“We came up with nothing on that name, and his passport seemed to be in order. All we found was that he’s a former boat builder, now making his way by doing boat repairs.”
“It’s an alias,” Charity said. “He’s someone of importance to the Agency.”
“Send me a sketch and I’ll see what I can come up with. Do you think he’s a threat to your mission?”
Charity thought about that for a moment. “No, I don’t think he’s a threat. But, he definitely thinks the American government wants him dead.”
“Get me the sketch. The suit you asked for is on its way. Check with the hotel concierge tomorrow morning for a package.”
There was a click, and when Charity looked at the screen she saw that Stockwell had ended the call. She placed the phone on the desk and tore out a sheet from the hotel stationary. Flipping it over, she began to draw from memory.
Twenty minutes later, she had a very good likeness of the man. The hotel’s computer probably had a scanner, but she didn’t think it was a good idea to use it. Adjusting the desk lamp, she used the camera function on her cellphone and sent the image to Colonel Stockwell.
Charity had gone up to the restaurant because she was hungry. She hadn’t eaten since her late-afternoon sandwich the day before, and now her hunger was mounting. Grabbing her purse, she went to her backpack and retrieved her Sig. From now on, she thought, as she slid the weapon into the purse, I’ll be armed everywhere I go.
Without another thought, she left the room and took the elevator back up to the rooftop restaurant. Before the elevator reached the top, her phone chimed, alerting her to an incoming message.
Subject is Victor Pitt, former clandestine asset with the Agency. Disappeared six years ago, whereabouts unknown. He has knowledge that is considered dangerous to the Agency, but not a threat to your mission. Proceed as you think best.
Charity pushed the phone back into her purse and had her hand on the Sig when the doors opened. Rene was standing there, waiting for the elevator. The two collegiate clowns were gone.
Charity smiled. “Looks like I’m the one holding the gun this time, Victor. Let’s go back to our table.”
He started to reach for his pocket and Charity leveled the Sig inside her purse, thumbing the hammer back. The sound froze him in place.
“I’m hungry, Victor, and you interrupted my breakfast. So now you’re buying my breakfast while you tell me all about what a bad boy you’ve been. Move.”
He turned slowly, then walked toward the table by the railing. Charity gave him three steps, then followed. She waited a few feet away until he sat down, then took the chair directly across from him, her hand never leaving her purse.
The waiter came and poured coffee as the two stared at each other. Charity ordered a bacon and cheese omelet and the waiter left the table.
“I was wrong,” Rene said. “What I took for poor field craft was simple disinterest. How did you come up with my name so fast?”
Slowly, Charity released her grip on the pistol and pulled the sketch from her purse. “Relax, Rene. I said I wasn’t here for you, and I’m not.”
He looked down at the sketch and then smiled up at Charity. “I must have made a pretty good impression.”
“Somewhat,” she replied. “But don’t flatter yourself. I’m just good with pencil and paper. Look, I’ve been instructed to proceed any way I see fit, where you are concerned.”
“And just how do you see fit?”
“I have a few questions first,” Charity replied. “I know who you are and what you used to be. I know when you quit and disappeared. I know you’ve been a boat builder and now do odd jobs on boats. Or at least that’s what your background shows. What I don’t know is why.”
“Why I left?”
Charity nodded.
Rene looped his left arm over the rail and turned in his chair slightly, pushing his legs out in a relaxed pose. “I bet you could find out anyway—and what you’d find out will be a lie, more than likely.”
Charity waited, saying nothing—a tactic she’d learned from McDermitt during their boat ride back to civilization. The man was a good listener and made people want to talk without saying or doing a thing.
Rene sighed. “It was six years ago this fall.”
The significance meant a lot to Charity. She’d participated in the summer Olympics in Sydney just a year before that, earning a bronze medal in the women’s four-hundred-meter medley. At twenty-five, she’d been one of the older members on the Olympic swim team, but was determined to be part of the games in Athens three years later. Then the planes hit the towers and changed everything.
“Nine-Eleven?”
Rene nodded somberly. “I was in Frisco. My fiancée was flying in from Newark. We were gonna be married the next day.”
“Flight Ninety-Three?”
His eyes fixed on hers for a moment. She could see the hurt, and felt his pain. “Yeah,” he said with a heavy sigh. “She called me after the plane had been taken. Just like everyone else, I figured it was a hijack for hostages or ransom. Then reports started coming in about the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. I tried to call her back, but kept getting her voicemail. Then I heard that Ninety-Three went down in a field in Pennsylvania.”
“I’m sorry, Rene.”
“Ancient history,” he said. Though he shrugged it off, Charity could see the torment in his eyes. “I never went back to Langley after that. I bought a boat in Frisco and sailed south. Spent the winter in Cabo San Lucas, mostly in a drunken stupor. By the following summer, I’d wound up in Panama. That’s where the first attempt was made.”
“First attempt?” Charity asked.
“There’ve been three attempts to kill me so far,” he replied. “The second was in Belize, three years ago. Then in Puerto Rico last year.”
“What happened to them?”
