Death Echo

by Elizabeth Lowell

Her eyes were clear, green, patient, cool.

  Stubborn.

  Mac’s smile was thin. He knew all about stubborn. He saw it in his mirror every morning. The razor edge of her tongue didn’t bother him. He’d been insulted a lot worse for a lot less reason.

  But it meant that he didn’t have to play the amiable and easy game any longer.

  “Yeah, that’s what I do,” he said, smiling. “Sell my time.”

  This smile was different. It had Emma wishing the gun in her backpack was in her hand.

  “How much time do you have on your clock?” she asked.

  Blackbird moved restlessly, responding to a gust of wind. Mac didn’t have to look away from Emma to know that the afternoon westerlies had strengthened. The overcast was now a faint diamond haze.

  Time to get going.

  “I’m delivering the boat to Blue Water Marine Group,” Mac said. “Today.”

  “In Seattle?”

  “Rosario. San Juan Islands.”

  That could be checked. And would be.

  “Is Blue Water Marine Group a broker?” she asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  Emma throttled a flash of impatience. “Do they own this boat?” He shrugged.

  “Do you have their telephone number?” she pressed.

  “I use the VHF. That’s a radio.”

  She told herself that she didn’t see a gleam of amusement in his nearly black eyes, but she didn’t believe it. She hoped he couldn’t see the gleam of temper in hers. She felt like a dumb trout rising for pieces of indigestible metal.

  “I’d like to go with you to see how Blackbird rides,” she said evenly.

  “I don’t want to sell my boss a pig.”

  “I’d like to have you along.” He shrugged again. “No can do. Insurance only covers the transit captain.”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  “Blue Water Marine Group won’t.”

  Emma knew a wall when she ran flat into it. She pulled her sunglasses out of her crop top and put them on. “Is there some way I can contact you?”

  “I’m right here.”

  She flashed her teeth. “So am I. I won’t be for long. How do people who aren’t standing on your feet get hold of you?”

  “I move around a lot,” he said. “That’s the life of the transport skipper.”

  “But you have a cell phone, right, one that rings almost anywhere?”

  Mac decided that baiting wasn’t going to get him anywhere with this woman. She had a temper, and she kept it to herself. So he pulled out one of the stained business cards he always carried in his jeans.

  She took it and slid it into her backpack as she walked to the swim step. “See you around, Captain.”

  Mac didn’t doubt it.

  Nor did he doubt that someone would be running his fingerprints soon. She had handled that card almost as carefully as a crime-scene tech.

  5

  DAY ONE

  BELLTOWN MARINA

  AFTERNOON

  Taras Demidov leaned against the sturdy pipe railing that kept careless pedestrians from falling fifteen feet into the waters of Belltown Marina. Part of him was amused by the railing. It summarized the difference between Russia and America. Russia believed citizens should watch out for themselves; if they got hurt, it wasn’t the government’s fault. America’s citizens believed the state should take care of them like children. Russia accepted a world of good and evil. Americans believed only in good.

  Demidov enjoyed working with a culture that believed in God but not in the Devil. Americans were so genuinely surprised when flames burned through their flesh to the bone.

  Unfortunately, the world wasn’t made up of Americans. The so-called nations of the Former Soviet Union understood about the reality of evil. Some of them contributed to it at every opportunity.

  A movement in the marina caught his eye. He lifted his camera again, bracing the long lens on the railing. A light touch of his finger and the automatic focus homed in on the brunette who had reappeared from the cabin of Blackbird. Even though he knew that he wouldn’t be able to identify her at this distance, he took a series of quick pictures. Digital cameras were useful for fast transmission of images, but they just didn’t have the resolution of a good, slow film camera.

  But tourists carried digital cameras. As long as he appeared to be a tourist he could vanish among the crowds. He was pushing it by having a long lens on the digital frame, something few tourists had. He wasn’t particularly worried. People saw what they expected to see. If anyone asked him a question, he would answer it in genial American English.

