Minotaur (10 page)

34.

“I
don’t know how much more I can tell you,” Fiona said. Some of her confidence had fallen away. “The shipments came in by water. Through that boat launch you saw, under the house.”

“I thought that was just Favorov’s escape route,” Chapel said.

“You saw the panic tunnel, the one that leads from our bedroom down to the water. But there’s another tunnel that leads from the launch to the cellar. When Ygor was building the house he had some contractors build the escape route first, then he fired them and hired some new ­people to dig the tunnel through to the cellar, so no one blabbing workman could give away the plan for the whole complex.”

“How often did shipments come in?” Chapel asked.

“Only two or three times a year. Ygor would get very nervous around those times. His biggest fear, I think, was that someone would see the boats coming and going. It was all done in the middle of the night, and very quietly, with no lights showing at all. Ygor always thought I was asleep when it happened, but I would wake up when he crept out of bed to oversee a delivery, and I would go to my bedroom window and listen to it all happen. The boats would come in—­from Cuba, I think, the men who came on the boats always spoke Spanish—­and offload down there, then our servants would move the crates into the cellar.”

“What about outgoing—­when the crates went to his white power friends, how was that handled?”

“Now that was rather ingenious,” Fiona said. She looked proud of her husband for how he’d masterminded his criminal enterprise. Well, she had stayed married to him even knowing as much as she did. “We would throw a party, just a little thing with a few other ­couples and their families. A garden party, a Christmas toast, it didn’t matter. The caterers were always the same, and there were always more of them than we actually needed. They would come in a truck with all the food and wineglasses and tablecloths and such, and when they left, they would take the crates with them. No one in this part of Long Island would look twice at a catering truck.”

Chapel supposed he was a little impressed, himself. It would have taken a truly mammoth amount of organization and discretion to make this all work for so long with nobody noticing. Though he supposed the police and the Coast Guard rarely came out to the richest part of Long Island, and then only when they were called in. Every house in the area was big enough and expensive enough to have its own private security.

“Tell me something,” Chapel said, not because it would help his investigation but just because he had to know. “Did you know what was in those crates?”

Fiona shot him a glance from the corner of her eye. “Not as such.”

“But you had to know it was something illegal. You knew that these ­people, the ­people your husband sold the guns to, were dangerous ­people. And yet you never did anything to stop it. I’m not saying you could have. I’m sure Favorov would have laughed if you asked him to stop. But you never even tried. Did you?”

Fiona inhaled deeply. “You know exactly why I said nothing. You know it, and you’re just trying to make me say it, because you think I should be ashamed. You might as well ask me if I loved my husband or not. Well?”

Chapel opened his mouth to speak but he just couldn’t be that cruel. He couldn’t say what he really wanted to say.

Angel could, though. “She married him for his money. She’s a total gold digger.” Chapel was glad Fiona couldn’t hear the little voice in his ear.

“I grew up in a home where the only food on the table came from government assistance. My father spent his whole life looking for work and never found any. I vowed, when I was just a little girl, that I wouldn’t die as poor as he did. I worked hard to make that happen, to get where I am. I don’t regret the things I’ve done. You can think of me what you like, Mr. Chapel. Better ­people than you have called me a whore.” For a second she turned her head, glancing back at the boys in the backseat. Chapel wondered how much, if anything, they’d understood of the conversation he’d been having with their mother. “I’ll tell you what I told them. It’s hard work, and the hours are shit. But the benefits are amazing.”

That was enough to shut Chapel up. For a minute, maybe. Then he felt like he had to say what he was actually thinking. “I don’t think that at all.”

“Oh, really? You still respect me, is that what you were going to say?” Fiona lashed out.

“I think a lot of ­people would have had a hard time jeopardizing their position as the wife of a billionaire, just on an ethical qualm. Honestly, I have no idea what I would have done in your situation. That much money must be incredibly tempting,” he admitted. “What I was going to say, though, was that I don’t think you did it for the money.”

Fiona stared ahead at the road.

“I saw the look on your face, when I came out of the boys’ bedroom. When you were worried they might be hurt. I saw the same look my mother used to get, when I was a kid and I fell out of a tree I had tried to climb. Maybe at first, when you first met Favorov, it was about the money. But it isn’t anymore. And that, I can definitely respect.”

