by Dean Carson
“To a successful escape,” I parroted.
“We didn’t see the dive,” said Bill. “But Jelly told us you cut an impressive figure in the air.”
“Not so impressive tonight,” I said. “I had company on the dive.”
I told them the story of being confronted by La Donna. I could see Bill was enjoying the tale. Not so Jelly, who had a tight expression on her face.
“I think when we get to Venice I should get the train for Rome,” she said. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
I reached out and took her hand. “It’s over,” I said.
“And three people are dead,” she pointed out.
That was true. But at least La Donna’s death spared me the dilemma of deciding whether or not to shop her to Interpol as the Webcam Killer. In the end I would have done the right thing. But this was simpler. Killing the two assassins she had hired did not weigh on my conscience. They were paid hitmen who had tried to kill me for money and they got their just desserts. Her death weighed more heavily on me. We had been friends, of a sort. I had trusted her. We had bounced uglies with each other — and not just when I was chained to a bed and drugged. We had a history, and I didn’t like the way it had ended.
What consoled me was that I would have liked her ending even less. She had wanted me dead for a fee. And she was not a good woman, not by any stretch. Pure evil would not be overstating the case. So I could live with her death. Quite easily, in fact.
“It’s over,” Bill echoed. “Tomorrow you can spend the day catching the rays on the deck, and by evening we will be in Venice.” He turned to Jelly. “We are very open-minded here, and if you want to sunbathe European style, that’s not a problem with me.”
“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” she said. “It might be too exciting for Ben.”
Bill looked disappointed. “Shit — I should have learned to sail myself and left him at home.”
We had a simple meal of pot noodles — two pots each. Bill can be a bit of a foodie philistine. He couldn’t tell foie gras from spam. But after the evening I had had, even pot noodles were welcome. I just hoped he had packed some bacon for the morning. After the meal, Ben took out his guitar and strummed some stuff I didn’t recognise but which his father seemed to take inordinate pride in and which Jelly, who was a few years younger than me, seemed to know. It was a very pleasant evening.
A little after midnight, we called it a day. Bill stood up and yawned.
“I’ll take the first watch, Dad,” said Ben.
I looked at him. “Nobody is going to get to me in the middle of the ocean,” I said.
He smiled condescendingly, the way only teens can. “Uncle Eliot, it’s a sea, not an ocean. And it’s full of other boats, so someone has to steer for the night. I’ll do four hours, then Dad will take over for four hours.”
“The bastard wouldn’t let me get a full night’s sleep on the way over,” said Bill, but he was smiling at Ben as he said it.
Ben went on: “Jelly, you can take the inner cabin. Eliot, Dad and I will take the outer one.”
She smiled sweetly at him. The innocence of youth.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Ben needn’t have worried; nothing improper went on that night. I was too exhausted. I did lay down on the bed with good intentions, but by the time Jelly was ready I was out cold. I woke about six, when the light streaming in the small cabin window caught my face. We banged the headboard for a few minutes, then I fell asleep again. Not very gallant, but I had been shot at and nearly drowned and Jelly would just have to accept that I would make it up to her in grand romantic gestures once we got to Venice.
When I woke for real, the cabin was empty. I checked the time on my phone and was surprised to see it was nearly eleven. I pulled on my clothes and went out on deck.
“Any bacon?” I asked.
“You missed it,” said Bill. “Bacon’s for breakfast.”
I looked at Jelly. She shook her head. Just as I thought; Bill hadn’t packed any proper food.
“There’s some energy bars in the galley,” he said helpfully.
“I put some fruit there as well,” said Ben.
“While you’re down there, you could bring up a round of coffees,” said Jelly. She looked stunning in a dark blue bikini.
I came back up ten minutes later with four mugs of coffee and a banana. I looked around. To the left — port side — was a distant haze on the horizon that might be clouds or might be land. To the right — starboard — was another distant haze on the horizon. Italy and Croatia, or cumulus and stratus? I couldn’t tell. Looking forward and backward, I could see only sea. Not a boat in sight.
