Island of Thieves

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  He was seated between the smaller Jiangsu man and the forgetful Droma drone who’d owned the box of three-ring binders. A second Droma exec sat across from Shaw, flanked by Karla Lokosh and the male half of Kilbane’s security team. Shaw had caught his name as Castelli when he’d reached across to shake the redheaded woman’s hand. She had changed from her skirt into a dark gray jacket and pants, a warmer choice for late in the day.

  “Karla,” she said, holding out a hand to Shaw. He introduced himself, and they both turned to the slim Jiangsu executive.

  “Nelson Bao,” he said. “How do you do?”

  “Has either of you been to this part of the country before?” said Shaw.

  They both shook their heads. “Closest I’ve been is Utah on vacation,” said Karla.

  Nelson Bao smiled. “You have me beaten. I’ve flown over Washington many times but never landed until yesterday.” He looked at Shaw. “Are you from here?”

  “Seattle,” said Shaw, “but I’m brand-new with Droma. My first week and first time on the island. So we all have that in common.”

  “It’s an astonishing place,” Karla Lokosh said. “What do you do for Droma?”

  “Facilities manager. I’m still figuring out exactly what that means.”

  She laughed. “It took me a year to get my feet under me at my job.”

  “What is your role?” Bao asked her.

  “I’m vice president for Bridgetrust’s business development. So I expect Mr. Chen and I will be talking about ways to get your firm some operating capital this week.” She nodded to the Jiangsu leader, who was deep in conversation with Lokosh’s boss, Flynn. Flynn was describing something, his hands drawing pictures in the air, as Chen nodded along. The Bridgetrust president had a blunt nose and light blue eyes that were bright with the energetic discussion. Chen had permitted himself a soft smile at Flynn’s effusiveness. Shaw guessed smiling might be as demonstrative as Chen got.

  No way to know which CEO was a likelier candidate to have a thief in his employ. Maybe Chen was a high roller at Macau casinos. Maybe Flynn was competitive to the point of obsession.

  Hell, maybe they’d both brought thieves. Wouldn’t that be a party?

  The salad was served promptly. Shaw garnered a few morsels of information from his dinner companions in between bites. Chen’s company was looking to establish a presence in the United States. Droma would provide resources and get its foot in the door of the lucrative Chinese market for skilled personnel, as Sofia had mentioned to him. Bridgetrust Group, Karla Lokosh’s company, might provide capital as well as the necessary American percentage of ownership to gain legal approval and political support.

  Nelson Bao was a chemist, and so was Avery Morton, he of the leather jacket, whom Bridgetrust had contracted to review technical specifics for this deal. Exactly what chemical plant or invention Jiangsu had in mind for its proposed U.S. branch was unclear. Shaw got the gist that was need-to-know information. This week the teams would be talking through options and negotiating terms.

  By the time they had finished their entrées, Shaw’s head was filled with business-speak like “core competency” and “B2B.” The terms might be different from the Army’s, but the love of euphemisms and acronyms was the same.

  None of them seemed like thieves. Maybe Castelli, who’d sat quiet and slightly sullen during all the business talk. The most he’d volunteered was that he and Pollan, the woman on Kilbane’s team, sometimes went fishing. As the plates were being cleared, Castelli excused himself and went to join the other table. From the glances Shaw had taken during dinner, that bunch had been even less bubbly than Castelli.

  At the main table, Linda Edgemont and Sofia Rohner laughed together in animated conversation. The most emotion Shaw had seen from the younger woman. But the biggest gestures were from Flynn, who was telling a humorous story that involved shooting a bow and arrow, judging from his pantomime.

  Morton took advantage of the empty seat to switch tables, and soon he and Nelson Bao were deep in esoteric talk of molecular chemistry. With a swapping of chairs, Karla Lokosh sat next to Shaw so Bao wouldn’t be talking over her.

  “What do you do when not on a private island, Mr. Shaw?” she said.

