Wildfire (25 page)

"But now?"

"I really don't know." Harold Tisbury shook his head sadly.

"I still think we have a chance to turn him back around," Sam Tisbury said. "We convinced him to buy that new boat and get out on the water by himself for a while. It was a nice long sail down to the Bahamas. Alfred's had several days to get himself refocused and to forget about Lisa. We just have to hope that it worked."

"Did you get hold of him and let him know that the time for the meeting has been moved up, to accommodate Crane?"

"No, not yet, but that shouldn't be a problem. We exchanged faxes yesterday. He was just off Freeport, in the Northwest Providence Channel, and he assured me that he would be at Cat Island in plenty of time to make the meeting. I would expect him to be somewhere between Nassau and the Berry Islands by now."

"His favorite sailing grounds." Harold Tisbury nodded. "How's the weather holding out down here?"

"Apparently not too bad. Winds are fair to moderate, five to fifteen knots, but with some erratic shifts to the northwest. I suspect that's going to give him a few problems when he gets into the Sound, but he seemed to think that it was perfect sailing weather for his new boat. I got the impression that he was enjoying the challenge."

"Good," Harold Tisbury rasped. "The weather will force him to pay attention to his sailing and keep his mind away from the past." The elderly industrialist seemed to want to continue with that thought, but then shook his head in irritation and said instead: "Are you going to make another attempt to contact him about the change in time?"

Sam Tisbury nodded. "The way he described his planned course, he's likely to be there at the villa sometime around noon tomorrow. But just in case he's still hanging around offshore, I'm going to send him another fax—confirming the new time—when I get into Nassau, which should be sometime around two or three tomorrow afternoon."

"That late?"

"I've got a couple of stops to make first."

"Part of your diversionary trip?"

Sam Tisbury nodded. "I want to check in with a couple of our friendly law enforcement types on the Royal Bahamas Defense Force, make sure that we don't have any unusual DEA or FBI activities going on in the area."

"An excellent precaution." The elder Tisbury nodded approvingly. "But don't you think you're cutting things a little too close with your flights?"

"No, I don't think so." Sam Tisbury shook his head. "The weather front is a long way off. I've arranged for a private hop from Freeport to Nassau, and then a separate plane and pilot out of Oakes Field down to the Cutlass Bay Club airstrip. Once I get there, I'll use one of the jeeps to drive up to the villa. I figure I should be there just around five o'clock. In the worst case, if I get a flat on the way up and have to hike, five-thirty at the latest."

"What about Alfred? Do you think we're giving him enough notice about the schedule change?"

"More than enough." Sam Tisbury nodded reassuringly. "That new boat's rigged with a 75-horsepower diesel, so he can always drop the sails and motor in if need be. If he's anywhere in the Sound at all, he'll dock at the marina in plenty of time to make the meeting."

Sam Tisbury thought about how long it was going to take him to reach the southern end of Cat Island by his multi-stop diversionary route, including an overnight stopover in Miami, and sighed inwardly. It came out to about twenty-six hours longer than a direct flight to the Hawks Nest airstrip in one of the corporation's private Learjets, and then a short five-mile drive to the villa.

There would be a definite loss of comfort, as well as time, but Sam Tisbury had long since shrugged that sort of thing off as inconsequential. It was far more important that he and his father arrive at the Cat Island villa separately, and in as inconspicuous a manner as possible. Just like the other ICER committee members.

"Assuming, of course, that he does intend to be there," the elder Tisbury reminded.

"Yes, of course."

Harold Tisbury was quiet for a long moment, then said, "I understand that he may have someone with him on the boat."

"One of the yacht dealership employees." Sam Tisbury nodded. "A woman named Anne-Marie. Apparently it was part of the package. Delivery and shakedown cruise. She sailed the boat down to his summer home."

"By herself?" the old man asked innocently.

Sam Tisbury nodded.

"Do you think, possibly . . ."

"The broker described her as a topnotch sailor, extremely athletic and quite attractive," Sam Tisbury said. "He also assured me that they look upon Alfred as one of their special customers. Given all the extenuating circumstances, I would think it's all very possible."