“Christ, we’re in the middle of nowhere,” I said, sitting down suddenly. “Do any of you know where we are?”
“We’re following a course down the middle of the Adriatic towards Venice,” said Ben. “Most yachts hug the coast and hop from harbour to harbour. It’s a week-long sail. But we are heading direct with no stops and we’re not sailing. We are on engine. At ten knots, it will take us a day and a half. We’ll arrive tomorrow morning.”
I nodded as if I understood. “So tell me, if we are on engine, what’s that big sail doing up?” I asked.
“It helps,” he said. “But you have to be a bit careful.”
I nodded again. He wasn’t buying it.
“Seriously, Uncle Eliot. You have to be careful on a sail boat when the sail is up. If I have to tack…” He saw the blank look on my face. “If I have to turn the boat with the sail to catch a better wind, I have to tack. That means that the boom —” he pointed to the long horizontal beam at the bottom of the boat — “that’s the boom; if that moves, it will move very fast. And it could hit you.”
“How big a problem is that?”
“It could throw you overboard. If it hits you on the back, you’ll be all right. But if it hits you on the head, you could be concussed or even unconscious when you hit the water. When the wind catches the sail, the boom will whip across the deck very fast. That’s why we all wear life jackets on a yacht.”
I looked at Jelly. If she was wearing a life jacket, it was a very small one. There was very little room to conceal it in the skimpy bikini. Perhaps her boobs counted as a floatation device. I looked at Bill. What he was wearing looked suspiciously like a Hawaiian shirt over a spare tyre. He was sitting uncomfortably close to the edge and puffing a small cigar. Only Ben had a life jacket on.
“Message received and understood,” I said. “So we’re stuck here until tomorrow morning?”
“Don’t look at me,” said Bill. “It’s not my fault you can’t fly.”
I shrugged. “I can enjoy the view.” I looked lasciviously at Jelly.
She blushed slightly but didn’t look away.
“I can also get on with a bit of work.”
Bill raised an eyebrow.
“I need your laptop,” I said. “I am going to start compiling a file on Amel Dugalic. I’ve never met the dude, but he’s seriously pissing me off. It’s no fun people trying to kill you.”
“What sort of internet signal do you think you’ll get in the middle of the ocean?”
“The sea,” corrected Ben.
“I can use my sat phone as a modem.”
“Or you could sunbathe with me and enjoy a romantic sail trip,” suggested Jelly.
Or that, I thought. Dugalic could wait. His days were numbered, but he could wait until tomorrow. Maybe even the day after. Maybe even … no. I would take today off, but then the hunted would become the hunter.
It was an uneventful but pleasant day. There is no privacy on a small boat, but I was in good company. My mindfulness exercises helped keep the frustration at bay, and Jelly’s bikini kept the boredom at bay.
In the middle of the afternoon Ben killed the engine for half an hour and we swam from the boat, exulting in the deep blue water. It was quite cold so far from land and a little daunting to know that the sea bed was a full kilometre beneath our kicking f
eet. But when I thought of La Donna sinking beneath me, I lost my appetite for the water and came back on board.
That evening we had two more tubs of pot noodles each. Next time, I would do the shopping.
The Milky Way was out in full glory that night, and as we retired Jelly spotted a shooting star.
“Make a wish,” she said. “Quick.”
Before I could stop myself, I said it out loud. “I wish that once this is all over, you’ll stay in my life.”
THIRTY-NINE
Bill woke me at eight. “We’re here,” he said. “Venice. Conference in the main room in five minutes.”
“Do you mind?” said Jelly sleepily, pulling the sheets over her body.
Five minutes later, rubbing the sleep from our eyes, we left the inner bedroom and sat at the small table by the galley. Mugs of coffee were waiting for us and Bill had thoughtfully supplied energy bars. Breakfast of champions.
