Power (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 8)

by Thomas Hollyday

  The Bertram was moored alongside the pier in the harbor water.

  “You boys want a ride?” asked Captain Jimmy.

  Loggerman and Stoney nodded.

  The thirty-one footer ran like it was bred to go fast. It was an improvement on the old PT boats of Pacific War fame. Essentially it took the deadrise bow angle of the fast hulls and made the sharp design follow through all the way to the stern instead of flattening out midway.

  Captain Jimmy took the wheel and sent the twin engine cruiser out into the harbor. This boat had been modified with the inboard engine and water jet propulsion giving very good control.

  He said, “We got the speed and, when we tangle with grass on the African rivers, these jet drives won’t get stuck like the prop jobs. Big surprise to the other contestants. We’ll leave them hung up in the hyacinth weed.”

  Loggerman watched happily as a mysterious grin took over Captain Jimmie’s face.

  Chapter Six

  Loggerman checked in at the hotel when he returned to River Sunday. The clerk, still in his red uniform, beckoned him to come to the desk. He pointed to a lanky man sitting in one of the plush flower fabric armchairs on the far side of the lobby.

  “He’s waiting for you. Says he’s a reporter from a petroleum journal.”

  Loggerman knew most of those writers. He did not recognize the man’s gold-rimmed round eyeglasses, carefully brushed black hair, and dark gray business suit.

  The visitor looked up from a folder in his lap and smiled as Loggerman approached.

  Loggerman recognized the smile and said, softly, “Eddison.”

  Eddison stood. “I figured you were in Baltimore. I thought I’d wait.”

  They shook hands.

  “Like my Teddy Roosevelt glasses?” asked Eddison with a grin.

  Loggerman nodded and led his government friend into the hotel bar.

  Eddison spotted an antique photograph in a wood frame on the wall of the bar. He said, “Gary Cooper and Fay Raye in a sailboat. They must have made a movie here in the old days.”

  “Don’t know about the movie. The natives call those boats skipjacks.”

  “Last time I talked to Captain Jimmy, he had a line on a Bertram 31?”

  “Yes, he got it this trip. When he gets her back home, he figures he will beat everyone on the river.”

  Eddison sat down on the wicker stool at the bar and leaned toward Loggerman.

  “My friends tell me you’re in a tough spot.”

  “The same friends you had in Lagos?”

  The bartender came then and asked for orders. They ordered and Eddison sat back quickly. When the waiter left, he resumed in a lower voice. “Politicians like Tinker attract the teenagers and college kids to help with rallies, cheerleading, that kind of thing.”

  Eddison paused and smiled, “I forgot. You said you were from Maine. Maybe only people like me used to do kind of stuff, putting out bumper stickers, working for the guys who were against war.”

  “I know, “said Loggerman. “My father was over there getting shot at. He used to say each one of you protesters encouraged one more bullet against his fellow Marines.”

  “Yeah, I guess, “said Eddison, looking at his drink for a moment. “Anyway, Tinker has a lot of volunteers. He has big lists on social media. He has a following bigger than the President of the United States. So he’s a very powerful man.”

  “Stephanie is involved with this kind of power?”

  Eddison went on, “Can’t be sure. We don’t have her name on any of our lists.”

  “You mean terrorist lists?”

  “We have all kinds of lists of people we watch for criminal activity against the country.”

  “So it’s terror?”

  “We can’t be sure what these mobs might do. Some of them cause destruction, let’s just say.”

  He added, “Like other Tinker volunteers, Stephanie might be attracted by the idealism. At one time Tinker was in Congress on energy and conservation committees. Afterward he formed the Tinker Institute to promote his idea of Free Energy for People. Your wife who had worked for him in Congress went with him. So some of his followers are innocent followers of the energy ideas he has.”

  “Meaning they don’t go around blowing up things?”

  “You got that right. It’s hard to find the bad when they are mixed up with the regular fans.”

  “Where does he get his money?”

