by Gregg Loomis
That tangle of branchlike black coral would make a good marker, he thought as he flicked his fins and slowly moved on.
His dive watch told him he had still had a good twenty minutes before the pressure of depth presented any danger of the bends.
He watched a leopard ray glide by, its wings rippling in a graceful simulation of flight.
Then he heard it: an angry buzzing like the sound of an electric razor, growing louder. An outboard. Inside his mask, his eyebrows curved into a frown. On an island as sparsely populated as North Caicos, there were plenty of places for the natives to fish without dropping a line on the section of wall he was diving. Surely they could see the boat and would know he was down here. Maybe they'd go on by.
Somehow he doubted it.
As if to confirm his suspicions, he heard a splash and watched an anchor pull its line down to the sandy shelf forty feet above his head as the motor died. Jason waited, expecting to hear the thunk of a sinker on a hand line as it hit the water. He wanted to see where the treble hooks preferred by the locals were hanging rather than risk getting snagged. No fishing line, sinker, or hook was forthcoming.
Strange.
Unless the boat's occupant wasn't fishing. Unless somebody had come out here for him.
He bit the soft rubber of his regulator's mouthpiece in annoyance. There would be only one reason for somebody to come out here after him, and they were supposed to leave him alone for the next three months. Two jobs a year—that was it, the max. It had been only weeks since the affair on St. Bart's.
In fact, it would be fine if they overlooked him for a year or two. The work had paid well enough for him to retire as it was, enough to mandate that he reside someplace with no income taxation. His employer managed to satisfy the IRS by means Jason felt were best not inquired into, but sheltering his income where he lived was his responsibility. Hence his present residence. He had built the house as a vacation home, an excuse to claim residence in a tax haven. Now it was where he lived, had been home since his life had been turned upside down and shaken out as though the gods were emptying a paper bag. Ever since ...
He pushed the thought out of his mind and glared up at the hull of the newly arrived boat. Well, if they were determined to intrude on his dive, they damn well could wait until he finished.
Maybe that crab was back on the edge of its hole.
A pair of passing jack rolled shiny button eyes at him in curiosity.
Twenty minutes later, Jason reached the surface and tossed the crab into his boat, followed by his flippers and weight belt. From the water he could see Pangloss, barking wildly, back into the stern, as far as the dog could get from the wildly thrashing crustacean. Pangloss hated crabs. His irrepressible curiosity had led to more than one painful experience involving the creatures' massive claws. Regardless, the dog insisted on joining Jason on dives, running into the water with baleful howls every time Jason tried to leave him ashore. Apparently barking at dolphins and seagulls was sufficient compensation for sitting in the boat for an hour while Jason probed the wall for lobster or crab.
Jason climbed into the twelve-foot Boston Whaler, his back intentionally toward the small craft rocking next to his in the gentle swell.
On the horizon he could see a sportfisherman. A charter from nearby Providenciales, Jason guessed, some rich dude paying a grand or so a day to troll for marlin even though the big-billed fish weren't expected in the area for months yet. The sun shot a brilliant reflection from something on board, perhaps the glass of a porthole, a woman checking
her makeup in a mirror. There was something that didn't fit, something not quite right about that boat. What—
His thoughts were interrupted by a voice that had the musical lilt of the islands in it. "'Lo, Jason! You don' looks like you glad to see me."
Jason loosened the straps and slid out of the backpack tank harness before he turned toward the other boat. He was facing a black man whose age was indeterminate but whose disposition was always as bright as the smile he wore. It was annoyingly difficult to remain waspish around such cheerfulness, and Jason felt guilty for keeping the man waiting. He was, after all, only the messenger.
"I'm always glad to see you, Jeremiah. It's just you always bring bad news."
His mood undiminished, Jeremiah nodded. "Dat be right, I 'spose. But mon, you don' keeps no phone in yo' house; how else folks gonna get a'holt of you?"
Jason restrained a tart comment that the absence of a phone was fully intended to discourage contact. "I had a phone, Jeremiah, I'd never get to see you, now, would I?"
Jason was grinning in spite of himself. Jeremiah's smile was as contagious as the plague. As North Caicos' representative of the island's postal system, as well as UPS, FedEx, and DHL, he took his duties seriously. If a customer had paid for personal delivery, Jeremiah would see to it the service was performed as requested. Besides, occasional deliveries provided an excuse to visit with the constituency of his seat on the island's governing council.
Jason held out a hand and leaned over toward the deliveryman's boat. "Okay, give it to me and I'll sign for it."
Grateful he wasn't going to get any trouble from the reluctant recipient, Jeremiah handed over a cardboard envelope, using his other hand to rub Pangloss's nose. "I 'spect you be goin' like always when the package come."
Jason nodded absently, tearing the cardboard open. Inside was a Hallmark card, an invitation to a child's birthday party filled in for three days from now. Someone at the home office had a sick sense of humor.
It took Jason twenty minutes to navigate the convoluted, unmarked passage through the half-mile reef of fang- toothed coral that ringed the shallow lagoon in front of his house, tie off the Whaler to the buoy, and wade ashore with Pangloss splashing behind.