  “Van.” Shaw had a cover story for his profession but not his personal life. Mentioning the charity he was trying to build was out. It might lead to questions, voiced or not, about why he was interested in helping families of convicted felons. “I volunteer with some veterans’ groups. I read. And I exercise to stay sane.”

  “You look very fit.” Karla smiled. “Weights?”

  “Or running or MMA. A friend is introducing me to yoga. If it’s always new, it’s never dull. You?”

  “Dance. Ballet as a girl, modern in college. It was going to be my major until I realized Alvin Ailey was never going to call but Merrill Lynch might. I switched to get my M.B.A.”

  “A native New Yorker?”

  “Boston transplant,” she said. “I started my career there, and a New York company made me an offer too generous to ignore, so I hid my Sox cap and moved.”

  He grinned. “Better or worse?”

  “I’ve adjusted. The winters aren’t any easier.”

  “You’re seeing the Northwest on its best behavior.” Shaw gestured to the expansive windows of the pavilion and the sun accelerating in its fall behind the forest to the west. “The weather that tricks people into moving here. Then comes the sucker punch. Eight months of gray. The mountains don’t reappear on the horizon until summer.”

  She laughed. “But not as much snow. There’s that.”

  “No. Not as much.”

  The server came to the table to ask the guests which dessert they would prefer, chocolate mousse or lemon tart. Shaw managed to keep from asking for both and opted for coffee instead.

  Karla smiled. “I didn’t realize you could get plain old coffee in the Northwest. I’ve been here a day and counted twenty different shops.”

  “Constant caffeine staves off suicidal impulses during the bleak months.”

  Sebastien Rohner stood up at his table. The room quieted. The servers stopped in midstride, their arms full of dessert plates.

  “Before you all get some well-deserved rest,” Rohner said, “I wish to say how much I’m looking forward to our discussions tomorrow.” He nodded to Chen and Flynn. “It’s not often that we can realize a key moment as it happens. To form a partnership such as ours, mutually beneficial and with such potential for growth, is truly extraordinary. I know there are many decisions yet to be made—and many lawyers yet to sign off on our agreement.” That prompted a laugh from the guests, Linda Edgemont most of all. “But I’m confident that Jiangsu Special Manufacturing and Droma International Solutions will be recognized as a new vanguard in international business relations and that Bridgetrust Group will be first to reap the benefits. We have a brilliant week ahead. At any time when we’re not in conference, please enjoy these wonderful surroundings. Take a boat out on the water or a walk along the beach. This is our home, and it was meant to be shared with friends.”

  Shaw had been smiling wryly to himself ever since Rohner’s implication that he and the guests had been working hard, consuming their salmon and risotto.

  Despite the coffee, Karla Lokosh was stifling yawns by the time they’d finished their cups. “Sorry. I’m still on New York time.”

  Nelson Bao looked at his watch and then at Zhang, who was staring at him from the far table. “And we were meant to call home this evening. It was very nice meeting you.”

  Shaw said good night to Bao and Karla and the rest. The pavilion had three exits leading directly outside. Shaw picked the one to the south. The sun had dropped behind the hump of the island, and the steady wind had begun to whisk away any remaining heat the landmass had absorbed during the day.

  Split logs embedded in the grassy slope formed a set of stairs to the beach. The knee-high lights lining the paths didn’t extend to the slope, perhaps to avoid spoiling the
view for anyone gazing out at the horizon. The stairs descended into murky dusk. Past their end a slow regular splash of waves against the shore called.

  He had abstained from wine during dinner, but the rich meal was enough to leave him feeling slowed and heavy. The soft life, he brooded. It hadn’t been so long ago that he’d been on active duty. Running all day, literally and figuratively, sometimes on only a couple thousand ravenously devoured calories. The main course alone had been that much tonight. Maybe feeling like you were losing a step was just another part of the transition to becoming a civilian.

  Not that his time outside the Army had been calm. Shaw had found himself in enough trouble during the past two years to fill half a dozen deployments, and without an entire platoon backing him up.

  No. That wasn’t totally honest. He’d gone looking for danger at least as much as it had come to him. Partly to keep from losing that step. Mostly to have some purpose. He wasn’t a soldier anymore. It had taken time to figure out what he wanted to do; helping kids the way his mother Moira had. If he could get the charity off the ground.