  “Donations, mostly. All legal. Many of the firms in the energy business are members of his Institute. Some join after they have had problems with the mobs. Afterward they don’t get hit again. We think it’s a protection scheme.”

  “What about the law? Can’t the FBI do anything?”

  “We can’t find proof. Once the utility companies get hit with a grid problem, a blackout, and then get their lights back on, they won’t talk to us. We have no connection between any damage to energy sites and his Institute.”

  “What about these electric grid shutdowns? I read whole cities lose power for hours.”

  “We can’t be sure it’s his people. Besides, these mobs don’t have the technical skill to shut down networks.”

  “You got your hands full.”

  “My friends are concerned.”

  “They worry he could shut off all the lights of the country.”

  Eddison nodded. “We think it works like this. He scares an energy firm like a utility company in some small town into dropping their customer prices of energy in the local market. Maybe they will be having computer grid shut downs they can’t stop. The firms become dues-paying members of the Institute and are promoted by Tinker as good energy companies. Then they don’t have any more trouble from mobs and bad publicity. They lower prices to the locals. They make up the losses using their profits. Somewhere the Tinker Institute makes money out of it. It’s a neat scheme but we can’t prove it. Members of Tinker Institute don’t talk to us.”

  “Very neat.”

  “Tinker is getting more and more members. Do you have any idea what would happen as part or all the energy business gets into the hands of people like Tinker?”

  “Financial nightmare.”

  Eddison nodded. “If Tinker controls energy, he could force the government to pay him to keep the lights on.”

  Eddison continued, “So we wait for him to make a mistake. We have to find out how he causes these blackouts and gets the energy companies scared so they agree to pay.”

  “What does this have to do with me?”

  “I think you realize your daughter may be undergoing training for some criminal act.”

  “I appreciate your telling me all this. I know I have to get her out.”

  “You could help us. You are a computer man. My friends want you to help us. What you do will assist our people to get Stephanie home.”

  Eddison leaned back. The bartender talked on his phone.

  “Part of this is to find Stephanie and ask her if she will provide information on the Tinker secrets.”

  “How?”

  “We need you to enter the compound and look around for information on where she is. Maybe you’ll find other stuff to help us. You know computers from your work in Africa. You designed all Joe Henry’s networks.”

  “Can’t your people do this?”

  “You’ll have a story if caught. They’d assume you are a nervous father looking for his daughter. If my friends do anything and are caught, they tip off Tinker that the government is on to them. We don’t want to announce our hand.”

  “I had an idea you coming to River Sunday wasn’t only for my kid.”

  “The waiter is watching us. Let’s get out of here. ” Loggerman waved for the bill.

  Outside, Eddison said, “You’re in the middle of this whether you like it or not.”

  “I’m worried about Stephanie - not your Tinker intrigue.”

  “Yes, but you told me the protesters in Baltimore must have known in advance about you and your ship. You got problems there - b
ig problems.”

  Loggerman nodded.

  “You were a Marine. Remember the oath to the country.”

  “I did my time.”

  “I thought Marines never quit,” Eddison said, walking to a black pickup. “Get in.”

  “Where are we going?” Loggerman asked.

  Eddison said nothing. He reached into the dash compartment. The door popped open to reveal a police radio. He pulled out the microphone and said, “Eddison here. I’m on the way.”

  Ten minutes from River Sunday they entered a tiny lane hidden by brush at the side of the macadam highway.

  “Reminds me of the entrance to the Tinker place. Are you guys in cahoots?”

  Eddison smiled. “Not a chance.”

  Grass rubbed the underside of the truck and leaves smacked the fenders. The path became a rutted field trail alongside a tall fence overhung with honeysuckle. It ended in front of a shingled roof cottage overlooking a wide river. Magnolias and pines enclosed the house which had a caved-in rotten porch. To the left across an overgrown former lawn, the top railing of a wood stairway appeared among high bushes. Loggerman could see it lead down to the river beach.