Fiona turned to stare at him. He had to nod forward, at the road, so she would keep focused on driving.

They were silent for a long time. Finally, in a very small voice, she said, “Thank you. Thank you for that much. We’re almost there.”

35.

F
iona turned off the main road and wove the Bentley through a maze of streets in a small seaside town, just a few dark stores and a ­couple of modest houses, really. As she neared the water she switched off the lights and pulled quietly up outside a ramshackle marina.

“This is it?” Chapel asked, disappointed. “I thought you really had something. But the Coast Guard already seized Favorov’s yacht. He isn’t leaving the country by sea, not tonight.”

Fiona looked over at him with an appraising stare, as if she were trying to decide whether he was making fun of her or not. “The yacht was never the real plan,” she said. “He knew perfectly well that as soon as he called it in it would be picked up. That was just a ruse.”

“So what are we doing here?” Chapel asked.

“You don’t have a lot of rich friends, do you, Jim? If you have a yacht you must own a sailboat too.”

Chapel felt his eyes going wide. “A sailboat? Where does he expect to go in a sailboat?”

“Cuba would be my guess. From there he can go anywhere.”

“But he would have to sail—­by himself—­across a thousands miles of the Atlantic Ocean,” Chapel pointed out.

“Ygor is an excellent sailor. He always talked about competing in the Americas Cup, but he had to keep his profile low. A straight run down the coast will be nothing to him. If he runs into a storm in the middle of the ocean he could be in real trouble—­especially since he can’t afford to radio for help. But if the weather stays clear he’ll have no trouble making the crossing.”

She gestured at the boats lined up at the water’s edge.

“Slip thirty-­three,” she said. “Assuming he didn’t get here before us.”

36.

C
hapel jumped out of the car without another word and headed for the shadowy marina. He was not surprised when he heard Fiona start the Bentley’s engine and pull away. He doubted he would ever see her again, and he was fine with that—­she’d helped him enough to earn a get-­out-­of-­jail-­free card.

The marina was closed for the night, its main gates padlocked shut. Chapel jogged along the length of its chain-­link fence until he found what he was looking for. The marina was exactly the kind of place bored teenagers would break into on a Saturday night. At some point in the past, someone had wormed their way through the fence. Behind a stand of potted trees he found a place where he could just lift up a section of fence—­careful not to let it jingle too much—­and crawl underneath.

Inside the fence the marina was full of moving darkness, the long linear shadows of the boats’ masts carving up the orange light from the parking lot. It looked like there was a sizeable restaurant and a smaller hotel on the grounds, a place where sailors could spend the night in a bed that wasn’t swaying with the breakers. Beyond those buildings lay a wide boardwalk and a station for fueling small boats and emptying waste tanks. Beyond that the boats bobbed gently in their slips, each of them tied up at a little strip of dock. They made constant soft noises like old men snoring in their beds—­the sounds of lines slapping against aluminum masts, the sounds of tarpaulins ruffling in the breeze, the sounds of boats smacking rhythmically up against the old truck tires chained to the side of each dock. No sound whatsoever of a Russian spy desperately readying a sailboat for a long voyage.

Chapel stayed low, hiding behind a weathered wooden fence as he peered into the dark, looking for the numbers painted on every slip. He kept a pistol in his hand, ready to shoot the moment Favorov lifted his head.

Slip thirty, thirty-­one, thirty-­two—­there. Chapel crouched down behind a bollard streaked with seagull droppings and tried to get a good look at the boat. It was a long, sleek craft, its white hull clean of barnacles, its deck in good order. Its sails were furled tightly against its high mast. The name of the ship was painted on the back:

PHAEDRA

SOUTHAMPTON NY

At first it looked like no one was aboard the boat, and Chapel thought maybe he’d beaten Favorov to the marina. But then he heard a low rumbling noise and saw white bubbles come streaming up from the boat’s bow. Slowly, but steadily gaining speed, the boat started to edge out of its slip on its bow thrusters, headed for open ocean.

For the second time that night Chapel was stuck on dry land, watching his quarry get away by water.