  To the crowds around him, Demidov was just one more sightseer enjoying Seattle’s long summer days.

  That startling, useful naïveté about strangers hadn’t changed since Demidov had first come to the U.S. many years ago, as a young commercial attaché in the Russian Consulate in San Francisco. He had been amazed then at his freedom of movement from city to city, state to state. He was still amazed. His movements were unwatched, unmarked, anonymous. As long as he stayed away from any Russian Federation consular buildings, he didn’t have to worry about FBI counterintelligence watchers.

  All he had to do was wait for Shurik Temuri to appear and claim Blackbird. Unless the sullen old wolverine was disguised as a supple brown-haired female, Temuri was staying hidden in the background. Shadow man in a shadow world.

  As was Demidov, who tracked the woman through the camera lens. She walked like an American, open and confident. Maybe she was the captain’s “friend.” Maybe she was a player. If she got close enough to the camera, he would find out if Moscow had any record of her.

  Like a hunter slipping from blind to blind, Demidov tried to take pictures of the woman as she approached. If the crowd around him moved, he went with it. He was careful never to be alone against the sky. That could attract attention. Attention was the death of many a careful plan. And man.

  He lined up for another attempt. She was almost close enough for a useful shot. He held his breath, waiting, waiting….

  At the last instant the woman turned away, attracted by the white flash of a seagull diving for food thrown by laughing tourists. Turning away like that was a trick experienced agents had, an instinct that made them duck.

  Or it could be what it looked like. Coincidence.

  Demidov swore silently and turned in another direction, giving her his back as she reached the top of the ramp and slipped into a group of pedestrians. Like the woman, he didn’t want to give away his identity to strangers.

  When he turned back, camera and hands shielding his face, he couldn’t find the woman. His mouth flattened. Thinking quickly, he took more pictures of nothing. He could follow her or follow Blackbird.

  Demidov turned back to Belltown Marina. If the woman was a player, she would reappear when the yacht was delivered in Rosario. If not, it didn’t matter.

  All that mattered was Blackbird.

  6

  DAY ONE

  NORTH OF SEATTLE

  4:15 P.M.

  Emma pulled off at a rest stop and sat for a few minutes, pretending to talk into her cell phone. The people in the two cars and one long-haul rig that had followed her off the freeway got out, went into various restrooms, walked dogs, and stretched out cramped muscles. Everyone piled back into the same vehicles and left.

  She watched her mirrors and told herself to stop being paranoid. Herself didn’t listen.

  She blew out an impatient breath and punched two on her speed dial. The outgoing call to St. Kilda was automatically scrambled, just as incoming calls from St. Kilda were automatically decoded by her phone, which could use either satellite or cell connections. All of St. Kilda’s field agents carried the special phone. In a pinch, it could double as a camera, still or video, with or without sound.

  “Faroe’s phone,” said a woman’s voice. “Grace speaking.”

  “Emma Cross. Is he around?”

  “Annalise has her daddy in a chokehold. Anything I can d
o for you?”

  Emma laughed. “I’d like to see that.”

  There was a brushing sound, then Faroe’s voice said, “Where are you and—”

  “I’m north of Seattle, heading for a Puget Sound waterfront town called Rosario,” Emma cut in. “The captain is about six foot two inches, rangy, stronger than he looks, unusual coordination, maybe thirty-five, very dark brown eyes, short black hair and beard, no visible scars or missing digits or teeth.”

  “Name?”

  “MacKenzie Durand, called Mac, no ‘k,’ according to his card.”

  “Impression?” Faroe asked.

  “Warm smile, cold eyes. Very smart. In the right situation, I bet he’d be damned dangerous.”

  Faroe grunted. “Somebody wasn’t happy to find out that Blackbird is the same vessel that left Shanghai.”

  “Somebody will have to be happy with the radiation patch and business card I passed off in Seattle.”

  “Somebody is never happy.”

