by Matt Lincoln
“Too long,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s been about three weeks. But then again, I don’t blame them. They have a lot of other tips and a lot of other cases that are more pressing to them than this one. And he does sound kind of like a crackpot.” She nodded to Holm on this last part.
“Three weeks?” Muñoz repeated, letting out an exasperated huff. “The Hollands were in Scotland three weeks ago, and we’re just now hearing about it?”
I shared her dismay, but complaining wasn’t going to get us anywhere. And I felt for this poor Interpol guy. If this was a small town, he probably had a large geographic region on his plate that stretched far beyond it. He had his own cases, like Diane said, and international cases more pressing to his country than a couple of American drug dealers last seen in Georgia, of all places. I was sure he’d gotten to it as quickly as he could, frustrating as that fact was.
“Let’s cut the guy some slack. I’m sure he and his agents did the best he could,” I reminded everyone.
“He did,” Diane agreed. “And even if he didn’t, there’s nothing we can do about that now. We need to focus on the task at hand.”
“Which is?” Holm asked hopefully.
“Hold on, tell us the whole story first,” I said, holding out my hands to slow everyone down. “How did he figure out that the lead was legitimate?”
“Well, the guy just kept calling, saying he kept seeing Chester and Ashley every day,” Diane explained.
“Every day?” Holm repeated, unable to stop himself from cutting her off. “You mean they’re still there?”
“They could be,” Diane said, nodding slowly. “But let me get to that part. Ethan’s right. We’ll all need the full story.”
“Right, right, sorry,” Holm said, holding up his own hands in defeat.
“So, this man is a fisherman by trade, and he says that every time he goes out fishing for the past few weeks, he sees this couple walking along the shore. A man and a woman, about middle-aged, American, and looking like they’ve had a fair amount of Botox or plastic surgery to pair with a set of bad spray tans.”
“Well, that’s them. There’s no question about that,” Birn chuckled.
“I’m sure there are a lot of people who fit that description, though admittedly probably not in a small Scottish fishing town,” Diane said with a wry smile. “Anyway, when he saw their pictures on the news, he recognized them instantly.”
“Witnesses aren’t always right, though,” Dobbs warned. “Especially in cases like this one that are so high profile. People see what they want to see.”
“That’s what the Interpol guy thought at first, too,” Diane said with another nod. “But apparently, they think it’s different this time. This man claims to have seen the Hollands so often and so regularly that it can’t be ignored.”
“So he just sees them on the shore?” I asked. “From how far away?”
“Another good question,” Diane said. “At first, pretty far. But then I guess he started seeing them out on the water, too. Not every day at first, but often enough. And then every day, all at the same times and in the same place, like clockwork.”
“On the water?” I repeated, perking up even more at this news. “Doing what? In what? A yacht? A sailboat?”
“That’s the thing, the guy says it’s an ocean liner,” Diane said, her brow furrowed now as she said this.
“A what?” Muñoz asked, unable to hide her skepticism.
“I guess this fisherman goes pretty far out,” Diane shrugged. “And the Hollands are on some ocean liner with a bunch of other people. He said it seemed like they were looking for something in the water.”
Now, this was just too much for me. The Hollands were known nautical enthusiasts, and this sounded straight out of the playbook for how they found Lafitte’s ship in the Keys, painstakingly searching through the water with a team of experts until they found exactly what they were looking for, even though it took months on end.
“That’s them,” I said definitively. “It has to be. Who else would fit that description, doing that?”
“I agree,” Diane said. “That’s what made the Interpol agent look into the case some more. The guy started calling about this ocean liner. It was just strange enough to fit the file, and those details haven’t been released to the media or the public at all. We’re just saying that the Hollands are drug kingpins hiding behind a real estate empire, not that they go digging around the ocean floor for buried treasure in their free time.”
“That would inspire a fair amount of sensationalism,” Muñoz agreed. “It would just make our jobs harder.”
“Agreed,” Diane said, crossing her arms. “And it has the added benefit of tipping us off that this fisherman character might just know what he’s talking about, though I don’t see how we could’ve foreseen that.”
“Has he ever talked to them or anything?” I asked, unable to keep the nervous excitement out of my voice. “Has he gotten a good look at what they’re doing or any idea what they’re looking for?”
It had never occurred to me that the Dragon’s Rogue might not actually be anywhere near the Americas anymore. Could it have ended up right back home in European waters? There would be a kind of symmetry to that, I decided, as well as some irony considering how much time the Hollands and I had spent sorting through the waters closer to our homes.
“He says he tried to talk to them a couple of times, but they’re not very talkative,” Diane said, and I thought I just might explode from my anticipation, my mind reeling with all this new information. “He asked them what they were doing in Scotland once when they were still sticking to the beach, and they just said they were taking an extended holiday. Then out in the water, he asked if they were fishing, and they said ‘something like that,’ but didn’t elaborate.”
“They have to be looking for one of Marston’s pirate ships. They’ve just got to be,” Holm said, and I kind of wished he hadn’t. The FBI liked ribbing me for that stuff even more than my own colleagues did.
