Sail (20 page)
FOR THE FIFTH TIME Peter asked—no,
demanded
—to know where Tatem was taking him.
For the fifth time Tatem ignored him, acting as if Carlyle weren’t even there in the car.
Right up until they drove through the towering wrought-iron gates of the U.S. embassy in the heart of downtown Nassau.
“Follow me,” said Tatem after parking the car in front. Not a request—an order.
So Peter followed Tatem into the embassy and down a long, narrow corridor. If the building had air conditioning, it was broken. The place was hot, a few rocks and a ladle short of a sauna. There were ceiling fans overhead, yet all they did was make sure the stifling air was evenly distributed.
At the last door at the end of the corridor, Tatem stopped. “Go on in,” he said, stepping aside.
Peter stared at the closed door, beads of sweat trickling past his sideburns. This Tatem was tougher than he had sounded over the phone. “You’re not coming with me?” Peter asked.
“No. Out of my jurisdiction, as they say. I’ll wait for you out here.”
Tatem turned and walked off, leaving Peter alone. And wondering,
What the hell’s going on?
Through another door down the hall Peter could hear a radio, the muted sound of Bob Marley’s “Could You Be Loved.” The song that really would’ve nailed the moment was by the Animals: “We’ve Got to Get Out of This Place.”
The exit sign hanging over a nearby stairwell was practically calling out Peter’s name. That’s when the door suddenly opened before him.
“Hello, Peter,” she said.
They were standing face-to-face, yet another surprise for the day. This one was a doozy, and couldn’t have been more unpleasant or threatening.
The last time Peter had seen Agent Ellen Pierce, she had been sitting in a Manhattan courtroom shooting daggers at him with her intense yet unquestionably beautiful brown eyes. She had dedicated two years of her life to investigating and finally nabbing a Brooklyn crime boss who was running a hundred-million-dollar drug ring.
All it took was two weeks for Carlyle to set the bad guy free.
When the jury came back with their not-guilty verdict, she actually yelled “Fuck!” in the courtroom. It even brought a smile to his face.
So what was Ms. Pierce doing here? Why would she possibly need to speak to him now? About what?
He had a pretty good hunch.
“Don’t tell me,” began Peter, raising both his palms. “You want to talk me out of searching for my family, too.”
Pierce smiled. She was wearing a white polo neatly tucked into a pair of tan linen slacks. DEA island wear, perhaps?
“Oh, no,” she said. “I think it’s great that you want to search for them.” She motioned for Peter to have a seat at the small conference-room table behind her. “But before you do, I think there’s something you need to know. I’m here to
help
you, Peter.”
JAKE DUNNE, a drug runner? Uncle Jake a bad guy? Was it possible?
It sounded crazy coming out of Ellen Pierce’s mouth and even more so when he repeated it in his head. He couldn’t picture it, not for a minute. It was obviously no joke, though. The DEA was known for a lot of things, but comedy wasn’t high on the list. In fact, it wasn’t on the list at all.
“Jake Dunne’s been on our radar for well over a year now,” said Agent Pierce, folding her lean arms on the table. “He’s been spotted repeatedly with a known smuggler, and his travel patterns have been suspicious, to say the least. Unfortunately, beyond that, we’ve not been able to prove anything. Close, but not quite. Nothing that would hold up in court.”
“Even if your suspicions about Jake are true, what does that have to do with my family’s disappearance?” asked Peter. “They were hit by a storm.”
“Yes, they were,” said Pierce. “What we don’t know for sure is whether that storm is the real reason the boat went down. There remains another possibility—that Jake was pulling double duty on this trip, captaining the boat while also making a dropoff.”
“A dropoff
where?
” asked Peter. Agent Pierce definitely had his interest now. This was sounding better and better.
“That’s the thing. They’re mostly done on open water. You’ve got two boats and no one else around for miles. If that’s what Jake Dunne had planned and there was an altercation of some kind—a disagreement about money, perhaps—I’m afraid your wife and stepchildren may have paid the price. It’s a working theory, anyway.”
