Cries of the Lost

by Chris Knopf

  So I stared at the TV, sipped my beer and tried to will their voices into the auditory range. Unsuccessfully.

  The solitary drinker got up and left, so I took his seat next to the other pair of guys. It only took a few minutes to eliminate them from consideration. I fought the impulse to look down the bar as I finished my beer and sauntered back out to the street. I climbed into the Ford, from which I had a good view of the entrance under the giant parrot, and waited.

  The older man, I assumed the inspector, came out first with a cell phone held to his head. He continued talking as he climbed into a stripped-down Honda Accord and drove away. His officer was another half hour, likely taking the opportunity to get in a few extra beers. He crossed the street and got into a white, nondescript coupe of likely European origin. I pulled out of my spot and did an unhurried three-point turn a dozen feet down the street, coming around just in time to see the white car turn left at the end of the block. I turned on red, and again, caught the rear of the white car just as it made another left. This brought him out to a wider avenue that ran parallel to the waterfront. I was able to settle into a reasonable distance behind, and even allow a vehicle or two to get between us without losing sight of my quarry.

  The avenue followed the coast to the south, through an affluent, gate-heavy residential area, then around to the east, where traffic thinned and the white car picked up the pace. I felt the strain as competing impulses—close in or drop back—fought in my chest. I picked the wiser competitor and let some more air open up between us.

  We were well clear of George Town by this time, zooming toward Bodden Town, the second largest municipality on Grand Cayman. We almost got there. With little warning, the white car took a fast right down a narrow road paved in crazed macadam festooned with sprouts of ragged grass. It looked too confining and too exposed at the same time, so I slid by and pulled off to the side of the road. I punched up the maps function on my smartphone and located my position. The sandy road led south toward the coast, where a cluster of streets hugged the beach.

  It was the only way in and the only way out.

  I drove back and slunk down the road. The white car was out of view, which was favorable to a point. I moved slowly, scanning for taillights, or the colorless gleam of moonlight off white car paint.

  I made it all the way to the sea with no results. I’d passed a few side streets along the way, so I backtracked and toured a pair of tiny neighborhoods of single-storey cottages with colorful stucco walls and tile roofs, but no white coupe.

  I went back down to the coast and explored the last option, another settlement, with some of the homes directly on the sea, which I could hear after lowering the window of the SUV.

  And there it was. A white car parked next to a large van, behind a house that faced the beach. Inside the house, with a high degree of probability, was Natsumi Fitzgerald. Hungry, thirsty, likely frightened, yet doggedly determined.

  I SPED back to the hotel and emptied the room, loading everything into the rented SUV. Then I drove south toward the airport through the windy Caribbean night. I felt my chest start to tighten as I played my mind forward to the next few moves.

  What I needed first was a place, a hotel or motel, as close to the airport as possible. And it had to possess a few key qualities. So I forced myself to concentrate on that task, ignoring the escalating stress reactions as I circled my destination with no viable candidates in place.

  I’d just begun to fashion alternative strategies when I saw the sign, FIRST AND LAST RESORT, outside a forlorn cluster of tiny bungalows guarded by an office building with a shiny tin roof, lit by a powerful floodlight mounted on a nearby telephone pole.

  I pulled in.

  The guy at the desk inside the office had been on this earth a very long time. His skin was the color and texture of weathered leather. His thick, flat nose covered most of his face, and I could see his eyes, despite the low light, were black marbles set inside golden ponds. A cigarette was tucked between his fingers, and a small glass, filled with dark rum, was close at hand.

  “I need a room,” I said.

  He thought about that for moment. “No other reason to be here, I reckon,” he said, his voice more British than island lilt, and all coarse grit sandpaper, wetted down.

  “You got one?” I asked.

  “You got money?”

  “I do.”

  “Then we got one. Our best, near the back. Quieter.” He pointed his finger at the sky and moved it back and forth. “Lots of planes up there.”

  “That’s perfect,” I said, handing him my credit card.

  I waited as patiently as I could through the laborious check-in process. His hands were steady, but achingly deliberate, dedicating equal time to running through the paperwork, pulling on the long filter-less cigarette and sipping from the small, rum-filled glass.

  He put a big brass key tied to a thick plastic tag with the address of the motel on the counter. He tapped his fingers on the key before sliding it across to me. “Number’s on the side of the building, but I can show you. If you’re feeling confused.”

  I assured him I was fine navigating on my own, and thanked him again for accommodating me.

  He shrugged the longest shrug I’d ever seen. About two minutes up, and twice that down. “No matter,” he said. “You get lost bad enough, we got the authorities to do the retrievin’. Got to do something with all those taxes, right then?”

  THOUGH I’D never done it before, booking a chartered plane was ridiculously easy. The plan was to hop over to Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, logistically easier since the trip was between British Overseas Territories. That was my assumption, anyway. I called on the way and asked if I could load all our stuff ahead of time, and have the jet wait until the moment we were ready to take off. This was not a problem. It didn’t appear anything would be a problem as long as adequate funds were available to cover the cost.

