Calamity (Captain Grande Angil Mysteries)

by Robert G. Bernstein

  My brain was swimming with worry about Jenny, but I put it out of my mind long enough to consider George’s theory.

  “It’s out there,” I said. “I mean what you’re suggesting . . . it’s really farfetched.”

  “Is it? Is it really? You were there. Shit. I wasn’t even an idea then. But I read about that period. And I know what happens to people and governments when they feel their backs are against the wall. The peace movement was HUGE, wasn’t it?”

  “It was,” I said.

  “So?”

  “You realize what you’re suggesting.” I wasn’t asking.

  George shook his head and whistled. He ran his hand across his face, as if to wipe away a coating of grime, then he looked at me with a trace of fear in his eyes.

  “You really stepped in it this time,” he said.

  34

  George went back into the office and tore at another one of the file boxes. I heard him typing on his laptop as I tried to call Jenny. Got her voice mail after several rings, which meant, at least, her phone was still on.

  “What are you going to do?” George yelled from the office. “Did you call that Fed back?”

  “I tried, twice,” I said. “They told me he’s not taking calls.”

  “Not good. You must have pissed him off. Would have been moderately advantageous to have someone in law enforcement on your side.”

  “I’m not giving up on him yet,” I said.

  George stepped into the open and leaned against the door with his arms folded. He was in a T-shirt and his multicolored tats showed dramatically under the overhead light. A half-dragon, half mermaid on one side and some kind of East Asian design on the other.

  “I’m no expert, Cap,” he said. “You say you want to go to DC and maybe see the Senator. Why would the Senator agree to see you? It’s not like you have anything that he would care about.”

  “True,” I said. “On the other hand, I can put Bowers, Hollyoake and Preston Mellville together in sixty-nine, possibly working a scheme to bring tainted drugs into the U.S. And I have a dangerous-looking hoodlum at SafeOps who met with a guy who later had his neck snapped three different ways.”

  I turned around and gazed out my window and took a few moments to consider what I had just said. Outside, in the noon sun, a couple of clam diggers were dragging totes across the mudflat. Time was short. They only had a few hours before dark. I felt sorry for them. Trudging through sticky, muddy goo for the slightest reward. Poking and hoping. The irony wasn’t lost on me.

  “Maybe I’ll hold off on trying to see the Senator,” I said. “Maybe I need to check out SafeOps first. Go directly to the lion’s den, so to speak.”

  George raised an eyebrow. He cocked his head and sucked in a breath. It was his way of holding back advice he knew I didn’t want to hear.

  “What do you want me to do?” he said.

  “Remember when we talked about you coming in on this venture?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m giving you another chance to get out of it.”

  “No way, Cappy. I’m in.”

  “There could be a lot for you to lose, George. I’m not shitting you. I have nothing. A boat, a tiny house, three ex-wives and three kids. Kids are mostly grown, content, strong; the ex-wives are independent and stable, sort of. They’ll all go on without me. My mother’s a shell of her former self, doesn’t even know who I am. She’s a ward of the State of New Hampshire for the rest of her life, however long that’ll be . . . days, months. At best, she plays with dolls and feeds herself a few bites of oatmeal. This is the woman who fought the Nazis, escaped over the mountains like Julie What’s-her-name in that freakin’ musical, helped build a nation and bore me into this world, and every day I go to see her is like a visit to my own private hell. Look at me. I’m in my waning years. Success like you’ve seen has passed me by, and I ain’t ever gonna find the time to catch-up with it. I’ve done all I’m going to do on this Earth. And that’s about the size of it. You, on the other hand, are just starting out. You got no wife, no kids. Shit, you’re not even seeing anyone seriously. You got a fortune in the bank. Good parents. Friends. You still have your legacy to leave. Your whole life is ahead of you. Why piss it away on something like this? We don’t even know these people.”

