Twice a Spy dc-2

by Keith Thomson

  Hadley set her BlackBerry on the table. “You ready for the latest?”

  “I can make the time.” He ate a forkful of fish for appearance’s sake.

  “Our pilot friend went straight home to his apartment in Anse Mitan, about five miles from here. He microwaved a burrito for dinner, and had”-she glanced at the BlackBerry’s display-“five red stripes: I’m going to have to check my codebook.”

  “You’ll do better with this.” Stanley tapped the leather-bound drinks menu propped between a candleholder and the pepper mill. “Red Stripe is a beer brewed in Jamaica. If our boy’s had five, he’s probably not planning to drive. Under any other circumstances, I’d say: ‘I hope not.’ ”

  “Currently he’s surfing the Web. No calls, no new e-mails, two text messages, one sent to a local woman asking her if she’d be at Le Squash for happy hour tomorrow, one from a Dutch woman who tends bar at a nightclub in Fort-de-France inquiring about his plans later tonight.”

  “She looking to book a ‘flight’ with him?”

  “It would seem so. He didn’t reply.”

  “Maybe he’s waiting to hear from two men.”

  With a groan, Hadley kicked Stanley’s shin, as she would have if she knew him well. “Those men would know that contacting him by telephone or text would effectively be contacting us.”

  “Unless it’s encrypted text.”

  “Good point.” Hadley began typing a cable.

  “How about this?” Stanley asked. “Do we know where on the Web he’s surfing?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. EBay-auto parts.”

  “We’re capturing it?”

  “Are you in the market for auto parts too?” Hadley resumed eating.

  “When I was in Algiers, an MI6 tech intercepted bad guys’ messages embedded in online classified ads for used bathroom fixtures. They were using an encryption algorithm to mix the secret text into the pixels of the photos in a way that didn’t distort the pictures.”

  She paused, fork midway to her mouth. “Used bathroom fixtures?”

  “Would you ever look at classified ads for used bathroom fixtures, let alone buy a used bathroom fixture over the Internet?”

  She smiled. He sat back and admired her. No acting required.

  Throughout the rest of their meal, thoughts of covert operations receded.

  15

  The black water lightened to violet. Landfall. Charlie wasn’t sure whether he was happier about that or the fact that he hadn’t needed to use his speargun en route.

  He and Drummond surfaced about fifty yards short of a secluded beach that shone silver in the moonlight. On the dark and densely wooded hills, thousands of lights glowed like embers. A gentle breeze whistled through palm fronds. Charlie thought of his surroundings in terms of obstacles to circumventing the local authorities-who were undoubtedly scouring the island-and getting to the Laundromat. Contacting Bream was out. The BirdBook had been left in the overnight bag last seen in the customs office. They had fled the airport with only what they had on them, wallets and the pill bottle Drummond always kept close at hand.

  Charlie spat out his clammy mouthpiece. “It’s been over an hour since you hot-wired a vehicle. What do you say we find another one?”

  Drummond held his mouthpiece close to his lips, as if ready to resubmerge. “Okay.”

  A hundred yards up the beach stood a mass of stacked wooden lounge chairs. “Looks like a hotel there,” Charlie said. “What do you think?”

  “It does.”

  “What do you think we should do? Head toward it? Or away?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How about this? Say you were a fugitive looking to shed your scuba gear and steal a car in order to get to a Laundromat in Fort-de-France. Would you be wary of a big hotel, where the security might be watching out for us, or would you be psyched about a crowded place where there are probably a lot of other people with our skin color, many of them on their fourth or fifth umbrella drink by now?”

  “Ah. In that case, the relative ease of obtaining clothing and a vehicle would outweigh the cons, which would largely consist of a faxed alert that the graveyard-shift guards and receptionists may not even have seen.”

  Unbelievable, Charlie thought.

  They swam closer to the beach, then walked along the sandy sea bottom in their flippers. Gas-fed torches showed the way to landscaped gardens fronting a large resort hotel. As they drew closer still, the dark forms of guests came into view.