  I reminded myself that this was Grand Cayman Island, a place where some of the richest people in the world stashed their money, and would often want to get in and out of town in a hurry.

  I asked a cabbie waiting at curbside for directions to the Luxflite hangar.

  “You mean de VIP con-van-ience center. Luxflite don’t have anyt’ing so dodgy as a hangar.”

  “My apologies.”

  He pointed to an area to the left of the A-frame main terminal. “Just follow dat road ‘round to de end of de runway. De’re signs.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  There it was, as promised. A single-story, hip-roofed building surrounded by lush tropical foliage and a parking lot filled with confident European and American sedans. Inside, two fashion model-perfect young women, prime examples of the robust Caymani an genetics, rose from their mahogany desks to greet me. I didn’t know which one to address.

  “I’m Jonathan Lembert,” I said, casting my eyes from left to right. “I called about a jet?”

  “You have luggage to leave with us, no?” said the beauty on the right.

  “I do. Luggage and gear. Out in the parking lot.”

  Without losing eye contact, she held up a tiny pager and pushed the button.

  A few seconds later a large white guy in a dark suit appeared, smiled and shook my hand. “I will handle that for you, Mr. Lembert,” he said, with a hard-to-place British Commonwealth accent.

  “Would you care for tea? A cocktail?” the woman on the left asked.

  “I’m all set. Thanks.”

  The large man seemed slightly offended that I wanted to stay with him through the loading process, which was too bad, but I couldn’t allow anything to be left behind, unlikely as that was. I distracted him with contrived American banalities.

  “I’m really starting to dig soccer. You know, what you call football? You have a national team. I bet you watch the World Series. I mean, this is still North America. The Dominicans are nuts about baseball, and they’re Caribbeans, right? There’s been like a thousand of them in the
majors. Can I help you with that? It’s pretty heavy.”

  He cast a gaze that was equal parts appreciation and disdain, and with one hand, lifted the bag into the cargo hold of a Cessna Citation 525B jet airplane.

  Back inside the building, one of the women gave me a leather folder with the photos and resumes of six pilots on call for our flight, four men and two women, all with military and major airline experience.

  “Call us when you leave George Town. We’ll be waiting.”

  These were the moments when I thanked the ambition of my dead insurance agent wife, who bilked millions out of her carriers and clients instead of an easier and safer few hundred thousand. It meant that of all the worries a person could have living under assumed names and identities, for me, money was not one of them. As long as I was a careful steward of my illicit resources. This was an extravagant splurge, though well warranted by the importance of the next several hours.

  With a critical link in the escape route secured, with any luck, I walked mentally through the next phase as I drove back to the bungalow motel near the airport. I hoped all the data I needed was living on my little laptop, with no essential scrap now loaded on the small jet. I was normally diligent in my preparations to the point of obsessive compulsion, and yet somehow I always seemed to overlook some obvious detail. Maybe that was the problem. Too obvious.

  Back in the room, I booted up the laptop and a voice synthesizer—another call center application—this one capable of replicating anyone’s recorded voice, in this case Inspector Josephson’s. I’d built a menu of about two dozen statements, some declarative, others innocuous to cover the unexpected. I probably needed more than that, but I had to consider the time it would take to toggle through potential responses versus normal conversational back and forth, where there’s little or no lag time between speakers.

  I clicked on the cell phone number of the RCIPS officer I’d intercepted. My first line identified his boss as the caller.

  “We good here,” said the cop. “Nothing to report.”

  I clicked on my next line. “There’s been a change of plans. We need to move her again.”

  “What’s that?”

  I stuck to my script. “It can’t be helped. I have the place. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “New place?” asked the cop.

  I searched my neutral lines. “Can’t discuss that now. We need to move fast.”

  “We in trouble over this?” he asked.

  I clicked on a good answer, but took a little too long getting there. “I’ll tell you later.”

  “We got a delay here,” said the cop. “Maybe somebody listening in.”

  “We need to move fast,” was the best I could do.

  “okay, okay. Tell us where to go.”

  I gave him the address and room number at the motel. I had him repeat it back to me. I told him it would be waiting for them, the door unlocked with the key inside. I asked him when he could get there.

  “Twenty minutes, as long as that Jap girl not fight us over every little thing.”

  Good luck with that, I thought.

  “I’ll see you there,” my inspector robot said, signing off.

  UNFORTUNATELY, IT was time to put the gun dropped into the Suzuki to good use. I hate guns. They frighten me. They’re nasty to look at, hard to get without risk and prone to unplanned firings.

  I’d never actually shot anyone, at least not directly with my own trigger finger. Didn’t mean they weren’t just as dead. But there were times when only a gun in your own hand will do. And this was one of them.

  I dressed up in my black outfit, including a black ski mask. Then I packed the SUV with my remaining belongings and parked it in front of the unoccupied bungalow next door. It was more than a half hour before the white car and the van from the safe house arrived. I slid down in my seat, keeping the vehicles in view. The van backed into the parking space, the rear door only a few feet from the bungalow. The driver of the white car got out and met the man from the van at the rear door. They opened the van and climbed inside. Soon after they brought out Natsumi, handcuffed. Each cop held one of her arms, and they half lifted, half pulled her to the bungalow.

