Tempest

by Mark Dawson

  “Was it all right?” he asked, noting her expression.

  “Yes,” she said as she stopped the recording.

  “You’re sure?”

  “It was fine. Well done.” Her words caught in her throat.

  “Oh,” Danny said, suddenly crestfallen. “Shit. I’m sorry. Isabella.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Forget it.”

  He was right. It was Isabella. Danny could send his daughter a message. More than that, if everything turned out the way they wanted it to, he would be able to see her tomorrow or the day after that. He could hold her, tell her that he loved her, think about spending time together.

  She couldn’t conceive of what that must feel like. The news that Danny had just delivered was difficult to get out of her head.

  She tapped on the video, added it to a text message and sent it to Logan.

  61

  They ditched the Prius and picked up another car to bring them back to the safe house in Central. Navarro called ahead and told Mazzetti to make sure everyone was there. Schroder, Morley and Farrow were waiting for them by the time they arrived.

  “What happened?” Navarro asked them.

  “We got jumped,” Morley said.

  Morley was defensive; he knew that Navarro would be angry. “We cleared the house, took out Wang and his men, picked up the stuff they took from the boat. A woman was waiting for us in the garage on the way out. Put a gun on us and locked us in a storeroom. By the time Schroder got us out, she was long gone.”

  “Describe her.”

  “Mid-thirties. Short black hair. Dark make-up around the eyes. She knew exactly what she was doing.”

  Navarro was sorely tempted to rip them all a new one, but he knew that would be indulgent and would serve no useful purpose. He was beyond frustrated—his expectation had been that he would have contacted Lincoln by now to tell him that the matter had been put to bed—but, when he addressed it rationally, he knew that Nakamura must still be close at hand. They just needed to locate him again.

  Mazzetti was busy at the kitchen table, switching between his two laptops with an expression of intense concentration on his face. He must have sensed that Navarro was looking at him; he took off his headphones and looked up.

  “I think I have something,” he said.

  Navarro aimed one final glare at Morley and then went over to the table. “What?”

  “You asked me to keep an eye on passenger manifests out of HK. I’ve been pulling the passenger name records from all the airlines and running it against what we know about PROSPERO. I struck out. I got nothing.”

  “So?”

  “So I widened my scope a little. I ran a script to pull the same information from all airports within a twelve-hour drive of the city. Shenzhen. Macau. Shek Kong. There’s also a private airfield near Chep Lak Kok. A private jet was chartered on short notice from there with a flight plan to Cuba via Tokyo and then Toronto. The manifest has two passengers: Danny Arakawa and Lillian Black.”

  “Arakawa?”

  “A new passport was issued to a Danny Arakawa from the consulate general this afternoon. Here—I have his picture.”

  Navarro looked at the screen. It showed the photograph page from a passport. The photograph was unmistakably that of PROSPERO.

  Navarro swore. “Where’s the airport?”

  “Lantau, next to Chek Lap Kok. It’s twenty-five minutes from here.”

  “When does the flight leave?”

  “Thirty minutes.”

  62

  They hadn’t the time to finish their coffees before a uniformed steward came to fetch them. He introduced himself as Lin, offered them Michael Yeung’s compliments and then told them to follow him. They went through a sliding door onto the apron. A Gulfstream was parked away from the terminal building, and Lin escorted them over to it. A beach towel–sized red carpet had been unrolled at the foot of the ramp that had been swung down out of the gleaming fuselage.

  Beatrix and Danny followed Lin on board and found that they were to be the only passengers. Beatrix glanced around: there was a bulkhead panelled in beautiful burled maple, and set into it was an open door through which they could see the brightly lit instruments of the cockpit. There was a gleaming galley opposite the ramp door, and Beatrix could smell a custom coffee blend already brewing in the pot. The roof and walls of the main cabin were covered in soft beige suede, and the furnishings were upholstered in fine leather of the same colour. Two soft leather couches flanked the front half of the cabin, while, in the rear, four captain’s chairs were grouped around a small table. She noticed Ethernet and USB ports every few feet along the knee-high air-conditioning panel on either side of the cabin. A serving station and small bar were inset into the rear bulkhead, also panelled in rich maple. An open door between them revealed a bathroom with gold fixtures and a full shower.

  “What can I get you to drink?” Lin asked Danny.

  “Do you have whisky?”

  “I have a twenty-two-year-old Macallan or a fourteen-year-old Glenmorangie,” Lin said.

  “The Macallan, please.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “A beer will be fine.”

  Lin was preparing their drinks when the crew boarded the jet. They were to be flown by a young Asian man and a middle-aged white woman, both of them wearing smart uniforms.

  The woman took the drinks from Lin and delivered them herself. “I’m Captain Wilson,” she said, her accent betraying her Australian heritage. “This is First Officer Suzuka. Welcome aboard.”

  Suzuka nodded his own greeting before stepping onto the flight deck.