“Angel, get the Coast Guard headed for my position.”

“Most of the local units are still tied up with the yacht,” she replied. “They’re at least twenty minutes away. I’ll try to call in some police boats—­”

“Yeah,” Chapel said. He was already running for the dock. “You do that.”

He couldn’t make the jump to the sailboat, he knew. The boat was already ten yards out of its slip by the time he reached the dock.

But he wasn’t going to let Favorov get away. Not this time.

37.

C
hapel’s miraculous artificial arm had one major design flaw—­it couldn’t be immersed in water. The silicone flesh over the robotics couldn’t be made watertight.

He reached up with his good arm and slipped the catches that released it from his shoulder. Automatically it powered down. He placed it gently on top of an old oil drum and then he dove into the icy water of the slip.

Before he’d lost the arm, Chapel had been an excellent swimmer. Growing up in Florida, he’d spent countless hours in the canals and swimming in the ocean until his mother had joked he was half fish. After he lost his arm in Afghanistan he’d had to learn all over again how to maneuver in the water with an asymmetrical body and only one arm with which to stroke. He would never be as fast as he was when he’d been a kid.

Add to that his recent injuries—­the salt water burned his lower chest where he’d been shot, and stung his thigh where Daniel had stabbed him—­and fatigue and shock and everything else.

But he would be damned if he wasn’t going to catch the sailboat. He pushed forward as hard as he could, his head breaking the water only so he could make sure he was swimming in the right direction. He felt his earpiece slip away and float off, and knew he’d lost Angel, but he didn’t slow down to try to grab the thing.

Forcing himself through the exhaustion, through the shock of the cold water, through the darkness, he watched as the boat slipped further and further out of reach. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Favorov had heard him thrashing around behind the boat and had come out to shoot him. He wouldn’t have been surprised if his overworked body just gave up, if cramps had seized him and he’d drowned on the spot. But he kept going, even though it seemed he was making no headway at all.

And then the miracle occurred. The one he’d been counting on. His hand brushed against something fibrous and he grabbed at it, praying it was what he thought it was. Instantly he felt himself tugged along, dragged through the water behind the boat. He stopped kicking his legs—­he didn’t need to work so hard anymore.

When Favorov had left the slip he hadn’t bothered to stow the painter that had held the boat to the dock. He hadn’t even removed it properly—­judging by the frayed end of the line Chapel now held, he’d just cut through the thin cord to save time. Now it was slack in the water, dragged along behind the boat. Now Chapel had it in his hand.

It wasn’t easy to pull himself up that line with just one hand. Chapel tried to get his legs around the thin rope but it was made of slick nylon and he couldn’t get enough purchase. In the end he grabbed it with his teeth. The boat tried to rip his molars out of his head but it let him reach forward and grab another arm’s length of the line and haul himself forward, just a little.

It helped when Favorov cut out the bow thrusters and went to raise his sails. The ship slowed in the water, carried along by nothing but the current, and Chapel was able to pull himself along much easier. Eventually his head hit the stern of the sailboat with a nasty
thunk
. He was less worried about a new head injury than he was about the noise he’d made. When no one came back to see what had created that noise, much less to shoot at it, Chapel pulled his head fully above the water and just breathed for a moment.

To his left a short ladder hung down from the rail of the boat, put there so that swimmers could climb back on board without help. Chapel swung himself around and kicked until he got a foot in the bottom rung of the ladder. Moving as fast as he could, he dragged himself up and over the rail. No lights showed anywhere on the boat, but he could make out Favorov’s silhouette up on top of the cabin, where the Russian was wrestling with the sails. Chapel froze in place, desperately hoping he hadn’t been seen. He waited a full minute before rolling himself behind a storage locker where he could just rest for a while out of sight.

Overhead a billion stars showed, dancing as Chapel’s heart raced and even his eyeballs seemed to throb with exhaustion. He had very little energy left, very little time before his body was just going to quit in protest. He’d pushed himself too far and adrenaline could only help so much.

He had to keep moving, though. The temptation to just lie there until he had his breath back, until he could recover, was just too great. It was possible he would just fall asleep right there, and not wake up until Favorov discovered him—­and then, presumably, he would never wake up at all.