Keith Thomson - Twice a Spy

“How about we get out and let this thing keep on chugging to sea, so that when the cops get to it, there’s nobody aboard?” Charlie said. “We can use one of the life rafts to get back to the island.” He thought back to what Bream had said: Anybody who wants to sneak onto Martinique can pull up in a million places by boat.

“They’re also sending a helicopter.” Drummond indicated the walkie-talkie.

“Super. With a searchlight?”

As he sometimes did, Drummond massaged his temples, as if trying to trip the button that activated his memory. “Sorry,” he said in conclusion.

“Okay, how about a more basic survival question?” In this respect, Charlie thought, Drummond’s tradecraft was practically ingrained. “If you were now, hypothetically, a fugitive, what would you do?”

“Swim to shore.”

“But they’d still see you.”

“Not if I swam underwater.”

“It’s got to be a couple of miles at least.”

“Well, that would be my best course of action, if I were a fugitive.”

The distant cry, which Charlie had thought of as a seabird’s, grew louder, into a whine. He recognized it. Helicopter rotor.

He gripped his door handle. “Well, either way, we need to get out of here now.”

“This way,” Drummond said, unlatching the door to the cargo hold.

“What difference does it make?” Charlie asked.

Pushing open the door, Drummond pointed into the dark hold. The glow from the console outlined walls blooming with vests, masks, fins, and cylindrical tanks like the one that had flown out the rear door and onto the runway.

“I guess you’ve scuba dived off an amphibious rescue vehicle before too,” said Charlie, who had never even snorkeled.

Drummond pulled on a wet suit. “Maybe so.”

A minute later the whine of the rotor turned into a series of raucous thumps. The moonlight delineated the approaching helicopter from the night sky. Dressed like frogmen, Charlie and Drummond sat on the edge of the open cargo doorway.

“Some handicapper I am, thinking coming here would be simple,” Charlie said, effectively to himself.

With a splash, Drummond fell backward into the sea.

Charlie followed suit, sinking into water that was warm and, better, ink black.

In a preposterously small rented Peugeot, Stanley and Hadley raced to Les Trois-Ilets, a seaside village off the coast where the Amphibus had just been found.

Undercover as the well-heeled Atchisons, they checked into the five-star Hotel L’Imperatrice, a remnant of the 1960s’ embrace of garish opulence. The lobby was dominated by a lush rain forest replete with a three-story coral cliff enshrouded by luminescent mist, the result of a booming waterfall and as many filtered spotlights as a Broadway stage. At the frothy base of the fall was an emerald lagoon, populated by fish representing every shade of neon.

Stanley thought of the hotel as the perfect venue for the espionage fantasies of his youth, in which the Ritzes of the world constituted the everyday operational locale. In reality such accommodations had been far from the norm. Even in Paris, the job took him to the sorts of hotels that offered hourly rates. His agents weren’t just people willing to sell out their own countrymen; they were willing to do it for a pittance. Not quite habitues of the posh spots.

With a Serge Gainsbourg melody in his head, he walked onto the bamboo terrace that extended from the open-air lobby and overlooked the purple-black Baie de Fort-de-France.

“Hoping to spot our rabbits swimming ashore?” asked Hadley, joining him at the rail.

The inability to do anything frustrated him. “At least we’re close to the action in the event there is some.”

She checked her BlackBerry. “The local officials have come to the conclusion that Drummond Clark is an international money launderer and arms dealer named Marvin Lesser. Old cover, mistaken identity, or whatever, it’s working better as a pretext for a manhunt than anything we could have come up with.”

“So what can we do now?” Anything seemed preferable to sitting idly.

Hadley hesitated, then asked, “How about we get a bite?”

“I guess we can keep an eye on the bay.”

The hotel’s outdoor restaurant, Les Etoiles, was lit for the most part by candles and tiki torches, but also, as advertised, by the stars, beneath which the Baie de Fort-de-France was a mosaic, flickering from black to white. Along with a smattering of other late diners, Stanley and Hadley were serenaded by a calypso band in tuxedos the same turquoise as the pool. They both ate Colombo, Martinique’s national dish, a coconut milk curry of fish, served with spicy fried plantains, at a price probably close to the per capita income. Stanley would have happily quit after the salad course. Primed for a hunt, his body wanted no part of food.

Hadley set her BlackBerry on the table. “You ready for the latest?”

“I can make the time.” He ate a forkful of fish for appearance’s sake.

“Our pilot friend went straight home to his apartment in Anse Mitan, about five miles from here. He microwaved a burrito for dinner, and had”-she glanced at the BlackBerry’s display-“five red stripes: I’m going to have to check my codebook.”

“You’ll do better with this.” Stanley tapped the leather-bound drinks menu propped between a candleholder and the pepper mill. “Red Stripe is a beer brewed in Jamaica. If our boy’s had five, he’s probably not planning to drive. Under any other circumstances, I’d say: ‘I hope not.’ ”

“Currently he’s surfing the Web. No calls, no new e-mails, two text messages, one sent to a local woman asking her if she’d be at Le Squash for happy hour tomorrow, one from a Dutch woman who tends bar at a nightclub in Fort-de-France inquiring about his plans later tonight.”

“She looking to book a ‘flight’ with him?”

“It would seem so. He didn’t reply.”

“Maybe he’s waiting to hear from two men.”

With a groan, Hadley kicked Stanley’s shin, as she would have if she knew him well. “Those men would know that contacting him by telephone or text would effectively be contacting us.”

“Unless it’s encrypted text.”

“Good point.” Hadley began typing a cable.

“How about this?” Stanley asked. “Do we know where on the Web he’s surfing?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. EBay-auto parts.”

“We’re capturing it?”

“Are you in the market for auto parts too?” Hadley resumed eating.

“When I was in Algiers, an MI6 tech intercepted bad guys’ messages embedded in online classified ads for used bathroom fixtures. They were using an encryption algorithm to mix the secret text into the pixels of the photos in a way that didn’t distort the pictures.”

She paused, fork midway to her mouth. “ Used bathroom fixtures? ”

“Would you ever look at classified ads for used bathroom fixtures, let alone buy a used bathroom fixture over the Internet?”

She smiled. He sat back and admired her. No acting required.

Throughout the rest of their meal, thoughts of covert operations receded.

The black water lightened to violet. Landfall. Charlie wasn’t sure whether he was happier about that or the fact that he hadn’t needed to use his speargun en route.

He and Drummond surfaced about fifty yards short of a secluded beach that shone silver in the moonlight. On the dark and densely wooded hills, thousands of lights glowed like embers. A gentle breeze whistled through palm fronds. Charlie thought of his surroundings in terms of obstacles to circumventing the local authorities-who were undoubtedly scouring the island-and getting to the Laundromat. Contacting Bream was out. The BirdBook had been left in the overnight bag last seen in the customs office. They had fled the airport with only what they had on them, wallets and the pill bottle Drummond always kept close at hand.