side of the house, then looked up. The man at the door was crouched behind a pillar.

  He waited. Looking upward he saw that flames were licking out through the open window, and the roof was catching fire.

  A moment later, blazing shingles began to fall to the ground.

  The man at the front looked up and backed away from the pillar.

  Yeoman shot the speargun. There was a hiss of gas, and then the spear caught the gunman, exploding on contact. The man dropped his gun, which clattered down the front steps, and lay still.

  Yeoman ran forward, picked up the gun, pointed out at the trees, and squeezed the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  He squeezed again. The gun was jammed. Disgusted, he threw it away, pulled the .38 from his belt, opened the door and ran inside.

  McGregor twisted away as the first of the cats leaped for him. He felt claws reaching for his back and shoulder; his shirt was torn; the cat grabbed hold, snarling.

  He was not prepared for the weight of the animal, which knocked him to the ground. Powerful teeth sank into his arm; he felt streaks of pain.

  Twisting, rolling, he saw the second cat moving closer. McGregor held up the gun to the first cat’s head and fired.

  The teeth relaxed; the animal fell away.

  “Fiona! You’ve hurt Fiona!” Elaine screamed.

  She ran forward and Sylvie caught her, tripping her and throwing herself on top.

  Meanwhile, with a snarl, Fido leaped upon McGregor. McGregor’s derringer slipped from his fingers as the cat’s jaws gripped his wrist. He howled in pain.

  He rolled with the animal, feeling its hot breath, smelling the close animal smells. He tried to shake the cat free but it was strong and vicious; the claws raked at this chest; his shirt was shredded.

  And then suddenly, the cat was gone.

  He looked up in surprise.

  The cat lay silent and unmoving on the ground. Its head was crushed.

  And a familiar voice said, “You want help, man?”

  Yeoman came running up. McGregor said, “You must be confident with that thing,” pointing to the gun.

  “Sure,” Yeoman said. “Sure.”

  He looked over at Elaine and Sylvie, shrieking and scratching.

  Without a word, he walked over and pulled the girls apart. Elaine appeared startled in the brief instant before Yeoman swung the gun down on her head. She settled softly to the ground.

  Sylvie kicked her.

  “Ugh,” Sylvie said. “Disgusting.”

  “You don’t seem to like the company,” a voice said behind them. “Pity.”

  McGregor turned.

  Levett, with Barbara at his side, stood at the door. He had a machine gun in his hands.

  19

  “I HAVE NOTHING BUT ADMIRATION for your cleverness,” Levett said. “You have provided a remarkable diversion. And your friend has considerable resiliency, to say the least.”

  He turned to Yeoman and fired a single shot. Yeoman twisted and fell, rolling from the light into the darkness of the shrubbery. It was sickening, the way he fell.

  McGregor started toward him.

  “No,” Levett said. “Stay where you are. Otherwise the girl.”

  There was no movement from the bushes. He could see Yeoman’s left foot in the light, twisted in an odd way.

  McGregor stopped.

  “This way,” Levett said, wiggling the barrel toward the pool. “There is not much time.”

  Burning cinders were falling to the grass from the roof.

  “The timetable has been advanced,” Levett said. In his hand he held the plastic bag of diamonds. “A problem, but nothing insuperable. It is time now for your final dive, Mr. McGregor.”

  He looked at McGregor’s bleeding scratches from the cat. “The sharks will love you.”

  McGregor allowed himself to be led around to the side of the house, to the pool, and then to the edge of the cliff. Fifty feet below, in the darkness, he could see the ocean breaking in gentle waves.

  He felt nothing but a kind of sickness. Yeoman had been killed; God only knew what would happen to Sylvie.

  “Now jump,” Levett said. He came close. “If you please.”

  “No,” McGregor said.

  “Then I would be forced to shoot you.”

  “But that would spoil everything,” McGregor said.

  “I would still do it.”

  McGregor shrugged. He was tired. He didn’t give a damn any more. He looked down at the water once again.

  Anything was better than hitting that water alive. Anything.

  “In the leg, I think,” Levett said. He lowered the gun to McGregor’s leg.

  “Pleasant journey, Mr. McGregor.”

  There was a shot.

  McGregor, tensed for the impact and pain of the bullet, was startled. Nothing happened to him, but Levett twisted, toppling forward, the bag of diamonds flung into the air where it opened and scattered, the jewels sparkling like stars as they fell into the ocean.

