Aground on St. Thomas

by Rebecca M. Hale

  Sanchez relayed the path she and Bobo took through the opening in the construction fence behind Fort Christian, into the courtyard, and up onto the clock tower.

  “We couldn’t very well stay inside the fort, so . . .”

  Abe cut in. “Why not? No one knew where you were. You were safe from the federal agents—and our separatist friends here on the island.”

  “Well . . .” Sanchez stuttered, feeling flustered. Why had she let Bobo lead her around? She stared at the wooden tabletop, her brow furrowed. After a pause, she lifted her head and resumed her story.

  “Bobo suggested we move to the church.”

  “Bah, Bobo.” Abe snorted. “Can’t trust him.” This was his assessment of most politicians, but he’d never liked Bobo.

  “Bobo stripped off his tunic, as a disguise . . .”

  Abe winced, covering his eyes. “That detail, you could have left out.”

  “I lost him in the crowd, but he found me outside the church. We were met at the gate by this guy in a brown robe. Dark-skinned but not West Indian. He had a gray goatee, neatly trimmed.”

  She shook her head, still puzzling over the man’s religious affiliation. “He said he was a bishop, but I don’t think he was a member of the local clergy.”

  Abe leaned back on his bench, his demeanor suddenly somber. He drew in his breath and then slowly let it out, as if calming his nerves.

  Finally, he spoke.

  “I know the Bishop.”

  The Lutheran Church

  ~ 68 ~

  Honest Work

  THE BISHOP STRODE briskly through the front gates of the Lutheran church and up the walk to the annex attached to the sanctuary. The regular pastor would be returning from his vacation as soon as the island’s transportation ban was lifted.

  He would not have the use of the facilities for much longer.

  At the annex door, he reached into the cassock and pulled out the key to the exterior lock he had secured the night before. The door swung open, revealing a bleary-eyed Bobo sitting up on his cot in the dorm room—alone.

  The Bishop glanced down the hallway. “Where’s Sanchez?”

  Bobo shrugged. “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.”

  At the Bishop’s scowl, he added, “She was gone when I woke up.”

  “How long?” the Bishop demanded as he turned toward the corridor. He trotted to the end, peeking inside each doorway but quickly dismissing the escape potential of each room—until he reached the bathroom.

  Bobo caught up to the Bishop at the bathroom window. The cassocked man leaned out the opening, studying the disturbance on the muddy ground below.

  “I brought her to you, just like you asked,” Bobo said defensively. “I’ll be expecting my payment. I earned it fair and square. Nothing dishonest about it.”

  The Bishop pushed back from the window. Looking over his shoulder at the shirtless senator, he wondered, not for the first time, if the Reverend was playing both sides.

  Hotel 1829

  ~ 69 ~

  Reincarnation

  THE FIXER SAT at the far end of the bar inside Hotel 1829, quietly sipping a hot cup of tea. He had positioned himself so that the gash on his left wrist was facing the wall, making the injury less noticeable to the bartender and the sickly man teetering on a stool about four feet away.

  The second mojito was already halfway consumed, and the bartender feared his small supply of mint leaves would soon run out. He began muddling leaves for a third glass, which he knew without asking would be requested in short order.

  The drug-laced concoction had started to kick in, and the mojito drinker had a lot to say—even if his words were somewhat slurred.

  “I tell you, it’s something, confronting your own mortality . . . knowing that the end is near . . . that this is it . . . this is all that life is ever going to bring. Makes you kind of wish for something more.”

  He slurped up the last of the second mojito. His frail hand tapped the counter. “Like more mojitos!”

  The bartender shook his head in amusement. He retrieved the empty glass and replaced it with a full one.

  As the man started on the new drink, a commanding feline voice issued a stern order from the veranda.

  The bartender reached beneath the counter for a container of cat food.

  “Excuse me.” Grateful for the excuse to leave his station, he carried the container outside to the cat’s empty bowl.

  The Mojito Man didn’t seem to notice the bartender’s absence. His rambling discourse continued unabated.

  “Course, my mother, she believed in reincarnation. We all have multiple lives, so you’ve got to watch out for karma—that’s what she’d say. She always thought she’d come back as a cat.” He swiveled around in his chair, trying to see out to the veranda. “Could be that cat. Wouldn’t that be ironic?”

  After almost falling off the stool, he gave up on his effort to track the cat. He shifted his attention down the bar toward the Fixer.

  “What about you? What kind of animal would you come back as?”

  The Fixer took a sip of tea, thoughtfully pondering the question.

  “Eh, pal? What would you come back as?”

  The cup returned to its saucer with a light clink.

  “Myself.”

  •

  THE BARTENDER COMPLETED his cat-feeding duties and reentered the bar as his demanding patron drained the last of the third mojito. The man sat alone at the counter, his mood quickly mellowing.

  “What happened to your friend?” the bartender asked, removing the empty teacup from the end of the counter.

  “Said he had business to attend to. Nice guy. Quiet bloke . . .I think I’ll just take a breather over at your nice table.”