"I see," Harold Tisbury rasped, and then seemed to lose himself in thought.

Sam Tisbury sat patiently, wondering—not for the first time—if his longtime mentor, partner, and father was finally starting to go senile.

"So that's why you suggested the idea of vacations as a cover," Harold Tisbury finally said.

"If the FBI is focused on Alfred, then they will see a wealthy older man on a sailing cruise to the Bahamas with a younger companion." Sam Tisbury nodded. "This time of year there should be dozens, if not hundreds of Alfreds—and their
companions,"
he added significantly, "down there in the islands."

"Including us."

"Yes." Sam Tisbury smiled. "Sergio and Jonathan seemed to appreciate the added touch."

"I'm sure they did, as do I," Harold Tisbury said. And then: "What about you?"

"Sandra has a previous engagement." Sam Tisbury shrugged. "But your grandson and I are going to meet down at the Hawks Nest marina on Sunday morning. We've made arrangements to charter a boat, spend a few days fishing together."

"Excellent idea." Harold Tisbury nodded approvingly. "He's a good boy. I think you're doing very well with him."

"I still haven't managed to spend as much time with him as I would have liked, but I suppose that's the disadvantage of having children later in life," Sam Tisbury said.

"Thirty-five wasn't so old to be starting a family."

"No, I suppose not. But just the same, I was gone a lot when he was growing up, and now that I have the time to do things with him, he's the one who's not around."

"No, he's out learning the business from the ground up, just like you were when you were his age," the elder Tisbury reminded his son. "And besides, look at what we've trusted him with. Can you
imagine
what you would have done if we'd had the Crucible process then, when you were his age, and I'd entrusted the development of a test-program to
you?"

"I think I would have been overwhelmed by the responsibility," Sam Tisbury said honestly. "I guess things were different then."

"Maybe, maybe not." The elder Tisbury shrugged. "As I recall, we took on some pretty serious situations when you were twenty-three, and we did just fine."

"As serious as this?"

"You remember how we dealt with that miners' strike in fifty-eight? When they were going to shut down our entire South American operation, just when the market was starting to skyrocket?"

Sam Tisbury nodded silently.

"You think we were wrong?"

"Then? At first I didn't know what to think."

"And looking back?"

"We did what we had to do." Sam Tisbury shrugged.

"Exactly." Harold Tisbury nodded with a smile. "And I expect my namesake to do exactly the same thing. He's a Tisbury, and we Tisburys do whatever is necessary to get the job done. Just as we've always done."

"He's a stubborn kid," Sam Tisbury said, shaking his head. "We've had some pretty serious arguments. For a while there, I was afraid I'd lost him. In fact," the younger Tisbury added, "sometimes I still am. I often wonder if his mother's—what should I call it, activism?—has had too much of an influence on him."

"Your mother, God rest her soul, never really approved of my work, or yours either, but it never stopped us from doing what we had to
do ... in
fact, were
destined
to do."

"Mom was pretty persuasive, in her own way." Sam Tisbury nodded, a sad smile appearing on his face.

"Yes, she was, but it never stopped us, did it?"

"No, it didn't, but it still hurts every now and then."

A pained look seemed to cross Harold Tisbury's face.

"We Tisburys have always paid a price for our dreams and our aspirations," the old man rasped. "The men
and
the women. Sometimes they pay a higher price than we do, and sometimes that price seems more than we can bear, but we always go forward, no matter what, because it's in our nature . . . and our blood."

"I remember those arguments."

"Oh, God, yes, we had some good ones, didn't we?" The old man chuckled, seemingly drawn out of his temporary doldrums. "You were goddamned stubborn, and we had some hellacious arguments, but I didn't lose you, did I?"

"No, you didn't."

"And you won't lose
your
son either," Harold Tisbury said firmly. "Remember how you were after the strike, when the FBI and the trade commission started in on their investigation, and you were convinced that we were going to prison?"

"Pissed, scared, and confused, all at the same time."

