The Four Corners Of The Sky (56 page)

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Brad admitted. “That’s something to worry about.”

Brad
should
worry about it, Georgette urged. He should just sign those divorce papers immediately. Remember: his first responsibility was to his company Hopper Jets and to his mother Mama Spring and to his sister Brandy, whose husband had left her. Brad had to take care of his nephews. Annie could take care of herself.

Brad felt very calmed by Georgette’s tone. He found himself wondering what she was looking like these days. He told Georgette that tomorrow he was going to fly up to Emerald to visit Sam in the hospital. He had always—and he choked up even thinking about it—loved Sam. Maybe Georgette could meet him at the hospital and go out to dinner with him.

Georgette didn’t think so.

A
nnie had flown in and out of Boca Chica Key any number of times; she routinely clocked fifty flight hours a month as a jet instructor and often did so off Key West waters. So she’d been more accustomed than Dan to procedures at the security checkpoint, where MPs checked them in at 07.53 hours, 07, 07, 2001, and instructed them to put their personal belongings out for inspection, including their cell phones, which were not permitted inside the facility. Such things, she advised Dan, had to be tolerated at a high-security military facility.

But Dan didn’t see why he should have to pass through a scanner as if he were a grocery item. He didn’t like handing over his Swiss Army knife to the military and he said so.

The MP ignored him and crisply saluted Annie. “Please follow me, ma’am.”

At 7:59 a.m., in an
NAS
staff room, the young couple sat at a large oval rosewood conference table. They might have been waiting for any sort of business to start its meeting, except that Annie wore a white Navy uniform and Dan had a Miami Police Department badge hanging from his rumpled blazer and the business was U.S. Government business. There were twenty chairs on rollers around the table, sixteen of them still empty. Two uniformed naval officers, one senior to the other, their faces set, displayed excellent posture at the far end. After introductions, Lt. Commander Bok and Chief Warrant Officer Sims had nothing to say except “Mr. Fierson will be with us in a minute.” When Dan stood to stretch, loosening his tie, both officers turned their heads, not their shoulders, to glance at him briefly, then returned to the file folders they were studying.

In the deep silence of the room the sudden noise of doors opening was a shock. First slipped in a young, bone-thin woman in a stylish black pants suit, with a white shirt; she wore a headset, carried a clipboard. Two male civilians stepped around her and moved to the table. One was the chunky
FBI
agent who’d been wearing the porkpie hat when he’d arrested Rafael Rook in the parking lot near Rest Eternal in Miami. “Hi, Dan,” he said.

“Hi, Willie. How’s it feel? You one-up me. State one-ups you.”

“We all want the same thing.” The agent pulled out a chair.

“Think so?” Dan asked amiably. “Annie, this is Willie Grunberg. He’s been after your dad as long as I have.”

The third man to enter was older, taller, thinner, wore a much more expensive suit and had the rich slightly waved gray hair that accompanies institutional success. Indeed, his dark pinstriped suit, substantial and imposingly tailored, gave off an impression of such consequence that the suit appeared to be wearing the man inside it. He nodded affably. “Good morning, everyone. I’m McAllister Fierson. Apologies. Fog delay at Andrews. Why don’t we introduce ourselves?”

No one saw any reason why they shouldn’t.

Fierson took his seat at the head of the table. “Pardon me one second.” His assistant handed him a page she took from her clipboard, which he initialed. The door opened again. The man who walked into the room this time was such a shock to Annie that surprise brought her to her feet. “Trevor?”

In this room and wearing a regimental tie and sports jacket with his button-down shirt and chinos, Trevor looked so out of his habitual setting that she almost didn’t recognize him. “Where are Amy and Eliot?” she blurted out.

“Her cat, my dog,” Trevor explained to the others in the room. “They’re with a pet sitter. Good one.”

The thin young woman with the clipboard laughed as if to express her amazement that they were wasting their time on cats and dogs.

Annie turned to Dan. “This is Trevor Smithwall. He lives next door. Trevor, what are you
doing
here?”

Trevor held out his hand to everybody, who had to introduce themselves all over again. He told them he was “Agent Smithwall, Justice.”

“Sergeant Hart, Vice,” replied Dan.

