“Better get these on. You’re starting to look whiter than me.” He handed the bundle to Walker, then went to finish securing the tarp and its macabre burden. Those thoughts of Claire, waiting just a few hundred yards away, were urging him to finish things up.
“I’ll go get Claire.”
Walker nodded his agreement and Dan started back along the shore.
They had managed to drag the body completely out of the water and Dan had wrapped the tarp tightly around it. Now it lay trussed with only the head exposed. He had little doubt it was Claire’s boss, Robbie: once they had rolled him over and seen the wild red beard, it seemed impossible for it to be anyone else. After all, how many men with red hair and a beard could there be in this remote area? What had been less obvious—and much more troubling—was the deep indentation in the back of his skull. It was hidden beneath the mass of thick, curly hair, but Dan had felt it when he positioned the head in order to make it easily visible for Claire to look at when she came over. He had no forensic training, and he supposed there was a chance the injury could have happened post-mortem, but the weather was good and the sea was calm. It was hard to see how anything could have hit hard enough to cause that kind of damage.
Claire was still sitting where they had left her, staring out over the water.
“Claire? You okay?” It was a stupid question, but he couldn’t think of anything better.
She turned toward him, her face still damp with tears, and nodded without speaking.
“Do you think you can do this?”
He wondered how many more times he was going to have to ask this girl that same damned question. He had asked it when she was stuck on that bloody island, watching the black ship. He had asked it when he took her back to Spider Island and got her to walk to Shoal Bay, to the very place some guy had been waiting for her with a gun. And now here he was, asking it yet again in order to get her to look at the dead body of someone she had probably known and been friendly with. He felt like an asshole, but he knew it was something that had to be done, and she was the only one who could do it.
She still didn’t speak, but he saw the slight rise of her shoulders and the pale, resigned smile as she stood up. He reached out his hand to steady her as she staggered slightly on the rocks and then moved it to her waist to support her. He could feel the tension in her body, her muscles stiff with the effort of holding her emotions in check.
Walker stood up as they approached, blocking her view of the corpse. As she got nearer, he stepped back to let her pass but stayed close. Dan moved up on her other side and reached forward to turn down the flap of tarp he had folded over the dead man’s face. He heard the sudden intake of breath and turned to look at her face.
“Is it Robbie?” Dan asked quietly.
She nodded.
“You’re sure?”
She nodded again and turned away.
Dan watched her stumble back across the rocks. Her shoulders were hunched, and her hands were clenched into fists. He looked at Walker. “We need to get her back to Annie. She can’t stay here. Want me to wait here while you run her back in the dinghy?”
“No. You go. I’ll wait.”
Dan was about to argue but thought better of it. He was getting by far the best of this deal. He nodded, caught up to Claire, gently took her arm, and led her over to the dinghy. As he pushed off, he heard Walker call out to him, “Hey, white guy. Don’t get lost.” Even in these circumstances, Walker could make him smile.
Annie was sitting out on the aft deck. She stood and walked out to the top of the walkway as they approached, her eyes holding a question as they stared down at Dan. He gave her a brief nod and watched as she reached out to pull Claire toward her, enfolding the younger woman in a rough bear hug as she stepped onto the deck.
“You staying?” she asked Dan, her chin resting on Claire’s head and her voice muffled.
“Can’t. I have to go help Walker.”
“Go. I’ll look after things here.”
“Thanks, Annie. We shouldn’t be too long.” Dan had come up with an idea for how to secure the body. He would tow it to a piece of shoreline nearer to Annie’s boat and bury it under rocks. That should protect it from animals, although he couldn’t slow decomposition. It would also allow Tom to return to his cabin. “How’s Tom doing?”
“Still moaning, but he’s okay. I’ll try and get some food into him in a while. Stupid old bastard.”
Dan smiled. Annie might pretend to be tough, but there was a softness there that was unmistakable and heartwarming. He turned to Claire and took her hands in his. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he told her. He was rewarded with a wan smile.
It took longer than he had planned to find a place to bury Robbie. Either the shore was too steep or the rocks were too big. Finally he found a site that might work. It was above the high-tide line, on a sloping ledge of dark rock, and Dan climbed up onto it. He had to reach above his head to pry some rocks loose and then pass them one by one down to Walker, who arranged them carefully around and over the body. It was far from perfect, but it would have to do.
As he slid back down, Dan heard Walker begin to chant. The sound was eerie, almost hypnotic, and it grew until it seemed to fill the air and the water and even reach down into the rock itself. The rhythm was so ancient, so primal, so fundamental, that Dan felt his body start to rock and weave in unison.
As the last sound faded, the two men stood together on the edge of the land and looked out over the water. Words were inadequate. And unnecessary. A man had died. A spirit had been freed and sent forward on its journey. There was nothing else to say or do.
Silently, they made their way back down to the dinghy. Dan held it steady as Walker climbed in, then cast off the rope that tethered it before stepping in himself and pushing off. He put his hand on the controls, but instead of starting the motor, he let the boat drift out on the waves. Walker sat quietly, watching him.
“You still chewing on a problem?”