“But the note in the bottle—they’re alive,” said Peter. “At least, I’m praying they still are.”
“I’m praying for the same thing, Mr. Carlyle. In fact, I’m banking on it,” she said. “And having seen firsthand in a courtroom how determined you can be, I’d say the smart money’s on your finding them first.” She reached into her pocket. “That’s why I want you to have this.”
Pierce placed a sleek black cell phone on the table. It wasn’t any kind of phone Peter had seen before, and he thought he’d seen them all. He picked it up, staring at it as if it had just fallen from the sky.
“Yeah, I had the same reaction when I first saw it,” said Pierce. “Here, let me show you how it works. Piece of cake, really. You don’t have to be a techie.”
She took it from Peter’s hands and opened it like a compact for makeup. On one side was a keyboard, on the other what looked like a solar panel.
“It’s a satellite phone, isn’t it?” asked Peter.
Ellen nodded. “The best Uncle Sam’s money can buy. Waterproof, shatterproof, with a carbon nanotube battery that lasts over a hundred hours a charge. You can call from anywhere on the planet at any time. Perfect signal, completely encrypted. No one can listen in.”
“Very cool,” said Peter. “Why do I need it?”
“Because no matter where you are, you need to contact me the second you find Jake and your family. I have to know before the media does—even before the Coast Guard, if possible.”
“I got that part, Agent. But
why?
”
“If there were people who wanted Jake Dunne dead, it’s safe to assume they still do. That’s why we have to get to him first—for his protection and, more important, for your family’s. At the very least, they’re out there with a drug runner.”
Peter blinked long and hard. “This is weird,” he said. “I mean, the fact that you’re helping me. You don’t even like me.”
“You’re right, I don’t. That said, you have your job to do and I have mine.” Pierce smiled. “Now do me a favor, will you? Go find your family.”
THERE WAS THIS ONE NIGHT BACK when I was a resident at the Cleveland Clinic, and I was supposed to be catching an hour nap in the middle of a twenty-four-hour shift. It was my only chance to get some much-needed rest, and I was exhausted.
But I couldn’t sleep. I was too tired. So I turned on an old Sony Trinitron in the doctors’ lounge and started watching this documentary on Ansel Adams. Or was it Franklin B. Way? I can’t remember. Anyway, what I do remember is the phrase they used to describe this time of day, when supposedly the light from the sun is perfect for photography. “Magic hour,” it’s called.
Magic hour.
As I sit here on the beach, staring out over the ocean as the sun kisses the horizon, I’m pretty sure this is what they were talking about on the TV show.
It’s beautiful.
It’s also ironic. Back home I almost never saw sunsets. Hell, I barely saw the outdoors. Most of my days were spent standing in a sterile, windowless room, my view alternating between heart monitors and the real thing pulsing on a table in front of me.
No regrets, though. I never lost sight of the good I was doing. But like I said, it’s ironic. It took all of this to happen before I could really appreciate something as simple as a sunset.
“Hey, Mom,” says Ernie, running over to me. He stands sideways, displaying his profile. It’s obvious, in a very cute way, that he’s sucking in his stomach a little. “How much weight do you think I’ve lost?” he asks.
Indeed, my pudgy little man is a lot less pudgy than at the start of the trip. He’s probably lost seven or eight pounds, and it shows. Better yet, it’s seven or eight pounds more than he was ever able to shed back home.
I look at his face, the pride written all over it. Then I glance down at his stomach. I’m ready to
gush
about how thin he now looks.
And that’s when my eyes nearly pop out of my head.
There’s a boat sailing out of Ernie’s belly button!
“What is it, Mom? What’s wrong?” he asks, looking down at himself in horror.
“Nothing’s wrong!” I answer with a jolt. “It’s all right!”
In fact, it’s better than all right.
It’s magic!