“Ben is tying up. We’re not in the main harbour, but at a marina on the edge of the town. We’ve taken a berth right at the end, as far away from the marina entrance as we can. It’s the most private place we could get. You still have no papers.”
I nodded.
“So here’s the plan. The nearest American consulate is in Milan. You Brits have an honorary consul in Venice, but your nearest real consulate is in Milan as well. So Ben and I will drive there, sort out an emergency passport, and bring it back here. It’s three hours each way and say three hours to pull the strings. Can you kids entertain yourselves on your own for nine hours?”
“I think I can come up with some ideas,” I said, slapping Jelly playfully on her delicious rump.
“And don’t go into town. Without papers, you don’t leave the marina,” he warned. “In fact, you don’t leave the boat.”
They were gone half an hour later. A military car was waiting for them. We had nine hours of peace and privacy. I felt Dugalic could wait yet another day.
“Let’s go back to bed and not worry about the noise at all,” I suggested. So we did.
An hour later we were back on deck, having our second coffee of the morning.
“Do you know what I miss?” Jelly said. “I miss bacon. Bill is a lovely guy, but he’s no domestic goddess. If I ever see another pot noodle…”
I laughed. “Believe it or not, he’s better around the house than his ex. It’s a wonder Ben survived his childhood.” I looked wistfully beyond the harbour towards the city. “Do you think we could risk going into town and getting a good breakfast?”
She raised a finger and pointed to the small gate leading from the marina. The gate had an attendant. No papers; no breakfast. “Cheer up,” she said. “I can go into town, pick up some ingredients and be back quickly. What would you like?”
“Bacon and eggs. And milk that isn’t in a small plastic tub for my coffee. And some fresh bread. And an English language newspaper.”
“Do you want slippers and your pipe too, old man?” She stood up and stretched. “Be good while I am gone.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Seriously. Do you have anything to protect yourself?”
“Jelly, it’s over.”
But for the sake of peace, we began a quick search of the boat. Bill hadn’t brought any weapons. There were some knives in the kitchen, but unless I was attacked by soft butter they wouldn’t help me much. I searched for the boat’s flare gun but couldn’t find one.
“It’s probably all right,” said Jelly. “I just need time to adjust. It’s been very intense, and I am not as used to all this as you and Bill. I can’t just put it behind me like you can.”
“A few hours in a gondola taking in the sights with a hot man by your side will help,” I suggested.
She smiled and kissed me. Just then her phone went off. She looked at the screen and a queer look came over her face. “It’s my brother,” she said. “I have to take it.”
“Let me talk to him,” I said playfully, but she kept the phone.
She held it very close to her ear and moved away. “Give me a moment,” she whispered in the earpiece.
She stepped off the boat onto the wooden deck of the marina and walked out of earshot. Fine. I get private. Maybe her brother was a bit of a hard-ass, not good with men his sister dated. Or maybe she wasn’t ready to introduce me yet. Or maybe she wasn’t going to remain part of my life? Maybe I was overthinking this. Maybe she just wanted to talk to her brother with no one listening. I sipped my coffee and looked out to sea, symbolically giving her the privacy she wanted.
She came back a few minutes later and seemed to be tense.
“How is your brother?”
“Fine.” No elaboration. Her gloom seemed to settle like a cloud over my happiness.
“Is he the jealous type, your brother?”
Finally she smiled. “Family shit,” she said. “Nothing important. He is on his way to Rome.”
“So you’ll be leaving me soon?”
“Maybe that’s what’s wrong. I don’t know if I want to be with you, but I don’t want to leave you.”
The logic of women can be baffling at times. I made some sympathetic noise and nodded in understanding. There wasn’t much I could say. A declaration would be coming on a bit strong. Even a klutz like me got that.
Then she smiled a proper smile, which as usual lit up the room even though we weren’t in a room. We were on deck. If we could capture the light of that smile, we could knock a bit off our energy bill, I thought.