  He wasn’t a thief anymore either. Not for himself. Would he steal to fund the charity, if legitimate jobs like Droma petered out? He’d evaded that question whenever Addy Proctor probed his intentions. Worried that Shaw might be constructing a noble cause to allow dishonorable pursuits, perhaps unconsciously. He wasn’t sure of the answer.

  A decision for another day. There was work to be done.

  He returned to his room to change and to wait. With only a week until the summer solstice, sunset came late. Full dark even later. It was nearly eleven o’clock by the time Shaw slipped out of the staff quarters.

  He took the black wand from his pocket and buried it under a small rock. No need to broadcast his movements tonight any farther than he had to.

  FOURTEEN

  Shaw had picked the spot earlier. A deep, narrow split in the slope of the north shore, out of the range of the estate’s lights. The grass grew tall in the split. He could lie almost prone and remain unseen by anyone more than twenty feet away. Looking through the reeds and flowering strands, he’d spot anyone approaching the gallery from the estate.

  The gap in the slope was as comfortable as he could expect. Under the breeze, the sugary scents of pollen and decaying salal berries filled his nostrils. He would be covered in grass stems and seeds when he got up. Couldn’t be helped.

  If Rohner wasn’t imagining the threat, what was the thief’s plan? A missing piece of statuary wouldn’t go unnoticed for two days until the guests left. No sane person would try to spirit it away in their luggage.

  A boat could easily beach on the shore under cover of darkness to pick up the statue. Maybe to pick up the thief, too. But leaving the island would be the same as admitting guilt, for both the thief and whichever of the executives had brought them. Shaw supposed that one of the unwritten rules of their strange game was to get away clean and for the missing piece not to be noticed until it was too late.

  He couldn’t guard the gallery around the clock. A burglar would have to at least case the place, and there were only six or seven hours of darkness to allow any thief a close examination of the collection’s defenses. He’d grab sleep while the execs were in conference tomorrow if he needed it.

  Shaw continued watching. It was a skill he’d been practicing as long as he could remember.

  First with his grandfather. Absent a babysitter, Dono would bring young Van along while casing possible scores. The two would sit in Dono’s work truck or in a vacant apartment or house. When Van asked what they were looking for, his grandfather would have him assist by writing down the times of people coming and going. He would later quiz Van on what he remembered about them. Their clothes, their attitudes. As Van became more confident, Dono took full advantage of the presumed innocence of a child, sending him through neighborhoods on his bicycle or chasing a Frisbee onto private grounds, to report back on the security features he’d seen.

  The Rangers had trained his patience to another level. On one mission, before he’d made sergeant, Shaw and his fireteam had been in Khost Province near the Pakistan border to recon a river crossing. Intel suspected that an insurgent convoy would cross the river on the ramshackle bridge of stone and repurposed steel beams. The where was vague enough. The when was even less certain. The platoon had hiked from the LZ at night and concealed themselves at key vantage points along the road and the river. Shaw’s team wallowed in muddy wetlands a quarter mile upstream.

  One day had passed, then another, while the platoon barely stirred. Still the intel reports insisted that the convoy was imminent. Finally, after six days of almost complete silence, not daring to move during daylight hours, they’d received word that the convoy had chosen another route. The fireteam stood upright for the first time in nearly a week that night. Their five-mile hike to the extraction point was such a relief it had felt like a vacation.

  So Shaw waited in the island grass. Almost philosophical. He couldn’t control whether the thief decided to hit the gallery tonight or at all. For now, until he had another trail to follow, this was what he could do.

  Midnight came and went. The main house a black temple behind the squat block of the gallery.

  The thief might not show. Shaw weighed the idea of breaking in himself, if only to see what the black crates contained.

  He removed a device about the size of an old-style pager from his pocket and switched it on. The strip of display screen on the device glowed yellow-green as numbers blurred too fast for the eye to follow. Broadband frequencies. Within five seconds the device had locked on to a wireless signal. The signal sent by the alarm’s control panel to the transceivers on the doors and skylights.

