Steve Martini - Shadow of Power

I slow down and get a mouthful of dust as I open the window and wave him toward me. The instant he sees me, Herman stops talking and sprints to the passenger side of my car and gets in. Before his feet even hit the floorboards, we’re moving again.

“It’s Aranda up in front of us,” I tell him.

“Damn near killed us,” says Herman. “I thought we were clear till the other car nailed us. Couldn’t even see ’em in the dust.”

“I had him in the parking lot. He got away. The press showed up.”

“As soon as I saw the cameras in the car, I figured,” he says.

We are racing, bouncing along in ruts on the unpaved road. Herman hits his head on the roof of the car and finally gets himself strapped in.

Heading down the grade on the other side of the hill, I can see Aranda’s car moving at speed now, on pavement. The other SUV is behind him, less than fifty yards back, with a camera all the way out the window, trying to get film of the chase. There must be another way around the hill on the other side. Their vehicle has now closed the distance. The clerk in his small rental car is not going to be able to stay ahead of them for long, not on pavement.

Herman and I struggle to catch up. When we reach the pavement, I put the pedal all the way to the floor. Down on the flatlands, we can no longer see them. The two cars have disappeared. For a while, more than a mile, there are no intersecting roads, so I race at full speed, taking some dogleg turns and fishtailing.

As I negotiate one of these, I see the SUV. It’s turned around, facing the other direction on the wrong side of the road. Its rear end is up against a metal light standard, with a good wrinkle in the bumper and the rear hatchback. All four of the occupants are out, stretching their legs and checking their body parts to see if they’re still working.

Up ahead I can see a traffic light where the road dumps into the main highway. The light is red in our direction. There’s no sign of Aranda’s small car. He has made it to the main highway and merged with traffic. With dozens of roads to turn off onto and probably more than a mile ahead of us, there’s no way we’re going to catch him now.

Herman and I cruise the back roads along the coast on this end of the island for the balance of the afternoon and into the early evening, looking for any sign of Aranda or the small car he was driving. Herman calls Harry and tells him what has happened.

Just before dark we arrive back at the hotel and end up out back on the veranda of the Gouverneur de Rouville.

By now Ginnis will know that the world has found him. He and his entourage will be making plans for a quick exit off the island.

Harry suggests that we stake out the airport. It’s a thought, but the chances are slim. You can be sure that a member of the Supreme Court-and there are only nine of them in the world-can call in one of the sleek white government passenger jets anytime he needs it, so that even if he leaves from the main airport, he won’t be going through the terminal. They would take him out through one of the private hangars, guarded and behind locked security gates. We wouldn’t even be able to get within two hundred yards of him.

We’ve lost him, and we know it.

The three of us sit there having drinks. We order dinner, and Harry and I begin discussing plans for an early return to San Diego. Herman makes a call to his process server in Washington and warns him that Ginnis may be on his way home shortly, so to watch his house and to try to serve him with a subpoena there.

We are talking over our meals. I’m seated with my back to the bar, looking out over the narrow inlet, the bright lights and neon from the buildings on the other side dancing off the water as Harry talks.

“We use the witnesses we have, draw out their testimony, and stall for time,” says Harry. “Sooner or later Ginnis has to pop up. The other members of the Court will be putting fire to his feet to make him show up at work once they realize he’s not in recovery mode, he’s hiding.”

As Harry is talking, I’m so exhausted that my mind dances with the neon across the way. People walking, a small boutique hotel, next to it a bar all lit up. Jazz music floating across the water. People coming and going, tourists arriving, a few more leaving.

“We have to get out of here. We have to get home.” It doesn’t click in my mind until the figure hauling luggage is joined by the other two. Then I see the large, dark Town Car pull up in front of the steps under the bright orange neon.

“What’s wrong?” Harry is looking at me. His back is to the water. He turns around.

“It’s Ginnis…” I’m out of my chair before the words are out of my mouth. “Do you have the subpoena?”

Herman has it in his pocket. He’s still looking, but he doesn’t quite see what I’m looking at.

“There, under the hotel sign on the stairs. Aranda with the luggage, the man with the cane,” I say.

Then they see him. In a shot, Herman is through the restaurant and out the door. Harry and I empty our wallets onto the table. We don’t even have a bill.

We are fifty yards behind Herman on the sidewalk running along the waterway toward the floating bridge. A few seconds later, Herman is on it, clambering across. You can hear his heavy footsteps. None of us are up for this. Harry is falling behind. “Go on,” he says. “Don’t wait for me.”

As I look across the water, the tall, willowy figure is still at the top of the stairs. When you are tired, your mind plays funny tricks, but I swear that the other person hauling the luggage down to the car is Aranda.

Ginnis is wearing white slacks, a dark sport coat, and a panama hat drawn low over his face. In the distance I can see the head turning as he checks out the street in both directions, no doubt making sure that the media crews chasing him are not in sight. He isn’t even leaning on the cane. When he comes down the stairs, he has only the arm of the stout woman standing next to him for support. This would have to be Margaret.

Herman is nearly across, thirty yards from the quay on the other side, when the diesel engine starts. The bridge begins to rattle, and within seconds it swings free from the concrete dock and begins the long arc back across the water to where we started. Herman stops, puts his hands on his knees to catch his breath. Then he runs to the hut and the operator inside and pleads with him to close the bridge just for a second, long enough for him to jump onto the sidewalk on the other side.

“No, mon, there’s a freighter coming.”

We stand there and watch in total frustration as the arc of the bridge brings us within fifty yards of the dark Town Car, before the pontoons slide us away and across the water. By this time Ginnis and his wife are already in the backseat.

I cannot tell if he sees me or, if he does, whether he recognizes me, but when he looks this way, over the roof of the car, just before he slides behind the wheel and they pull away, there is no question that the driver is Alberto Aranda.

Monday morning, and Harry and I are back in the office, still jet-lagged from the long flight home.

Saturday night after watching the Town Car disappear around the corner as we watched helplessly from the moving bridge, Harry, Herman, and I raced to the airport in Curaçao in hopes that maybe we would see the sleek, dark vehicle somewhere near the terminal. But if it was there, it was already secluded behind locked gates in a secure area. There was no sign of the car or any of its occupants. The three of us scoured the terminal, which isn’t that big.

Harry thinks Ginnis probably gave up the rental house the moment he discovered that the world was looking for him. They would have moved to the hotel in town for a day or two, just after Herman hit the island. They could have stayed in rooms rented probably in another name, killing time until they could coordinate their move off the island out of the sight of the press.