“I’ll do the groceries. I’ll even get your paper. Be back in a while.”
I watched her walk down the marina towards the entrance, her long graceful back to me, her hips swaying gently, her buttocks… Maybe I lingered on them a little too much for politeness. But she had her back to me. She couldn’t see.
She was stopped at the security gate briefly. At that distance I couldn’t make out what was going on, or even see her very clearly, but after a few moments the gate opened and she disappeared. I sighed. The last few days had been frantic. My world had been turned upside down. It’s not as if people hadn’t tried to kill me before. It went with the job. But no one had ever targeted me and that was upsetting. I hadn’t violated my internal code of conduct, but I had stretched it a bit. And in the midst of all that turmoil, a wonderful woman had inserted herself into my life. It was a lot to process. I was sitting there morosely on the deck, gazing at the city in the distance, willing, I suppose, her speedy return. God, I was like a moody teen.
Then my phone snapped me out of it.
“Gerry?” It was Bill’s voice, so I went along with it.
“Hi Bill. Who else would it be but Gerry?” I replied. I tried to put an American twang on my accent in case anyone was eavesdropping. “Any news for me?”
“I’m with the consul now, and he has agreed to issue an emergency passport. It’s not a full passport. It is only valid for a month. But it will get you back to Boston.”
I knew the game he was playing. The CIA maintained a number of false identities ready to press into action when they were needed. Bill was burning one of their precious identities to help me out. Gerry from Boston was now no longer a fiction. The careful work that had gone into preparing the identity was being thrown away on a Brit abroad and could never be used again for an American operative. It was a big favour. Bill would never say it — he might not even think it — but I owed him one.
“And you’ll owe me two hundred bucks.”
“Shit, Bill,” I said in my best Texas drawl. “A passport is only one-forty bucks.”
“There’s a fee of sixty to rush it through.”
“Boy, you told me you had contacts who could do this.”
“And didn’t I do it? Shut up and be grateful.”
The phone clicked off.
I laughed. Bill was cloak-and-dagger to the end. He would have loved that little game of charades. I checked the time on the phone. Jelly had been gone longer than I expected. There should have been a grocery store near
the marina. Maybe she just needed time to process things. I know I did. But I was getting hungry, and hunger always trumps emotion. I thought of ringing her, but that would look a bit needy.
So I sat with my back to the marina, staring out to sea. I let my eyes defocus and took a few deep breaths. I let my eyes close as I focused on my breathing, counting breaths in bunches of ten, not chasing my thoughts, not chasing them away, just watching them come and go.
And then I fell asleep. Will I ever master this mindfulness thing?
FORTY
I don’t know how long I had been out, but a noise on the deck woke me with a bang and I was on my feet and turning almost before I was fully awake. I came around in a crouch, to present the smallest possible target, and brought my hands up in the classic boxer’s stance. I stepped forward and snarled. Attack. When in doubt, attack.
Then my brain kicked in and I saw that it was Jelly, back from her shopping trip.
“A bit edgy there,” she said with a grin. “And not as alert as you should be. You spy types are all pants, no hat. I got right onto the boat before you even reacted. What if I had had a knife?”
“I would have died happy, looking into your beautiful eyes.”
She laughed.
She was carrying two bags. Both were in large brown paper bags. I stepped forward and offered to take one from her.
“I’m a modern girl. I can carry my own bags,” she said. That was fine by me. My arm still throbbed, despite her best nursing efforts. I am an ardent feminist and more so when it saves me having to put myself out. So I followed her down into the galley.
She put one bag down on the table and told me to sort it out. She went towards the inner room with the other bag.
“Are we not going to eat that too?” I asked.
“I should hope not. It’s far too expensive to eat. It’s a present. For you.”
“Can I see?”
She playfully slapped my hand away. “It’s for later.”
“Tell me what it is.”
“It’s a lacy bra and panties set.”