  Levett himself gave a groan of pain and fell forward to the ground. He rolled, screaming, and fell off the cliff. His voice gave a final howl of pain.

  Then a splash.

  Looking back, McGregor saw Yeoman emerge from the shrubbery, a revolver in his hand. Yeoman smiled.

  “How you doing, mon?”

  “Fine,” McGregor said, staring at him. “But I thought you were—”

  “Nope,” Yeoman said. “Missed entirely. Just a little diversion.”

  A burning timber came crashing down and fell hissing into the pool.

  “But I suggest,” Yeoman said, “that we get out of here.”

  They got out.

  20

  “I AM DISTRESSED,” BURNHAM SAID, watching as the police doctor swabbed iodine on McGregor’s back.

  “Don’t be,” McGregor said.

  “I wish you had called the police.”

  “I thought you were understaffed and overworked.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I thought I had forty-eight hours.”

  “True, but—”

  “So I took care of it myself.”

  “That,” Burnham said, “is what distresses me. Three men dead at the Cockatoo.”

  “A brawl.”

  “Four others dead at Silverstone. And the half-eaten body on the beach, and a fire in the house.”

  “It could happen to anyone.”

  “That is difficult to believe.”

  “Your job,” McGregor said, “is to make people believe it. And for the rest, you have two witnesses. Barbara Levett, the sister-in-law of Mr. Bad News. And Elaine.”

  “That is true,” Burnham said. “Two witnesses.”

  There was a silence.

  McGregor said nothing for a long time. Burnham looked at him steadily, and then he said, “Still trying to protect her?”

  “No. Not protect, exactly.”

  “You want to deal with it yourself, perhaps?”

  “I don’t know,” McGregor said.

  “But you understand the situation?”

  “I suspected,” McGregor said. “From the start. You see, I’m in the phone book, but it still takes time to find me. Particularly that first night: you see, I was at Sylvie’s apartment. I was called there. Now, that’s quite a thing. Anyone who knew enough to call me there when I didn’t answer my own phone knew quite a bit about me.”

  “And that was why you went along with the whole scheme?”

  “Yes. I had to find out if she was involved.”

  Burnham nodded.

  “But I know now. In fact, I knew a long time ago. Everything was too smooth. They knew me, and
knew my habits, too well. Someone must have been tipping them.”

  Burnham said, “They opened an account for her in Martinique. Fifty thousand dollars—the bequest of a nonexistent uncle in St. Lucia.”

  “White money,” McGregor said.

  “Yes.”

  McGregor sipped the rum Collins. “Well,” he said, “I’ll miss Sylvie.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Burnham said. “She would have watched you die, quite calmly.”

  McGregor said nothing.

  “In a way, you know,” Burnham said, “the poem was quite appropriate.”

  “What poem?”

  Burnham sighed. “I tried to tell you before. The name of the yacht, the Grave Descend, was a riddle disclosing the identity of the owner. Mr. Levett, you see, was a scholar.”

  “Of Samuel Johnson.”

  “Yes. Have you read Johnson’s poem on the death of Mr. Robert Levett, practitioner of physic?”

  “No.”

  “It’s quite well known. The last three lines to the first stanza go:

  “See Levett to the grave descend,

  Officious, innocent, sincere

  Of ev’ry friendless name the friend.”

  “Charming,” McGregor said.

  “I thought you’d like it.”

  Yeoman found him at the truck, checking the tanks and regulators.

  “What’s going on, man?”

  “Preparing for a dive.”

  “Where?”

  “Off the promontory. Did you know that there was no reward money for what we did?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I feel entitled to a little reward. I told the police that the currents around the promontory are swift and variable.”

  “Around the promontory? They’re peaceful as—”

  “Exactly.”

  Yeoman frowned. “We going hunting?”

  McGregor said, “I’ve been offered half-partnership in a hotel on Grand Bahama. I think it’s time I took it up.”

  “And the diving business—”

  “All yours,” McGregor said. He got into the track. “Come on. I need a little capital. We ought to be able to find six or seven of those stones.”

  Yeoman got in beside him.

  They drove off, down the road, along the coast of Ocho Rios. After a time Yeoman said, “You miss her?”