  All the time I was talking George stood between the doorframe looking at his shoes or out the window. He rubbed the back of his hand, tugged at his sleeve, anything to avoid eye contact. When I finished my diatribe he stared straight at me.

  “I have an answer for that,” he said. “But I’ll save it for another time. When I’m God damn good and ready and I think you need to know. In the meantime, you can just shut the fuck up and tell me what you want me to do.”

  35

  I gave George a pump action twelve-gauge and the keys to my boat and house. I told him to keep an eye on things and continue searching Allen Bowers’ file boxes. George suggested some additional research on the Web. It was a good idea. The more information I had about SafeOps the better, particularly the names of their founder or founders, operating officers and Board of Directors.

  Hadley didn’t call me back and I had to bet his office didn’t appreciate me calling him every fifteen minutes.

  My flight out of Portland was scheduled for 5:00 PM. It didn’t give me much leeway. Even with the overdrive gear, cruising in an antique Land Rover at highway speeds made about as much sense as asking a Sherpa to jog on a treadmill. George offered to swap vehicles and hang out at my house and his suggestion set me off. I told him he had to start thinking defensively. If someone wanted to do me harm, they’d be looking for me at home, the boat or in my truck.

  “George,” I yelled. “Take Bowers’ files and my shotgun to your house. Use your vehicle. I’ll leave the Rover here and take the rental. Hole up at the house. Once a day — and I mean during the day, during working hours when traffic is heaviest — drive by the boat and the house. Use your car, not that yuppy sport truck. If someone is watching either my house or the boat, if you see a strange vehicle or truck parked nearby, call me. Do not, I repeat, do not, under any circumstances try to reach these people. Have I made myself clear on this?”

  “Yeah, Cap. I got it. You don’t have to worry about me. I won’t be a hero.” He sounded sincere.

  We left my house at the same time. I followed him to make sure he and his sensitive cargo got to his palatial estate in Appleton without interference. I really didn’t expect any trouble, nor did I think anyone could tail us successfully on a coastal Maine road in late December.

  George lived on twenty acres high on the Ridge Road. He had a superb view of the valley below and the Camden Hills beyond. You could even see portions of the upper St. George River and Seven Tree Pond to the North and South. An absolutely gorgeous spot. The house had a single floor of forty-five hundred square feet. High ceilings, vaulted archways, wide pine floors, Italian tile, custom cabinetry and fixtures, and a kitchen Martha Stewart would die for. Unique in anybody’s book. A standout that had been featured in Downeast Magazine and two or three other slick-skinned home and garden-type publications.

  Two hundred feet from the main house stood George’s two-story barn. As you would expect from a millionaire who made his fortune in the music and sport bike industries, the inside had been divided in two sections. The top floor contained a state-of-the-art-recording studio, the bottom floor housed a garage and George’s extensive bicycle and antique motorcycle collection. Thanks to me, he also had a small area devoted to interesting items salvaged from our deep-sea explorations in the Gulf of Maine.

  I said goodbye to George and headed to Route-17, picked up I-95 in Gardner and took it South to Route-295 in Brunswick. The rental got me to Portland International Airport with twenty minutes to spare. I declared and checked-in my forty-five and a box of ammo and had them both packed in the requisite hard shell safety case, which tucked nicely in the sea bag between my skivvies and toiletry. At fifteen hundred ten the security guy at the
counter used my gun-box combination to open and confirm the contents of the safety case. He nodded, passed me a separate claim receipt and told me to enjoy my flight. I tried Jenny while waiting in line at the metal detector but got no answer. She was either still out of it, asleep, or worse, her phone had been taken away. When I called Hadley again I connected to a courteous Annapolis dispatch officer who told me he had left me specific instructions that he would be temporarily unavailable. She then told me to leave them the “fuck” alone or she would have me arrested as a national security threat. So much for cultivating relationships with the authorities.