Annie was wondering if she had herself unknowingly given Trevor the means to pursue her father. How stupid not to be more suspicious of his willingness to use his
FBI
resources to help. “Trevor?” she said again but he seemed to think that it would be inappropriate to meet her eyes.

“Let’s begin,” suggested McAllister Fierson. “And I want everyone to feel comfortable. Lieutenant Goode, your father has placed us in an awkward…” He looked at Trevor.

Trevor said, “Situation.”

“My dad is a con artist,” Annie replied. “I don’t see how his ‘situation’ could involve the Navy, the—”

The thin young woman suddenly cursed in a loud whisper into her headset. “No, you need to get here at 8:25!” Everyone turned. She noticed their looking at her and told the man in the expensive suit, “Sorry!”

Fierson lifted an admonishing finger in her direction then turned back to table. “So we—” he bowed slightly to the flag in the corner “we find ourselves in this, as Agent Smithwall put it, situation.”

As he seemed to be speaking to Annie, she replied, “Which situation is it, sir?”

Fierson’s assistant opened a folder and placed it in front of him. Glancing in it, he replied, “A serious one.” There were details he would not be able to share; they were protected by the government’s claim that it needed to protect them. “But shall we be candid? We all know your father has, or had, in his possession a certain artifact to which the Cuban government, specifically—” he checked his notes “—the Museo Habana in Plaza de la Revolución, is laying claim. A relic that is reputedly a quote ‘national treasure.’”

Annie asked, “The Queen of the Sea?”

He nodded. “We’d like your help in solving this problem with Cuba, without further embarrassment to anyone. Your father is not yet in police custody, although charged with a number of felonies.”

“Sixty-one counts,” threw in Willie, the chunky
FBI
agent. He thrust his finger aggressively at Annie. “We want that statue back and we want the jewels that go in it. It belongs to Cuba. Your dad’s got that statue or he hid it someplace and he’s figuring to unload it for some real dirty money. He’s a fugitive. And you know where he is!”

Fierson ignored the agent. “Lt. Goode, by protecting your father, you have made yourself vulnerable to serious charges.”

“Like 10 years worth,” the chunky agent couldn’t stop himself from saying.

Fierson held out a palm to silence him. “If you can assist us in recovering this artifact, and arrange for your father’s return, his problems, and yours, become less…urgent.”

Before Annie could reply, Lt. Commander Bok assured Mr. Fierson that to serve the United States government in any way they asked was both Lieutenant Goode’s duty and her privilege. Chief Warrant Officer Sims couldn’t agree more.

Annie sat straighter in her seat, hands folded tensely but quietly on the table. “Mr. Fierson, should I have a lawyer present?” She glanced at Dan. “I mean, before I speak as to my knowledge of any stolen object?”

“Or the felon that stole it,” growled the
FBI
man. “I bet you know exactly where Peregrine is.”

“I think I can safely say,” Fierson gestured at the officers and (sternly) at the fat agent, “I think we can safely say that a lawyer won’t be necessary, since any information Lieutenant Goode may have obtained from her father—”

“Or from Rafael Rook,” Dan interjected.

Fierson nodded agreeably. “She obtained without being made in any way aware of its criminal nature. And any subsequent facto actions she took to relieve, comfort, or assist her father or his accomplice, she took in ignorance of the fact that they had committed felonies. There was therefore no criminal facilitation by the lieutenant.”

Dan muttered, “So much for
ignorantia juris non excusat.”

The thin young woman laughed but quickly stopped herself.

After a brief glare at them both, Fierson held up for view the Photostat of the sketch of the Queen of the Sea, the one that Raffy had already shown Annie. “Let’s put our cards, all our cards, on the table,” he suggested.

Annie motioned with her hands as if they were spilling those cards before him. “Yes, sir.”

“Your father has somehow acquired this valuable object, a gold and jeweled Spanish Renaissance reliquary known as—” he checked the piece of paper “—
La Reina Coronada
del Mar
. Sources indicate he has a buyer of some sort who intends to donate the statue to the diocese of the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart in Miami.” Again, Fierson checked his pages. “‘
El siglo decimosexto reliquia dorada
’ appears to have a certain religious significance. We already have in our possession a small, quite authentic silver case alleged to have been removed from the statue, containing a so-called thorn from the crucifixion crown of Christ. Its existence strongly suggests the authenticity of the statue from which it was taken.”

