Kirk Russell - Shell Games

“Where is she?”

“You’re a fuckin’ fool, lad.”

Marquez watched the Zodiac motor slowly out of the cave with a single man guiding it. The rest had gone, however they’d gotten here. He knew it would take time, maybe too long, to sort out that the man at the helm wasn’t him, and Kline had to be counting on that. The Zodiac turned out of the cave, the light vanished, and there was only the roar of the waves.

An hour or more had gone by and he needed to get out of the water, had to get above the incoming tide. They’d stripped his clothes down to his shorts, had taken a knife, a second gun, the telelocator off him. How long would it take Douglas to figure out that someone else was running the Zodiac? He’d get sus-picious when the calls didn’t go through, but when would they start searching the caves? Get up, he thought, get off the sand and on the rock as high as you can. He lifted his head, staring into the darkness, head throbbing and not thinking clearly, his body trem-bling with cold. He could make out the cave entrance but there was little light. Pushed off with his heels, dug them into the sand, used the rocks to help pull himself up and then fell again. Fought his way back up as a wave ran as high as his knees.

There’d been a rock ledge near here when he’d swept his light across. If he could find it, maybe there was a way to get onto it. Four feet higher would buy a lot of time and sooner or later they’d come here. He got to his feet, his back resting against the rock, breath coming in gasps. Had to get out of here, had to get high enough to last through the changing tide. Where was Douglas? What was taking so long? He pressed against wet rock, leaned into it, hopped sideways, working his way along.

She’s on a boat, the crew’s favorite, the Irishman said. Then she’s alive. She’s alive and can be found. He felt the gap in the stone now, leaned his head into the hollow. How deep was the ledge? No way to tell, and he tried jumping up and sliding onto the rock. Got partway onto the shelf and slid out, fell on his back on the sand, his shoulder striking a rock. He lay there, numbed. A wave touched his legs and he rolled to his side, got on his knees again, to his feet, tried again, fell again. On the fourth try he finally got enough of his weight onto the ledge. He rested and inched forward, praying there was enough room, that his shoulder wouldn’t brush rock too soon.

But there was plenty of room. The shelf was deep and worn smooth by the ocean. Marquez slid toward the back and lay on his side, watching for light, moving his legs and feet to fight the cold, trying to keep his fingers from going numb as another half hour or more passed. Waves finished against the rock now, spray reached him, and where was the Zodiac now? Why was it taking Douglas so long to backtrack?

Then he saw light but not from a boat, something surfacing in the cave, another diver, he thought, and slid against the back wall. The light came closer, moved toward him, and he heard rubber, the snap of a mask, a man’s hard exhale lost as a wave came in. The light had vanished and Marquez strained to hear, knew the diver was on the small beach where the Irishman had left him. Now he heard the tanks clank against rock, saw a beam of light working low along the water to his left and then quickly turned off.

“Where are you?” a voice said, but the light didn’t come back on.

Afraid to leave the light on, Marquez thought. Looking for me and surprised I wasn’t where they left me. The light scanned again, this time the beam reaching closer. He heard the air tanks clank against the rock again, the rip of Velcro, the man reposition-ing himself, and briefly the light was on again. When it clicked off Marquez got ready. The next pass would reach him. He brought his knees up, thought he’d try to kick out, drive his legs into the man’s chest.

Then without warning, the sound masked by rough water at the cave entrance, there was a boat motor and a searchlight played along the walls. Marquez slid forward as the boat turned around. He heard a hard splash and the boat swept into the cave, its lights raking across him.

“Identify yourself.”

“Marquez,” he shouted. “Watch out! There’s someone in the water under you! Don’t let the diver get away, stay with his light!” But either they couldn’t hear him or didn’t understand. And then there were arms grabbing him and they struggled to get him aboard.

“Do we have her?” Marquez asked. “Do we have her?”

“No.”

“Stay with the light, there was a diver,” and a blanket was wrapped around him, a woman telling him they couldn’t do any-thing about the cuffs yet as they tried to pick up the light outside the cave, and a search began along the beach.

“We’ll find him,” he heard the boat’s pilot say, but he knew they wouldn’t. He’d lost the money and they had nothing. He leaned over the side looking down into the dark water. Who was the diver? Was it Kline?

“You’re a stand-up guy,” Douglas said outside Mar-quez’s house, and Marquez waited for the reason Douglas had driven up here. His heart had jumped when Douglas pulled into the driveway, afraid Douglas was here to deliver bad news in per-son. Marquez hadn’t gotten home until dawn and this was where the FBI insisted he be, as though Kline would contact them again. “You probably came pretty close to buying it last night. Good thing you got on that ledge.”

“What about the Irishman’s comment she was on a boat?”

“Do you believe him?”

“I want to believe she’s alive. How much money was in those bags?”

“$200,000. A lot of one dollar bills.”

That brought a rush of anger in Marquez. He squinted against the sunlight, his eyes tired, his mind veering off from how Kline would react to the short money.

“Tell me. You shorted him, so what was your plan?”

“To be there, John, and I think you know that. He didn’t bring Petersen; he wasn’t ever planning to make a trade, which probably means he doesn’t have one to make.”

It was Alvarez who’d figured out that the man on the Zodiac had gone off the side wearing dive gear and swum to shore. The Zodiac steering had been locked and it had run out to sea drawing all but the vehicle surveillance with it. The FBI theory was that he’d floated the money ashore with him and met his ride.

“There was a last image on the Web site before it went down,” Douglas said. “You’ll see it soon enough. Her head was tipped back and she had a knife at her throat. The facial contusions were deeper, more colored. I’m told they took at least forty-eight hours to develop the color they had. It means that not all the images were shot the same day, but whether that’s good or bad we don’t know. I don’t want her husband to hear any of this. He doesn’t know about it now and doesn’t need to.”

“I won’t be the one to tell him.”

“How computer literate are you?”

“Not as literate as my fifteen-year-old stepdaughter.”

“I hear you on that. The site is down, but he may come back up, and if he does and keeps the same sequencing going, it may not be a very happy ending.”

“You’re talking around the edges of whatever you have to say.”

“What I’m getting to is, it’s our opinion there’s nothing more that can effectively be done. We need to let him make the next move, because we don’t have one.”

“I think the Irish bastard was telling at least part of the truth; she’s alive on a boat somewhere. We can check every boat over sixty feet in California.”

“And if you get close you may cause him to kill her. Better for your team to sit tight, hard as that is, and we’re all over the boats anyway.”