She opened the envelope. A business card slipped out, engraved with the name of the self-described aide de camp, presently walking back to the vice president’s residence in an indifferent manner, arms swinging, and the split tails of his suit jacket flapping against the breeze. It was a clear message. If ever she needed to get in touch with the Vice President, she was to call his aide-de-camp. Sebastian Ayres. A name that had to be made up. Except he was as real as his muted gray suit.
19
Republic of Nauru, Micronesia
Tuesday, August 19
IN A DELIGHTFUL state of undress, Madelyn rustled up a lunch of assorted wrapped sandwiches, microwavable pizza, chips, and cold beer from the fridge. They dressed and carried everything topside, sitting across from each other at canopied bench seats. Once again, she imposed a chilly distance between them, her eyes often glancing away to avoid looking directly into his.
By her third beer, she opened up, almost giddy at times, at other times moody, her temper switching from capricious and unpredictable to staid and taciturn. “The owner of NBT is back in Sydney while I’m here, minding the store. Been running it for five years. I know everything, more than Don, including where the bodies are buried.” She grew quiet again, her head bowed, her hair ruffling with chance breezes, her eyes no longer hidden behind tinted glasses but shadowed nonetheless. Swallowing the bitter along with the sweet, she admitted, “He’s proposed. Like a million times. Don’s older than me. Tell the truth, quite a bit older. Divorced now. His kids don’t like me much. Why should they? We’re nearly the same age. I keep thinking I can do better. I can go back home. I can find a man closer to my age and fall madly in love.” She shrugged as if her plans and dreams were unimportant when they clearly weighed on her mind. “Meanwhile, life is good. I have my work. And I’m free of commitments.”
“But you’re considering his proposal.”
“And why not?” she said, becoming defensive. “He promised to make me a business partner when we marry. But first, he has to make good on the partnership. Only then will I step before a preacher. I’ve learnt a thing or two about empty promises. Been burnt more than once.” She repositioned her sunglasses, once again covering those revealing eyes that conveyed even more than her revealing words.
The sun was bright and hot, obscured only occasionally by a scattering of clouds. Here on the calming water, the temperature was pleasant and the breezes pleasanter. Jack could almost forget everything that came before this quiet interlude of sitting across from a dynamic woman who had given her body to him as a gift. A gift, as it turned out, more precious than the one he gave her.
To fill the awkward silences, she rambled on. “Twice a year, I fly home. Visit family. Close to my sister Julie. Jules. We’re two years apart, as different as night and day. She begs me to come home. I will, soon enough.” She tilted her head, considering him with a thoughtful look. “I don’t know what to think. About us. About last night. And today. Nothing, I suppose. It was enjoyable enough. A way to escape boredom, I guess. A fling.”
She wasn’t pleased with his brooding silences. She was eager to hear him wax poetic and regale her with expressions of undying love. But what was the point? Soon they would part, never to meet again.
She repositioned her face to meet the sun and avoid his gaze. After a while she said, “What about your family? I’m sure you have a story to tell, so tell it. The guilty don’t have to be incriminated, only the innocent. You told me about Texas, sick Mom, deadbeat Dad. There must be more.”
He laughed lightheartedly at her joke that wasn’t quite a joke but a reminder of their illicit business arrangements and adversarial positions. She knew everything important there was to know about him, including his real name. Despite previous denials, she might have already made the necessary calls to proper authorities, who would meet them at the dock, take him into custody, and arrange his extradition back to America. But since she would have been implicated by association, and she also had to protect her agency, he dismissed the possibility.
“My story,” he said. His was a very old story, or should have been. Yet the details were near enough to touch with an outstretched hand. “Like I said, my father walked out. My mother tried the best she could. Then she got sick and we skedaddled home to Arizona. My aunt and uncle took us in. When my mom died, they adopted me. I grew up like any normal kid.”
Her gaze was direct and filled with sorrow. His tale, told in clipped sentences and unexcited monotones, barely loud enough to be heard above the ocean waves slapping against the hull, seemed to strike her as much more dramatic than his offhand recount had been. Her face fell. A gulf separated them.
