Keith Thomson - Twice a Spy

Still Stanley knew he needed to keep an eye out for a knife or gun produced from a hiding spot and against which his only defense would be the surveillance team in a hotel room fifty yards away. In such situations, the old joke went, the best your backup team can do is avenge you.

The condo itself wasn’t as bad as advertised. Empty Red Stripe bottles, randomly flicked bottle caps and clothing abounded, but were lost in the grandeur of the space-ten-foot ceilings with gleaming ceramic tile crown molding, lustrous hardwood floors, and slabs of granite atop every counter.

Whisking a weight-lifting belt off the back of one of the dining room chairs, Bream ushered Stanley and Hadley into two of the other three seats at the table. “I can offer you water, or water with a tea bag in it,” he said, indicating a stout Victorian teakettle on the burner.

“How about you just join us, Mr. Bream?” Hadley tapped the glass tabletop.

“Okay, then.” Bream spun around a chair and sat so that his chest was pressed against the backrest, providing himself an extra layer of protection whether or not he consciously intended it. “So are you folks CIA or FBI or I don’t need to know?”

“You were right the first time.” Stanley leaned over the table to minimize the distance between them. “I take it you’re aware that you’ve been ferrying some fairly sought after individuals.”

“I heard about the dustup at the airport last night. You’ve gotta understand, though, I’m just a glorified courier. Those guys came to me through an American company that does lots of business here.”

“We know all about them,” Stanley said of Alice Rutherford’s NSA unit, which had operated under the cover of a Maryland-based insurance agency and obviously hadn’t placed background checks for charter pilots high on their priority list. “I want to let you in on something that the CIA has learned: John Townsend Bream is a thirty-nine-year-old resident patient at the Four Oaks mental institution in Tunica, Mississippi. Has been for nine years.”

Bream stared across the table in openmouthed wonder. “So you’re saying I’m a mental patient in Mississippi and, what, that I’m just imagining that I’m in Martinique?”

“That’s possible. It’s also possible that you assumed the identity of someone who wouldn’t be going anywhere …”

Bream scowled. “Maybe the mental patient assumed my identity-”

“If I were you, I’d deny everything too,” Stanley said.

“Don’t worry, we’re not here about that,” Hadley added.

“Not necessarily.” Stanley let a beat of silence underline the threat. “If you’ll help us locate your two passengers, J. T., your only involvement in this case will be collecting the ten-thousand-euro reward for their arrest.” In fact, Stanley expected Bream, or whoever he was, to wind up penniless in a federal penitentiary.

“Do you have any idea where they are?” Hadley asked.

Bream sighed wistfully. “I wish I did.”

Stanley didn’t believe him. “How about your best guess?”

“The only unusual part of the deal is they’re planning on bringing back some supersize cargo. I’m supposed to find a bird with an extra-large cargo door. But that’s okay. I once had a client who bought a statue in Athens and flew it back to Palm Be-”

Hadley cut in. “Do you have a rendezvous time or place?”

“They’re gonna call me as soon as they find whatever it is they’re looking for. They’ve got me booked for the whole week.” Bream broke free of Stanley’s stare, shifting his focus to the copper teakettle.

Hadley set her BlackBerry on the table and cupped her right knee, signaling to Stanley her belief that the pilot was dissembling. Stanley twisted his wedding ring, indicating his agreement.

The BlackBerry vibrated, rattling against the table. Hadley snatched it up.

“Well, how about that?” She relayed the text message. “Lesser and Ramirez have been captured at sea by the Royal St. Lucia Police Force and are on the way to a detention center.”

Bream grinned. “Well, it’s a good thing you came to see me, isn’t it?”

The forty-foot Royal St. Lucia Police cutter chugged toward a remote island known as Detention III, a dismal, rocky place, apparently immune to vegetation, and so tiny that the architects had had no choice but to build up: The four-story brick prison stood at a slight incline. Painted battleship gray, it was part tenement house, part lighthouse, surrounded by two rings of twenty-foot-high electrified wire fencing and, in the event of a power outage perhaps, an outer fence topped with coils of old-school razor wire.

Drummond was handcuffed to a long bench in the police cutter’s stern. If he had a plan, he had to have dreamed it up, literally, while napping during the hour or so since their capture. Escape seemed impossible to Charlie, who was handcuffed to the other end of the bench.

“Lesser” and his young accomplice “Ramirez” might be able to buy their way out, though. Charlie had gleaned that Detention III was administered by a private maritime security firm called Starfish, contracted by Saint Lucia, Dominica, Martinique, and other islands in the area.

In the rest of Charlie’s scenarios, Detention III would effectively be a CIA detention center for him and Drummond. And the grave for Alice.

The washer sat on the prow, still strapped to its pallet. If the Saint Lucia policemen didn’t already know what the Pristina held, they would soon, when one of them peered under the lid-which someone would do eventually, out of boredom if not simple curiosity. They would then place urgent calls to the bomb squad. Enter the Cavalry.

While tidier than the exterior had led Charlie to expect, Detention III’s plain tile interior smelled like it was hosed down with seawater in lieu of proper cleaning. At the intake desk, three of the Saint Lucia cops uncuffed Charlie and Drummond and handed them over to two Starfish jailers, men who wore generic navy-blue fatigues with badges identifying them as Guard L. Minana and Guard E. Bulcao. Both West Indians, Minana and Bulcao spoke English with the sharp Hispanic accent familiar to Charlie from Brooklyn.

Minana, with his slight build, quiet demeanor, and round spectacles, could have passed for an actuary if it weren’t for the worn wooden cudgel, which he gripped as if it were a cutlass. As the trio of Saint Lucia policemen prepared to depart, he slipped them a small stack of greenbacks. On the way out, one of the cops drummed the lid of the washing machine. Minana smiled, seemingly pleased with his new purchase.

The heavyset Guard Bulcao meanwhile frog-marched Charlie to the wall next to the intake desk. “Face the wall, arms and hands apart,” the guard barked, then proceeded to pat Charlie down.

Minana gave the same treatment to Drummond, who, although awake, didn’t seem that much more alert than when he was asleep.

“Now the both of you turn around real slow and take off all your clothing, drop it to the floor, then say ‘Ah.’ ” Minana demonstrated by sticking out his own birdlike tongue.

The guards probed Charlie and Drummond’s mouths as well as every other body part where a weapon might be hidden.

Bulcao scooped their clothing and possessions from the floor, stuffing the lot of it into a large brown paper bag. “You guys can get this stuff back when the Martinique Police take you into custody in the morning,” he said, sitting down at the desk and filling out the intake form on the computer, at four words per minute.

L … E … S … S … E … R …

To Charlie, anything other than C–L-A-R-K spelled hope.

The rough orange prison jumpsuit chafed Charlie’s underarms and inner thighs as he mounted the three flights of stairs to the cellblock. Drummond followed close behind, trailed by Bulcao, who prodded them now and again for no apparent reason. Their footsteps in the cramped stairwell were amplified by the moisture on the moss-spotted walls, making it sound like a racquetball game was taking place.