Randy White: Hunter's moon

The million-dollar bounty was an example, Tomlinson explained. It started when the man called America’s news media “cowards and fiducial incompetents” because they sidestepped reprinting an editorial cartoon from a Danish newspaper that sparked worldwide riots. The caricature depicted the prophet Muhammad with a lighted bomb fuse in his turban-mild by Western standards.

The man remained outspoken even when Islamic clerics issued an international fatwa, or religious decree, demanding his head. Literally. The reward was posted soon afterward.

“The media used to despise him,” Tomlinson told me. “Then, for a while, he was their darling. But that’s changing because he refuses to back down on the cartoon issue. ‘When did the New York Times and Wall Street Journal start deferring decisions about free speech to religious fundamentalists?’ That’s the sort of thing he’s been saying and he won’t shut up.

“Ultimately, they’ll crucify him. He knows it. He seems to be inviting it.”

Standing in my lab that night, the man sounded in full control of his facilities, even while sharing a plan I dismissed as irrational.

“The group I mentioned, the Negotiators. They operated without oversight. Their victims were seldom found so there’s very little proof they were licensed to kill. But there is proof. I have it. Ethically, I couldn’t ask a law-abiding citizen to help me… That’s why I’m asking you.”

With an edge, I replied, “Very flattering.”

“It’s not meant to be. I’m explaining why I’m here. The illegalities my trip requires won’t be a problem for someone with your expertise.”

“You’re asking me to break laws, too.”

“None you haven’t broken before.”

His inflection conveyed subtext. Was he telling me he wanted someone killed?

I said, “You don’t need me. You need a magician. The Secret Service will realize you’re missing before you make it to an airport.”

“Not the way I’ve set it up. We’ll have enough time.”

My expression read We?

“That’s the deal. You’re coming. Spring me loose, keep me alive, and get me back. Help me disappear and I’ll make your past disappear.”

He interpreted my unresponsiveness as mistrust.

“I’m not the first to offer, I know. But I’m the first who has the power to make it happen.”

I let the canoe swing free, then drifted awhile before I ruddered toward the island.

I’d studied charts and aerial photos. Ligarto consisted of about seventy acres of high ground, most of it built by Florida’s pre-Seminole inhabitants. They were a sophisticated people who constructed cities of shell. On Ligarto, they’d built courtyards, dug canals, and raised shell pyramids four stories high.

Archaeologists believe that royalty lived atop those pyramids. The equivalent of post-Columbian royalty still did: The celebrated man was staying in a cabin on the highest mound.

From the aerials, I knew the layout. I also knew that Ligarto’s Prohibition-era docks were on the western shore along a private channel. That’s why I was approaching from the east. To the east, water was seldom more than chest-deep, scarred with reefs of oyster and rock-okay for canoes, bad for powerboats. A fringe of mangrove swamp buffered the island so there was no easy place to land.

Visitors, welcome or unwelcome, would not be expected from the east.

I paddled close to the mangroves, mist smoldering out of the bushes as if the swamp was afire. I caught a branch, slid paddle beneath thwarts, and repositioned my feet as the canoe swung under limbs. It was a cheap canoe, green plastic hull, quieter than aluminum, with ridged seats. I’d been paddling for an hour. I had to pee and my feet were numb.

I sat rubbing my ankles and waited, straining to see through the mist. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to wait long.

I didn’t.

There were four men, not two. They were in an inflatable boat, all of them paddling, but the last guy, starboard aft side, also used his blade as a rudder. They came directly at me. For a moment, I thought I’d been spotted. But then the boat turned north, hugging the shore, passing within twenty feet of where I sat motionless, all senses testing, as they paddled into mist.

Water-laden air molecules transport odor as efficiently as they conduct sound. After a few seconds, the smell of men and equipment arrived on foggy tendrils: military canvas, rubber, machine oil, the stink of wet boots, the stink of stale tobacco laced with an unexpected hint of eucalyptus or clove.

Spiced tobacco. Distinctive.

An inflatable boat resembles an overinflated inner tube, pointed at the front, with rigid buoyancy chambers made of high-tech fabric. In military jargon, it’s a “rubber boat,” or an IBS (Inflatable Boat, Small). This one had an outboard engine mounted aft, but it was tilted upward and locked, so the vessel should have been difficult to control.

The four men made it look easy. Blades cut the water in synch; strokes short, efficient. This was a military unit, or paramilitary, a trained assault team: two men had already pulled on ski mask balaclavas. All four had weapons slung over their inboard shoulders, ammo clips fixed. One of the rifles had the distinguishing banana clip of a Russian AK-47 or one of that weapon’s myriad clones.

Weapons identification is something else not taught in college science labs. I maintain a working knowledge for a reason.

A Secret Service agent carrying a Russian assault rifle? No way. Nor do agents whisper in a foreign language or smoke clove tobacco-the odor reminded me of Kreteks, the cigarette of choice in Indonesia and some parts of the Middle East.

These weren’t federal agents on maneuvers. It was remotely possible they were American friendlies assigned to test the island’s security. Staging mock attacks is part of Secret Service training. In Maryland, the agency built a mock city to simulate attacks on motorcades. Agents participate in crisis scenarios known as AOPs, “Attacks on Principals.”

But war games in this fog? At this hour?

No, I’d stumbled onto a hit team. The men were assassins with a plan and they were now only minutes from their target.

The celebrated man had told me he had enemies. He’d said he expected someone to take a shot. I’d dismissed the million-dollar bounty as media sensationalism, just as I’d dismissed his fears as an outdated sense of his own importance.

He was right. I was wrong.

“It’s something you’ll get used to,” he’d told me the night I agreed to help him. I’d been pressing for details on what, exactly, he was offering me in exchange.

“Not that there’s anything in my past that I regret,” I’d added.

“Really? Then you’re one of the few rational men I’ve met who can say that. Or maybe I’ve misjudged you.”

“When I say ‘regret,’ I mean there’s nothing that warrants records being destroyed.”

“I’m not that stupid. The only thing destroyed when a man tries to erase the past is his own future. How many fools have marched off that cliff? What I can offer is clemency-in a legal sense. The same for other members of your little group… including your friend Tomlinson.”

Long ago, Tomlinson had been a suspect in the bombing of a U.S. Naval base. There are men in high places who still believe he’s guilty of murder. They want him dead.

“A pardon, you mean?”

“Yes. Retroactive.”

It strengthened my impression that the man had an obsolete sense of importance.

“It’s my understanding you lost that power when you left office. .. ten years ago?”

“Nine. It just seems longer because of all the screwups and bad luck the last two administrations have had.” He was standing in my lab at the bookcase, hands on hips. “I don’t suppose you have something on the subject?”