I CAN BARELY GET THE WORDS out of my mouth fast enough. “Ernie, where are your brother and sister?”
“They’re picking berries,” he says. “Why?”
“That’s why!” I say, pointing out to the horizon. “Look at what’s there.”
Ernie turns to see what I see—a huge sailboat, close enough that we can actually make out the shape of the sails. It’s not a blip like the other boats we’ve seen, too far away ever to notice us.
We’ve got a chance with this one. A real chance!
“Hurry! Go get Mark and Carrie,” I say. “We need to light the fires! Ernie, run!”
Ernie races as I push myself up to stand. If I could, I’d be doing jumping jacks or cartwheels, anything to attract attention.
Please, let there be someone on that boat with binoculars!
I pray.
Look this way. I can see you, so you can see me.
“Holy shit!” yells Mark seconds later, bursting through the brush onto the beach. Carrie’s behind him. They both outran Ernie, who finally brings up the rear.
“See! See, I told you!” says Ernie.
“Yeah, now let’s make sure they see us!” says Mark, heading for our campfire.
He grabs our ready-made “match,” a thick stick wrapped with a swath of one of our blankets, and douses it with the rubbing alcohol from the first-aid kit. As he dips it into the fire and sprints to our three piles of leaves and branches, he looks like he’s carrying the Olympic torch.
“Here goes nothing,” he says, lighting the piles.
They ignite immediately, their orange glow matching the sky almost perfectly.
With the last of the sun disappearing, all we can do is stand here on the beach, our gaze bouncing back and forth between the boat and the flames as if willing them together.
“C’mon,” pleads Carrie. “They have to see us!”
This has to be our moment—has to be. We deserve it. So we wait to be spotted, the fires roaring in their perfect triangle. I’m fifty feet away and I can still feel their heat. I keep thinking that at any second we’ll see a signal from the boat. A flash of light, a flare shot high into the sky. Something.
Anything.
I look at the kids and I see exactly what I feel—hope. But as five minutes turn into forty, without any signal from the boat, it fades. Slowly. Painfully. Our fires are beginning to die down. It’s getting dark on the beach, in every sense of the word.
I want to cry. I don’t.
I can’t.
For the kids’ sake. For my own sake, too. But this is so cruel.
“There’ll be another boat soon, you’ll see,” I say instead, trying to lift everyone’s spirits.
The kids know exactly what I’m trying to do. But rather than calling me on it—something they always used to do—they go along with me.
It’s as if we all suddenly realize that even though we’ve had our hopes dashed today, that’s better than having no hope at all.
How can it be that the more life throws at us, the stronger we become?
SITTING AT A SECLUDED BACK TABLE in Billy Rosa’s, the diviest of dive bars on the outskirts of Nassau, Devoux glanced at his Glashütte Pano Navigator watch yet again. He’d made the trip down to the Bahamas for one reason and one reason only.
Insurance.
If Carlyle needed backup, he’d be close by to intercede. But he was hoping that it wouldn’t come to that.
He knew they couldn’t afford even the slightest hiccup. Everything had to go as planned, tidy and neat. Like clockwork.
But here was Carlyle, over a half hour late. They were supposed to be discussing his flight plan one last time, and exactly how he should commit the murders.
What the hell was keeping him?
“It’s not what, but
who,
” explained Peter when finally he arrived, a few minutes later.
Peter then shared his recent conversation with Agent Ellen Pierce. The upshot was surprisingly simple, not to mention being an amazing case of serendipity. Jake Dunne was taking the fall for everything.
“Talk about a lucky break, huh?” said Peter before letting go with one of his obnoxious chuckles. He leaned in, his voice cutting back to a whisper. “For a minute there, I almost believed the bitch.”
Devoux rubbed his square chin, not yet sold either way. “What tipped you off?”
Peter reached into his pocket. “
This,
” he said. “She gave it to me so I can call her the minute I find Katherine and the brats.”