“Except you aren’t, are you? Any normal kid. Your childhood follows you around wherever you go.”
He didn’t know why he told her. Normally he kept things like this to himself, tucked away in a deep part of his psyche. The life he was supposed to live ended at the tender age of twelve. Everything that came afterwards was just a postscript. Frigate birds circled the sky. Breezes stirred the eddies. He should have felt something. Anything. Realization should have flooded his mind. Blood should have surged through his veins. Possibilities should have jumpstarted his heart. If he were wise, he could leave everything behind. He could lose himself here, on the other side of the sunset. He could forget everything that had gone before. He could relegate Jack Coyote to a footnote at the end of an overlong treatise. He could start over. Except it was too late for anything like that. Too late to think that maybe this woman, or any woman, could be his salvation. Too late to feel anything but a great emptiness.
“And Washington? How does it fit in?”
“I’m a cyberhacker. A good cyberhacker.”
“And they needed your talents,” she said with a sigh. “End of story. But not quite. What will you do? Where will you go?”
“Find the people who killed Milly and set me up.”
“And when you do find them?”
“Kill them.”
She visibly jolted at those two stark words, then shivered, her face draining of color. “Just like that?” She snapped her fingers.
“Just like that,” he said unemotionally.
Turning on her business face, she reached for her beach bag, set up the netbook she brought with her, and connected it to the internet via satellite. Together they electronically signed off on all required paperwork. Then she set into motion an electronic wire transfer to be executed at close of day Australian time and relayed around the world to the Caribbean island of Nevis. “The funds will clear by the end of the week. Your digital debit card should be available a few days later.”
“And if there’s a delay?” he asked.
She smiled her feline smile. “No worries. My reputation is sterling. I work hard to keep it that way. Wouldn’t want to mess around with the dark web. Bad reputations spread like wildfire.”
Everything accomplished in brisk fashion, she logged off and tucked the netbook away. When she looked up, her smile was spontaneous and tension-free.
They went below and like a young married couple, pulled more food from the fridge, hauling everything up with several trips between them before relaxing topside, taking in the sun, and eating their full. Hard-boiled eggs. Miniature hotdogs microwaved to steamy hotness and dolloped into crusty buns. And the main course: a delectable fish stew with potatoes, beans, carrots, and a thick cream, courtesy of the captain’s missus. They consumed several more bottles of beer, but Madelyn being ever in control, limited her drinking, staying slight tipsy but never quite drunk. Giving way to the waves of heat and the bobbing motion of the sea along with a sense of euphoria, Jack told the same silly jokes he told other women while romancing. The stiff-upper-lip Aussie finally lowered her protective veil, laughing heartily. It was good to see her laugh. It was good to laugh with her. He couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed so freely.
Maddie suddenly stopped laughing. Her face became serious. She lifted her sunglasses and propped them
atop her head. She called to Captain Ken and pointed.
Not far off, a lone man in a fishing boat was standing precariously, feet apart, arms waving in crisscross fashion, his dinghy rocking precariously from side to side. “Ahoy!” he hailed. “Ahoy there!”
Captain Ken brought the sailboat avast, slackened the mainsheet, swung the boom about and against the wind, and worked the Annabel Lee alongside the fishing boat on the starboard side. The stranger let the vessel pull forward until it came astern. Captain Ken threw him a line. The fisherman secured the line in a figure-eight around two adjacent cleats and heaved the craft snugly against the cruiser.
“Permission to come aboard,” the fisherman said, bounding up the swim ladder with ease.