No one said anything now, though, not even so much as a snicker, and I realized that the FBI agents were just as excited as we were to be finally getting a breakthrough in this case. Maybe they had been getting more frustrated with the slow pace of things than they had let on originally.
“That was my first thought, too,” Diane said, glancing over at me apprehensively. “Anyway, as I was saying, the Scottish fisherman didn’t talk to them at all after he saw the FBI report on the news. He steered clear of them after that. Still saw them, though.”
I noticed that Diane brushed over the talk of the pirate ships. This struck me as intentional, and I narrowed my eyes at her.
“What’s going on?” I asked her. “What aren’t you telling us?”
She swiveled to me, hands on her hips, and heaved a sigh.
“You don’t miss much, do you, Marston?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow at me. “Look, I’m not holding anything out on you. I’ve told you everything I know. It’s just that… I know you’re going to want to work this.”
I blinked at her, not comprehending what she was saying.
“Uh, yeah, duh,” Holm said, voicing my own thoughts. “Of course we’re going to work this. Man, I haven’t been to Europe since the Navy. Don’t think I’ve ever been to Scotland, though.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Diane said, looking as if the words pained her to say. “No one’s going anywhere, at least not yet.”
I thought my jaw might drop all the way to the floor, and just like that, the room was abuzz again. Everyone was talking, not just whispering this time, and Diane’s efforts to silence us were proving unsuccessful in this round.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I cried, gaping at her. “You can’t drop that bomb of a lead on us and then pull the rug out from under us like that!”
She shook her head at me, uncomprehending. Everyone was too loud, and she couldn’t hear me.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!�
�� I screamed again, louder this time, and it carried over all the noise now.
“Look, look, I knew this wasn’t going to be popular,” Diane said, motioning for us all to calm down and listen some more, and the chatter dropped back down to a mere buzz, enough for her voice to carry over it. “But it’s not up to me. This might not even be our case for the time being.”
“What?” Holm cried, sounding even more aghast than I had. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It’s Interpol,” Dobbs said bitterly, shaking his head. “They’re claiming jurisdiction, aren’t they?”
“They are now,” Diane sighed. “I’ll fight it, but Scotland is understandably concerned. They’ve had mob problems for God knows how long, and they don’t want to add a major international drug operation on top of it all.”
“I… I…” I stammered, not sure what to say. “Surely they can’t think cutting us out will help matters.”
“No, they don’t,” Diane said, shaking her head. “They understand that our agencies have done a lot of the legwork here, and when push comes to shove, the Hollands—or whatever their real names are—will most likely be extradited to the United States to stand trial.”
“Most likely?” Muñoz interjected. “You mean there’s a chance that they won’t be?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said again, staring at Holm and shaking my head. He looked back at me with the same shocked expression on his face that was no doubt on mine.
“Look, it depends on what Scotland finds out about what the Hollands are doing there if it’s the Hollands at all,” Diane explained.
“There’s no way it’s not them!” Birn argued. “You heard that description and what they’re doing. There’s just no damned way!”
“I don’t disagree,” Diane said, pursing her lips. “But either way, if Scotland wants to try the Hollands for some major transgression there before extraditing them here, that would be their right. It just depends on where all the chips fall with this one, and we just can’t see that far ahead yet, no matter how much we’d like to.”
Her mouth was set in a thin line now, and I could tell that she didn’t like this any more than we did. That was some consolation, at least. I knew she would be fighting for us all the way through this mess.
“Look, you have to just send us out there to observe,” I argue, trying to sound measured and understanding, though it was difficult. “Just Holm and me. Or even just me. We could help them work the case, track these people down. We’ve been working this for the better part of the year! Our insight and experience could be invaluable to them.”
“I don’t disagree with that, either,” Diane assured me, giving me a small smile. “But don’t underestimate Interpol. Those guys know their stuff. If they really need us, they’ll call for us. Until then, we just have to sit tight and keep following other leads as they come up.”
“Other leads?” Muñoz repeated, true to form and aghast. “What other leads? We know where they are now, don’t we?”
“Not for certain yet,” Diane said patiently. “We can’t abandon other leads just because we have a good one. Great one, even. Additionally, there’s more to be learned about these people. Prioritize your work on the Hollands’ background for now. The more we know about them, the better.”
“Come on,” I argued, at a loss as I shook my head at her. “You’ve got to at least try to get us over there. We’ll be a help to them, even if they don’t believe it yet.”
“Believe me. I tried,” Diane said wanly. “But they’re not having it, not yet. They’re wary of too many people crowding around the case and freaking the Hollands out. And they do have a point. For all we know, they could still be keeping tabs on us.”
This was a valid enough concern, I had to admit. The second Holm and I got on a plane to Scotland, someone might tip off the Hollands. Still, I wanted to go so badly. It was killing me to be so close, yet still so far, from catching these people and maybe even finding the Dragon’s Rogue.
“Don’t worry,” Diane told me kindly, no doubt seeing my conflicted emotions on my face. “We’ll still be involved, and there’ll be hell to pay if they try to steal the whole case from us. I promise you that. In the meantime, we still have work to do.”