His house consisted of two structures elevated above potential flood tides by stilts. Between the buildings was a wooden walkway roofed with bougainvillea vines.
Pausing at the bottom of a flight of steps, Jason used a length of hose to wash sand from his feet while Pangloss lapped at the stream of cool, fresh water. Finished, both man and dog climbed stairs up to the building that served as kitchen/living room/studio. Years of island living had taught Jason the benefit of exposing as many surfaces as possible to potential breezes, as well as the wisdom of segregating light-requiring daytime activities from sleeping quarters that could be closed off against the tropical sun.
Inside, Jason ignored the panorama of golden beach and turquoise sea to glance again at the child's invitation in his hand. He had rarely been to the company's office. Most previous assignments, never more than one or two a year, had been hand-delivered. Idly, he wondered why the change. He tossed the card onto a table and looked out of the tinted glass that formed the building's front wall.
The houses's exposure to sea and sand had not been entirely for aesthetic purposes. The height of the walkway above the pancake-flat terrain gave him a 360-degree view of any possible approach. In front was the lagoon and its silent sentries of coral that would tear the bottom from any craft unfamiliar with the path through. Behind was a salt marsh, a saline, gelatinous muck soft enough to swallow even the occasional iguana unfortunate enough to wander there. To Jason's left, the beach ended in impenetrable mangrove at the point of a tidal stream's juncture with the ocean. To his right, sand the texture of powdered sugar stretched in a three-mile crescent without intersecting so much as a path connecting it to any of the three small native settlements.
The latter approach was the only practical one, the house's single vulnerability should someone choose to trek miles across scrub bush and sharp rocks to reach the shoreline. Discouraging as such a journey might be, Jason had done his best to foresee the possibility.
Jason had not been surprised that Jeremiah had chosen to deliver the packet by boat rather than the long walk along the beach to a house that, to the untrained eye, was only an attractive beach home somewhat difficult to reach. In Jason's business, the more difficult, the b
etter.
He walked into the kitchen area, pulled out a large pot, and filled it with water from the cistern. Dumping the still-thrashing spider crab into the water, he turned next to rinsing out the dive equipment. Finished, he went to a pine cabinet that housed the sound system. Seconds later, notes of the first movement of a Mozart concerto grosso filled the room.
Jason turned around and faced the glass that framed the beachscape a few yards away. Between him and the view, just inside the glass, was a canvas on an easel. Part of a gecko, vibrant green, was staring back from a half- completed cluster of bougainvillea. Tubes of acrylic paint and brushes lay in the tray at the bottom of the easel. The unfinished painting and art supplies were exactly as he had had left them a lifetime ago. He and Laurin had gone back to the States together without a suspicion that she would never return.
Jason stared mutely at the canvas, as incomplete as his own life. How many times had he picked up the brushes to start again? More than he could count. Each time he saw not lizard and flower but Laurin beside him, fascinated as the canvas filled with paint. Each time he had replaced the brush in the tray, unable to concentrate. Twice he had vowed to toss the unfinished picture; twice he had been as unable to destroy the last thing she had watched him create. Not only was he incapable of finishing or destroying this specific canvas; it was as if his ability had drained away along with whatever passions and feelings he had formerly possessed. Brushes had become foreign objects, as strange and unfamiliar in his hands as an ancient war club.
There were times he feared he had lost the talent to paint forever. Other times he didn't care.
As though only partially aware of what he was doing, he went outside and followed the walkway to the building that housed his bedroom. Shuttered against the heat of the day, the room had a slightly musty smell that Jason knew would disperse as soon as he opened the windows to the evening's breezes. Overhead, a fan lazily churned the warm, humid air as he flipped on a light switch and entered a walk-in closet.
The space was more bare than occupied. On one side hung a few sundresses, the sort of beach casual wear appropriate for a place where shoes were optional at most. Repeatedly, Jason had vowed to remove them, to donate the lot to the local church for distribution. Each time he had removed one from its hanger to box it up, he remembered the last time she had worn it: the white with red polka dots she had on the night surprisingly rough seas had nearly swamped the Whaler on their return from a visit to a neighboring island; the green one with the exceptionally short skirt she wore to a friend's birthday party, provoking clucks and head shakes among some of the older native women; the blue stripe that she... Real or imagined, her clothes still had the scent of her, that musky, sweet odor he had come to associate with sex. Years later and the closet still smelled like she had just left it.
No use. He had given up, unable to part with the last
physical vestige of the woman he still loved. He not only couldn't remove her clothes; he couldn't go into the closet without tears blurring his vision.
Turning his back on the rack of dresses, he unzipped the clothes bag that contained what little remained of his business wardrobe. He slung a lightweight wool suit over one arm and, with some effort, extracted a cashmere overcoat. Jason scowled. In spite of his effort to stave off moths as ravenous as the sharks outside the reef, the insects had gotten to it. He'd better take it along, moth holes included, until he could replace it. It was likely to be cold where he was headed.
It took a few minutes longer to find his only two dress shirts and a tie. Now if he could only remember where he had put his suitcase ...