It was a statement more than a question and Dan nodded in acquiescence. “Yeah.”
“Think you can fix it?”
Dan shrugged. “Not really. These guys are pretty well organized. I can’t get hold of anyone, and even if I could, they probably wouldn’t listen to me. And I don’t think they could get here quickly enough to do anything anyway, so I guess it doesn’t really matter. And they look ready to move. They’re not going to hang around once they’ve got those canisters organized. I figure by tomorrow, next day at the latest, the black ship and the crew boat will be gone.”
Walker nodded and inclined his head toward the shore. “What’re you going to do about him?”
“Nothing I can do there either, except tell Mike or the coast guard about it—whoever I can reach first. They can take it from there.”
“You figure it was the same guys?”
“Yeah.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes, and Dan watched the water move around them as he struggled with the concept of being a bystander rather than a player.
“Be a bitch to just let them go.”
Dan’s head snapped around as he heard the softly spoken words. They certainly weren’t what he had expected to hear from Walker, although they echoed his own feelings perfectly.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice betraying his wariness.
Walker smiled. “Wanna stop them?”
“Stop them? Are you fucking crazy? We can’t stop them—that’s what’s driving me nuts!”
“Yeah. I know. I’ve been watching it eating at your gut.”
“Yeah. Well. Guess I’ve got to learn how to deal with it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Fuck off!” Dan took a deep breath. He was letting both the situation and Walker get to him. “We’ve got to get back to Claire.”
“Yeah. Nice girl, that.” Walker’s face was expressionless, but Dan heard the smile behind the words.
“Yes, Walker. She is. Now let’s drop it, okay?” This was gett
ing way too personal. He reached for the starter. “In fact, let’s drop everything and get back to Annie’s.”
“We can stop them, you know.”
Dan’s hand froze in mid-air. Walker was serious.
“Yeah? And how are we going to do that?”
Walker outlined his idea as they sped back.
TWENTY
The lineup for customs and immigration at the main terminal at the Vancouver International Airport was slowly thinning. The passengers from the big Cathay Pacific arrival had mostly been processed and were now milling around the luggage carousels while the next group, off an Air Canada flight from Mexico City, moved steadily forward, passports in hand. Jason Colwood glanced up at the clock on the wall of his booth. He had been on duty for almost three hours and was due for a coffee break. He beckoned to the next person standing in the line. The man was dressed in a slightly rumpled business suit and was obviously traveling alone. He had his passport ready in his hand, open to the photo page, and as he approached, Jason could clearly see the cover: Mexico. Well, that made sense seeing as the flight had originated there. Jason reached out a hand for the passport as he took in the face of the man who now stood in front of him: dark eyes, sharp nose and high cheekbones, black hair and light-brown skin. He glanced down at the photo and then back up again. Definitely the same man, and he appeared to be totally at ease, perhaps even a little bored, certainly a bit impatient. Who wouldn’t be after a long flight and then standing in line for half an hour or so? He slid the passport into the reader and watched the screen as the data appeared: Juan Luis Rodriguez Vargas. Age 42. Married. Born in Tapalpa in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. Businessman. There were no cautions. Juan Luis had visited Vancouver twice before.
Jason looked back up from his screen at the man standing across from him and made his decision. “Good evening, Señor Vargas. Bienvenido a Vancouver.”
The man smiled. “Gracias, señor.”
Jason handed the passport back, nodded, and turned to look at the next people in line: a family with two fractious young children. Juan Luis Vargas, more properly known as Mohammed ibn Saleh ibn Tariq al-Nasiri, took the passport and slid it into the inside pocket of his jacket. He would not be needing it again.
A car, its windows darkened, was waiting for Nasiri outside the terminal. The driver lowered his sign, bowed his head in deference, took the suitcase and stowed it in the trunk, then waited while Nasiri slid through the open door onto the back seat. He wouldn’t be needing the suitcase again either. The Mexican clothing he had filled it with would be worn by whoever was returning there with the passport he had used. A fresh set of clothes lay on the seat beside him and he used the drive into downtown Vancouver to change. He was booked into the same hotel he had used on his last two visits, Days Inn Vancouver. It was perfect for his needs: not high-end enough to attract clients requiring their own security details, not low-end enough to attract trouble, and only two blocks to the massive Vancouver Convention Centre, with its glass walls and picturesque views across the harbor. With the main event starting in just three days, the hotel would be full of bureaucrats, civil servants, and journalists. He would blend in perfectly. The message light on his phone was already blinking when he entered his room.
Mike Bryant moved out onto the walkway in front of the Vancouver Convention Centre and gazed out over Burrard Inlet. Across the water the lights of West and North Vancouver glittered brightly. Even after an exhausting seven hours spent organizing the inspection of every square inch of the more than two hundred thousand square feet of meeting space, plus an almost equal amount of service rooms and kitchens, he was still refreshed by the salt air and the luminous glow of the snow-covered mountain peaks that formed a backdrop to the cities that stretched along the North Shore. A warm square of light creeping up one of the steep slopes marked the path of the Grouse Mountain gondola, and the lights on the ski runs on both Mount Seymour and Cypress Mountain were clearly visible. He made himself a promise to visit one of them as soon as this damn meeting was over.
