Elizabeth Lowell - Death Echo

Emma crouched down, rubbed her hand over the glorious teak, and glanced casually at the electronics panel.

The scratch was right where it should be, which meant Blackbird ’s twin was still missing.

Good news or bad?

Both, probably. Luck seems to go that way.

Mac said nothing while Emma straightened and moved on to the galley. He decided he could get used to watching her.

“I doubt that Blackbird would go for much more than two, maybe three million after she’s commissioned,” he said. “Depends on the electronic toys and the demand in the marketplace.”

“And on how stubborn the present owner is about selling.” She shrugged, then faced Mac. Nice wasn’t getting the job done. Time for something else. “Price isn’t my problem. Getting the boat is. So just who owns Blackbird and how do I get hold of him? Make my life easy and I’ll see that you get paid for your time. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Sell your time?”

Her eyes were clear, green, patient, cool.

Stubborn.

Mac’s smile was thin. He knew all about stubborn. He saw it in his mirror every morning. The razor edge of her tongue didn’t bother him. He’d been insulted a lot worse for a lot less reason.

But it meant that he didn’t have to play the amiable and easy game any longer.

“Yeah, that’s what I do,” he said, smiling. “Sell my time.”

This smile was different. It had Emma wishing the gun in her backpack was in her hand.

“How much time do you have on your clock?” she asked.

Blackbird moved restlessly, responding to a gust of wind. Mac didn’t have to look away from Emma to know that the afternoon westerlies had strengthened. The overcast was now a faint diamond haze.

Time to get going.

“I’m delivering the boat to Blue Water Marine Group,” Mac said. “Today.”

“In Seattle?”

“Rosario. San Juan Islands.”

That could be checked. And would be.

“Is Blue Water Marine Group a broker?” she asked.

“Sometimes.”

Emma throttled a flash of impatience. “Do they own this boat?” He shrugged.

“Do you have their telephone number?” she pressed.

“I use the VHF. That’s a radio.”

She told herself that she didn’t see a gleam of amusement in his nearly black eyes, but she didn’t believe it. She hoped he couldn’t see the gleam of temper in hers. She felt like a dumb trout rising for pieces of indigestible metal.

“I’d like to go with you to see how Blackbird rides,” she said evenly.

“I don’t want to sell my boss a pig.”

“I’d like to have you along.” He shrugged again. “No can do. Insurance only covers the transit captain.”

“I’ll risk it.”

“Blue Water Marine Group won’t.”

Emma knew a wall when she ran flat into it. She pulled her sunglasses out of her crop top and put them on. “Is there some way I can contact you?”

“I’m right here.”

She flashed her teeth. “So am I. I won’t be for long. How do people who aren’t standing on your feet get hold of you?”

“I move around a lot,” he said. “That’s the life of the transport skipper.”

“But you have a cell phone, right, one that rings almost anywhere?”

Mac decided that baiting wasn’t going to get him anywhere with this woman. She had a temper, and she kept it to herself. So he pulled out one of the stained business cards he always carried in his jeans.

She took it and slid it into her backpack as she walked to the swim step. “See you around, Captain.”

Mac didn’t doubt it.

Nor did he doubt that someone would be running his fingerprints soon. She had handled that card almost as carefully as a crime-scene tech.

DAY ONE

BELLTOWN MARINA

AFTERNOON

Taras Demidov leaned against the sturdy pipe railing that kept careless pedestrians from falling fifteen feet into the waters of Belltown Marina. Part of him was amused by the railing. It summarized the difference between Russia and America. Russia believed citizens should watch out for themselves; if they got hurt, it wasn’t the government’s fault. America’s citizens believed the state should take care of them like children. Russia accepted a world of good and evil. Americans believed only in good.

Demidov enjoyed working with a culture that believed in God but not in the Devil. Americans were so genuinely surprised when flames burned through their flesh to the bone.

Unfortunately, the world wasn’t made up of Americans. The so-called nations of the Former Soviet Union understood about the reality of evil. Some of them contributed to it at every opportunity.

A movement in the marina caught his eye. He lifted his camera again, bracing the long lens on the railing. A light touch of his finger and the automatic focus homed in on the brunette who had reappeared from the cabin of Blackbird. Even though he knew that he wouldn’t be able to identify her at this distance, he took a series of quick pictures. Digital cameras were useful for fast transmission of images, but they just didn’t have the resolution of a good, slow film camera.

But tourists carried digital cameras. As long as he appeared to be a tourist he could vanish among the crowds. He was pushing it by having a long lens on the digital frame, something few tourists had. He wasn’t particularly worried. People saw what they expected to see. If anyone asked him a question, he would answer it in genial American English.

To the crowds around him, Demidov was just one more sightseer enjoying Seattle’s long summer days.

That startling, useful naïveté about strangers hadn’t changed since Demidov had first come to the U.S. many years ago, as a young commercial attaché in the Russian Consulate in San Francisco. He had been amazed then at his freedom of movement from city to city, state to state. He was still amazed. His movements were unwatched, unmarked, anonymous. As long as he stayed away from any Russian Federation consular buildings, he didn’t have to worry about FBI counterintelligence watchers.

All he had to do was wait for Shurik Temuri to appear and claim Blackbird . Unless the sullen old wolverine was disguised as a supple brown-haired female, Temuri was staying hidden in the background. Shadow man in a shadow world.

As was Demidov, who tracked the woman through the camera lens. She walked like an American, open and confident. Maybe she was the captain’s “friend.” Maybe she was a player. If she got close enough to the camera, he would find out if Moscow had any record of her.

Like a hunter slipping from blind to blind, Demidov tried to take pictures of the woman as she approached. If the crowd around him moved, he went with it. He was careful never to be alone against the sky. That could attract attention. Attention was the death of many a careful plan. And man.

He lined up for another attempt. She was almost close enough for a useful shot. He held his breath, waiting, waiting…

At the last instant the woman turned away, attracted by the white flash of a seagull diving for food thrown by laughing tourists. Turning away like that was a trick experienced agents had, an instinct that made them duck.

Or it could be what it looked like. Coincidence.

Demidov swore silently and turned in another direction, giving her his back as she reached the top of the ramp and slipped into a group of pedestrians. Like the woman, he didn’t want to give away his identity to strangers.

When he turned back, camera and hands shielding his face, he couldn’t find the woman. His mouth flattened. Thinking quickly, he took more pictures of nothing. He could follow her or follow Blackbird .