4
Ethan
Tensions were predictably high in the office after Diane told us about her call with the guy from Interpol. No one was happy with what we’d just been told, and I was starting to feel more claustrophobic than ever, between all the stacks of files, the phones ringing off the hook with new tips, almost all of them no doubt dead ends, and the FBI agents all chattering amongst themselves in disdainful tones about what was going on.
“I knew this was going to go sour,” I heard Agent Smith mutter bitterly after Diane had returned to take refuge in her office. “We never should’ve let them take the lead on this case.”
“It’s not like we had a say,” another particularly unfriendly man named Forrester added. “None of us wanted to come here in the first place.”
“Well, we should’ve fought harder,” Smith said, giving Dobbs and Corey a pointed look as if he didn’t think they had quite risen to the occasion.
“Hey, I fought just fine,” another guy named Hunt said. “So did he.” He gestured to his partner, a plain-looking guy with a permanent scowl named Barnes.
Barnes nodded in agreement and turned his unpleasant expression on Dobbs and Corey.
Holm and I exchanged a bemused look. They were really talking about this right in front of us, emboldened by the bad news and Diane’s newfound absence and distraction.
“Shut up,” Dobbs hissed, glancing over at us quickly and averting his eyes the second he saw that I was watching him. “They can hear you.”
“We’re supposed to play nice, remember?” Corey added.
I heard a snickering sound behind me and knew that Muñoz must have been listening, too. She was no doubt wondering how these guys possibly thought they’d been playing nice up until this point.
From the second the FBI agents had arrived, they’d been relentless in their disdain for us. It had started out more brazen, with the coffee spilling and constant jabs at Holm, Birn, and Muñoz during the manhunt for the Hollands’ hitman. Once I arrived on the scene, things grew more subtle, however, in response to more than a few good talkings-to from Diane.
There were whispers, and snickers, and the pedantic explaining of things everyone at MBLIS had known since the early days of our law enforcement training. All while Diane wasn’t looking, of course, though I doubted that much escaped her notice even when she was tucked away in her office.
It was annoying, to say the least. But until now, they hadn’t expressed their hatred for the very idea of working with us in the first place, at least not in front of our faces.
“Oi! If you have something to say, why don’t you come over here and say it?” Holm called over to them, and his eyes narrowed in a blistering glare that was altogether rare coming from him.
“Shut up!” I hissed to him. As much as I hated this, I didn’t exactly want to get into it with the FBI agents. Well, really, I didn’t want to get into it with Diane, who would get into it with us if we caused a scene.
“You think we should just let them sit there and blame us for this?” Holm asked, throwing his arms up in the air in exasperation.
“Do you want Diane breathing down our necks for the next God knows how long?” I shot back.
My partner seemed to consider this briefly, dropping his arms and shooting a wary look in the direction of Diane’s closed office door.
He didn’t have time to make a decision, though.
“Come on, what are you, Robbie, scared?” Smith sneered, notably using Holm’s first name even though the two of them weren’t anywhere close to being on a first-name basis. “Scared of your girl boss just like you are a little coffee?”
“Holden!” Corey cried, giving his partner an astonished look. “This isn’t like you.
A little healthy competition between agencies, sure, but this is too much. If you’re not careful, I’ll get you pulled off this case.”
I glanced back at Birn and Muñoz, who both looked just as surprised by this response as Holm and I were. For Smith’s own partner to threaten him like that, he must’ve been really out of line. Indeed, he’d gone much further than he had any other time since the other agents arrived in Miami.
“What did you just say?” Smith asked, turning his ire on Corey now.
“He’s right, man, you went too far,” Forrester said begrudgingly. “We all know Diane’s better at this job than a lot of people in the FBI.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?” Smith asked him, open-mouthed. “If we’d kept this in-house, we would’ve caught them by now. And Interpol wouldn’t be acting like they could walk all over us, now, would they? We all know that hardly anyone over there probably even knows what MBLIS is.”
“They damn well know that the Hollands are on our Most Wanted List, though,” Forrester argued. “And Interpol plays by its own rules. You should know that.”
“Yeah, they took that human trafficking case from us a while back,” Dobbs pointed out helpfully. “At least they haven’t completely stolen it yet. They’re just seeing what they can do without us while they gather information.”
“Us?” Hunt asked with emphasis. “What us? She made it clear enough that if she were to send someone, it would be them.” He gestured vaguely in Holm’s and my direction with a glower at Diane’s office door.
“Exactly,” Smith agreed, clearly glad to have some backup from amongst his own ranks. “And you can’t say that wouldn’t be a mistake, can you, Doug?” He narrowed his eyes at Forrester as if challenging him to dare to disagree.
“Well, they are the ones most well-acquainted with the case,” the other man pointed out, practically wincing as he said it because he knew what Smith’s reaction was going to be.
“Please, they stumbled onto this case,” he scoffed, true to form. “You can’t seriously think that this agency has the training and resources necessary to take on something this big effectively?”