  I jumped out of the SUV and followed them through the door, shoving both men into the room before they realized I was there. I flicked on the ceiling light, and with the gun pointed at the startled guy to the left, said, “Get on the floor, face down, hands on the back of your head.”

  When they hesitated, I leveled the gun at the other cop’s face. “Get down now, or I start shooting. Easier for me.”

  When they complied, I dropped to my knees and shoved the gun into the first cop’s neck. I pulled his service pistol from the holster and stuck it in the rear waist band of my pants. Then I said, “The key to the cuffs.”

  He rolled up on his left side and used his right hand to dig the key out of his pocket. He moved his other hand away from his head, with fingers spread as if to signal eagerness to go along. Once I had the key, and both of his hands back on his head, I moved to the other cop and freed him of his gun. For a dangerous moment, I had to take my eyes off them so I could get the cuffs off Natsumi, but they both stayed put on the floor.

  As Natsumi rubbed her wrists, I moved her around behind me.

  “Here’s what happens next,” I said. “You blokes are going to stand up very slowly, and with your hands back behind your head, walk to the bathroom.”

  They did as told and I followed them into the bathroom. I turned on the light and told them to sit on the floor to either side of the toilet. One had to squeeze in next to the wall, never quite making it; but after confirming that they could clasp hands below the tank, I had Natsumi click on the handcuffs.

  As a final touch, I told her to cover their mouths with duct tape. It was only then they probably realized I really wasn’t going to shoot them, and anger began to take the place of fear in their eyes.

  “You Americans think you own the world,” said Officer Brick, the one who’d been on the line with the inspector. I reached out and held Natsumi’s hand before she could finish sealing the tape across his mouth. “But this girl and people like her are gonna take it away from you. One day at a time. They never gonna give up.”

  AT THE airport, we spent about twenty minutes wiping fingerprints off the Ford Expedition. I pressed my finger to my lips before leaving the vehicle and Natsumi nodded with understanding. Soon after that, we boarded the Cessna and the young lady pilot and her copilot shot the little jet into the sky. It wasn’t until we’d landed at Beef Island on Tortola, passed through customs and shut the door of another rental car, that it felt safe to speak openly.

  “You saved my life again,” said Natsumi. “You keep doing that.”

  “I keep putting your life in danger.”

  “It’s a funny way to impress a girl.”

  “It’s not on purpose.”

  “All you have to do is tell me you love me,” she said.

  “I love you.”

  “See how much easier that is?”

  Later on, she asked, “What happened?”

  “The bank dropped a dime on us.”

  “To whom?”

  “That’s the hard part. I count two, maybe three possibilities. Did you learn anything from Officer Brick?” I asked her.

  “He said the Americans were after me and my partner. Later on, he called you my boyfriend, but never said your name. They had mine after taking my prints and DNA. The casino prints us and takes a swab as part of their security clearance. Never knew they shared it with the Feds.”

  “I imagine that DNA was dearly acquired.”

  “They were trying to use me as leverage with people they simply called the Americans, so FBI, CIA, embassy people, who knows.”

  “What did they want to trade you for?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Don’t know. But they really wanted me to tell them what was on the flash drive we took out of the safe-deposit box.”

  She
looked away and then added, “There’s not much else I can tell you. They mostly asked questions and I mostly told them to let me go. pretty tedious all in all.”

  I gave my opinion that the SUV was separate from the cops, and she agreed. Neither of us wanted to believe the people in the SUV were our countrymen. Too sloppy and murderous. And we didn’t want to believe our own government would try to run us off the road, naïve as that might have been.

  “So we have three lunatic groups after us,” she said. “The cops, American foreign agents, and who-knows-what in killer SUVs.”

  “That’s my count.”

  “Maybe that visit to the bank wasn’t such a great idea.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “But at least it taught us something.”

  “What?”

  “Lots of people really care about what’s on this flash drive. They knew it was there and were waiting to pounce on whoever dropped by to pick it up. It’s important enough that these Caymanian bankers are willing to compromise their legendary confidentiality. Whether through bribery or coercion, that’s a really big thing.”

  “So you’re happy about this,” she said.

  “Very. Now that you’re sitting next to me and we’re safely out of harm’s way.”

  “As far as you know.”

  “As far as I know.”

  WE CHECKED into a small resort hotel on Tortola just south of Road Town, capital of the British Virgin Islands. Our room faced Sir Francis Drake Channel, the blustery little sea around which most of the archipelago gathered. The night was clear, and even with a feathery palm tree in the way, we could see speckles of light from neighboring islands, and even the ghostly white shape of a sailboat running downwind toward the southeast tip of Tortola, and then maybe on to the U.S. Virgins and beyond.

  “Now what, chief,” said Natsumi.

  “I find postcards from the South of France irresistible.”

  “C’est bon,” was all she said, pulling me over to the big bed under the lazy ceiling fan, where we found a way to put aside all conflicting impulses and obsessions by focusing on the one area where full agreement was a sure thing.