“Hey, Mike. We need you in here.”
He dragged himself away from the view and turned to see the broad bulk of Sergeant Grant Fraser standing in the doorway. “Yeah. Coming.”
The team had assembled in the wide concourse that ran the length of the main building. Sets of blueprints were spread out over almost every available surface. Mike glanced around, performing a quick head count as he did so. Everyone accounted for.
“So where are we at?” he asked.
Grant answered. “We’ve checked everything. It’s clean.”
“Do we have uniforms on duty tonight?”
“Yeah. Three in and four out. Door checks every hour.”
“Anyone checked the alarms?”
“Yep. Richards and Ferguson sat in while the manager ran through the system. Everything checks out.”
“So we good to go?”
Grant turned to the group. “Guys?”
There was the rustle of paper as notebooks were opened and pages checked, then one by one the men reported.
“Yeah.”
“I’m clear.”
“All good.”
“Same here.”
By midnight, the convention center lay quiet and dark. Mike made his way back to his hotel, stripped down to his underwear, and fell into bed. Even if he was able to sleep—something he doubted—he would be back up at five the next morning to monitor the check-in procedures for participants in the preliminary meetings. So far it had all been routine. Everything had checked out fine and he thought they had all the bases covered. But he still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
Javier Fernandez sat quietly in the salon of Snow Queen, legs stretched out in front of him and a glass of single-malt scotch by his side. He had acquired a taste for the stuff on one of his trips abroad and knew he would never go back to the aguardiente of his native land. It was two hours since he had placed his call to the hotel in Vancouver. Nasiri should be calling him back very soon.
Things had gone well in Shoal Bay. Despite the problem with the girl, whom they still hadn’t found, he had been pleased with the day’s rehearsals. The men had shown they were ready and they had no problems assembling or handling the various weapons. Fernandez’s mouth narrowed in a thin smile as he thought about it. Except for the gas canisters, which Alex and Carlos would fill at the last minute, everything was ready to go. Tomorrow they would load the crew boat and head south.
He stood up and moved to the window. The weather forecast had predicted a front moving in overnight with strong northwest winds and rain, easing by late morning. The men would have to take the crew boat back over early to beat the seas, but once they left Shoal Bay and turned south, they would have the wind and waves behind them. And as soon as they had crossed the open waters of Queen Charlotte Sound, they would gain some protection in the narrow stretch of water that ran down the east side of Vancouver Island. It would all work as he had planned. He could picture the route on the chart he had memorized. The boat would refuel at Port Hardy, then run at full speed down the Inside Passage. It would then turn into Johnstone Strait and pass through the throat of Seymour Narrows, out into the Strait of Georgia, and across to the southern mouth of the Fraser.
The rest was easy. Once in the river they would become invisible. The Fraser was lined with wharves and docks, and constant traffic moved in and out of them. A crew boat’s arrival at the public wharf at Steveston was a common event in the working life of the river. They would not even be noticed, and the vans he had arranged to meet them would also be lost in the normal chaos of loading and unloading.
His thoughts were interrupted as Alex entered the salon. He had been monitoring the radio on the bridge. “Nasiri called. He is in place and he has the rifle.”
Fernandez nodded. All the pieces were coming together, exactly as he had planned it. The big man would be pleased.
TWENTY-ONE
Walker’s idea was crazy, but maybe it
was worth a try. It had to be better than doing nothing, and even if they didn’t succeed in stopping the men on the black ship, they might delay them long enough to allow Dan time to contact Mike and get Hargreaves back.
Walker had explained his idea—Dan wouldn’t grace it by calling it a plan—as they motored back to Annie’s boat, and now the two of them were heading out yet again. They were on their way to some island that didn’t have a name, that sat in a river that wasn’t shown on any chart, and that was on the other side of two sets of narrows, one at each end of a tidal lake that was reached by a narrow inlet. It would be dark by the time they got there. If he ever tried to explain this to anyone back in the city, Dan thought as he watched the inlet narrow ahead of him, they would have him certified and locked up. They had nothing with them: no charts, no compass, and no supplies, although Annie had lent him a flashlight and an old jacket that he could barely fit his arms into but which she said might come in handy if it got cold. She had also given him a box of chocolate-chip cookies.
According to Walker, the island they were heading for was temporarily home to some twenty or thirty young men—the number changed all the time, so he couldn’t be more specific—all members of local Native bands and all of them with troubled histories. Like Walker, they had left their communities to try life in the big city, and, again like Walker, they had gotten themselves caught up in crime or drugs or both. Most had done time in jail, although some had simply found their way home when they ran out of money or alternatives.
“So let me get this straight.” Dan was still seriously questioning his sanity for agreeing to this trip. “There’s a bunch of kids living on this island?”
“Yeah. Some. Some older guys too. Might even be a few as old as you.” Walker looked at him and chuckled. “But probably not.”
Dan ignored the jibe. “So what do they do there?”
Dark Moon Walking Page 14