  Eddison turned off the engine. The place was quiet except for the alarm call of a blue jay.

  He said, “Welcome to our observation post. We’re at the Nanticoke River. It goes down to a small point or peninsula alongside River Sunday harbor. This spot is below the wharf of the Tinker Institute compound.”

  He opened his door and stepped down from the truck. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to two of my friends, Sarah and Barbara.”

  They went to the stairway and Eddison led the way down the steps to a narrow muddy shoreline filled with waist high green reeds. The twilight showed a river extending about a half mile across.

  Eddison said over his shoulder, “It took us a long time to take Tinker seriously. When he left the Congress and came over to this remote part of Maryland, most everyone, especially in the White House, thought he was just an eccentric with all his talk about energy policy. He had a policy he claimed no one would pay any attention to and he was right. The whole thing was too crackpot.”

  About a hundred feet down the shore a thirty foot workboat covered with faded paint was tied in shallow water to a crooked pole. The boat was similar to the type being repaired by Scotty in River Sunday. Like the one at the shipyard, its long and narrow hull ended with a cab at the bow large enough to shield a fisherman from stormy weather. The hull was rigged for crabbing with pulleys holding coiled crab baiting lines. The cuddy cabin in the front was large and opened to a smaller downstairs compartment. From the cabin to the stern a long canopy shielded workmen from the sun.

  “You’ll enjoy this craft since you’re a man from Maine,” Eddison said as they walked the shoreline among the reeds and windblown fallen tree limbs.

  “Pretty poor shape,” Loggerman said.

  “We want everyone to think so. Come on aboard.” He walked aboard on a flimsy board leading from the sand over the water to the gunwale.

  Coming up the cuddy cabin steps was a younger woman with a hard face, short close-cropped brown hair, and cold eyes. She was dressed in a black tank top and jeans with boots looking rugged enough to kick down a wall or an opponent. At her shoulder was a holstered automatic pistol.

  “Sarah, this is Loggerman. He’s going to be working with us.”

  She smiled and said, her hand outstretched, “Welcome to our crab boat.”

  “Sarah’s supposedly writing an article on Eastern shore watermen for a New York magazine. As far as anything else about her, you don’t want to know it or you’ll be scared away.”

  “I speak waterman,” she said, her voice low and guttural.

  The boat was very narrow. When he stepped aboard, however, the hull did not tip from the weight shift as he would have expected.

  Noticing his surprise, Sarah said, “We added some hull lines underwater which steady her up with all the equipment we have aboard. The mooring has been dredged. Big engine, too.”

  She lifted the wood cover of the engine compartment in the middle of the hull under the canopy. Inside was a shiny automobile engine with two large carburetors.

  “We got more than four hundred horsepower in there. Will push this little fellow along at a good forty knots, but also let her cruise real slow to fish.”

  “All to keep an eye on our target,” said Eddison.

  Sarah led Loggerman forward under the long wooden canopy back to the cuddy cabin. It had a top cabin with windows and a small shelf inside. Moving forward underneath was a long second cabin of about five feet built under the front deck. Built into the shelf over the second cabin was a captain seat and controls including steering and engine. A radar system was mounted on the wall with other instruments. He saw steps to the lower level under the front cabin.

  He heard Eddison climbing down the steps behind him. “Sarah intercepts all the communications coming to and from the compound,” he said as he waved his hand at another cluster of electronics around the second cabin.

  Another woman, perched on a bench in front of the electronics, looked up. She said, “Some of the material we can’t decipher yet but we’re working on it. We’re tying all the gear into intelligence in Washington. Sometimes this little boat has picked up some good things. Right, Sarah?”

  “Loggerman, meet Barbara. She’ll interpret anything you are able to steal from the compound.”

  Barbara smiled, her hand reaching a double barreled shotgun on the desk in front of her. “Don’t you go bringing any Tinkers in my little cottage, Loggerman.”

  “I got your message.”