  Drummond slowed a few yards from shore, body low in the surf, apparently casing the surroundings. When no one was in sight, he ambled onto the beach, his flippers and speargun bunched under one arm.

  Charlie followed. The sand ended at a wall of bamboo stalks twenty to thirty feet high, red at their bases before morphing into a brilliant green. Drummond deposited all of his gear but his wet suit into their midst. Which made sense to Charlie. The lightweight neoprene suits had short sleeves and pant legs, not entirely out of place on guests strolling along the beach.

  Without the wigs they’d worn at the airport, they looked less like the two men sought by local authorities. On the other hand, they looked more like the two men sought by the rest of the world’s authorities. But Drummond’s intuition seemed to be firing. So Charlie didn’t hesitate to replicate his father’s every move while trailing him up the beach and toward the hotel.

  They crossed paths with a handsome middle-aged couple, apparently walking off dinner, arm in arm, their wedding rings and her diamond aglow. Flush from a bottle of wine or just the warm air, they both smiled, the wife offering a warm “Good evening.” Awaiting a reaction to the dripping scuba suits, Charlie could only muster a nod in greeting, but Drummond said, “How’re you doing?” as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  The man and woman appeared to care just as little, intoxicated with each other. As they passed, a wave sizzled up the sand, lapping their shins. “God, why didn’t we change into our swimsuits?” she said. “I’m dying for a dip.”

  Charlie spotted a bamboo hut fifty yards ahead, between the beach and the hotel’s swimming pool. Nailed to the hut’s grass roof, at a slant, was a sign that read SANDY’S, hand-painted, intentionally slapdash. Probably a shop that sold suntan oils and lotions at three times the price guests would pay in town. Pointing it out to Drummond, Charlie said, “That place ought to have shirts and stuff.”

  “It’s closed,” Drummond said.

  “I know, but I was thinking that someone who can hot-wire an amphibious vehicle might be able to open a hut.”

  The hut proved to be nearly as secure as a vault, an industrial version of the prefabricated metal storage sheds sold at home improvement stores-the bamboo facade was hot-glued to the exterior walls, synthetic grass was stapled to the roof. Its door and window were fastened by combination locks.

  “An interesting piece of information about combination locks is that many have small keyholes on the back,” Drummond said.

  Charlie eagerly flipped the lock over and spotted a tiny round keyhole in the upper right corner. “Excellent piece, Dad!”

  “Did you know that many people use the same combination lock for years without ever noticing the keyhole, until a thief defeats it.”

  “How does the thief defeat it?”

  Drummond gazed down the beach, as if regarding a beautiful painting. “How would I know?”

  “Say you were a onetime CIA operations officer, who took a five-day course in lock-picking when you were at the Farm …”

  16

  The shock of actually finding the Clarks might have bowled Stanley over if Hadley hadn’t seized his hand and steered him behind a grassy rise in the sand, out of the fugitives’ sight.

  “Good choice of hotel,” he said under his breath.

  “Next time we decide to take a ‘romantic stroll along the beach,’ remind me to request permission to bring a sidearm.”

  Stanley had an AK-47 and three handguns in his apartment in Paris, but rarely
took them to work, although, like now, they often would have come in handy. As opposed to FBI agents, CIA officers didn’t carry firearms-the bureaucrats usually withheld permission for fear of their operatives being exposed as CIA officers and of the resulting flaps.

  Antibureaucratic vitriol sharpened Stanley’s senses. He regarded the stretch of beach where the Clarks had disappeared. “We ought to go after them.”

  Hadley opened her purse and drew out her BlackBerry. “And take them ourselves, with no weapons?”

  “Just tail them. In a minute or two, they’ll have a whole new wardrobe from that beach supply shack or the shops in the lobby. Another ninety seconds and they’ll have helped themselves to a car in the guest parking lot that no one will realize is gone until morning at the soonest. By the time our backup mobilizes, the rabbits will have blended into the half a million people on this four-hundred-square-mile jungle.”

  “They’ll know we’re tailing them, though.”