  The bartender set down the cup and jumped around the counter to help the man off his stool. The spindly legs gave way as the bartender carried his customer to the bench lining the wall on the far side of the backgammon table.

  Eyes drooping, the man pointed feebly at the marble game board.

  “Hey, what do you call this setup you’ve got laid out here? There’s something familiar about it. I can’t quite remember.”

  The bartender carefully disentangled himself from the wasted limbs.

  “Backgammon. Can I get you a glass of water?”

  The water was rejected, but as the man stretched out across the bench, he asked, “You ever have any pirates come down here and play?”

  Washington, DC

  ~ 70 ~

  A Face in a File

  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL shivered in his cardigan as his office air-conditioning unit pushed a cold blast out the room’s ceiling vent. His disheveled appearance was in as much disarray as the stacks of paper and boxes surrounding him.

  He’d spent yet another night sleeping on the office couch, but the morning hadn’t brought any better news from the Caribbean. If possible, the situation in St. Thomas had grown worse overnight.

  The president was rapidly distancing himself from Operation Coconut, disavowing all direct knowledge or involvement in the matter. The code name had been leaked to the press—to the delight of the beltway news commentators. Calls for the attorney general’s resignation were growing by the minute.

  The cruise ship passengers who had been stranded in the Charlotte Amalie harbor the previous day had now reached their next destination. Many had taken that opportunity to contact lawyers and were promising to sue for the costly disruption to their vacations.

  The attorney general shook his head at the television screen in the corner of the room, which was tuned to one of the national cable news channels. The sound had been switched to mute, but the tropical pictures and the scrolling news feed at the bottom of the screen were enough to convey the trouble he was in.

  To make matters worse, it was impossible for him to get accu
rate and real time reports from St. Thomas.

  The frazzled man stared down at his telephone console, glowering at the device. Telecommunications in the US Virgin Islands had been restored late the previous afternoon, but so far, few people on the ground inside the restricted territory were accepting or returning his calls.

  He’d tried without success to reach the Governor’s aide, the so-called impeccable source of information who had triggered the indictments and attempted arrests.

  Cedric’s phone rang straight through to a voice mailbox that had reached capacity and was taking no new messages. The AG’s tracking technology indicated the phone was located in the vicinity of a hotel named Blackbeard’s Castle. He could only hope the whistleblower had checked himself into a room and was enjoying a nice cocktail by the pool.

  He suspected a far more nefarious fate had befallen their star witness.

  The attorney general had received a similar lack of response from his chief legal counsel on St. Thomas. Wendy the Wunderkind was no longer looking quite so wonderful. He knew for certain that she was avoiding his phone calls. That this would lead to her termination appeared not to matter.

  The AG stared woefully at the framed photo of his golden retriever.

  Intelligence reports from native Virgin Islanders were quickly losing credence.

  •

  WITH WENDY AWOL, the attorney general had turned to the assistant special agent in charge for briefings on the latest developments. At least the FBI was providing prompt updates, he thought as the light flashed on his console.

  The AG answered the phone, weary but anxious for news.

  “Well, Friday, what’s the word?”

  “Cautiously optimistic, sir. The streets this morning are calm. There’s no sign that the vandalism from last night has spread.”

  The AG sighed. “If that’s all it takes to cheer you up, you’re a far more optimistic man than I am. What about the Governor?”

  “Still no sign of him, sir. I’m afraid he’s given us the slip.”

  The AG rubbed his forehead. “And the arrested senators?”

  “Camped out in the Legislature Building. The appellate judge stayed with them all night. He ordered in a nice breakfast for everyone. Maybe that will convince them to cooperate.”

  The AG shook his head. He knew there was little chance of that happening.

  “And Hightower?” he asked with a despondent sigh.

  There was a brief hesitation.

  “He’s . . . uh . . . unavailable, sir.”

  “You mean he’s on the sauce,” the AG snapped. “I saw him on the news this morning. The cameras showed him on the balcony outside the Governor’s office, drunker than a skunk.”

  Agent Friday chose not to provide further comment. None was needed. The AG had already gathered plenty of damaging evidence on the Gorilla through other sources.

  “The assistant director of the FBI is due at my office within the hour. I’ll get back to you on Hightower. In the meantime, don’t let him do anything foolish.”

  A slight edge of sarcasm crept into Friday’s voice.

  “That may be overoptimistic, sir.”

  •

  MUTTERING TO HIMSELF, the attorney general turned his attention to the nightly reports Friday and his teams had sent in. They were digital files, requiring the AG to review them on his computer, but at this point, he wasn’t complaining.

  As expected, the write-ups were thorough and complete.

  Slowly, the AG scanned through photos from the vandalism in downtown Charlotte Amalie, studying the graffiti that had been sprayed in the waterfront alleys and the physical damage that had been inflicted on the shop windows.

  After a careful perusal, he shifted to the file compiled by the FBI agents manning the Governor’s Mansion.

  With a wide yawn, the AG reached for his cup of coffee—and nearly spilled it down his shirtfront at the image of the cleric who had visited the First Lady the previous evening.