“No idea,” Rene replied. “I disappeared. Something I’m very good at. When you showed up here, after bumping into you in the Caymans, I was certain this was the fourth attempt by the Agency to kill me. Had you not come up in that elevator when you did, you would never have seen me again.”
“Why do they want you dead?”
“Dead or back in the fold. I know things that could bury quite a few people way above both our pay grades. They kept me in line and silent with vague threats toward Alecia. I knew how the game was played in the Puzzle Palace. But once she was gone, there wasn’t anything holding me. So I disappeared.”
“And you’ve been on the run for six years? Always looking over your shoulder?”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. In most of the places I find myself, anyone like me sticks out like a sore thumb.”
Charity considered what he’d said and decided he was telling the truth. “You have nothing to worry about where I’m concerned. I’ll be finished here in a few days and flying back to my boat in the Caymans.”
“Just what a good field agent would say to throw me off.”
Charity smiled. “If it weren’t true, you’d have been dead the second the elevator doors opened. You’re not the only one who can disappear.”
Rene slowly nodded. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. Where do we go from here?”
“For now,” Charity said with a wicked smile, “take me to this mango festival. Later, we can decide on where to go from there, your room or mine.”
“What is a helicopter doing out here?” Martin Beisch asked. “Most of our people have never even seen one.”
“We still do not know,” Leon replied. “After it left here, it continued upriver. Karl saw it while he was inspecting the old man’s farm yesterday afternoon.”
The babo looked up from his desk. “What happened there?”
“He said he shot it,” Himmel replied. “But it must be armored, because it flew away.”
“Or he missed,” Beisch said, rising from behind his desk and walking to the window. “I meant what happened with the old man?”
“Both he and the other
farmer are growing coca. The botaniker confirmed that what they are growing came from his modified seeds. He predicts they can harvest well before the flood.”
Beisch’s back was to Himmel, as he gazed through the window at the many homes and shops that made up their community. “Tell Karl I wish to inspect the wall. As soon as possible.”
“Right away. Will there be anything else?”
“No, that is all.”
Without another word, Leon left Beisch’s office. A young boy waited in the foyer of the large house. There were more than a dozen such boys, whose only purpose was to move quickly from one part of the community to another, delivering messages.
“Find Aleksander,” Leon told the boy. “Tell him to report to the babo at once. Then go to the farm and alert Wirth that the babo will be inspecting the wall this morning.”
The boy dashed out the door. In seconds, he’d disappeared down the foot path that connected all the buildings in the commune. They’d once used battery-powered radios to communicate with the outlying parts of the community, but Beisch had put a stop to it, thinking that with civilization pushing its way up the river others might hear them.
The boy found Karl quite easily. Almost out of breath, he told the man that the babo wanted to inspect the wall right away, and he’d been told to continue there to let Wirth know.
“No need of that,” Karl said. “Go ahead and take your break here. Wirth is always ready.”
The truth was, Wirth was very busy this time of year and the field beyond the wall was usually neglected as a result. It would do the man good to have the babo yank his chain. Then Karl could step in and take charge personally, sending Wirth and his men through the door in the wall to the other side, giving him some time alone with Jenifer.
Karl crossed his small yard and entered his workshop. His position allowed him a few modern provisions that others in the community would like to have, but that their station didn’t warrant. Inside the shop was where he kept his two all-terrain vehicles. One was the standard ATV, with racks mounted front and rear for carrying loads, and two seats like a motorcycle. The other was larger, with side-by-side seating, a large cargo bed, and a roof with roll bars.
He climbed into the larger machine and started the engine, then went to the front of the shop and opened the two large doors. A moment later, Karl was moving down the path that took him from his home toward the big house on the point.
Babo was waiting on the porch, talking to Leon, when Karl brought the machine to a stop in the yard. He said something to Leon that Karl couldn’t hear, then came down the steps and climbed into the passenger seat. In moments they were off.
“Is there anything else you would like to see, besides the wall?” Karl asked, after a few moments.
Ignoring the question, the babo said, “Leon told me that you shot at the helicopter.”
Karl thought for only a second before answering. “I shot it, yes. But it must have some sort of steel hull, like the tanks our grandfathers drove.”
Both men’s paternal grandfathers had been tank commanders in the war. They’d deserted when it was obvious that Hitler’s days were numbered, and came here with several other like-minded people. Both Karl and the babo had heard stories from their grandfathers about how thick the tank hulls were, and how bullets were ineffective against them.
“You shot the helicopter,” Beisch conceded. “But your bullets did nothing. Why did you shoot at it?”
Karl glanced over at the leader of the small community, unsure of how to answer. Over the years, a handful of residents had left the jungle to see what life was like on the outside. At least that was the story that was usually circulated. While some did manage to find a way to leave the jungle, most had been dissidents that the former babo had culled.
Karl knew there were bones scattered on the bottom for half a mile downriver from the pier. He’d thrown quite a few men and several women from the pier himself. He and his men took turns with the women first. The new babo was even less tolerant of those who went against the community’s standards of purity and harmony—purity of the people’s pedigrees, and blind obedience to the wishes of the collective. The wishes of the collective were whatever the leader deemed necessary. It was the goal of the community to produce a pure and hearty population, a notion left behind by their grandfathers.
