Kenner suspected that Willy had gotten cold feet, and had been unwilling to wait. But it was an important and telling mistake. Kenner called the agent and started proceedings to subpoena Willy's phone records.
None of them was allowed to leave the island for the next three days. There were formalities, forms, interrogations. There were problems with emergency care for Morton's collapsed lung and Jennifer's massive blood loss. Morton wanted to be taken to Sydney for surgery, but he was not allowed to leave because he had been reported as a missing person in America. Although he complained bitterly about witch doctors, a very good surgeon trained in Melbourne took care of his lung in Gareda Town. But Jennifer had not been able to wait for that surgeon; she had needed three transfusions during five hours of surgery to remove the bullets in her upper body, and then she was on a respirator, near death for the next forty-eight hours. But at the end of the second day she opened her eyes, pulled off her oxygen mask, and said to Evans, sitting at her bedside, "Stop looking so gloomy. I'm here, for God's sake." Her voice was weak, but she was smiling.
Then there were problems about their contact with the rebels. There were problems about the fact that one of their party had disappeared, the famous actor Ted Bradley. They all told the story of what had happened to Bradley, but there was no way to corroborate it. So the police made them tell it again.
And suddenly, abruptly, unaccountably, they were allowed to leave. Their papers were in order. Their passports were returned. There was no difficulty. They could leave whenever they wanted.
Evans slept most of the way to Honolulu. After the plane refueled and took off again, he sat up and talked to Morton and the others. Morton was explaining what had happened on the night of his car crash.
"There was obviously a problem with Nick and what he was doing with his money. NERF was not doing good things. Nick was very angry--dangerously angry. He threatened me, and I took him at his word. I had established the link between his organization and ELF, and he was threatened, to put it mildly. Kenner and I thought he would try to kill me. Well, he did try. With that girl at the coffee shop, that morning in Beverly Hills."
"Oh yes." Evans remembered. "But how did you stage that car crash? It was so incredibly dangerous--"
"What, do you think I'm crazy?" Morton said. "I never crashed."
"What do you mean?"
"I kept right on driving, that night."
"But." Evans fell silent, shaking his head. "I don't get it."
"Yes, you do," Sarah said. "Because I let it slip to you, by accident. Before George called me and told me to keep my mouth shut about it."
It came back to him then. The conversation from days ago. He hadn't paid much attention at the time. Sarah had said:
He told me to buy a new Ferrari from a guy in Monterey and have it shipped to San Francisco.
When Evans expressed surprise that George was buying another Ferrari:
I know. How many Ferraris can one man use? And this one doesn't seem up to his usual standard. From the e-mail pictures it looks kind of beat up.
And then she said:
The Ferrari he bought is a 1972 365 GTS Daytona Spyder. He already has one, Peter. It's like he doesn't know...
"Oh, I knew all right," Morton said. "What a waste of money. The car was a piece of crap. And then I had to fly a couple of Hollywood prop guys up to Sonoma to beat the hell out of it and make it look like a crash. Then they flat-bedded it out that night, set it on the road, fired up the smoke pots..."
"And you drove right past a wreck that was already in place," Evans said.
"Yes," Morton said, nodding. "Drove right around the corner. Pulled off the road, climbed up the hill, and watched you guys."
"You son of a bitch."
"I'm sorry," Morton said, "but we needed real emotion to distract the police from the problems."
"What problems?"
"Ice-cold engine block, for one," Kenner said. "That engine hadn't run for days. One of the cops noticed it was cold while the car was being put on the truck. He came back and asked you the time of the accident, all of that. I was concerned they would figure it out."
"But they didn't," Morton said.
"No. They knew something was wrong. But I don't think they ever guessed identical Ferraris."
"No one in his right mind," Morton said, "would intentionally destroy a 1972 365 GTS. Even a crappy one."
Morton was smiling, but Evans was angry. "Somebody could have told me--"
"No," Kenner said. "We needed you to work Drake. Like the cell phone."
"What about it?"
"The cell phone was a very low-quality bug. We needed Drake to suspect that you were part of the investigation. We needed him pressured."
"Well, it worked. That's why I got poisoned in my apartment, isn't it?" Evans said. "You guys were willing to take a lot of risks with my life."
"It turned out all right," Kenner said.