  “Yeah, I get that. The Blackbird is either owned or brokered by Blue Water Marine Group in Rosario,” she continued. “I’d like a fast run on them from research. Mac is a transit captain. Is the research in on him yet?”

  “Still pulling threads. Stay on him and watch your back.”

  “How carefully?”

  “How many backs do you have?”

  Emma closed her eyes. “Right.”

  “If research turns up anything useful, it will appear on your computer or as a text on your phone.”

  “Faroe…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’d swear I was being followed when I left the Belltown Marina.”

  “Description?”

  “That’s the problem,” Emma said. “I never saw anyone. I just had this feeling I was being watched. I did all the standard things for dumping a tail, both on foot and after I got in my rental. Nothing popped.”

  “How are you feeling now?”

  “A little foolish for wasting time, but I’d do it all over again.”

  “The dumping tail thing?” Faroe asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Keep it up. Everyone who ever worked with you at the Agency mentioned your good instincts. Some folks didn’t like what you found with those instincts—”

  “I’m shocked,” she cut in.

  “But that’s why St. Kilda hired you,” he continued. “We’re not politicians. All we want are answers. Get them.”

  Faroe disconnected before Emma could say anything.

  She sat, staring at the phone, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, thinking.

  I left the Agency because I got tired of shadows within shadows within darkness. Every shade of black and gray.

  And now all my instincts are twitching like I’m in Baghdad.

  Bloody hell.

  She snapped the phone shut, started her rental Jeep, and headed north on Interstate 5.

  7

  DAY ONE

  BEYOND ROSARIO

  8:03 P.M.

  Mac Durand slid the black-hulled yacht through the narrow channel at dead idle. By dark or sunlight, Winchester Passage was beautiful, distracting, something he didn’t need while single-handing a complex new boat in the ever-changing waters of North Puget Sound. The long-lasting twilight made everything difficult—seemingly clear but actually not.

  Yet Stan Amanar had insisted that Blackbird be in Rosario tonight, even if it meant running after dark.

  Mac didn’t like it. Deadheads—logs that had been soaking in the saltwater so long they floated straight up and down, exposing only a few inches of themselves above the water—were a constant danger. More than one twin-prop boat had met a deadhead and limped into the nearest port on one prop. Unlucky single-prop boats were towed or came in very slowly on a small kicker engine.

  Some of the boats sank.

  Never underestimate the sea.

  Or a woman.

  Mac smiled slightly. He was looking forward to seeing Emma Cross sometime soon. It would be interesting to find out what her game was. Or to get her out of her clothes, depending.

  He didn’t get naked with crooks.

  He picked up a channel marker a half-mile ahead and checked the paper chart spread out on the helm station in front of him. He would turn to port when the marker was abeam on his starboard side. Then it was a straight shot in two miles of deep water to the lights that marked the channel into Rosario.

  Mac set aside the joystick controller and returned to the throttles, nudging them forward. Speed had its risks. So did going too slow and feeling his way in the dark. Without radar or an electronic chart plotter, he was cutting things close. Sight navigation in full darkness was a good way to be surprised to death.

  Mac made his turn at the markers and brought the speed up more. The diesels purred and the wake boiled out behind the transom, a pearl fan spreading over the black water. He headed for town at what he estimated was the most efficient rate for both speed and fuel use—about fourteen knots. Engines like the ones in Blackbird’s belly could push the hull at more than twice that speed.

  Two hundred yards outside the breakwater, he cut the throttles back to reduce his own wake. The marker at the outside end of the alley was flashing red against night-black water.

  He picked up the hand-held VHF he had brought aboard. Blackbird wouldn’t have any proper electronics until after she was commissioned.

  “Blue Water Marine, Blue Water Marine, Blue Water Marine, this is Blackbird outside the breakwater.”

  The response was immediate.

  “Blackbird, this is Blue Water Marine, switch and answer on six-eight.”

  He twisted the channel selector and punched the transmit button. “Blue Water, this is Blackbird. You have somebody down there to catch a line?”

  The man-made marina looked calm in the deceptive light, but tidal currents could be a bitch.

  “With those pod drives, you won’t need help,” Bob Lovich said, “but we’re coming down to watch.”

  Whatever, Mac thought impatiently, and punched the send button instead of answering. The worst part of this job is owners who don’t know as much as they think they do.

  No matter what the spec sheet said, Blackbird was an untried boat. It took a lot of arrogance, plus a full helping of stupidity, to assume that the spec sheets were the same as the actual boat in the water.

  He pulled the engines out of gear, flipped off the engine synchronizer, and stepped out onto the main deck. Quickly he coiled bow and stern lines and placed them on the gunwale where someone on the dock could reach them. Because he was cautious, he put most of the weight of the lines on the inside half of the gunwale. If something went wrong, the lines would slide to the deck, rather than into the sea, where they could tangle with the props and cripple the boat.

  Caution was also why he tied fenders on the dock side of the boat. He didn’t want sudden wind or current to push him against the dock and mar Blackbird’s hull. Salt washed off. Scrapes didn’t.

  As he stepped back into the cabin, he heard the radio’s impatient crackle.

  “Stop wasting our time playing with fenders, Mac,” Lovich said. “That boat can dock herself.”

  Only if the captain knows the drill. Even a pod drive isn’t idiot-proof.

  Yeah, the worst part of his job was the owners.

  Mac knew that Blackbird was equipped with the latest and greatest pod drives, but he didn’t want to rely on a system he’d never used in the close quarters of a marina. He knew what the boat would do if he used the twin throttles for maneuvering. He couldn’t say the same about the joystick for the pod drives.

  Mac glanced around the deck, planning his moves, and then stepped back to the helm station inside and put the engines in gear. Dead-slow, he passed through the slot in the breakwater and entered the boat basin at a crawl. Using throttles and helm, he cruised down the outside alley, stopped and pivoted between two docks that were crowded with moored boats.

  The Blue Water dock was flood
ed with light, more to discourage theft than for safety reasons. Mac saw three men waiting at a gap between a fifty-two-foot sailboat with tall aluminum masts and a smaller pleasure boat with a square stern and long, overhanging bowsprit. He recognized two of the men, Bob Lovich and Stan Amanar, owners of Blue Water Marine Group. The third man was a stranger.

  On the approach, Mac kept going in and out of gear to keep his speed down. The gap awaiting him at the dock left him maybe two feet to spare on bow and stern.

  Hoohah, this should be fun.

  The tide was on a steep ebb. Beneath the glittering dark surface of the water, heavy currents pulled and shoved. He came out of gear and let Blackbird drift to a stop parallel with the gap where the three men stood, impatiently waiting for him.

  Immediately Mac felt currents work on Blackbird, pushing it away from the dock. He stepped out and called to Amanar.

  “You sure you want Blackbird in this spot? I’d hate to put a mark on your new boat.”

  “Ever play video games?” Amanar asked.

  “I’m male, what do you think?”

  Lovich laughed.

  The stranger didn’t change expression. Though he looked about Mac’s age physically, his eyes were older than the first sin. Mac’s instincts started crawling over his neck. He’d seen men like this stranger before, usually on a killing field.

  “Forget the wheel,” Amanar said. “Use the joystick. It’s just like a video game.”

  Mac didn’t hide his skeptical look.

  “Go ahead,” Amanar said. “We won’t charge for scratches.”

  “Your boat, your money,” Mac said.

  It’s a good thing I don’t have to like someone to work for him. I’d go broke otherwise.

  He went back to the helm, checked that the joystick was powered up, then cautiously tapped the upright stick toward the nine o’clock position.

  More quickly than he had expected, Blackbird moved sideways toward the dock. The short burst of power cut off the instant he released the joystick, but the boat continued to move slowly sideways.

  Huh. It works.

  He switched the stick toward the three o’clock position for half a second. It was enough to cancel the portside drift and bring the boat to a halt.