A Deadly Vineyard Holiday

by Philip R. Craig

  — 8 —

  I took a left at the blinkers and drove along Barnes Road. Sure enough, the car made the turn, too, staying a quarter of a mile or so behind. Not too close, but close enough. When I took a right on West Tisbury Road, the car followed along.

  I turned into the airport entrance.

  “Why does it say ‘The County of Dukes County Airport’ and not just ‘Dukes County Airport’?” asked Debby.

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “I thought we were going to Gay Head,” said Zee.

  “We are,” I said, “but I want to see if that guy behind me is actually tailing us, or whether I’m just paranoid.”

  My passengers turned and looked back as the car turned into the airport entrance road.

  “That blue car,” I said. “Anybody recognize it?”

  “How long has it been following us?” asked Karen.

  “Since we left home. Maybe he’s just a guy trying to catch a plane.”

  “And maybe I’m the queen of Siam,” said Karen.

  I drove up to the terminal and took a left around to the temporary parking spots, where folks load and unload their cars while waiting for airplanes to come or go. I kept driving around the circle and came back to the entrance road just as the blue car should have been coming by.

  It wasn’t.

  It could have been in any one of several places beside or off the entrance road: at the auto repair shop, at the Steamship Authority office, where you can sometimes actually get tickets to or from the island on the day you want to travel, at the Laundromat, or at one or another of the businesses that are out there.

  The car turned out to be at the auto repair shop, which is at the end of a short side road near the air terminal. I didn’t actually see it there, but I did see it reappear behind us after we passed the side road on our way out.

  I took a right and headed for West Tisbury. The blue car stayed well back, but followed along.

  “Good guy? Bad guy? Nosy writer looking for a scoop?” I listed the possibilities to my passengers.

  “Can you lose him?” asked Karen.

  “Probably, if he stays that far back,” I said. “But do you want to lose him? Wouldn’t it be better to find out who he is?”

  “Better, maybe, but not necessarily safer, and that’s what I’ve got to think about first. Lose him.”

  There are some winding roads up in West Tisbury, and unless you’re close you can lose contact with a car in front of you. I drove along at a sedate pace until I was almost to the millpond, then hit the gas and sped out of our shadow’s sight just long enough to hang a sharp left on New Lane and disappear.

  The shadow, probably coming past the youth hostel by this time, had several choices to consider. We were gone, but gone where? Along Old Country Road to the right? Along New Lane to the left? Past the millpond and its swans, then right toward North Tisbury? Past the millpond and then left, going by Alley’s Store and on toward Chilmark?

  And if north, then what should he do at the Scotchman’s Lane intersection? Go left? Go right? Go straight ahead to the North Road intersection? Then what? Left on North Road, or straight on State Road?

  And if he turned south, should he go straight on South Road? Or had we taken a right on Music Street, another onto the panhandle, and gone straight on? Or had we gone left onto Middle Road and headed on up-island?

  Or had we turned into one of the many private drives that leave the paved roads?

  Shadow had problems. I wondered if he knew that Music Street, so named, they say, for the piano purchased by some culturally inclined guy who lived there long ago, had previously been known as Cow Turd Lane? I doubted it, because I didn’t think Shadow was too familiar with the island; otherwise he’d have gotten closer to us when we came to West Tisbury village, so he’d know which turn we took.

  Down New Lane a little way, I pulled into a driveway, turned around, and parked. If Shadow happened to pass by, I wanted to be facing him.

  “We’ll wait awhile,” I said, “and give this guy a chance to give up on us before we go on.” I offered my passengers my theory about Shadow’s relative ignorance of the island and its roads.

  “You know anything about surveillance?” asked Karen.

  “Not much,” I admitted.

  “Well, for one thing, there may be more than one car involved. The first guy goes away for a while, and another car takes over. You notice any other cars sort of staying with us in front or behind?”