Winded, he rattled off profuse gratefulness for having been rescued. He was a large man dressed in cargo pants, a t-shirt fitting loosely over a broad chest, a tropical shirt over that, buttoned with one button, tails flapping in the wind. A palm bucket hat was thrust flatly onto his head above wraparound sunglasses. He gave everyone a full-bearded grin. He spoke rapidly, using sweeping hand gestures and disjointed words, explaining in the infectious patois of the island and the rat-a-tat-tat of native pigeon talk, of a bet among friends that led to him being stranded in the middle of the ocean. The outboard motor ran dry, you see. Foolish me, he was saying, especially since he was drunk and took the bet on a lark. The bet? Oh, the bet. To put-put-putter out to the sea buoy and head back inland. He would have won the bet, too, except for the unfortunate event of running out of gas. “Foolish me,” he repeated, tut-tutting. His friends must be looking for him, but the ocean is big. He had been adrift since dawn, he explained, his mouth turned down. It was only providence the Annabel Lee passed close enough for rescue. Otherwise he might have drifted farther out to sea, lost forever. He was all gestures and grins and teeth, lanky arms and sturdy legs and a bronze complexion that fit in with the tropics.
“Do I know you?” Maddie asked.
The grin again, but more pronounced this time. He looked her up and down, the kind of glance lurid men give fine-looking women who would never give them a second glance. “I’m sure I would have remembered a lady as lovely as you.” It was the clearest and most complete sentence he had uttered. The oily voice was oily no longer. Instead it was a rough baritone with a nasally quality, as if he had a bad cold. He sniffed, and sniffed again.
“I’ve seen you somewhere before, haven’t I?” She was insistent.
To Jack, there was something queer about the stranger. Unsettling. His face seemed bloated, waxen, unnatural. His teeth were too big for his mouth. His speech was slurred and his tongue thick. Spit came out with every sibilant word. His sniffing became constant, annoying. His mannerisms were staged. His speech rehearsed. His gestures flamboyant. His grin crazed. Despite fitting the part of a native islander, with his dark hair, his deep tan, and his pleasing features, he seemed slightly off. His overt friendliness bordered on a kind of frenzied madness. His story seemed ridiculous if not made up as he went along. His disguise of a bumbling, ill-bred, and slovenly man was contradicted by his intelligence, his jokey manner, and his quick-fire speech. Countless other details, ordinarily inconsequential on their own, wove a different tale.
He flashed her a wide toothy smile. “For me to know and you to find out.”
Had Jack recognized the warning signs a split second earlier, it would have meant the difference between timely actions instead of sluggish responses, attack mode instead of defensive posture, living instead of dying. The sizzling sunshine threw him off the scent. The relief of escaping his troubles for a few brief hours, the mellowness of having lain with a beautiful woman absent cares, the beer buzz that muddled his brain, and the gently lapping waters had lured him into complacency. When at last he figured out what was coming down, crucial seconds had already ticked by. The stranger’s unexpected appearance, his calculated words, his animated gestures, and his silly fish story melded into a convincing enough masquerade to trick these unsuspecting pleasure seekers, giving him the advantage.
“What do you want, sir?” Captain Ken had spoken. His face was troubled. He lifted the cap off his head, wiped his brow, set the cap back into place.
And then Jack saw it, the slightest of movements. He was about to shout a warning when the stranger moved his hand toward the waistband of his pants. A shiny object appeared in the grip of his taut fingers. Something popped like a cork released from a shaken bottle of champagne, the sound obscured by ocean waves slapping the hull of the boat.
Catapulted back by the single gunshot, Captain Ken hit the deck with a whack and a gurgling harrumph. His head lolled to the side. Blood oozed from his temple. A pitiful groan escaped his lips. Followed by another. Then silence.
Her eyes terrified, Maddie screamed, and screamed again. To stifle the awful noise, she slapped her hands across her mouth.
“I’ll take that,” the stranger said, nodding toward her shoulder bag.
She moved protectively toward it. “I ... I don’t think so.” Women instinctively guard their personal valuables. Everything that said who they were lay inside the deep recesses of their purses. Feminine products. Makeup. Mirrors. Aspirins. Mints. Cell phones. Credit cards.
“You don’t think so?” the stranger said cheerily. And repeated the words, this time with an edge to his voice. “You don’t think so, she says. As if she has a say ....”
Another pop followed.
