Randy White - Shark River

I said, “They wanted her for political reasons? I’m not asking for the official position. Just your personal opinion.”

“Why they tried to kidnap her? Political, sure, without a doubt. But is it drug cartel politics or political ideology? That’s what I don’t know. But we’ll find out. We’ve got people working on the stolen boats, the rental van, the motel they stayed in at Englewood. They wanted the girl, but they really wanted to leverage Harrington.”

“The girl’s father, he’s that important?”

“I’ve never heard his name before tonight. In the three years I’ve been attached to Counterterrorism, I’ve never heard the name Harrington mentioned. His official title is Consulting Ambassador, Latin America-a small-time political appointment. He works out of the U.S. Embassy in San Jose and he’s got some kind of villa or condo outside Cartagena. In international politics, it’s hard to tell who really does what. But Harrington, he’s so far behind the scenes that we had trouble coming up with a fast, full dossier on him.”

I told him, “Here’s something I may have left out. One of the guys on the dock, he was yelling in Spanish. He had a Colombian accent. They speak a very clean dialect, particularly in and around the cities. Bogota, maybe, but I’m just guessing.”

“Finally, you offer me a little scrap of useful information.” He chuckled, but it was a timing device, not laughter. “Colombian accent, huh? To pick out accents, you must be fluent. Spent some time down there in South America, have you Ford?”

“Several years. Traveled all over.” Interpreting the expression on the agent’s face, I added, “It had nothing to do with the drug trade, trust me. I was studying bull sharks. I’ve been researching them for years. The work took me all over South and Central America. All over the world, really.”

“Really? Who funded it? Who paid for all that travel and research?”

“I got some grants. But mostly private corporations that have a financial interest and see a potential for profit in certain sea products.”

“Fascinating.” His inflection said: Bullshit.

“You know anything about bull sharks?” I waited for him to respond, but he didn’t. He sat there leafing through his notebook. Finally, I continued, “A bull shark will swim hundreds of miles up freshwater rivers for reasons that we still don’t understand. It may have something to do with ferromagnetic crystals in their nervous system. Directional devices built right in, or perhaps it has something to do with the way their tissues deal with salt. Whatever the reason, they’re a very unusual animal. The Zambezi River shark? The freshwater sharks of Lake Nicaragua? Carcharhinus leucas. The same, aggressive animal. Because of that shark, I spent a lot of time working in the jungle.”

“That part of the story, I don’t doubt,” he said.

I wondered what he meant by that, the suggestive tone, but said nothing.

He said, “Okay, so you picked up on the Colombian accent. About six months ago, Lindsey Harrington’s father-Hal Harrington, that’s his name-attended a summit in Cartagena, along with representatives from several other Latin American countries. The U.S. has given them in excess of a billion dollars a year for the drug war-what they call a war, anyway-and the summit was to outline operational methods and long-term goals. That much is in the dossier. Maybe Harrington did something to piss them off. Maybe he bucked the Colombian establishment-it’s one of the most corrupt countries on earth. Whatever he did, he made someone mad enough to go after his daughter.”

“That’s it? It’s really all you know?”

“Yep. Pretty thin so far, but it’s early. You haven’t exactly been a fountain of information yourself. What I should tell you is… here, let me point out something that you may not realize, Ford. Something you haven’t thought much about. Right now, you’re safe. So’s Lindsey Harrington. For the next twenty-four hours, two different federal agencies are going to keep this island secured while we finish collecting evidence. We have lots of video to shoot, lots of photos to take. Where you are right now is one of the safest places in the world. But you can’t stay on Guava Key forever. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to get into your boat and go home. So what are you going to do if those punks come calling again? You really feeling that lucky? That’s why I’d like you to cooperate. If they put you on their personal shit list, it’d be nice to grab them when they come to grab you.”

“Stake me out like a goat, huh?” I shook my head. “Sorry, the timing’s bad. I’m too busy. I’ve got several research projects going on right now.”

He parroted my words with a flat sarcasm. “Research projects. Like what that’s so damn important?”

“I’m working on sturgeon, too. Not just bull sharks. I’ve got current projects, old projects-but sturgeon are what I’m doing right now. I’m working with some biologists from a lab not far from here, Mote Marine.” All true. When Waldman didn’t respond, I proceeded to tell more than he wanted to know about our sturgeon project, aware that a good way to deal with interrogation is to bore your interrogator. I informed him there’d once been a booming sturgeon fishery on Florida’s Gulf Coast, all because of the profitable caviar market. I described the fish to him, with its scale cover of primitive bony plates and rows of bony scutes on its body. Told him that the sturgeon is a freshwater species that migrates into saltwater, and is very easily netted-which is why the sturgeon was so quickly decimated north and south of Tampa. I added, “Now you mention sturgeon to a coastal fisherman and he’ll look at you like you’re nuts. No one even remembers that they were here. So we’re working on raising them in captivity, then releasing them into the wild. Problem is, they grow so damn slow.”

Waldman stared at me, bored, not letting the details register. “You’re not going to tell me a damn thing, are you?”

I said, “Nope, Doug, I’m not. I don’t want any trouble. I really don’t. I live a quiet, private life, and that’s the way I want it to keep it.”

He stood, hunted around in his jacket pocket for a moment and pulled out a tin of Copenhagen snuff. He flapped the can with his thumb, opened it, and pushed a big pinch of tobacco between cheek and gum. “I kinda figured you’d be a tough one to budge. That call I just took-when my cell phone rang a few minutes ago?”

“What about it?”

Waldman walked to the kitchen sink, spit, and flushed it with water. “Our people in D.C. and Virginia have now had”-he checked his watch-“they’ve now had slightly more than four hours to come up with a dossier on you. Know what they found? And I’m talking about the best-equipped, most computer-savvy security agency in the world. Nothing,” he said. “They found nothing interesting at all about you. Zip, zilch. Know what, Ford? From the information we got back, it’s almost like you really don’t exist.”

I began to feel uneasy, but made it a point to take a deep breath, relaxing in my chair. “You’re saying there’s something wrong with not being in some crime computer somewhere?”

“You’re in no computers anywhere. Nothing but the barest stuff, anyway. Harrington was tough to get information on. You’re even worse. Any idea why that is?”

I told him no, hoping he’d drop it, but he didn’t.

He leafed through a couple of sheets of paper and said, “Here’s what we’ve got on you. You’ve got a six-cylinder Chevy more than twenty years old. I’ve got the block number and the registration number right here. Another thing? When you were still in high school, you took the battery of Armed Services Vocational Aptitude tests. Damn near aced them all. Not the highest scores ever recorded, but way, way up there. Then you vanished for seven years. Not a trace. No military record, no nothing. Next thing that shows up is that you’re in California, graduating with a B.S. from San Diego State and then you get a master’s a year later from Stanford. No record of where you lived, no record of credit cards, no student loans or a checking account. Nothing at all that indicates you were actually at those places and attended classes. But the degrees are legitimate. I made our people check. Your doctorate from the University of Florida? Same thing.”