  “No. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t another one. I was watching the blue one. Is that one of your outfit’s cars, by the way?”

  “No, it’s not,” said Karen. “If you wanted to intercept somebody headed up-island, where would you do it? Beetlebung Corner, right? All the up-island roads converge there. You don’t have to trail anybody all the way from Edgartown. All you have to do is go ahead to Beetlebung Corner and wait for them to come by.”

  “You’re smarter than the average bear,” I said, turning to look back at her. “How did you, a mere off-islander, come up with that bit of wisdom?”

  “I have a map,” said Karen. “And I studied it, just like I was told to do at one of our earliest briefings. We all have maps.”

  “You almost make one have confidence in one’s government,” I said. “Well, you’re right, unless whoever you’re tailing stops somewhere this side of Beetlebung Corner. In which case, you’ll wait a long time up there. But we aren’t stopping this side, so if Shadow is waiting for us, he’ll find us. My plan is to give him time to give up and go home and then we’ll go on.”

  “And while you’re waiting,” said Karen, opening her ever-present handbag and taking out her radio, “I’ll make a call and find out if that car is one of ours that nobody’s told me about.”

  She got out of the car, crossed the road, and made her call. Ever the secretive Secret Service person.

  I looked at Debby. “How you doing, kid? Pain in the you-know-where, isn’t it?”

  “To tell you the truth,” said Debby, “I like it better this way than the way it usually is. Usually, I don’t get to move around at all unless there’s security everywhere. It’s like living in a glass cage. I don’t ever want to be a movie star or a politician, I can tell you. My dad likes his job enough to put up with it, and I can do it, too, as long as I have to, because of his career. But as soon as I can, I’m going to get out of the light. Right now, here with you and Zee, it’s better because nobody, not even the person in that car, probably really knows I’m here. They may think it, but they don’t know for sure. So it’s like being free, in a way.”

  “You’re not scared, then?” asked Zee.

  “After a while,” said Debby, quite calmly, “you stop being scared. As long as I can remember, I’ve known there are some sick people out there who might try to do something; but it doesn’t do any good to be scared about it. You just have to put them out of your mind and be careful at the same time.”

  Zee looked at her, then nodded. “Yes. That’s what you’ve got to do. You’re a brave cousin, Debby Jackson.”

  “Not always,” said Debby.

  Karen came back, not looking happy. “Definitely not one of ours,” she said, getting in. “I think we should go back.”

  I’d been considering that possibility. “We were picked up at my place,” I said. “If I was Shadow and if I’d lost us like I hope he has, I’d go back and wait until we came home. We do have to go there eventually, but in the meantime, I think we can go on up to Gay Head.”

  She looked disapproving but said nothing.

  I went on. “Shadow has just been trailing us, but he hasn’t tried to close. If he’d given any sign of getting close enough to do us some damage, I’d think differently. But he hasn’t. He just seems to want to know where we are. And now he’s lost us altogether.”

  “Maybe,” said Karen.

  “Yeah, maybe,” said Zee. “But if he’s ahead of us, we should see him at least as soon as he sees us. And
if he’s gone back down-island, he really has lost us. I think Jeff’s right, but you’re the Secret Service agent, so you decide.”

  Karen gave a rueful smile. “Maybe I should go into some other line of business. All right, we’ll go on. What’s so damned important up in Gay Head, anyway?”

  “I want to see a friend. While I’m doing that, the rest of you might take a walk under the cliffs or something like that. Do you good.”

  “Yes!” said Debby, with a real grin this time. “I’ve been at the top of the cliffs, but not at the bottom. The last time I was up there, you could see naked people down there! We could all take off our clothes!”

  “Cricket Callahan!” Karen looked as if she was trying to appear more shocked than she really was.

  “I think they’re sort of frowning on naked people down there these days,” I said. “But I could be wrong. You can give me a report when you get back.”

