Steve Martini - Shadow of Power

When Harry swallowed his tongue and went mum, Smidt told him to get on his computer and go online. Harv’s story was already running on the national AP wire, setting forth every little detail we had mentioned in chambers, starting with rumors about Ginnis and including the backgrounders on the J letter from Trisha Scott and Bonguard.

This would explain why they both disappeared. You would, too, if your phone started lighting up with calls from every reporter in the Western Hemisphere. This is what happens when you start sharing videos and transcripts with the curious in the courthouse.

If we’re lucky, we might be twenty-four hours ahead of the press and media mob when they parachute onto the island. People in the marble temple, the Supreme Court and its staff, will no doubt close around Ginnis like the Praetorian Guard to seal off his whereabouts. Unfortunately, we can’t count on the same kind of discretion from “Art and Maggie’s” neighbor out in Chevy Chase. As soon as the media dig her out of her garden, they’ll be flogging jets southward. Harry suggested that we stop off on the way and bag the lady so she could join us on a quick trip to the islands. But the law being what it is, people tend to frown on kidnapping.

Just before eleven the next morning-and we’re only half awake-Harry is squinting in the bright sunshine as I drive and he navigates the rental car from the airport toward Willemstad. It’s the only sizable town on the island and the seat of government for the five islands that make up the Dutch Antilles.

Curaçao was once a Dutch colony and today is a dependency of the Netherlands. The island has its own parliament, prime minister, and council of ministers, along with a governor-general appointed by the queen of the Netherlands.

Harry and I are trying to find our way to the Kura Hulanda, the hotel in town where Herman is staying. Strangely enough, Harry tried his cell phone, Verizon, and it worked. Roaming charges from the States are probably a million dollars a minute, but he hooked up with Herman, who is now headed into town from another direction.

Herman has been combing the island for the better part of two days, trying to hunt down the location of Ginnis and his wife. It may not be a huge island, but apparently it’s big enough that Herman is still searching, with no luck.

The island is arid, desertlike, a lot of rock and dry scrub, with patches of large cactus. Occasional glimpses of the ocean in the distance from the highway reveal azure waters, translucent to the white sand bottom. The sea is tinged green in places by shallow coral reefs. From what I can see, it is the image that might pop into your mind when you hear the words “tropical beach.” Unfortunately, Harry and I aren’t here to swim, though we may drown in Quinn’s courtroom if we don’t find Ginnis.

“Living history,” says Harry.

“What?”

Harry is looking at some literature he grabbed at the airport while I was getting the rental car.

“Says here ‘Living History, Museum Kura Hulanda.’ Apparently it’s by the hotel,” says Harry.

“Does it tell us how to get there?”

“No. But it does say, ‘See how the slave trade was done.’” Harry is reading again.

I glance over. Harry is holding a small printed flyer on card stock, what appears to be a pencil or ink drawing on one side. He flips it over. “‘We will take you back in time to the selling of newly arrived slaves from the west coast of Africa, around the 1700s.’” Harry looks up at me. “Interesting.”

The Hotel Kura Hulanda is situated on the main waterway, the channel that leads from the Caribbean to a generous harbor that spreads out in the center of the island. The harbor includes an oil refinery that was built in the early part of the last century. Today it provides revenue and good jobs for islanders. This, along with tourism and the export of Curaçao liqueur made from the peels of an orange native to the southern Antilles, keeps the island going.

The town of Willemstad itself is split by the channel, maybe three hundred yards wide, enough to admit oceangoing vessels, tankers, and midsize cruise liners.

On the north side, where our hotel is situated, are a number of restaurants, a few offices, taverns, and a small plaza with some shops.

Across the inlet on the other side are buildings three to four stories high, many of them with quaint Dutch façades, painted in bright colors, yellow and aqua, pink and maroon. These stretch for several blocks until they reach an old stone fortress that guards the mouth of the inlet at the sea.

The only way across the channel that divides the town is either to drive on the main highway over a high arch that spans the inlet at the point where it widens toward the refinery or to walk across a broad pontoon bridge. The floating footbridge, situated a few blocks to the west of our hotel, swings open for ships to pass and then closes again like a gate to connect with the other side.

The bridge is hinged on our side. At the far end, on the bridge at the other side, is a small hut. Every once in a while, you can see the belching exhaust from the roof of the hut and hear the diesel engine as the operator engages the prop that drives the gatelike bridge to open and close.

The hotel, the Hulanda, is actually a series of low-lying buildings situated around a large, meandering courtyard set into the hillside on the north edge of the inlet. It is separated from the waterway by a street with paved sidewalks on each side. A few shops and a restaurant-the Gouverneur de Rouville, a three-story red and white Dutch Colonial building with louver-shuttered windows and a veranda overlooking the water-complete the complex.

Harry and I dump our luggage in our rooms and join Herman at a table on the restaurant’s veranda to compare notes and find out what progress he has made. Given the lack of sleep, Harry has iced tea. I have soda water, and Herman hunches his broad shoulders over a beer.

“So far I’ve tried every real-estate office I can find that handles seasonal rentals,” says Herman. “None of ’em, at least the ones who would talk to me, recognize the name Ginnis.”

Herman has been telling the rental agents that there is an emergency back home and that friends and relatives have been unable to contact the vacationers with the news. So he is trying to locate them.

“I figure it’s a waste of time to check the hotels and resorts, since the neighbor in Chevy Chase told us Ginnis’s wife rented them a house,” says Herman.

“Is there any way to check passport control or immigration?” asks Harry. “They gave us a form on the plane coming in. One of the questions was where we were staying.”

“I thought about it,” says Herman. “The fort over there-” He points toward the old stone fortress at the ocean end of the inlet on the other side. “Inside is government square. The problem is, we go in there askin’ questions about passports and who’s landed on the island in the last year and they’re gonna wanna know why.”

“We could just cut to the chase and ask them where Ginnis is,” says Harry. “They have to know. Hell, with all the security, U.S. Marshals service, he probably came in on a government jet. You would think they’d know.”

“If they do, they’re not going to tell us,” I say. “And they’d probably call the marshals and warn them that somebody is nosing around. Once Ginnis finds out, he’ll be off the island in a heartbeat.”

“But there may be a way,” says Herman. “I gotta find the right person to do it.”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I’d rather not do jail time down here,” says Harry.

“No,” says Herman. If he can do it, Herman will try to find a local PI, someone with connections, maybe former police. “They’d be more willing to let their guard down and tell somebody like that where he’d be-Ginnis, I mean.” So far Herman hasn’t been able to find anyone who fits the bill. “How much time have we got?”