  Wilson pointed to the dual clocks on the forward bulkhead. “It’s two in the morning Hong Kong time,” she said, pointing to the clock on the left. “It’ll take just over twenty-seven hours to reach Varadero, with stops for fuel at Haneda in Tokyo and then Toronto. The time change can be a bit disorienting, I’m afraid. Don’t hesitate to ask Lin to make up your beds whenever you’d like; getting a little shut-eye will help. Wheels up in five minutes.”

  She shook hands with both of them, then stepped onto the flight deck and closed the door. Lin busied himself with raising the steps.

  “I could get used to this,” Danny whispered.

  “Better than a van that smells of fish?”

  He smiled.

  Lin sealed the door and then popped the cork on a bottle of vintage champagne. He poured two flutes and brought them over to Beatrix and Danny.

  “With the compliments of Mr. Yeung,” he said. “He wishes you all the best, Mr. Arakawa.”

  Danny sat back in his chair and put the flute to his lips. Beatrix thought he looked wistful as he gazed out of the window. He had been here a long time. More than half his life had been spent in the city, and now he was exchanging all of that history and security for the chance of something else. The risk of danger, too. It was no surprise that he was nervous.

  The engines picked up and the jet started to taxi out to the runway.

  Beatrix started to think about Cuba. There was no point in trying to fool herself otherwise: the lack of intelligence was a serious concern. She thought of Logan. Their relationship, such as it was, was based upon a tissue of lies: she was not who she said she was, and the same, almost certainly, was true for him. She believed that they had a common purpose in helping Danny, but their motives were not aligned.

  The jet’s engines cycled up and it streaked down the runway. The front wheel tipped up and then they were in the air, curling away from the island with its glitz and glamour and its seven million people, racing into the pitch-black night.

  Beatrix looked at her reflection in the dark glass of the porthole window. She was not approaching whatever they might face from a position of strength. She had been treating herself badly for weeks. She hadn’t trained, she was drinking too much, and she had been smoking opium for days on end. Her reflexes were slow and her body was weak, but, those weaknesses aside, she knew that her training held. She had
disposed of the men who had come to the flop, and then dismissed Navarro’s men with the same dispassion as she had demonstrated for all her years working under Control for the Group. The old responses and reactions that she had driven into her body through hours and hours of repetition would reassert themselves, just as they always had.

  That might be enough.

  It would have to be enough.

  63

  Navarro, Morley and Harker had a clear run to the airport with no traffic to hold them up. Harker was driving, and he pushed the car as fast as he dared, balancing the need to get to their destination before the scheduled departure of the jet with the requirement that they not arouse the attention of the police on the way. They followed Route 3 and then Route 8, speeding over the bridge onto Park Island, passing by Hong Kong Disneyland and eventually running along the boundary of Chek Lap Kok.

  The private airstrip was to the south of the main terminal, and they had two minutes to spare as Harker brought them to an abrupt stop outside the entrance. The two younger men got out and hurried inside; Navarro opened his door and went to the chain-link fence that offered a view of the apron. He saw a jet on the taxiway, watched it turn to face down the strip, and strained his eyes until he thought he could discern the registration that was stencilled onto the side of the engine: N765GS. He heard the aircraft roar as it slowly picked up pace. The nose lifted up, and, a moment later, the jet was aloft.

  Navarro called Mazzetti.

  “What’s the registration of the jet they’re on?”

  “Stand by… N765GS.”

  Navarro grimaced. “They just took off.”

  “Shit.”

  Navarro didn’t dwell on the disappointment; his would be a deferred satisfaction. Instead he said, “How long for them to get to Cuba?”

  “Twenty-seven hours from here.”

  He saw an opening. “How long from Raleigh to Havana?”

  “About six hours.”

  “Call Fort Bragg,” he said. “We need a team on the ground in Havana. Tell them we need eyes at the airport and circulate the pictures on those passports.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And book tickets for all of us on the next flight to Cuba.”

  Navarro ended the call and, as he watched the lights of the jet as it banked to port and raced into the night, he scrolled through his contacts until he found Lincoln’s secure line. His finger hovered over it, wondering whether he should call him. He decided against it. Lincoln hated bad news, and Navarro hated delivering it. Besides, this was just an annoyance. In a day or two, he would have Nakamura in his sights again. He just needed to be patient.

  Morley and Harker came out of the lounge.

  “Too late,” Morley said. “They just took off.”

  “I saw. Doesn’t matter,” Navarro said. “We know where they’re going. We can get a team from Fort Bragg to Havana twelve hours before they land. We’ll pick them up again there.”

  Part II

  Miami

  64

  Melissa Nakamura looked out of the window at the clouds that were gathering on the horizon. The weatherman on the news last night had suggested that Miami was going to see stormy weather today, and it looked as if he was going to be proven right. That was annoying. Melissa had hoped to go for a run on the beach today. It was the start of the school vacation, and she had promised herself that she was going to use the time off to work on her fitness. The beach would have been ideal, but she had a membership at the LA Fitness on South Miami Avenue, and she would just have to work out there today instead; the beach could wait until the weather was better.