"But you held together—that was the important thing. And when it was over, you remember what we did?"

Sam Tisbury nodded slowly. "Yes, we went out fishing."

"That's right," the elder Tisbury said. "We fished and we drank and we talked. We spent a lot of time talking, as I recall. Far more than we did fishing or drinking. And by the time we came back, you'd changed."

"Yes, I remember," Sam Tisbury said, a half smile forming on his lips. "You were pretty persuasive out there."

"I was just putting it all together for you." Harold Tisbury shrugged. "Telling you things you already knew. You just hadn't accepted them yet."

Sam Tisbury was silent for a few moments, staring down at the new scrambled satellite phone on his desk. Then he looked up at his father. "So who came up with the idea for this fishing trip?" he asked.

"You two get out there on that boat, get to know each other again," the elder Tisbury said with a knowing smile. "I think you'll be amazed at how much Eric has changed."

Chapter Fifteen

Deep in the bowels of the J. Edgar Hoover Building at Tenth and Pennsylvania avenues in Washington, D.C., Assistant Special Agent in Charge A1 Grynard sat in conference with three of his top-ranking fellow FBI agents whose supervisory responsibilities included violent crimes, white collar crimes, and special operations for the entire bureau. Also in attendance was their boss, the assistant director in charge of the Criminal Investigations Division, and an inspector from the Office of Liaison and International Affairs.

Six identical sets of file summaries were laid out on the table in the small, secured conference room. For the past two hours Grynard had been briefing the three investigative section chiefs, the LIA inspector, and the CID-AD on his case. Finally the covert operations section chief looked up from the briefing materials.

"You know what you've got here, don't you, Al?" he said to Grynard.

"What's that?"

"A goddamned political car bomb that's all primed and ready to go."

"Why so?" Al Grynard asked. He was pretty sure he already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it from a senior-ranking agent who had worked a number of cases just like this in his highly regarded career.

"It's obvious that these Fish and Wildlife agents tripped across one hell of an illicit operation. The way it reads here, we're talking something in the neighborhood of a hundred-million-dollar conspiracy—between some high-up right-wing types in the previous administration, and some high-up, big-money industrial types in big business—to neutralize the major environmental activist groups."

The LIA inspector and the other two investigative section chiefs nodded in agreement. The AD had a contemplative look on his freshly sunburned face.

"The trouble is, you didn't nail them all when you had the chance," he grumbled.

The man in charge of investigative operations for the FBI was not a happy man. First of all, he was irritated at having been called back to D.C. from his long-planned family vacation on the Chesapeake Bay shoreline. And secondly, he didn't like the political implications of what he was hearing from a man he considered one of the more aggressive and effective supervisory field agents in the entire bureau.

But the AD hadn't risen to the directorate level of the Federal Bureau of Investigation by allowing his investigative instincts to be hindered by personal considerations, much less by politics.

"Do you all agree there has to be another layer out there that we haven't touched yet?" Grynard said, ignoring the AD's implied criticism.

"Far as I'm concerned, there's no doubt about it," the representative from the office of liaison and international affairs replied. "No way in hell a couple of clowns like Abercombie and Wolfe are going to have direct access to the money and the influence it took to create that underground training center right in the middle of Yellowstone National Park."

"I assume we're still trying to track back on the money?" the AD asked.

"Yes, sir." The white-collar crimes chief nodded.

"I still don't see how somebody can build a goddamned underground training center in the middle of a goddamned national park, and we can't figure out who paid the bills," the AD grumbled.

"Actually, it turns out not to be all that difficult if you set up electronic transfers with—" the white collar crimes chief started to say, and then quickly realized that his boss didn't want to listen to any technical explanations on this particular morning. What he wanted to hear about were results.

"Besides," the AD went on, "it seems to me that for this whole deal to be strictly a government operation, you'd have to be talking Assistant Secretary level involvement at an absolute minimum."

"And probably White House connections to boot," the violent crimes section chief added.

"Goes without saying," the head of the white-collar crimes section agreed quickly.