Maddie’s eyes flew open. Her expression turned to one of dismay. She folded like a silk fan, legs bending and spine collapsing. She fell onto her knees, not quite understanding the course of events, only sensing that something was wrong. Terribly wrong. She opened her mouth to say something. Nothing came out but a gurgling cough and sputtering blood. Horrified to see her hands and chest covered with sticky redness, she tried to stop the flow of blood the way someone would brush away a swarm of bees. But the slickness overflowed like water spilling from a bucket, nothing to stop it but certain death. Her eyes swung toward Jack, round with alarm, silently asking, one part of her not quite understanding what just happened, the other part realizing all too well. Exasperation covered her face, as if to say she had been very foolish watching over her purse when it was her very existence she should have protected. She didn’t have a chance to say goodbye, even though her mouth formed the word. She frowned and regurgitated blood once more before subsiding onto the teak deck, her body shrinking into a fetal position.
The gunman raised his voice toward Heaven. “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.”
Jack rounded on the killer, whose fist yet clenched the grip of the pistol.
The gunman turned slightly, extended his arm, and aimed the barrel pointblank between Jack’s eyes. Simultaneously he removed the sunglasses and threw off the silly hat, revealing maddened eyes and shiny black hair above a triumphant expression. He moved forward, a single step only, his legs athwart, his posture balanced. He was grinning, enjoying this magical moment of hocus-pocus. It had been easy fooling these sunseekers, as easy as a cat pouncing on hapless mice at the stroke of midnight.
“We meet again, mon ami.”
With an unexpected thrust, he thrashed out his arm and pistol-whipped Jack across the jaw.
There was no shock or surprise at the assault. Nothing Jack could do and no defense he could launch, only accept the inevitable. This was the way it supposed to be, the moment when everything ended in a final gasping breath. He felt nothing at first. Then excruciating pain. Did he scream? He didn’t remember screaming. If he hadn’t screamed, he should have screamed. The killer did not leave his attack at one punishing blow but three in a row, left and right and left again, making sure there was no room for discussion. He didn’t have to put power into the delivery. Solid metal striking malleable flesh was more than enough. Nerve endings sent out sparks from the top of Jack’s skull to the tips of his toes, loosening every joint and slackening every limb. The deck came up to meet
his torso. Air rushed out of his lungs. Everything went numb. Nothing worked. He couldn’t lift a single finger, draw a single breath, or utter a single word, even if his life depended on it. It did.
The killer toed Jack onto his back. “You underestimate me once again, mon ami.” He stooped. Using the tails of his shirt, he cleaned the pistol, smiling idiotically while taking utmost care to bring a glossy shine to every surface, protrusion, and recess, paying special attention to the grip and the trigger. Having completed the job, he placed the pistol into Jack’s limp hand, wrapped his pliable fingers around the grip, and neatly tucked Jack’s index finger flush against the trigger. He chuckled at his handiwork. Leaning close, he left a kiss on Jack’s lips, a kiss imbued with both loathing and affection, a repulsive kiss, a kiss that said hello and goodbye in a single breath. “Je t’adore, mon amour,” he whispered as one lover to another. “Remember me in your nightmares.”
He reached for Maddie’s purse, and with a swift movement, tossed it into the sea. A few minutes later, the outboard motor thundered alive and the fishing boat roared into the distance.
There are precious few heroes, only the rare man who rises to the occasion. But every man, hero or not, can be broken. It only comes down to when and how. Jack was a broken man. Long after hearing the last sputterings of the motorboat and long after the pain inside his head had settled into a pounding throb, he managed to crawl over to Madelyn. On hands and knees. Inch by agonizing inch. Her eyes were open. She was still breathing but in shock and well past pain. He reached for her hand and held it. She gazed at him with an expression of sorrow, as if she wanted him to forgive her, wanted to confess all her sins, wanted to tell him she was guilty of having been tricked by the man who just killed her. She was trying to apologize, but her lips moved mutely, without words or utterances. She frowned and coughed once again, expelling the last dribblings of blood, her payment for being an unqualified fool, a payment much too high for whatever offense she may have committed.
Espionage Games Page 14