  She grabbed her running shoes and gym bag and was looking for her car keys when she heard a knocking at the front door. She frowned; she wasn’t expecting a delivery and, anyway, the Amazon drivers just left the parcels on the front porch these days. She put her bag down and went to the door.

  There was a man waiting outside.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Melissa?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  The man took out a small wallet and opened it, showing a badge. “My name is Carlos de Gea,” he said. “I’m a criminal investigator with the Office of the Inspector General.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, unable to hide the confusion. “I don’t know what that is.”

  “We investigate allegations of wrongdoing involving the CIA,” he said. “Please—there’s no need to be concerned. You’ve done nothing wrong, but it would be helpful if I could have a few words with you.”

  “I don’t see how I could possibly be helpful,” she said.

  “It’s about your father.” He paused, watching her face. “Please—do you think I could come inside?”

  Melissa went to the kitchen. The man—what had he said his name was again?—was in her front room, looking at the pictures on the sideboard. She guessed that he was in his early fifties. He was tanned, his skin contrasting with a pristine white shirt; he was well built and, all in all, he certainly wasn’t hard to look at. She made two Nespressos, putting the mugs on a tray and adding a plate of cookies.

  She went back into the sitting room and put the drinks and the plate of cookies down on the table. He took his mug and thanked her.

  “You said this was about my father?” she said.

  “That’s right. I’m sorry to surprise you like this.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “I have a message from him.”

  He took out his phone, woke the screen and handed it to her. Melissa looked down and saw that he had selected a video. Her father was in the frame. She pressed play.

  “Hello, Melissa. I’m sorry that this is probably going to come as a surprise. I would’ve much preferred to have spoken to you, but things are moving quickly here and I didn’t get the chance. Anyway—I just wanted to say that you can trust whoever it is who plays you this video.” She glanced over at Carlos, who smiled back at her. “I’ve been working with the CIA in an investigation that they’re undertaking against a man I used to know in Vietnam. I’m giving evidence against him that’ll show that he’s been lying about what he said happened. It doesn’t really matter what that is, but I’ll be able to tell you properly when we speak. And it kind of brings me to the point of this video.”

  He moved the camera to reveal more of the background. “I’m in an airport and I’m about to get onto a plane that’s going to take me to Cuba. I have to sit down and discuss the situation with the CIA, and we decided that it’s best to do it there. I know that sounds crazy and I promise I’ll be able to explain. You said that you always wanted to go to Havana, and it struck me that this could be the perfect opportunity to do that. I asked the man I’m speaking to whether it’d be possible for you to come out to Cuba while I’m there. You don’t have to say yes. If you don’t want to go, that’s fine—we’ll figure something else out when I’m done. But, if you’re able to come for a day or two—or even longer—that would be great. Just talk to the man or woman with the video. They’ll be able to make the arrangements and answer the questions that I’m sure you have.” He brought up his hand and smiled into the camera. “Bye.”

  “You’ll have questions,” Carlos said.

  She handed the phone back to him. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Let me just say that he’s not in trouble. I think he’s told you about his legal situation?”

  “From when he deserted? Yes. And I don’t blame him for what he did.”

  “No one blames him. He had a good reason to leave, and we’re going to expunge it from his record. Your father is a brave man. A patriot. We want his record to show that, and it will.”

  “So why is he going to Cuba?”

  “Your father is giving evidence against a senior CIA official. The man is dangerous, and we think that he has agents in Hong Kong looking for him. We have decided—at your father’s suggestion, actually—that he will be debriefed in a neutral location where he won’t be at risk. We—the OIG, I mean
—might not have picked Cuba, but that was what he wanted. And, speaking honestly, I can see the sense in going to a place like that.”

  “Why not here?”

  “We don’t think it would be safe for him until the case he is helping us with has reached a conclusion.”

  “And when would that be?”

  “Several months,” he said. “And that’s probably optimistic. Again, speaking frankly, I think that’s another reason why he chose Havana. It’s close to you—it takes just over an hour to fly to Havana from here. This might be the best chance for the two of you to meet for some time.”

  “Goodness,” Melissa said.

  She felt dazed by it all. Her father had told her how much he was looking forward to meeting her, and she had felt the same way. It had been a shock to have been contacted by him after so long, but, as they had corresponded, she had been charmed by him. They had moved their conversations to the telephone and, to her surprise, she had found that the prospect of finally knowing him had reminded her of how much she had missed his presence in her life. Her mother had always blamed him for the failure of their marriage, but, as Melissa grew older, she had realised that the fault lay with her mother and not him. She had found another man while he had been in Vietnam, and had ended their relationship in the most callous way possible. Her father had explained that he hadn’t even known that a baby had been conceived, and that he had only become aware that he had a daughter when he looked into her mother’s history after her passing. Melissa had told him that he didn’t need to justify himself, that she was thrilled that he had contacted her, and that she would love to get to know him.