  The report identified the man as a religious official, but the AG had seen his face somewhere before—and not in a church-related context.

  He squinted at the blurry picture on the computer screen, drumming his fingers across the desktop.

  Then he leapt up and began frantically digging through the banker’s boxes piled around his office.

  The search appeared haphazard, with the AG skipping randomly from one stack to the next, but there was a method to his madness.

  “Aha!” He yanked a tabbed manila folder from a box. Sitting on the floor, he flipped it open on his lap and thumbed through the contents.

  He held up a photo, a blurry black-and-white image of a dark-skinned man with a gray goatee wearing a brown cassock. It was a match to the shot taken from the Governor’s Mansion security camera.

  In the background, his computer picked up the morning KRAT broadcast and automatically relayed the audio. The attorney general ignored the by now painfully familiar “I Smell a Rat” jingle.

  He kept his focus trained on the file for a man known to US intelligence agencies only as “The Bishop.”

  Blackbeard’s Castle

  ~ 71 ~

  A Wife’s Duty

  HAVING FINALLY REACHED the top of the 99 Steps, Dread Fred and Whaler circled the drive leading up to Blackbeard’s Castle. The pair stopped at the bottom of the stairs that cut through the sloping lawn. Dread caught his breath while Whaler drained his water bottle.

  “We’re almost there,” Dread said patiently, starting up the last portion of the climb. He reached up to rub his shoulder. The radio equipment always seemed a lot heavier at the end of the hike than it did at the beginning.

  Whaler would have made a snide comment, but he was too tired to speak. Crumpling the empty plastic bottle, he jammed it into a side pocket on his backpack and wearily followed Dread up the stairs.

  •

  THE DJS FOUND Blackbeard’s pool and pavilion area empty, save for the bartender who provided the pair with fresh water bottles. Whaler pushed back his frizzy mane and pressed the chilled plastic container against his forehead while Dread went in search of the tower keys from the front office.

  Today’s location wasn’t as clandestine as that of the church cistern, but the hotel owner was a fan of the show and had given them permission to broadcast from the premises. With the cruise ships temporarily diverted from Charlotte Amalie—and with them, the day-trippers—the area was quiet. They were unlikely to be disturbed.

  And yet, no sooner had the DJs reached the platform at the top of the tower’s spiral metal staircase than they were startled by an electronic buzzing.

  Dread patted his pockets, checking for his cell phone. He pulled it out, but no calls registered on its display. “Is that you?”

  Whaler guzzled half his water bottle before responding. “No, is it you?”

  “No, numbskull, its not me.”

  Dread scanned the platform’s circular space, searching for the source of the sound. The area was protected from the wind by four feet of additional tower height. The men typically spread out across the wood plank floor when they operated here.

  A second buzz helped Dread track the hidden cell phone to a crevice beneath the stairwell. He fished the fancy, high-end device from its hole and shrugged.

  “Must belong to a tourist.” He studied the call log. “Whoever the owner is, there are a lot of people trying to contact him.”

  Whaler set down his bottle and held his hands up for a catch. “Lemme see.”

  Dread tossed the phone across the platform, but his aim was a little off. If not for Whaler’s long-armed reach, the phone would have sailed over the top of the tower and dropped into the swimming pool below.

  “Ha!” Whaler exclaimed at the difficult nab. “No offense, Dread, but short people can’t . . .” His voice trailed off as he read the most r
ecent number that had dialed the phone.

  Dread looked up from the equipment he was assembling on the other side of the platform. “What’s that, Whaler? You wanna demonstrate your athleticism by racing me down to the bottom of the hill and back?”

  “Naw, man, you’d leave me in the dust.” After scanning the call log, Whaler slipped the phone into his backpack. “Short legs have an advantage on hills.”

  Dread returned his attention to the equipment, humming as he plugged in the various cables to their slots.

  Whaler looked down the hill toward Government House and, beyond, the Legislature Building. He’d recognized the DC area code on the display.

  The number for the previous outgoing calls was even more familiar.

  He wondered who had been trying so desperately to reach Wendy.

  •

  BEFORE LONG, THE KRAT team was on the air, fielding calls from their engaged listeners. The main topic was, predictably, the territory’s political upheaval, with specific mentions of the senators barricaded in the Legislature Building, the vandalism that had occurred overnight in the alleyway shops, and, of course, the missing Governor.

  “The US can’t just swoop in here and arrest all of our politicians,” one caller protested indignantly.

  Dread grimaced. “I’m afraid they just did.”

  The dark reply was more threat than comment. “We need to kick them out and retake control of this here island.”

  Dread switched over to a second caller.

  “What are those hooligans doing out there on the streets? Did you see what they did down on the waterfront? Who is going to clean all that up? They’re going to scare off all the tourists. Then we’ll see some real trouble.”

  “Pasty boys,” Dread admonished into his mike. “It’s time for you to get busy.”

  He was about to move on to the next caller when Whaler threw his hands up and wiggled his fingers in the air, indicating they’d been contacted by a “drop everything” guest.