  Sarah looked down from the controls and started up the engine. The oversized engine rumbled into life. Loggerman and Eddison climbed back to the main deck. They helped with the line attached to the pole and the workboat got underway.

  Eddison raised his voice slightly to overcome the engine noise. “We’ll head along the far shore where we have crab lines to work. We’ll position the boat closer to the Institute to intercept their communications. You and I will keep next to Sarah up front in the cabin to avoid being seen. Barbara will work the crab lines out in the open just like any waterman along this river.”

  The crab lines were marked with buoys. The lines came up over a pulley system and Barbara, using a dip net, was able to fish the crabs as they emerged from the river chomping on baits.

  Eddison and Loggerman watched the reed-filled shore only a few hundred feet from the side of the boat. The water surface was broken with the tips of reeds growing in the tidewater. In the distance Loggerman could see the Tinker compound. He recognized the mansion but was too far away to pick out the roof guards. A large deep water pier extended out from the shore.

  A rumble sounded in the sky. Eddison picked up a small aircraft in his binoculars. He said, “I think Tinker has a visitor.”

  The plane, with a strange square tail and few identification markings, was equipped with floats. It circled, flew close to the river, dropped closer, and landed. It cruised in the channel a quarter mile from Eddison.

  “Pilatus Porter turbo. Hear loud whine of the engine?” said Loggerman. “I’ve seen them in Africa. Daddy told me he flew in one scouting Viet Cong.”

  “My friends have them, too,” said Eddison softly, as though he were remembering a long ago fight in another jungle.

  As they watched, evening mosquitoes began flying at their faces.

  “They are just in time for the evening bugs,” said Eddison, smacking at another frantic insect farming his arm.

  The plane turned toward the Tinker pier. The engine was cut. In the quiet an attendant in green uniform walked out on the pier. As he secured the lines the aircraft cabin door opened.

  A passenger disembarked. He was portly with a small head and spindly arms and legs. He had on a gray summer-weight suit and wore a straw hat decorated with a green band. He stopped and looked behind as a thin woman climbed down from the pilot seat.
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br />   “Look,” said Loggerman. “Her name is Spire. She works with Elizabeth.”

  Sarah took some photos and said, “I haven’t seen him here before. The woman has piloted the plane often. I’ll get those photographs to Washington.”

  “The Institute has many visitors?” asked Loggerman.

  “No,” she said. “Mostly it’s Ferrars who flies. Tinker himself goes to give speeches. The plane shuttles them to Baltimore Washington Airport.”

  The fat man walked up the pier toward the house. “Guy doesn’t walk. He waddles,” said Loggerman, putting down his binoculars with a smile.

  “You know, none of us ever thought this Tinker would amount to anything. Washington thought he would self-destruct early on. He is an alcoholic and he loves his women. He had nothing going for him in terms of being a leader of multitudes. He needs a steel rod in his back.”

  Loggerman said, thoughtfully, “My former wife is the steel rod in his back.”

  He added, “Don’t feel bad for me. I survived her. Cole probably found out Elizabeth is not the kind of woman he wanted for the future. She is not creative enough to do the job. Give her an assignment and she’ll accomplish it, but ask her to come up with a plan herself and she’s bewildered. Besides, her brain rubs people the wrong way. She is a very selfish woman and even a drunk Cole might get tired of her.”

  Sarah said, “We think the man they call Whithers does more of the thinking. His name is on a lot of the correspondence we pick up. We figured out his code name.”

  “I saw him. A little guy. Ferrars treated him like dirt when I was at the building. Why does he stay if he’s so smart?”

  “He’s a small-time con artist who knows he’s got a good thing here. Ferrars, I think, is the bigger power. He makes it all work. We think he has something on everyone in there. So he gets his loyalty. Ferrars came in to supervise the books. He brought in a supply of party girls and bourbon for Tinker. He imported Whithers to run the books.”

  “Ferrars captured the throne.”

  “We think Elizabeth and Ferrars are working together on this. It’s not all Ferrars. They complement each other.”