  “I can live with that. If we can stall them for as little as two minutes, we’ll have half a dozen police cars and a helicopter in play.”

  By way of agreement, she started back to the hotel, scrolling down her phone menu. “I’ll call the dry cleaners.” She meant their backup unit.

  Stanley looked past her, toward an odd rustling in the bamboo.

  Drummond and Charlie emerged from the stalks just a few feet away, crisp new Hotel L’Imperatrice T-shirts over their wet suits. They brandished pistols of sorts with four-foot barrels and spearheads protruding from the muzzles.

  Stanley was hit with a one-two punch of surprise, then fury. Why hadn’t he heeded his instincts and rushed the criminals the first moment he saw them?

  “Fort-de-France Dry Cleaning,” came the Yankee-accented voice of the backup unit’s chief over the BlackBerry.

  Holding a finger to his lips, Charlie held forth a thick sheet of hotel stationery. With the point of his speargun, Drummond directed Stanley and Hadley to the big block letters on the stationery, although Charlie’s intent had been obvious.

  By the light of Hadley’s BlackBerry, Stanley read: FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS IMMEDIATELY OR WE WILL SHOOT YOU:

  RAISE YOUR HANDS.

  ONE OF YOU, SAY, ENTHUSIASTICALLY: “LET’S GO FOR A DIP ANYWAY!”

  SAY NOTHING ELSE.

  Raising his hands, Stanley glanced at Hadley in hope that she had a better plan. Her hands were already in the air, and though the night made it hard to tell, she was pale.

  “Let’s go for a dip anyway,” she said with enthusiasm so convincing that Stanley wondered if she weren’t in fact happy to enter the water.

  As Drummond frisked him, Stanley waited for an opportunity to launch a knee into the old spy’s groin. The spear pressed into his own inner thigh made him think better of it.

  Drummond snatched away Stanley’s phone and flung it into the sea. The satellite device splashed down and sank, followed by Hadley’s.

  Now that they were at liberty to speak, Charlie looked to Drummond, who just shrugged.

  “It’s okay, I got this,” Charlie told him, before turning to Hadley. “Ma’am, gently toss your purse onto the sand in front of you.”

  Trembling-or probably pretending to be trembling-Hadley needed both hands to do it.

  Charlie scooped up the bag and sifted through its contents. “I hope it won’t inconvenience you too much, but I’m going to keep all of this stuff. After seeing your fellow civil servant Nick Fielding shoot Burt Hattemer with a keyless remote from a Lincoln Town Car, I’m not taking any chances with lipsticks and eyeliners.”

  According to a brief Stanley had read, the national security adviser was killed with a single.22 caliber round. Although Stanley had never seen such a device, a keyless remote could be rigged to fire a bullet; the museum at headquarters had an entire exhibit of pens, lighters, and even a roll of Tums that fired small-caliber bullets, most of the weapons dating from World War II. However, since forensics had conclusively determined that Drummond Clark had fired the.22 caliber bullet that killed Hattemer, either Charlie hadn’t seen the shooting or he was simply a good liar, in which case he’d likely inherited the trait. Back in the day, another CIA brief had noted, Drummond Clark could have convinced a polygraph that it was a toaster.

  Hadley’s chattering teeth seized their attention.

  Stanley gleaned her intent. “It’s going to be okay, sweetie,” he said, adding a tremor to his own voice.

  Charlie tightened his grip on his speargun. “Please cut the act. You’re way too teenagers-on-a-date for a married couple your age.”

  Ironically, the affection was authentic, Stanley thought. At least on his part.

  “I wouldn’t have given you a second thought,” Charlie added, “but while we were trying to get into the supply shack, my father kept looking back down the beach. You weren’t there. And you weren’t in the water. Which meant you’d ducked behind this grassy rise just after we passed you. Now why would you do that?”

  Hadley blushed. “My husband was a bit frisky, that’s all.”

  Charlie shook his head. “By your stage of the game, everyone knows it’s just not worth getting sand in those parts. Also you were calling the dry cleaners … Come on!”