  Arlington was strangely muggy for late December, as was the inside of my rental, a Ford Explorer. I started the truck, opened all the windows and turned on the air. As I left the parking lot and the airport I could see the sun behind high cirrus clouds and the polluted haze of the city. It gleamed like an electric egg yoke.

  I took the George Washington Memorial Parkway along the river toward Langley and eventually made a left on Dolly Madison Boulevard. Not surprisingly, SafeOps was an easy commute to the C.I.A. complex on the banks of the Potomac.

  George called while I was searching for a parking spot around the corner from the SafeOps building. I had been circling for fifteen minutes, looking for a parking lot or street that would provide me with a decent view of the front door and at the same time not draw anyone’s attention. I had to see the SafeOps people coming and going and try to get a decent photo of the guy I saw with Tanner in Annapolis.

  “Have you heard from your cop friend?” George said over the phone.

  “Not yet,” I said. “And I don’t think he’s my friend.”

  “Probably not. But at least he’s not out to kill you.”

  “Let’s hope. Whaddaya got for me?” I pulled around a second corner and found a parking spot in a lot that had a view of the front door of the SafeOps building through the car port of a six-story condominium.

  “The company was founded after the first Iraq war by two former C.I.A. guys and consists mainly of retired military and defense people. They do private security, combat-style training, guard work, personal protection, you know, all the cool, merc stuff. They’re constantly recruiting talent. If you go to their Website you can check out careers; they got jobs like marksman, explosives specialist, hand-to-hand instructors, K-9 handlers, that sort of thing. I’m sure they’ve fought in wars but they don’t advertise it. The board of directors reads like a who’s who of Washington insiders. It’s secret stuff, I mean, well, not that secret. The company’s listed on the NASDAQ, so the info’s out there for investors, if not for your average Joe.”

  “Anybody’s name stick out?” I said.

  “Yeah, everybody,” George said. “Like I said. It’s a who’s-who of back door big wheels. But get this. I went back a few years and guess who owned and later sold a twenty-five precent stake in the company.”

  “Hollyoake.”

  “That’s a roger.”

  “Went back a few years, huh.”

  “You want to know how many?”

  “I think I know.”

  “Cut his ties right after the fire. I hate to bring this up but what the hell are we doing messing around with a State Senator?”

  “How old he is?”

  “Let’s see. Says here he was born in thirty-nine. Makes him—”

  “Too old to be a hippy,” I said.

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” George said. “You a hippy in sixty-nine, Cap? No wait, you were in the Middle East in sixty-nine. On some special anti-terror squad.”

  “How old do you think I am, genius? I was sixteen then.”

  “Oh yeah, right. I meant seventy-nine. So, were you a hippy or not?”

  “The sixties are kind of a blur.”

  “I guess that answers my question.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, do you know what Bath Salts are?”

  “Just what I’ve read in the papers,” I said, “and what I’ve heard from local law enforcement. Bad shit. The worst. A cross between coke, meth and acid. Kids get seriously paranoid and hallucinate.”

  “They become psychotic, is more like it,” George said. “Anyway, I was looking at the redacted C.I.A. Operations Orders and got to thinking. So I wrote a search algorithm based on the redacted space and the number of letters that could fit, then I crossed it with the assumption it was a chemical name. I came up with Methylenedioxypyrovalerone. Better known as MDPV. Bath Salts. Could have even been some early derivation. Something experimental. Maybe even militarized. They were trying all sorts of shit during the Vietnam war. Ever see the movie, Jacob’s Ladder?”

  “For Chrissakes, George,” I said. “How do you know this shit?”

  “I don’t sleep much,” he said.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” I said and hung up. It was six thirty in the evening. At the SafeOps building two streets over, lights switched on and off and people and cars started to move. The workaholics were finally calling it a day.

