Keith Thomson - Twice a Spy

In the next seat, adding to the illusion, DeSoto steered the boat with one hand and held a thermos of espresso in the other. Sure his tan was too orange, his teeth were too white, and his hair was too fake, but when Charlie squinted against the sun’s glare off the water, the real estate agent passed for Cary Grant.

Charlie might have enjoyed the experience except for the police cutter bobbing ahead, a monstrous black thirty-caliber machine gun mounted on its foredeck. If the policemen glanced at the Riva through binoculars and recognized the fugitive Marvin Lesser-or if the forest of instruments sprouting from the cutter’s wheelhouse included a camera with facial recognition software-Charlie would wind up in a cell. Then things would get bad.

Drummond lay behind Charlie and DeSoto on the sundeck, his recently Clairol-ed black hair flapping aft; Charlie had gone “Golden Sunshine” himself. Drummond’s lethargy was genuine, the side effect of his medication. Charlie thought the attendant crankiness added a bit of plausibility to his role as a man reluctant to part with twenty-eight million of his hard-earned greenbacks.

“So what do you think of the Empress Josephine?” DeSoto asked.

Preoccupied by the policemen, Charlie struggled to find a response. “Terrific golf course, underrated empress.”

DeSoto laughed as only someone hoping to sell a $28 million property could.

Charlie watched the policeman at the machine gun crane his neck to speak to the pilot. Eyes glued to the Riva, the pilot reached for the controls. Water began lathering around the cutter’s stern and, sure enough, the craft launched onto a course to intercept the runabout.

Intolerant of gaps in conversation, DeSoto said, “I always say that golf is the only game where you strive for a subpar performance.”

Charlie faked a laugh. And asked himself why he and Drummond hadn’t simply chartered a dive boat, taken it to within a mile of Fielding’s island, then swum the rest of the way underwater. Anyone who’d seen a Saturday morning cartoon knew that was the way to go.

He reached back and nudged Drummond from his slumber. “Hey look, Mr. Larsen, a police boat with a thirty-caliber machine gun.” He hoped the reminder of the gift to the police, if not the imminent danger it posed, would spur his father’s mind.

Drummond looked up. “Oh,” he said. Getting comfortable again, he closed his eyes.

The police cutter chugged to within a hundred yards.

DeSoto cut his engines, bringing the runabout to a skidding stop. His only concern seemed to be his appearance, which he checked in the control panel. “As opposed to a lot of the other Caribbean islands, one thing you won’t have to worry about here in Martinique is crime,” he said. “The police don’t miss a trick.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Charlie. If he could grab hold of DeSoto’s thermos, he might heave its steaming contents at the policeman on deck and gain control of the machine gun.

The cutter pulled to a halt, paralleling the Riva. Both the machine gunner and the pilot were young Martinicans with muscles that swelled their dark blue uniforms.

“ Ca va, Monsieur DeSoto? ” asked the pilot.

“ Ca va, Sergent Francois ,” DeSoto said, a little New Jersey evident in his French. He dug an envelope from his breast pocket and handed it across the three-foot-wide lane to the pilot. “ Ca va? ”

“ Ca va. ” Stuffing the envelope into his own breast pocket, the cop offered a crisp salute and returned to the controls.

DeSoto then threw the throttle and the Riva was off. “The toll,” he explained to Charlie.

Charlie felt no relief. If experience was any teacher, that wasn’t the last they’d see of the police cutter.

“So what’s your first impression?” DeSoto asked.

“It depends on how much the toll is.”

Laughing, the real estate agent pointed at the mass of land looming before them like a low-lying thunderhead. As they drew closer, it turned greener and sharpened into picturesque, sprawling meadows.

“Originally Ilet Ceron was home to a rum distillery.” DeSoto waved at the ruins of a long warehouse coated in moss. “That was the factory.”

“Oh, good, I was worried that was the chateau,” Charlie said.

With a belly laugh, DeSoto drove the boat around a stretch of coast, bringing them into a small cove. A long, weather-grayed pier terminated at a gorgeous beach.

To tie up, the Riva had to gain admission. DeSoto slowed alongside a guard post resembling a prison watchtower. Atop it, in a small roundhouse, a man stood, shadows obscuring his features but not his machine-gun barrel.

“Why are there guards here?” Charlie asked DeSoto under his breath.

“The seller’s concerned about looters.”

Certainly it was a better answer than The security staff has been retained in hope of preventing anyone from retrieving the bomb disguised as a washing machine . Charlie suspected that the latter was the case, however.

“Who’s the seller?” he asked.

“I ought to have mentioned that before,” DeSoto said. “Mr. Fielding had no marital partner or descendants. His closest living relative is an uncle in the States who’s motivated to unload everything and collect the proceeds ASAP.” He nodded at Drummond, now sleeping on his stomach. “From his point of view, the ideal seller.”

The uncle in the States was in fact none other than Uncle Sam, Charlie speculated. Without Fielding, the CIA was probably eager to roll up its operation here. Charlie hoped that the island included no new personnel who would recognize him and Drummond. According to Alice, Fielding’s staff had had no idea that he was a spy. In fact, to add to his criminal cover, the Cavalry hired heavies from the Colombian Bucaga drug cartel.

The guard stepped onto the square platform surrounding the roundhouse. He was a tall Hispanic with the build of a Greek statue. He peered down through binoculars. Thankfully Drummond’s face was pressed against the cushioned sundeck.

Flashing a toothy smile, the guard waved the Riva ahead.

“It would seem we had one margarita too many, and three or four after that,” Hadley said as soon as Kyle loosed her gag. “As for our friend who left us tied up here like this, I don’t think there is any earthly explanation for her behavior.”

“It happens,” said Kyle, the amiable aquatics director.

Stanley hoped that Kyle was sincere, or, at least, that any curiosity the hardy Australian harbored would go no further than war stories the staff shared at happy hour. Although young-twenty-seven or twenty-eight-he had probably seen his share of oddities on the resorts circuit. Certainly he’d never opened up shop to find a couple bound and gagged. Yet he exhibited no surprise beyond the natural shock of discovery, nor any misgivings after hearing Hadley’s yarn. He asked only, “You folks want a Powerade-get some electrolyte action going?”

“That would be wonderful,” Hadley said. “Anything would be, except a margarita.”

“A margarita might not be such a bad idea, actually.” Kyle regarded Stanley. “You look like you could stand some hair of the dog, mate.”

Stanley decided to leave Kyle’s recommendation out of the report he would write Eskridge, who had never been in the field and would have enough trouble digesting the rest of the events at Hotel L’Imperatrice.

On return to their hotel room, Stanley took a seat at the rolltop desk. Blocking out the postcard view of the Caribbean through the balcony window, he clicked a featureless area of his computer screen four times in rapid succession, opening a fresh cable form. He filled it with a blow-by-blow account of the past fifteen hours. If adversaries were to intercept the transmission, they would view only an e-mail from Colin Atchison to his secretary asking her to call some other fictitious person and reschedule the morning’s round of golf.