“My orders in a situation like that are clear, sir,” Karl replied, after only a moment’s hesitation. “Protect the Bürger from outsiders at any cost. I considered the helicopter to be a threat to our way of life.”
“Yet, the man flying it has gotten away and probably reported the incident.”
It was still several kilometers to the southern end of the community, where the wall separated it from the rest of the island. Karl drove in silence for a moment, not sure what to say. He didn’t want to end up with his bones scattered on the bottom of the river.
The babo surprised him when he said, “Perhaps you need something more powerful than a rifle.”
The trail narrowed as the last of the outpost buildings fell behind them. A few minutes later, Karl guided the machine into a small clearing surrounded by simple but sturdy homes. Each was elevated, sitting on stilts two meters off the ground.
All the people who lived here were busy in the fields at this hour, only a few within sight. The crops needed constant attention to keep them from being swallowed up by the fast growing jungle surrounding the fields on three sides.
“Go that way,” Beisch said, pointing to the closer eastern shore. “Take me to where the wall meets the river, so I may check its effectiveness.”
Turning the machine, Karl caught a glimpse of Jenifer coming out of the field, her father right behind her. He smiled inwardly. The babo was both respected and feared by everyone. And here I am with the leader, Karl thought.
The all-wheel-drive machine had no trouble with the mud near the bank of the river. Karl guided it expertly through the soft, loamy earth, bouncing over occasional ruts and dead branches that had floated up with the last flood. In a few months, the fields would be harvested, and everything around them would be underwater. The farmers’ homes were built high above the ground, protected from the annual floodwaters. The homes and shops of the main body of the community were clustered tightly together on much higher ground at the northern tip of the island.
Stopping the machine at the end of the wall, he turned off the engine. The only sounds were the ticking of the exhaust as the engine cooled, and an occasional cry from a bird or animal on the other side of the river.
Beisch dismounted, his knee-high boots protecting his pants from the mud as he trudged to the waterline. Karl followed at a respectful distance. Beisch stopped at the base of the wall, which towered nearly four meters above their heads.
Knowing how the wall was constructed, it was hard for Karl to not laugh as the babo placed both hands against the wall and tried to push. The wood was very dense, and each plank in the wall was set deep into the ground. For more than sixty years, the annual floodwaters had pushed against the wall with tremendous power. Never once had any part of it failed or been undermined.
Beisch turned and walked along the wall, motioning Karl to follow. “How many of your men are posted out here?”
“Two men stand guard throughout the night during the summer months,” Karl replied, pointing ahead of them to a ladder and platform mounted to the wall. “Each man has his own stand, from which they can see any movement on the other side. They sleep during the day, while two of the field hands usually take their places.”
Indeed, there was a man standing on the nearest platform. Yet the other one, more than a kilometer away, appeared empty. “Two farmers?” the babo asked.
Just then, Erik Wirth emerged from between two rows of tall corn. Breathing hard from exertion, Wirth approached the babo. “Herr Beisch,” Wirth said, grunting the words out. “I was not informed you were coming out here today.”
“That is quite apparent!” Beisch roared. “Why do
you have only one man on lookout?”
Looking flustered, Wirth started to say something, when Jenifer came out of the corn rows, her hair competing with the corn silk for brightness—and winning easily.
Karl interrupted Wirth as his daughter approached. “One man is enough during the day, sir. Erik’s men are better suited to working the fields.”
Wirth glared at Karl, surprised at the man coming to his defense, and hating that he did so. “Yes, one man is enough. A second man can be added in a matter of seconds if needed. Nothing has ever gotten through the field, much less scaled the wall. One man can cover the field beyond quite effectively.”
Beisch turned to Karl. “Is this right?”
“Yes, sir. Erik was on the other side of the field when we came this way and he arrived here in moments. Many of his men were much closer.” Pointing to the elevated platform, Karl continued. “If that man up there sounded an alarm, a second man would be in the other stand in a matter of seconds. If need be, more will be at the door, ready for anything.”
“What is the status of the field beyond the wall?” Beisch asked, pleasing Karl to no end. He knew what it looked like; he’d just seen it yesterday.
“I am afraid it gets a bit neglected, this time of year,” Wirth replied.
“Bring the machine, Karl,” the babo said. “We will have a look.”
Karl nodded at Jenifer and winked, before running back to where the large ATV sat. Jumping in, he started it and returned to the others.
“Get on the back,” Beisch ordered Wirth, as he climbed in.
The man and his daughter took the rear facing seat in the cargo box, as Karl gunned the engine and steered toward the only break in the wall. Once there, the four of them dismounted, Beisch walking straight toward the large door. It was more than a meter wide and nearly two and a half meters tall. Wirth quickly joined him, as Karl and Jenifer stayed by the machine.
“Open it,” the babo ordered.
Erik removed the hefty wooden timber that held the door tightly in place and set it aside. He pushed the heavy door open with his shoulder, and the two men disappeared through it.
Ruthless Charity: A Charity Styles Novel (Caribbean Thriller Series Book 2) Page 12