  I looked at my watch. It seemed as good a time as any to go, so I did. No blue car was in sight when we got out to the Edgartown–West Tisbury Road. I took a left and drove past the police station and the old millpond, whose swans were right where they were supposed to be. At the fork, I went left again, past Alley’s Store and the field of dancing statues, then cut right onto Music Street, and left onto Middle Road, where the long-horned cattle lived behind their stone fence. Middle Road, narrow and winding, is one of the prettiest on the island, and I liked to take it when I went up-island.

  No blue car appeared behind us as we entered Chilmark, and I was content that Shadow either had gone home or was waiting for us up at Beetlebung Corner.

  I played tour guide, and pointed out stone fences and farms to my passengers.

  “Damn,” said Karen, suddenly, as we were ending a rare straight stretch of road.

  I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the blue car coming over a hill behind us, at the beginning of the straight stretch.

  Hmmmmmm.

  Shadow, as if as surprised at seeing us as we were at seeing him, fell back out of sight as we rounded another of the road’s many turnings.

  “Where the hell did he come from?” asked Karen. “There was nobody there when we came out of West Tisbury.”

  “Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,” I misquoted. “Now we know where he is, at least. And he’s not coming any closer.”

  “But how’d he find us?”

  An interesting question. “If all he wants is to know where we’re going,” I said, “it’s okay with me. I don’t expect to be there long, anyway. So we’ll just drive on.”

  We got to Beetlebung Corner and went on past Chilmark Center to Gay Head. Shadow stayed out of sight, but I didn’t think he’d gone away.

  Joe Begay’s house isn’t hard to find if you know where to look, which I do. The surprise was that he and Toni were both actually there, and not working. I introduced my cousins.

  “Mom’s looking after the shop, and Jimmy Souza’s running the boat today,” explained Toni, who looked a proper seven months pregnant and had that slightly tired glow that some women wear as they get closer to their birthing days. “Joe and I are just loafing.”

  “I didn’t know you had cousins in Virginia,” said Joe, his dark eyes ironic in his craggy bronze face.

  “Their first time on the island,” I said. “I thought maybe Toni could take them on a walk under the cliffs while you and I have a beer or two.”

  Joe’s private stock was Ipswich Ale, an excellent brew put together up north of Boston and brought down to Joe by a friend. It was always nice to have an Ipswich Ale.

  Joe looked at Toni. “How’s that sound to you?”

  “It sounds good,” said Toni. “I can use the exercise, and I won’t have to stay here and listen to man talk.” She kissed him and Zee kissed me, and the women and the girl walked away down the path behind the house, toward the faint sound of surf, which was carried to us on the southwest wind.

  Ipswich Ale came only in half-gallon bottles. Joe got one out of the fridge and brought two glasses. We sat down on the porch. He poured and we both drank. Delish!

  “Man talk, eh?” said Begay. “Cousin Deborah, eh?”

  “And her sister, Karen,” I said.

  “If you say so.” He poured us more beer. “What can I do for you?”

  “Listen,” I said. He was good at that, and I told him everything, including Jake Spitz’s recommendation that I speak to him.

  “Jake Spitz, eh? So you know Jake, and you want to know what’s going on. You get yourself into some weird situations, kid. Cricket Callahan as a houseguest. Well, I swan.”

  I nodded. “If the girl is in danger, why are they letting her stay with me instead of, say, taking her back to Washington or at least back to the compound, where they have plenty of security? It doesn’t make sense, and nobody will tell me what’s going on.”

  “What makes Jake think I can help you?”

  “Maybe you can’t,” I said, looking at the amber fluid in my glass. “But maybe you can.”

  He got up. “Let’s have a look at your wife’s car.”

  I followed him out into the yard and watched him as he looked under the hood, then got down on his back and had a look at things underneath. Finally he gave a grunt, reached up behind the rear bumper, and brought down a small object. He rolled to his feet, looked at it, and handed it to me.