  Jamming a cellular alarm signal was no trick with the right equipment. But jamming was also prone to error. Shaw’s method was better. His device would mimic the nearest transceiver, catching the signal from the control panel and sending it back again. Shaw could then open a door or a skylight without interrupting the expected exchange.

  A chink in the gallery’s armor, assuming there wasn’t a backup system that Anders hadn’t mentioned. Shaw wouldn’t put it past the enigmatic chief of staff.

  He switched the device off and tucked it away. Messing with the gallery and its safeguards tonight could only lead to trouble and maybe scare off the burglar before Shaw had a chance to catch them in the act.

  Shaw frowned and stretched. Perhaps there was no thief. Anders seemed to subscribe to that theory, even if he wouldn’t voice it. Was Rampage Rohner more than eccentric? Maybe the magnate was delusional and his family and inner circle were doing their best to shield him from the consequences.

  The lights in the passageway to the main house came on. Shaw sank back into the grass.

  Olen Anders descended the steps from the house to enter the gallery. Shaw saw its roofline brighten as the interior lights came on, shining through the skylights.

  The chief of staff was a night owl. Checking on whatever was in the crates, Shaw surmised.

  Within five minutes two figures appeared on the flagstone path between the house and the south wing. Shaw could make out their shapes and hear their footsteps, but it wasn’t until they descended the path to the exterior door of the gallery and its overhead light that he could identify them.

  Nelson Bao and Avery Morton. The two chemists. The door opened, and Shaw saw the long arm of Anders ushering them to enter.

  He waited another half hour. The three men remained inside. Whatever reason they might have for their midnight visit, it was taking a while.

  A thief wasn’t going to make a run at the statues with the gallery occupied. Shaw’s stakeout was a bust, at least until Anders and the chemists left. Better to relax while he could and circle back.

  He slipped away from his hiding place and down the north shore. From his high-rise apartment, Shaw had an enviable view of downtown Seattle and the bay, but even on the clearest of nights he could see at best a scattering
of pinpoints in the sky. Here on the island, the stars made an infinite mural overhead. A hint of what it must have been like for fishermen and sailors in centuries past, before human innovation began to blot out the heavens.

  As he walked, he picked at the grass and bits of bur stuck to his barn jacket. His fingers brushed across C.J.’s fountain pen in his pocket.

  The pilot was probably already asleep in the staff quarters. He might not catch her tomorrow if the plane left early. He decided to walk down to the seaplane. If it was open, he could leave the pen in the cockpit.

  Someone had switched off the dock lamps. The only illumination came from flat solar LEDs screwed into the planks every ten feet, equidistant between the mooring cleats. Shaw walked the L shape of the dock to the seaplane. The pilot’s door was unlocked. He set C.J.’s pen on the seat where she’d be sure to find it.

  He’d closed the seaplane door when footsteps on the wooden planks of the dock made him turn.

  Kilbane. With Castelli and Pollan just behind.

  Kilbane was showing some expression for once. The hint of a smile. Shaw didn’t care for it at all.

  FIFTEEN

  Kilbane pointed to the twenty-foot runabout, the little brother to the larger Regal cruiser.

  “Get in,” he said.

  Shaw looked at them. “Early for a fishing trip.”

  The three enforcers spread out, blocking the width of the dock.

  “You’re relieved of duty, Shaw,” said Kilbane. “We’ll take you to the mainland and drop you off. Your things will be sent to you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You’ll get your money. But you’re leaving the island. Now.”

  “I’m done when Rohner says so. Until then piss off.”

  “Get in the boat.”

  Shaw didn’t move.

  “Fine,” said Kilbane. He removed something from his belt and flicked his wrist. A steel alloy tactical baton snapped to full length. Castelli took out his own baton, and Pollan, the female member of their team, unholstered an evil-looking Taser pistol. The underlings held the weapons loosely at their sides. Waiting for orders. Or letting Kilbane have a literal first crack.