  “No,” McGregor said. “Hell no.”

  St. Croix

  January, 1970

  A Biography of Michael Crichton

  Michael Crichton (1942–2008) was a writer and filmmaker, best known as the author of Jurassic Park and the creator of ER. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Roslyn, New York, along with his three siblings.

  Crichton graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and received his MD from Harvard Medical School. As an undergraduate, he taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University. He also taught writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  While at Harvard Medical School, Crichton wrote book reviews for the Harvard Crimson and novels under the pseudonyms John Lange and Jeffery Hudson, among them A Case of Need, which won the Edgar Award for Best Mystery in 1969. In contrast to the carefully researched techno-thrillers that ultimately brought him to fame, the Lange and Hudson books are high-octane novels of suspense and action. Written with remarkable speed and gusto, these novels provided Crichton with both the means to study at Harvard Medical School and the freedom to remain anonymous in case his writing career ended before he obtained his medical degree.

  The Andromeda Strain (1969), his first bestseller, was published under his own name. The movie rights for The Andromeda Strain were bought in February of his senior year at Harvard Medical School.

  Crichton also pursued an early interest in computer modeling, and his multiple-discriminant analysis of Egyptian crania, carried out on an IBM 7090, was published by the Peabody Museum in 1966.

  After graduation, Crichton was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he researched public policy with Dr. Jacob Bronowski. He continued to write and published three books in 1970: his first nonfiction book, Five Patients, and two more John Lange titles, Grave Descend and Drug of Choice. He also wrote Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues with his brother Douglas, and it was later published under the pseudonym Michael Douglas.

  After deciding to quit medicine and pursue writing full-time, he moved to Los Angeles in 1970, at the age of twenty-eight. In addition to books, he wrote screenplays and pursued directing as well. His directorial feature film Westworld (1973), involving an innovative twist on theme parks, was the first to employ computer-generated special effects.

  Crichton continued his technical publications, writing an essay on medical obfuscation published by the New England Journal of Medicine in 1975 and a study of host factors in pituitary chromophobe adenoma published in Metabolism in 1980.

  He maintained a lifelong interest in computers and his pioneering use of computer programs for film production earned him an Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 1995. Crichton also won an Emmy, a Peabody, and a Writers Guild of America Award for ER. In 2002, a newly discovered dinosaur of the ankylosaur group was named for him: Crichtonsaurus bohlini.

  His groundbreaking, fast-paced narrative combined with meticulous scientific research made him one of the most popular writers in the world. His novels have been translated into thirty-eight languages, and thirteen have been made into films. Known for his techno-thrillers, he has sold more than 200 million books. He also published four nonfiction books, including an illustrated study of artist Jasper Johns, and two screenplays, Twister and Westworld.

  Crichton remains the only person to have a number one book (Disclosure), film (Jurassic Park), and television series (ER) in the same year.

  He is survived by his wife, Sherri; his daughter, Taylor; and his son, John Michael.

  Crichton and his younger brother, Douglas, co-authors of Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues, which was published under the pseudonym Michael Douglas.

  Telegram from Harvard College announcing Crichton’s acceptance, May 4, 1960. (Courtesy of the Office of the General Counsel of Harvard University.)

  Lowell House Harvard yearbook photo, 1961. (Courtesy of Harvard Yearbook Publications and Harvard University Archives.)

  Crichton as an anthropology major at Harvard College.

  “Peabody Papers.” (Reprinted from “A Multiple Discriminant Analysis of Egyptian and African Negro Crania” in Craniometry and Multivirate Analysis, Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 57, No. 1, 1966, courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.)

  Harvard Crimson article featuring Crichton, March 1969. (Courtesy of the Harvard Crimson.)

  Crichton as a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute, 1969.

  A photo of Crichton for his memoir Travels.

  Crichton hiking while doing research for his novel Micro.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1970 by Centesis Corporation

  Cover design by Andrea C. Uva

  Cover illustration by Omar F. Olivera and Theresa Burke

  978-1-4532-9929-6

 
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

  EBOOKS BY MICHAEL CRICHTON

  FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA

  Available wherever ebooks are sold

  Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.

  Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases

  Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.

  Sign up now at

  www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters

  FIND OUT MORE AT

  WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM

  FOLLOW US:

  @openroadmedia and

  Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia