No sign of any activity. I had the place to myself. I broke dinner out of my tote bag—a big step down from the Club Med buffet. On the other hand, I had a far superior room. So I sat in the dark and ate and thought and analyzed. Where had I gone wrong?
On Grand Cayman? I should have waited for the “African American” with the Uzi and given him the suitcase? I should have run up to my room and gathered my gear? I should have declined to fly out with Clyde Driffter?
On Cuba? I should have stayed behind with Vesco? I shouldn’t have traded gunfire with the black chopper?
On Jamaica? After wasting those three thugs, I should have returned to the U.S. Embassy and explained how I’d arrived there, what I was carrying and how I’d come by it?
In Haiti? I should have waited patiently in my locked room in the Consulate, not knowing why they’d locked me in, or what they had in mind?
In Santo Domingo? I should have tried to work something out rather than head for Puerto Rico?
On Puerto Rico? I should have gone to the U.S. authorities, after the U.S. authorities previously had tried to nab me?
By the time I got to Sint Maarten I clearly couldn’t go back, with pursuers on the alert everywhere I’d previously been. So moving down the chain of islands to St. Barts and Martinique was my only option, though every step took me further from home.
Reviewing the past couple weeks, I decided I hadn’t really fucked everything up. My only misstep was taking the job in the first place, and from that point the situation was fucked up, no matter how I played it. I’d wound up on Mustique, safe in a little tropical garden spot for the time being. But now that I had the time finally to think my next step through… I couldn’t come up with one. I couldn’t parse out a pattern. It was a dead end. The U.S. had no presence here. It was an island privately owned by the British Ultra Class. What they’d make of me, I couldn’t guess. No doubt they had ties to MI6. What story could I give them?
I couldn’t help but flash on Clyde Driffter’s final words: “A man alone ain’t got no bloody fucking chance.”
It was getting late, and I’d been on my feet out in the sun all day after a sleep-short night before. My mind was getting foggy, fading out. Tomorrow, I’d be thinking more clearly. I took off my shoes and lay down on the bed in the room I’d chosen.
A little later, I snapped awake at the sound of the front door opening. I heard tinkly giggles and deeper chuckles draw nearer. The door swung open, and a light flashed on. A young local couple, I guessed a maid and a yard boy had in mind some off-duty fun and games. The Caribbean has a reputation for being slow moving, but her hand came out of the front of his pants, and his hand out from under her top, at warp speed. She hid her face in her apron, and he flicked the light off. “So sorry, sah! Please excuse us.” And they scampered back out the door. Young lovers hoping to share a tender moment in the privacy of the guest house. Sorry, I spoiled it, but at least I bet they’d not be reporting it to the owners right away. I could move on tomorrow, bright and early, but for now I could sleep.
A tapping on the front door of the guest house awakened me in the grey dawn light. Now what? I weighed the options. Couldn’t very well shoot my way out. Slip out the back and head into the brush? With no way off the island, they’d get me soon enough. Might as well just answer the damned door and see what’s up. To my surprise, it was a dignified colored man in a neatly ironed, tropical weight white uniform, holding a silver tray of food and tableware. “The master thought you might appreciate some breakfast, sir,” he said, extending it toward me. I stepped up to receive it, and a crouching man darted out from behind the door jamb. Tea cups, scones and clotted cream went flying as he rose up underneath the tray and jabbed something into my neck.
And that was that.
I came to, lying on a soft bed in a tastefully appointed room all by myself. It reminded me of something… the last time something like that happened was… oh yes, when I reawakened after Soh Soon knocked me out in the Khmer Rouge’s Tuol Sleng torture chamber. Well, this had to be more hopeful. The Brits hadn’t established a world empire by playing patty-cake, but they wouldn’t likely be adding me to a pile of corpses.
“Hello? Anybody home?” I barked. The door opened and… stocky build, broad Slavic face, straw-colored hair… “Grotesqcu! What are you doing here?”
“The usual, Jake,” said Emil Grotesqcu, crack KGB agent. “Following you around. The key question is, what are you doing here? We’re still trying to figure it out. I’d have thought you’d be on Grenada by now.”
“Always keep ‘em guessing,” I replied. Grenada? The hell’s that about? “Was it your guys that stuck me in neck? Where did you take me?”
“Those lust-crazed servants reported you. The Mustique Company figured rounding you up in the morning would be soon enough as you were stuck on the island. They saw no point wasting a night’s sleep over you; they’d set the hounds out after breakfast. No telling how long you’d be tied up here if that happened, so there was no time to spare.”
“There never is,” I agreed. “So what happened? Where are we?”
“In a safe house. One of our useful British idiots lets us Friends of the People use it when we need a base in this region. After my men incapacitated you, we loaded you in his Land Rover and brought you here. You’re fine, nobody’s going to bother you now. We’ll send you forward this evening. Couldn’t you at least give me a hint what you’re up to down here? We initially figured it must be something dire and desperate for the CIA to team you up with DRAGONFLY, but why all the rigamarole, we wondered? I mean, why didn’t you just turn that suitcase over to the CIA station in the U.S. Embassy in Jamaica? The chaos and destruction you left in your wake… staging that dogfight with the CIA helicopter… you’re lucky somebody didn’t get killed. Well, initially we assumed the purpose was to confuse us, and you did have us going there for a while. It was all our network could manage, keeping track of you.”
“I’m not working for the CIA.”
“Of course not. Wink wink nudge nudge say no more,” he chortled. “But Driffter, after the crash—that threw us for a loop.”
“Yeah? How so?”
“He made his way to Grand Cayman and took some document files back to BCCI, claiming he’d retrieved them and demanding a reward. He kept yammering about $230,000, and finally they wrote him a loan for that amount that he’ll not have to repay. Costs them nothing, they’ll just post a loss of money that never existed anyhow. Fractional reserve banking, the Devil’s own invention. I wish we could claim credit for the force that’s going to take your economic system to eventual ruin, but your financial masters instituted it all by themselves before we even seized power in 1917. So my analysts next explored the possibility that Driffter was just a distraction, that there must be more to all this than meets the eye.”
“They worked that out, did they?”
“You led us on a merry chase, eluding all those thugs. It looked like it was genuine. Finally we realized that it was genuine.”
“Who were they, anyway?”
“Quite a rogues’ gallery. On Jamaica you killed three minions of a Ukrainian sex trafficking ring (explains the CZ 75) and then eluded some Arabs in Kingston. That plane from Grand Cayman was BCCI thugs. The Contras sent the man who visited you in the Trianon Hotel, and the ones in Santo Domingo were Columbians. The boat you encountered off Puerto Rico, that was Manuel Noriega’s men, Panamanians. That was a clever stunt you pulled in the Puerto Rico airport—several of your pursuers landed in the hospital after that free-for-all. The men tracking you at the Saint Martin airport were South African arms smugglers. I felt a little bad about winging the policeman.”
“It was you that shot that guy?”
“I calculated it was the best way to break up the pursuit. If I’d shot one of the South Africans, they’d just have taken off, and the police would have kept after you. Shooting the o
fficer was more likely to touch off a gunfight. It worked as I’d hoped. Operatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization met you in the airport at St. Barts—loved the way you threw them off the track. I wonder how Clark Clifford’s henchmen are going to describe their mission when they report in. The fellow who shot at you in Martinique harbor was from the Chicago mob. Off St. Vincent it could have been Iranians or the Mossad, or maybe Nigerians—several groups had staked out that island, but it was dark, we couldn’t tell who was in the boat. I don’t know why I bother worrying about you—you handled it all with your usual aplomb.”
“Why thank you. I was afraid I’d been getting stale.”
“Not in the least. Same old Jake.”
“Those people after me around Ochos Rios, who were they?”
“Ganga gangsters? Cubans? I don’t know. Castro was pretty annoyed about that MIG. I suppose he’ll expect us to replace it. But the fax of your passport photo didn’t start circulating right away. Our own people didn’t pick up your trail until you dropped in on the American Consulate in Kingston. You probably never noticed them. You certainly faked them out with that sailing excursion ploy, though—sheer brilliance. Had them in a dither until the St. Barts airport. I was surprised your CIA went to the trouble and expense of setting it up, but it worked like a charm. And Club Med? That New York slut…? What a hoot!”
“Just another wayward soul in search of love and acceptance in an indifferent world,” I said. “Let’s not judge harshly. One thing I wonder about is, these thugs on my trail have been going easy. I didn’t get the feeling they wanted to take me out.”
“No, I don’t think they did. Most of them had a vague apprehension that you just might be a CIA agent—killing you could bring them a lot of trouble. Besides, it wasn’t you, it was the ledgers they were after, and from what I’ve seen of the ledgers, they pose no dire threats to anyone’s operations or cash flows. BCCI’s clients want those materials so as to avoid embarrassment and inconvenience—tax evasion investigations, patterns of past transactions, money trails, evidence useful to political enemies—data that in the hands of the wrong people might bring a little trouble. Taking you out was a last resort, not worth the risk. Of course, that occurred to us late in the game. By the time you landed here on Mustique, we were working on another theory. Maybe your adventures weren’t a series of decoys and obfuscations at all. Maybe your assignment was ill-starred from the outset. Maybe Driffter wasn’t part of it after all, and you hadn’t intended to end up on Jamaica.”
“That was never in my marching orders, I can assure you.”
“So we back-analyzed the pattern of your movements, and it became clear that you were heading in the direction of Grenada all along. When you moved south from St. Barts the day after the coup, that confirmed our suspicions because soon thereafter my service alerted me to a major U.S. military operation afoot. So we concluded your objective all along had been Grenada for some kind of supportive activity, but you had to reach it clandestinely. However, something must have gone wrong because Mustique turned out to be a dead end for you. You had no hope of arriving on Grenada in time, so I thought I’d better step in and lend a hand.
“You see, Jake,” he continued, “we—the two us, I mean—have a serious problem. Two problems, really. I was able to make excuses about how you absconded with that satchel of our money in Belfast. Ultimately, it only caused a minor inconvenience as some other Irish Republican gang ponied up for the arms shipment. Russia lost nothing on the deal, and your ripping us off bolstered the case for my continued attention to you. But if you don’t make your rendezvous tonight and carry out your mission, that’s going to blemish the reputation of Jake Fonko, Superspy, and if my bosses conclude you’re no longer a primary threat and lose interest in you, my cushy job is done for. They’ll downgrade your case and put me back to subverting restive Muslim movements in our collection of Stans—a corner of the world noteworthy for dust, filth and flies. That’s problem number one, but I think I’ve got that one covered. I’ll deliver you to Grenada on schedule.
“The other problem is, it’s all very well for you to be a CIA superstar, but as far as my service can tell, you’ve bested me at every turn. I’ll admit I’m partly to blame for that because of the exaggerations I build into my after-action reports to pump up your reputation. If I don’t come through on this assignment, though, they just may decide I’m not up to the job and assign someone else to it. Already things are being whispered. So you’ve got to let me win one this time, Jake.”
“Do you have something in mind?”
“Those ledgers and disks from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International in your backpack would be of great interest to my service. We’ve had our eye on BCCI since its inception, though we use them from time to time. Those materials could provide a lot of valuable intel on various criminal and subversive networks around the world. So while you were unconscious, I took the liberty of photographing the ledger pages and duplicating the disks. I hope that’s all right?”
I gave his proposition a quick mull-over. Since I wasn’t working for the CIA, and since the stuff from BCCI was secrets neither from the U.S. nor any other government, nor related to any U.S. government operation, they were public property, sort of. I hadn’t stolen them, they’d just dropped into my hands, mine to dispose of any way I saw fit—finders keepers, no harm no foul. “Patriotic duty” had nothing to do with it, and while Todd Sonarr may have thought I owed him something for springing me from The Maze Prison in Belfast, I thought I owed the CIA bupkis for how they’d wrecked my army career.
I was tempted to just turn the whole lot over to Grotesqcu, post a “To Whom it may Concern” notice and let the Forces of Evil chase him for a while, but I saw angles to it that I could work. If I kept the original ledgers and disks, it would maintain the illusion that I was on a CIA assignment, and they still had value as bargaining chips. Letting Emil copy everything seemed only fair, since he’d rescued me, and I had to admit that his dogged devotion to my case over the years had gotten me out of more than one impending game ender. I had an interest in keeping him in business. If that BCCI stuff would boost his cred in the KGB, it worked in my favor too. He was the best backup I could ask for. The guy was a wizard.
“Okay,” I sighed with resignation. “I’m boxed in with no way out. But this has to be buried—deep cover, eyes only, strictest need to know. I don’t want to face fifty years in Leavenworth on a treason rap.”
“Not to worry, Jake,” he said. “How many of our spies has that ever happened to? For decades a number of your countrymen have quietly helped us out while faithfully doing their jobs, and all but a few freely walk the streets today. I can see benefits from this all the way around. You deliver product to the CIA. I return home with a trophy, the only man ever to count coup on Jake Fonko. My service can benefit from more insight into the networks and cash flows of the world’s scoundrels, and I doubt there’s anything about your CIA on those disks that we don’t know already. Depending what’s there, you may even be in for a hefty payday. You can count on the KGB to give money for value.”
“Enjoy them in good health,” I chirped.
“I thought you’d see it that way,” he said, looking altogether pleased. “You must be famished by now. Let’s have a bite to eat. Our host here has a most excellent Island chef from St. Barts—French and Caribbean fusion. I know there are cases of The Widow, as the Brits call Veuve Clicquot champagne, down in the cellar. We’ll pop open a bottle, and I’ll belatedly toast your birthday. Thirty five years, isn’t it? The prime of a man’s life. And then we’ll be on our way.”
It touched my heart. Somebody remembered. In the helter-skelter of the last couple weeks, even I’d forgotten. October 23rd, yesterday. “The years roll on, Emil,” I said. “Gone before you realize it.” But a little dark cloud crept in. I’d just turned 35, and what did I have to show for it? An interesting life, free and easy, pretty much
doing as I pleased, comfortable and exciting with glamorous interludes (punctuated by occasions of terror and danger, of course). But no real roots, no solid accomplishments, no permanent fixtures, no legacy, no family, building toward nothing. Did those 35 years add up to anything worthwhile, or was I on track for a fool’s existence?
We dined on the verandah. Grotesqcu fired the Widow’s cork out into the garden and filled our flutes. We raised them, touched them with a clink, and soon I was distracted from further dour reflections.
But I did wonder if there’d be a card from Dana Wehrli waiting in my mail, if I ever got home.
Night falls abruptly in the tropics. The sun slides below the horizon as an intact disk—boom. We finished off the bubbly and Grotesqcu led me out to the Land Rover. The driver—the man with the tray this morning—drove us to the jetty, where two Cigarette speedboats were moored. Four men who’d been standing around smoking, gathered beside them. Three climbed into the forward boat, and Grotesqcu, I and the other man stepped aboard the other.
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 4, 5 & 6 Page 17