  “There’s the reason Shadow was able to stay with you. This gadget lets him home in on you wherever you go. Let’s take a ride.”

  We got into his big four-by-four and drove out of the driveway. The blue car wasn’t in sight. We turned down Lighthouse Road and headed for Lobsterville Beach, one of the best fishing spots on Martha’s Vineyard. In the old days, happy fishermen could park alongside the road and walk the short distance to the fish-filled water, but now the road is lined with NO PARKING signs, and there is only a parking lot at the far end of the beach. Gay Head’s government at work again, but what can you expect from a town that has only pay toilets?

  At the lot, Begay paused and attached the device to one of the cars parked there. Then we turned around and drove back, passing a blue car as it came along the road. I looked in the driver-side window, but could see nothing. A pox on tinted glass.

  “We’ll let your shadow trail that other car for a while,” said Begay. “Meanwhile, I’ll make a couple of calls.”

  I sat on the porch and drank more beer while he made his calls. When he finally came out of the house, I could hear the sounds of the returning women’s voices coming from the path behind the house.

  Begay gave me an enigmatic look. “You are in a can of worms,” he said.

  “Are these the famous man-eating worms from outer space?”

  “The very ones,” he said. “The ones with teeth.”

  — 9 —

  “Let’s take a stroll,” said Joe Begay. “This time I’ll talk and you’ll listen.”

  We walked down the path that led to the sea, and met the women.

  “Ships that pass in the night,” said Zee.

  “We left you some beer,” said Joe to Toni. “We won’t be long.”

  “And they say women like to talk,” said Debby J. “Hah!”

  “Truly manly men have truly manly things to discuss,” I said. “After all, we have to run the world.”

  I dodged Zee’s feigned kick, and Joe and I went on toward the beach.

  “Here’s what I heard,” said Joe. “You know anything about intelligence agencies?”

  “Only what I read about in the papers.”

  “Well, there are a lot of agencies in the business, and they all need money from the government to stay afloat, but at the same time they all like to avoid being noticed. So they hide themselves lots of times under covers that sound good to the Washington people who hold the purse strings.

  “You remember a couple of years back when the National Reconnaissance Office got a lot of attention it didn’t want? The NRO handles spy satellites, but most normal people never hea
rd of them, even though they’ve got the biggest intelligence budget in the country, one that’s twice as big as the CIA’s. You’ll recall that Congress gave them three hundred million dollars to build a new headquarters and didn’t even know they’d done it.”

  “And even while it was going up, everybody thought it was a Rockwell International building.”

  “That’s the one. You’d think that it would be hard for Congress to fund a three-hundred-million-dollar project and not know it, but some say the NRO has an annual budget of six and a half billion dollars—that’s billion, with a b—and in a budget that size, a third of a billion can get lost pretty fast. And the NRO isn’t the only spy outfit that gobbles up a lot of tax dollars. Probably nobody really knows how much we spend on intelligence, but some of the smart guesses are that all told we spend pretty near thirty billion a year.”

  “Good grief! That’s more than I make!”

  “Our tax dollars at work.”

  We came out on the beach. There was a mist out over the water that hid the farther shores, but Cuttyhunk was in sight, and we could see fishing boats working the tides. To our left, the clay cliffs of Gay Head climbed out of the mild surf. We walked that way. Begay’s hands were thrust in his pockets, and he was looking at seabirds as he talked.

  “There’s the National Security Council, and the CIA, and the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office—that’s another outfit that most people never heard of. And the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Central Imagery Office—I always liked that name, and they’re cheap, too; only a couple hundred million a year. And there are the military intelligence agencies, one at least for every service branch, and there are others.

  “And all of them like secrets and have black budgets to keep people, including oversight agencies, from looking at them too closely. Some of the stuff they do is so stupid that they don’t want anyone to know about it, and other stuff is so sensitive that they, don’t trust Congress with it, and not entirely without cause, since Congress has never kept a secret in its life.”