Randy White - Hunter's moon

There are hundreds. Most are deserted mangrove swamp, bird rookeries of guano and muck. A few are privately owned, havens for wealthy recluses. From a jetliner, on a clear day, passengers may spot cottages among groves of citrus and bananas. They may covet the isolation, the quiet swimming pools, the docks-compound-sized islands rimmed by water.

They won’t find them mentioned in tourist brochures. Admission is by invitation. Wealth is requisite, power implicit.

Ligarto Island is private. An industrialist tycoon bought the place during Prohibition and built an elegant fishing retreat. The industrialist’s heirs still own the compound.

That was the rumor, anyway, and rumor is all locals ever heard about Ligarto.

Visitors came and went without interacting with neighboring islands-Gasparilla, Siesta Key, Useppa, Palm Island, Captiva. Silence is not always passive. The silence associated with Ligarto Island was hostile. It discouraged contact.

Ligarto was a place where the powerful enjoyed anonymity. Software moguls, international entrepreneurs, American political icons used it as a retreat-another popular local rumor.

Tonight it wasn’t rumor.

When the celebrated man surprised me in the lab, tapping on the screen door, I’d said to him, “When you say ‘escape,’ you mean from your security team. You’re serious when you say you want to travel alone.”

“Yes… at times, on my own.”

Another evasion.

“A security detail is with me around the clock, three shifts a day, seven days a week. It’s been that way for more than thirteen years, and it got tighter when the bounty was offered.”

I’d glanced beyond an aquarium alive with sea urchins toward the dark porch where ninety feet of boardwalk connects my stilt house with shore. A question.

“Relax, Dr. Ford, no one can hear. You met my bodyguard. He’s watching from a safe distance.”

It was difficult to be alone with this man and relax. He was referring to the United States Secret Service.

“Why don’t you tell your agents the truth: You want time to yourself. You’re… ill. They should understand.”

“The issue isn’t illness,” he snapped. “I have a measured amount of time to live. Surely you understand the difference.”

I appreciated his insistence on precise language and nodded.

“Besides, they don’t know the latest prognosis. Even if they did, it’s not that simple. They’re federal employees, with standing orders. I won’t compromise them as professionals by asking their permission.”

“The same agents have been with you a long time?”

“Several. I also have my staff to think about-secretaries, schedulers, travel assistants. More than a dozen. When my wife was killed, some of them wept like children. Wray had that effect on people. Her decency, her humor, her… her”-the man’s voice caught, he swallowed-“Wray’s intellect, and sense of grace. Which means they can never know. They’re like family. When I say escape, I mean disappear.”

I don’t follow politics, but even I was aware that he and his wife had been childhood friends, partners for life. Wray Wilson had been an inspiration to many. Born deaf, she’d earned a master’s degree before most kids her age-her future husband included-had graduated from high school.

She’d been on a chartered flight, a humanitarian mission carrying medical supplies to Nicaragua. The plane had caught fire during an emergency landing near a volcano. Wray Wilson and six other people were killed.

Distraught, the great man had demanded an international investigation. Later, he made headlines by hinting that his wife’s death wasn’t accidental.

Grief is part of a complicated survival process, but it can also debilitate. I wondered if grief had unhinged the man. He was too young and vigorous to be senile. But mental illness might explain his behavior. What he was proposing was impractical, maybe irrational.

I became agreeable in the way people do when they are dealing with the impaired. “I can empathize, sir. If a doctor told me I had a month to live, I’d want to… well, escape. So I understand, and I’m honored, but-”

He interrupted. “Why makes you so damn certain you don’t have a month to live? Or two weeks?”

“Well… I don’t know. You’re right, of course, but we all assume-”

“No, Dr. Ford, we don’t all assume. Your time may be more limited than you realize-that’s not necessarily a threat. It’s true of everyone, everywhere. And please don’t use that patronizing tone with me again. Do you read me, mister?”

Only Academy graduates and ex-fighter jocks can make the word “mister” ring like a slap in the face. He was both.

The man might be nuts but he wasn’t feeble.

I started over. “Look, I do empathize, but”-I gestured, indicating the room: wood ceiling, towels for curtains, rows of chemicals and specimen jars, books stacked on tables, fish magnified through aquarium glass-“but I’m a biologist. I don’t see how I can help.”

“I’ve done the research and I can’t think of anyone more qualified.”

“It’s possible, sir, that you have the wrong man-”

“No. Don’t waste my time pretending… or maybe denial is a conditioned response in people like you. I know Hal Harrington. He’s your handler, isn’t he?”

Harrington was a high-level U.S. State Department official and covert intelligence guru. I’d known him for many years.

I replied, “Harrington? With an H?” I pretended to think about it. “I’m not familiar with the name.”

“Maybe if I remind you of a few details. Would that convince you?”

“I really don’t know what you’re-”

He held up a hand. “When I was in office, they said I had access to every classified document in the system. Baloney. After what happened in Cartagena, I asked for a dossier on you. Know what I got? Nothing. Or next to nothing. Later, I ran across other globe-trotting Ph. D. s with backgrounds just as murky as yours. Scientists, journalists, a couple of attorneys, even one or two politicians. That’s when I began to suspect.

“I started digging. Insomniacs crave hobbies. I won’t tell you how but I discovered documents that hinted at the existence of a secret organization. An illegal organization, funded by a previous administration. Something called the ‘Negotiating and Systems Analysis Group.’ Only thirteen plank members; very select. ‘The Negotiators.’ Sound familiar?”

I’d replaced the slide containing the sea urchin embryo with another-a blank slide, I realized, but I pretended to concentrate.

“It was deep-cover intelligence. Members were deployed worldwide as something called ‘zero signature specialists.’ An unusual phrase, don’t you agree? Zero signature. It suggests they were more than a special operations team. Just the opposite. It suggests that each man worked alone.”

They weren’t killers in the military sense, he said. They had a specialty.

“Their targets disappeared.”

The celebrated man studied me as if to confirm I wouldn’t react.

I didn’t.

To paddle a straight course, I focused on the canopy of palms that punctured the mist. Their trunks were curved. Fronds drooped like sodden parrot feathers.

The breeze was southwesterly, warm on my face and left arm-another directional indicator-but the mist was autumnal. I should have been shivering. My clothes were soaked, but I was too focused to be cold.

I was dressed for a dinner party, not a canoe trip: dark slacks, dress shirt, a black silk sports jacket tailored years ago in Southeast Asia. I’d dressed for the role I would have to play if the Secret Service intercepted me. It could happen.

To get on and off the island undetected, I had to know how the Secret Service operated so I did my homework. I spent time at Sanibel’s library and on the Internet. More valuable was a discussion I had with an old friend, Tony Stoverthson, who’d worked for the agency prior to passing the Florida bar.