  36

  I waited in my perfect spot until the last diehard SafeOps employee left the building. The tough looking black guy I had seen with Tanner in Annapolis never appeared. It was time to reevaluate my options. Rather than lose my parking spot I walked down the street to a deli and bought a bowl of chicken gumbo, a turkey club, two bottles of root beer, a handful of Snicker bars, two Reeses Peanut Butter cups and a thermos-full of hot coffee. I took it all back to the Explorer and ate in the dark. The club tasted like cardboard. The gumbo needed hot sauce but wasn’t half-bad. I saved the rest for the long night ahead.

  With no word from Hadley, no answer from Jenny, and Zeke a renegade, I had little choice. I had to stay put and hope for the lithe black man with the sharp suit and SafeOps company car to show up. Once I had him in my sights I could follow him to a traceable address. At the very least I could take a photo and show it around, get a name to match the face. I needed a name. Something I could take to Hadley. I thought about breaking into the office but considered it an absolute last resort given the company’s specialization in security and protection. That left the Senator. Even there, with the whole country in a permanent state of yellow alert, what could I hope to accomplish? Who in his right mind would let someone like me in to see a United States Senator?

  Excuse me, Senator. There’s a Grande Angil here to see you. He claims to be a down-and-out party boat skipper turned P.I. from Maine with eighteen hundred dollars in his savings account and no steady means of employment. He’s here to accuse you of taking part in a plan to kill thousands of young Americans at a music festival and to get your confession and have you arrested as a conspirator. Shall I show him in? Yes, certainly. Please show Mr. Angil in. While you’re at it, give him the keys to Fort Knox and Air Force One.

  To pass the time in these situations, mostly when I’m driving, I do mental mathematics, speed-distance calculations and latitude-longitude games. I pretend I’m on a boat at a certain location and then strike off in one direction at a certain speed. Halfway to my intended destination I put myself on a new course and calculate a new speed of advance and speed over ground. I factor in set and drift and figure out my estimated time of arrival at the original destination. Just trying to remember latitudes and longitudes to two decimal places is a great memory exercise. When I get tired of speed-distance and memory games I do safety and emergency drills in my head. I picture myself at the helm of a given vessel and I set up an imaginary fire, explosion or foundering. I make my emergency radio calls and muster the crew, start damage control procedures and prepare to abandon ship. Sometimes, while playing these games, I realize there’s something I can do, some bit of planning or outfitting that I haven’t already done on my own boat. Sometimes it’s a simple realization, like perhaps it would be better to remount a fire extinguisher in a different location, replace a fire suppression blanket, or recheck the high pressure injectors on the engine where they pass over the hot exhaust manifold.

  Tonight,
sitting in the dark on a nearly vacant street a few miles from C.I.A. headquarters, feelings of doubt and uncertainty invaded my normal thought process. As a captain, working on different boats up to two hundred feet in length, I never questioned my training or ability. Sure there were times when the adrenaline would pump and I would feel a flutter in my chest or a tickle in the back of my throat. It’s an expected and natural response to dangerous stimuli. Sidling up to a seven hundred foot tanker in storm conditions, trying to get alongside at five to ten knots, in the dark, snow and ice flailing the windows, seas climbing the stern and nonstop freezing spray turning visibility to shit, you can damn well bet the adrenaline will pump. You welcome that sort of response, bathe in it like a shark in a chum slick. Say you’re on a tug and you lose power in a bad spot, at the bend in a river, with traffic all around, or at night, seaward of a difficult harbor entrance, and the crew can’t get control of the tow fast enough and the catenary catches a hang on the bottom, or the barge overtakes your boat and threatens to climb its stern. These emergencies don’t give you much time to react. In some cases you have minutes or even seconds to make the right call.

  I was a mere rifle shot from C.I.A. Headquarters. I felt out of my element and out of control. I hadn’t done my homework on the case, hadn’t taken the time to check out Jenny or her driver. I neglected to play the important mental games with the contingencies as thoroughly as I would have done had they been strictly marine or boat related. The oversight cost me. It may have been responsible for Tanner’s murder and Jenny’s abduction.