  Continuing to play dumb was futile, Stanley thought. Better to just stall. The backup unit commander probably had people on the way.

  “All right, Charlie, you’ve made us, except we’re on the same team as you.” Stanley turned to Drummond, who peered back as if through a thick fog.

  “In that case,” Charlie said, “before more of our ‘teammates’ show up, you two need to turn and head to the hut, holding hands, like you were before. And if you try anything, you will get speargunned in the leg-wait, I should qualify that: We’ll try for the leg. My dad could probably split a jelly bean from fifty yards away. But I’ve never shot one of these things before, so I can’t make any promises.”

  Stanley turned toward the hut and took Hadley’s hand, which was cold and clammy. Not part of the act, unfortunately.

  17

  A few minutes later the couple sat on the hut’s linoleum floor, Charlie aiming his speargun at them while Drummond bound their wrists and ankles with kite string.

  They looked like Superman and Lois Lane fifteen years after their first meeting, Charlie thought, out on a date night now while their kids were home with a sitter. According to their driver’s licenses, their names were Colin and Eleanor Atchison. Odds were high that their real names were something else. And it was even money that they were now plotting to turn the tables.

  For fear of drawing the attention of hotel security staff, Charlie kept the lights in the hut off. Drummond worked by the pink beam of a children’s flashlight, a miniature of Mount Pelee-squeezing the green mountain activated a tiny bulb within the red peak, theoretically simulating a volcanic eruption. His technique was to thoroughly tie captives’ legs together at the ankles, knees, and thighs, then practically mummify them from the waist up. Although the process was complex, Charlie had previously seen him execute it with the same dexterity that party magicians display when turning balloons into dachshunds. But now, lids heavy, head lolling, Drummond faltered.

  The conditions weren’t helping. With the doors and windows shut, a small grate provided the only ventilation in the hut, which was stifling and thick with the scent of suntan lotion to begin with. Perspiration streamed down Charlie’s face, soaking his shirt. Like being slow-cooked in coconut oil, he thought.

  The woman broke the heavy silence. “So … have you been in Europe?”

  “I don’t believe so,” Drummond said before pausing to reconsider.

  “Didn’t you just fly in from there?”

  Almost certainly, Charlie thought, the spooks had gotten hold of Bream’s flight plan listing Warsaw as his point of origin, a ruse capitalizing on Poland’s lax documentation requirements. A minimal amount of detective work on their part and Gstaad would be blown.

  Unwilling to assist them,
Charlie looked away, which, he realized, probably served as an admission-in his experience, people like these two were human lie detectors.

  “Please try to understand that we’re on your side,” the man said.

  “Interesting,” said Drummond, as he often did to avoid creating an awkward gap in conversation. He fastened the knot behind the man’s neck and moved on to the woman.

  “We can help you,” she said.

  Charlie considered that the sole aim of their conversation was diversion.

  The man craned his neck to look Charlie in the eye. “We all want resolution to your case, right?”

  There was a certain affability etched across his broad face, and his eyes were full of a forthrightness that didn’t seem like artifice. Langley must have invented a new sort of contact lens, Charlie thought. But on the off-chance this really was one of the good guys, he said, “The problem is that your company’s idea of resolution is diametrically opposed to ours.”

  “I’m not so sure. What’s yours?”

  “Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, stuff like that.”

  “Those perks come with responsibilities,” the man said. “In your case, answering to charges of a capital crime.”

  Charlie sighed. “Have you asked yourself why you don’t have spears running through you already? The only times we’ve ever hurt anyone have been in self-defense.”

  “What about Hattemer?”

  “I’m sure the Cavalry did a great job of littering the scene with our fingerprints and nose hairs and whatever, but anybody who thinks the Cavalry are good guys has to have been drugged by them.”

  The man shrugged. “What motive would they have had to kill Hattemer?”

  “Not Burt Hattemer?” Drummond said.

  Drummond had fled the scene of the killing just two weeks ago, yet his friend’s murder seemed to be news to him.