Randy White - Hunter's moon

Why was he asking about the covert intelligence guru again? Harrington was a member of the deep-cover operations team the president had discovered: Negotiating and Systems Analysis. To give members legitimate cover while operating in foreign lands, the agency provided them legitimate and mobile professions.

Harrington, trained as a computer software programmer, later founded his own company. He’s now listed among the wealthiest men in the country. Did that have something to do with it?

I had no choice but to reply, “You’ve mentioned Harrington before. Sorry, I don’t know the man.”

“You didn’t contact him after our meeting in your laboratory?”

“Even if I knew who you’re talking about, the answer would be no.” True. Harrington was still with the team. The head of it now. But I no longer trusted him.

“You’re good, Ford. If you’re proving you can keep a secret, it’s working. But I’m tired. We can talk about this later. Otherwise, I’ll give you information as you need to know.”

He sounded tired. My eyes had adjusted to the light and I saw that his face was the same mushroom gray as No Mas ’s hull. His hair had been shaved boot camp close but he looked monkish, not military. In every photo I’d ever seen, he had the silver, sculpted hair typical of politicians and anchormen. The change in his appearance was remarkable.

I said, “There’s something that can’t wait. You told me to pack a passport and enough clothes for a week. But if we’re going after Mrs. Wilson’s killers”-I made eye contact, trying to communicate my meaning without risking details-“I need more than socks and a shaving kit. There are some items at my lab that might be useful.”

He was unaccustomed to being pushed. It was in his face.

“That’s something we’ll discuss. But not now.” Blinking, Wilson leaned forward, removed his contact lenses. Then he pulled a bottle of pills from his backpack, and tapped two into his hand. “Is there water around here?”

I wanted more answers. If we were hunting professional killers, I had to stop at the lab. And there was no reason to bring Tomlinson. It wasn’t coincidental that he’d been at the party on Useppa and was now on this remote island.

Tomlinson is my trusted friend, a solid travel partner, and possibly the most intelligent person I know-when he’s not stoned or word-slurring drunk. But the man doesn’t have the skills or the stomach for the variety of violence Wilson was hinting at. On this trip, he would be a liability.

But I didn’t push because the former president was a sick man-for the first time, I could see the disease in his hollow, knowing eyes.

I hurried to the canoe and returned with water.

The former president was asleep. Finally. And Tomlinson still didn’t know we were on the island. As I headed down the beach to say hello, I realized that I, too, was moving in rhythm with the drums.

I’d changed into a khaki shirt and shorts and was carrying a Sage fly rod I’d found in a storage room. I’d broken the angler’s rule about borrowing equipment, rationalizing that I would return it in better shape than I found it. The reel needed oiling, and its sink-tip line was moldy.

As I walked, I made a hasty leader using spider hitches and surgeon’s knots, then tied on a streamer fly of chartreuse and silver. Still walking, I began false casting, stripping out line. It was the last hour of a falling tide. The beach was stained pink at the high-water mark. Below was exposed sand, sculpted by current, smooth as wind-blown snow. Its surface was crusted. It collapsed beneath my weight.

I made a cast uptide, waited until the line matched the speed of the current, then began to strip the lure toward the beach. Water was freighting out faster than I could walk. Whirlpools formed at my feet, and swirled over dark water at the drop-off’s edge. It was an intersection where predators would lie-saltwater snipers, awaiting bait that was overpowered by the lunar draw.

As I fished, I noted a buoyant darkness to the east separating itself from a velvet horizon. Soon, the sun would begin diluting shadow with rays of color. The moon had disappeared behind the tree line, but it would be visible from the island’s southern point, where Tomlinson and his painted friends were drumming and dancing.

They hadn’t noticed us land. I was now close enough to feel the percussion of the drums through my ribs, but there was still no indication they saw me. Fishermen, like joggers, are invisible to the uninitiated. And to the un-sober, in this case.

Drum circles attract mystic types, big on celestial rhythms. On full moons, sunrise and moonset are simultaneous, balancing for a moment on opposite horizons. My guess was, they’d keep playing until the moon disappeared into the sea. Especially if Tomlinson was in charge. The man sought balance in everything but the excesses of his own life.

In that way, at least, Tomlinson and Kal Wilson had something in common. The president had refused to lie down until he’d gone exploring. The place we were staying wasn’t just one cabin, it was a camp comprised of several one-room buildings-a kitchen and eating area in one, shower and toilet in another, and a bunkhouse set beneath trees next to the storage shed where I found a little Honda generator.

Nice place. Friendly, too, with its laid-back touches. DON AND JOAN WELCOME YOU, read a sign above the outdoor shower.

The former president insisted on helping me get the generator running before he settled himself in the bunkhouse. He was snoring when I checked a few minutes later. The photograph he carried was on the nightstand, its glass panel flickering with the reflection of ceiling fans overhead.

The last thing he said was, “If the fish are hitting, call me. I haven’t had a morning alone with a rod in my hand since I ran for the Senate.”

Stories I read described him as an “avid angler”-a term used so often that I’d dismissed it as the invention of some PR firm. “Image management,” political consultants call it. The ideal presidential candidate attends church, fishes, wears a rubber watch, and owns a retriever. But there is no contriving the authentic inflections of fishermen. I hear them every morning around the docks at the marina.

Wilson had had almost no sleep, though, so I wasn’t going to disturb the man even if fish were hitting. Which they were. My third cast, I hooked an immature snook. As I led it ashore, a pod of larger snook surfaced behind, including a couple of yardlong females.

Next cast, I came up tight on what felt like a snag’s deadweight, but then I discerned the muscular ruddering of a fish as it turned laterally to the current. I locked fingers over the line, lifted… then lifted again before the fish reacted, accelerating cross-tide so fast that line sizzled as it ruptured the water’s surface.

As the fish moved, I glanced at my feet-the line was clearing while the reel ratcheted. The handle banged skin off my knuckles as I slipped my hand beneath the spool, fingertips creating heat as they touched the line experimentally: too much pressure, the leader would break; too little, the fish might take all my line.

The fish was fifty yards into the backing before it turned, then stripped another fifty yards, running seaward. I began following it down the beach, trying to recover line. I was almost to the drum circle-they still hadn’t noticed me, Tomlinson included-when the fish turned and angled cross-tide again… then began to fight its way uptide.

Until that moment, I’d thought it was one of the big female snook. This behavior, though, was unusual.

I turned and retraced my footprints up the beach, leashed to the fish, my hands sensitive to vibrations transmitted through the line. I could feel the steady oscillation of connective tissue as the fish angled into the current, using its body mass to resist as I leveraged with the fly rod, steering it toward the shallows.