Chapter Six
That night
The number of things that had to be done before leaving the island always surprised Jason. Arrangements had to be made to refuel the house's generator every few days so that the contents of the freezer would keep; the bed linen needed to be stripped to prevent the mildew that bred in the humid air in any darkness; the cistern level must be checked to ensure a water supply upon his return. The alarm clock would have to be found so Jason could wake in time to take the Whaler over to Providenciales to catch the twice-weekly flight to Miami. Pangloss, along with appropriate rations, would have to be delivered in the morning to the native family who would keep him.
Pangloss.
The dog was scratching at the door, eager to enter where Jason was packing. Jason knew better than to let him in. The mutt recognized a suitcase and its purpose. With canine logic, the dog figured that if he unpacked the luggage, scattering its contents as wide and far as possible, Jason would not leave. It had taken Jason only one evening retrieving his underwear from the beach and his socks from the mangrove thicket to determine that Pangloss should be excluded from any area in which packing was taking place.
Closing the suitcase, Jason began to search for the tin of shoe polish he was certain he had bought only a few months ago. He found it under the sink in the bathroom. He sat on the floor to begin to try to remove the green mold that seemed to be devouring his only pair of toe caps.
In the background, Offenbach's overture to Orpheus in Hades cancanned through the sound system. Although he had never had any musical training, there was something about the symmetry of classical composers that Jason found restful. Contemporary pop, rock, or—worse—rap seemed to focus on the vocal, usually repetitive, and banal, with sharp elbows, rhythm without meaning. Or, in Jason's very private opinion, mere noise. He could endure the big band sound, the tunes of pre- and post-World War II, mostly long forgotten, but the classics of centuries past entertained him, setting a mood without the effort of trying to understand any particular lyrics.
He called it music to think by.
The heaviness of his eyelids told him it was well past his usual bedtime.
Pangloss had added a low growl to his persistent scratching. Putting down a shoe, Jason Opened the door. Hackles raised, Pangloss had his lips pulled back, exposing long teeth. As if to make his point, the dog gave two sharp barks.
Then Jason heard it over the dancing violins: a low series of beeps coming from the system he had rigged in every room except the bath. The sound was what had so disturbed the dog, sound from wireless transmitters in the weight detectors he had buried at random intervals along the beach. Each device gave off a sound slightly louder than the previous one the closer someone got to the house.
Jason was not expecting visitors.
The sportfisherman he had seen that morning popped into his mind. What had made him notice it? There was no bone in its teeth, no white wake as it cut through the water. It hadn't been moving. The flash he'd seen had come from a telescope or binoculars. Instead of trolling for marlin yet to arrive, it had been observing him. Oversight like that could get a fellow killed.
But how ...?
The keys to the sailboat he had rented in St. Maarten's to sail to St. Bart's. The keys Paco had when he was captured. The float had the name of the rental company, and the rental company had ... what?
Jason had used his employer's credit card, which matched his false passport, to rent the sailboat. Someone in Alazar's organization knew his face and recognized the fuzzy copy the rental company had made of his passport. The thought was less than comforting, but not as immediate as his present intruders.
In a single motion Jason removed something resembling a television remote and a pair of strangely configured binoculars from a dresser drawer and stooped to retrieve from under the bed a large wooden box clasped shut by a combination lock. Quickly touching a series of numbers, Jason opened the lid to reveal three fully assembled weapons with a loaded clip for each.
"Close," he said aloud, as though addressing Pangloss. "They're gonna get real close."
Letting the potential proximity of the intruders dictate his choice, he passed over a Chinese version of an AK-47 assault rifle and a stubby Heckler & Koch MP5A2 machine gun, a weapon designed to fill very small spaces with a maximum number of nine-millimeter Parabellum bullets, to select the
bulkiest of the three, the military model Remington twelve-gauge fully automatic shotgun. The weapon had been designed for urban riot control, hence the name "Street Sweeper." At twenty-five yards or less it could fill an area fifty by fifty with painful but relatively harmless rubber projectiles or, using the loads in Jason's clip, deadly lead shot.
Outside, the moonless sky was black silk paved with diamond chips. Ducking below the railing of the deck to prevent presenting his silhouette against the stars, Jason scooted back to the other building, followed closely by Pangloss. Once inside, Jason went to the kitchen and out what served as the back door and down steps to a room originally designed as a garage. From there, man and dog went outside and circled the house to face the front.
Straining his ears, Jason could detect only the soft lapping of the tide at the beach and the wind's sigh through the few scrubby trees. He put one reassuring arm around Pangloss, using the other to hold the pair of night-vision binoculars to his eyes as he swept the beach. At the moment he could see only interlocking fields of dull green, the color the glasses used to concentrate all available light. Jason wished he had taken the time to buy the newer technology, vision aids that picked up heat to display images. Deep shadows might momentarily conceal something from the equipment he was using, but there was no hiding body heat from infrared.
He forgot his discontent as a green blob emerged from the darkness and took form. A man carrying... carrying ... a long-nosed handgun. No, a handgun equipped with a silencer. Why go to the trouble of using a silencer when the nearest neighbor was miles away? Jason wondered. His curiosity was replaced by awe as four more figures followed the first silently up the stairs to the house's deck.