Staring at the satellite phone, Devoux nodded knowingly, a rocket on the uptake. “There’s a tracking device inside.”
“Exactly.”
“You sure you’re not just being paranoid, Peter?”
“No, she suspects something, all right. I’m not sure how or why, but she does.”
Now it was Devoux’s turn to reach into his pocket. He pulled out a Swiss Army knife, classic red.
“Give me the phone,” he said.
“What are you going to do?” asked Peter.
“Just give me the phone.”
Peter handed it over. “Be careful with it, okay? She can’t think I tampered with it.”
Devoux bypassed both the foldout scissors and the Phillips-head screwdriver on his knife. He went straight for the blade, wedging it hard between the seams of the phone.
With a flick of his wrist he shucked the phone open like an oyster.
“Trust me,” he said. “If you’re right about your little agent friend, tampering will be the least of our problems.”
THE AREA SURROUNDING Billy Rosa’s bar wasn’t exactly conducive to a stakeout. Come to think of it, thought Ellen, it wasn’t conducive to much of anything. To the left of the bar was the scorched frame of a burned-down warehouse, to the right a junkyard of rusted-out cars and trucks. Dotting the rest of the otherwise barren, sandy landscape was a smattering of withering sea-grape trees and bleached-out grass.
All in all, it was hardly a tourism brochure for the Bahamas in the making.
Still, Ellen made do.
First she parked her rental, a dark blue Honda Civic, amid the junkyard of cars, propping up the hood so it would blend in. Second, she nestled behind one of the sea-grape trees about seventy-five yards from the bar’s main entrance.
Third, she waited.
Despite the obvious fact that the sun was setting, the heat remained brutal. She was sweating from every pore, and her clothes were absolutely drenched. Even the leather strap of the high-powered binoculars draped around her neck was soaking wet.
Of all the places to have a drink on this island, why here, Peter Carlyle?
Ellen continued to wait, occasionally glancing at the receiver in her hand, which was picking up a signal from the phone she had given Carlyle. The receiver’s screen, about the size of a credit card, glowed bright with a 3-D topo-graphical map of the area, a red dot indicating Carlyle’s location right smack inside Billy Rosa’s bar.
She smiled. She had turned the creepy lawyer into a human LoJack device. Good thing, too. Now she didn’t have to follow him around the clock.
Just when it counted.
Like right now.
Staring at the entrance to the bar, Ellen scanned the dozen or so cars lined up in front. Some of them were only a notch above the clunkers in the adjacent junkyard, the rest being either modest compacts or Jeeps.
Then there was the one on the end. All she could think of was that bit from
Sesame Street: One of these things is not like the others . . .
It was a black Mercedes 600CL coupe. Ellen was no car fanatic, but she had learned a thing or two over the years while tailing drug dealers. When it came to Ferraris, Porsches, and Mercedes-Benzes, she could moonlight as a reporter for
Car and Driver
magazine.
Boasting over 500 horsepower and a price tag hovering around a hundred and fifty grand, the 600CL stood out no matter where it was parked. But here, outside Billy Rosa’s, it might as well have been painted purple with pink polka dots.
And the more Ellen stared at it, the more her gut told her the 600CL was somehow connected to Peter Carlyle.
Two minutes later her gut proved right.
Carlyle stepped out of the bar.
He wasn’t alone.
Ellen quickly peered through her binoculars. With Carlyle was a man of about the same height and build, maybe a little younger. He wore white linen pants, a blue silk shirt, and dark, mirrored sunglasses. And he was easily as creepy as Carlyle.
After chatting for a moment, the two went their separate ways. There was no handshake, barely even a nod from either of them.
Carlyle walked over to a white Buick Lucerne. The Mystery Man climbed behind the wheel of the hot Mercedes.
Ellen lowered the binoculars, waiting for both cars to leave.
Whatcha up to, Peter? Who’s your new friend? Anybody I should know about?
Only one way to find out.