Willie set a small package in bubble-wrap on the table. He unwrapped a little silver box with empty prongs on its lid. “This goes straight to the Cuban government,” he told them. It was the box Rafael had dug up at Hialeah racetrack.

Dan gave Annie a knowing glance. Obviously, Raffy, imprisoned somewhere here on the base, had given up the reliquary and who knows how much information about Jack Peregrine with it.

Fierson picked up the box and examined it. When he set it down, Willie grabbed it and wrapped it back into its package. Fierson turned to Annie. “We know this box was given to Rafael Rook by your father. We know Peregrine recently traveled to St. Louis to retrieve jewels belonging to the statue.”

Annie leaned around Dan. “Thanks a lot, Trevor!”

Trevor flushed. “Hang on, Annie.”

She stood up. “You hang on! Were you already involved in this mess of my father’s when I met you, or did you get involved after I came to you for help because you were my
friend?
”

Trevor’s ears darkened. “By the book, Annie. Your motto.”

Officer Sims interrupted them. “Lieutenant Goode, your mission is not to analyze. Your mission is to obtain a certain object and locate a certain person for your government. Is that not so, Mr. Fierson?”

Fierson wrinkled his mouth. “Let me assure you…Annie…that our national and strategic interests are involved here.” He stopped, closed and tapped his folder. “We not only want the statue back, we understand that some of its jewels have been placed by your father in a bank account in Havana. We’d like you to go get them.”

Annie scowled at Trevor. “Even if the emeralds and rubies are real and even if they’re in this bank—my dad’s just a crook. Why is this so important to the U.S. government?”

“That’s right.” Dan stood, leaning over the table at Fierson. “The U.S. didn’t steal the Queen, you aren’t trying to sell it and what’s it worth anyhow? A few million bucks? Chump change,” he growled. “So why are you here?”

Fierson turned a page in his folder. “Actually, even forgetting the national antiquity value, the emeralds and the 135-carat ruby are worth approximately forty-five million dollars. But you’re correct, Mr. Hart, the question is, why should we care?”

“And the answer?”

Fierson again nodded at the flag. “We don’t want Cuba to have the advantage of us in this matter.”

“Right,” snarled Dan. “Cuba’s so big and powerful.”

Dismissively Fierson swiveled from him toward Annie. “While we deeply care to see the people of Cuba once again living in freedom…all in good time. And while we know that a Communist regime will not cherish this Christian relic as a…as a relic, still there is the matter of the press this incident could cause if the Cubans were to make a public fuss about an American criminal robbing them and American law enforcement simply dropping the ball. But settling these claims—between Cuba and the Catholic Church, is not your responsibility, Annie. You produce the statue. Produce the jewels missing from it. And assist us in locating your father. You are relieved of other duties for the following two weeks in order to carry out these tasks.”

Annie pivoted in her chair toward Lt. Commander Bok. “But sir, I’m already under orders to report back to Annapolis on Monday at 0600 hours! I’m scheduled to test the F-35 Lightning II at Air Systems Command.”

With a glance at his superior, Chief Warrant Officer Sims answered for the Navy: They had already discussed with her base commander Dicky Campbell the scheduled test flight at
ASC
. That test would take place as planned but with a different pilot. In official records, however, the pilot performing the test would be Lt. Anne Peregrine Goode.

“Fake alibi,” said Willie, who was ignored. He picked in disgust at a cinnamon bun he took from a wrinkled bag.

Next to Annie, Dan startled everyone with a sudden hard whack of the table. “Why fly a test? Just have the news announce she broke the record!”

Annie hushed him. “I can handle this.” She turned to Lt. Commander Bok. “Sir, can’t this statue thing wait till I do the test or can’t somebody else go to Cuba—”

“Lieutenant!” snapped Bok.

“Sir! I have an opportunity to break a—”

“Lieutenant Goode!”

Furious, Annie bit her mouth closed.

“This is bullshit,” grumbled Dan.

Fierson’s voice sharpened. “Young man, we’ve heard enough from you. If you don’t want to be removed from the room, please keep quiet.” The government official turned his back on the detective. “Annie,” he soothingly went on, “I admire your desire to serve your country by testing the Lightning II. But this Queen of the Sea matter involves your country as well. We might not care for the kind of nation Cuba has become, but we can’t have an American con artist stealing its historic treasures. Can we?”