Линкольн Чайлд - Crooked River

It had been a good trip. They had successfully retrieved both acoustic Doppler current profilers. To lose one of those twenty-thousand-dollar babies would be a disaster. Now she was eager to download the data and see if it finally confirmed her mathematical models.

She set the rudder to zero, and as she was putting all the controls on the helm to bed, she noticed through the bridge windows a man standing on the dock, tall and pale, the wind whipping his white suit. With a Panama hat on his head, he looked like an albino drug lord waiting for his shipment to come in. He was peering up at her boat and seemed to be looking directly at her through the bridge windows. She wondered how a weirdo like this had gotten onto the private pier, because he obviously was no mariner.

Once everything was in order and she’d filled out the electronic log and shut down the breakers, she stepped out of the wheelhouse. Lam was finishing up as well, transferring the ADCP devices to a two-wheeled cargo carrier on the pier. The man in white was now approaching her directly. She turned her back, busying herself with straightening up a muddy bight, hoping he would go away.

“Dr. Gladstone?” came a smooth voice.

She turned. “Yes?”

“I am Special Agent Pendergast.”

His hand was extended, but instead of shaking it, she held up both of hers, wet and smeared with tidal mud from the dirty line. “Sorry.”

The man withdrew his hand and fixed a pair of glittering eyes on her. “I should like to have a conversation with you.”

“Go ahead.” She stood there. Special Agent . Did that mean he was FBI? “Wait — you got a badge or something?”

A hand slid out a billfold, displayed a shield, then returned it to his suit. “If we could perhaps withdraw to your laboratory, where we could speak in confidence?”

“What’s this about?”

“Captiva.”

“No way. Sorry.” She turned, slung her duffel over her shoulder, and began walking briskly down the pier. Lam tried to catch up, pushing the carrier, and she again quickened her step, trying to escape the man in white. But he paced her, effortlessly.

“I understand you’ve been studying the pattern of gulf currents over the past five years,” he remarked.

“I said no. I’m in the middle of a research project, my grant is about used up, the lease on my research vessel expires next week, my rent’s increasing, my boyfriend dumped me — and I don’t want anything to do with those feet washing up.”

“Why not, if I may ask?”

“Because it’s going to be a mess. A big, hot, political mess, in which the science — the actual science — will be lost. I’ve been through it before... trust me.”

She walked still faster, but the man kept up without even appearing to quicken his gait. Gladstone was usually able to outwalk anyone, and this only served to increase her irritation.

“Dr. Gladstone, I’m glad you mentioned your research vessel. Aside from that ugly streak on the stern, it’s a handsome boat.”

They had reached the end of the pier. Lam was practically jogging in an attempt to keep up. Gladstone’s Kia Soul was parked close in, thank God. She spied it, raised the key fob, unlocked it with a chirp, and made a beeline. She reached the door, pulled it open, and got inside. She began to shut the door, but the man’s hand came to rest on it, holding it in place as he leaned in.

“Please take your hand off my car.” She gave the door a pull, but he was holding it fast with remarkable strength. He gave her a little smile.

“Dr. Gladstone, I am sorry to hear about your other troubles, but at least you needn’t worry about the lease on your vessel.”

She paused. “What do you mean?”

“I paid a call on Caloosahatchee Marine Leasing. Your lease has been extended. And they kindly pointed me in your direction.”

“Wait... why?”

“Because you see, Dr. Gladstone, the FBI is going to need that boat of yours. And, of course, you .”

Chief P. B. Perelman sat in the back of the meeting room, flanked by Towne and Morris, listening with growing impatience as the Coast Guard oceanographer, a fellow named McBean or McBoon or something, droned on while plowing through an endless PowerPoint presentation, his green laser pointer flashing about like a cat chasing a mouse. In image after image, chart after chart, Perelman was getting a grand tour of the southern gulf and the Caribbean, focusing on Cuba.

Commander Baugh stood next to the oceanographer, in work blues, arms crossed, listening with his head tilted and a serious furrow in his brow.

The images flashed along, finally ending in an animated video that showed the complex swirlings and windings of the Loop Current, the famous oceanographic phenomenon that came up from the south and carried water into the Atlantic, where it joined the Gulf Stream.

What Perelman gathered from the presentation was that it was essentially impossible for the feet to have been carried by any combination of currents, winds, and tides from the Cuban mainland to Captiva Island — except for one area. As the main Loop Current drove northward along the Yucatán coast and into the gulf, a stable eddy, called the Mariel Stream, separated from the current and brushed the northeastern shore of Cuba, from Mariel Bay to Playa Carenero. In this twenty-mile stretch of shoreline, a floating object placed in the water at a tidal low had the possibility of being carried north toward the Gulf Coast of Florida, where it would encounter the natural prominence of the Sanibel/Captiva island chain. And, he concluded, a backtracking simulation of the Mariel Stream and Loop Current indicated that under certain conditions, such an object would require a travel time of about three weeks, plus or minus, to reach Captiva — which he wished to point out fit with the twenty-five-day estimated time the feet were in the water.

At the end of the presentation, the man retreated from the podium and the commander came up, face dark and serious. Two knotted hands gripped the podium and he glowered at the group, turning his head from one side to the other, displaying a fresh whitewall haircut.

“Thank you, Lieutenant McBath,” he said in a gravelly voice.

He allowed a silence to gather in the hall.

“We all remember,” he began slowly, “the Mariel Boatlift, where over a hundred thousand Cubans, released from prisons and mental hospitals, crowded on boats and headed northward, flooding the United States. It was so called because they hailed from Mariel Harbor.”

He looked around.

“There’s a reason why they came from that place. At the mouth of Mariel Harbor, on the gulf side of the bay, is the infamous prison known as El Duende. El Duende is a grim institution, long infamous for the incarceration and torture of political prisoners. Many of the inmates from El Duende joined the boatlift, which almost emptied the prison.”

A satellite image, stamped SECRET, appeared on the screen, showing a vast prison complex surrounded by walls and fences, sprawling along the strand beyond the mouth of the harbor.

“But El Duende was soon refilled by the Communist regime in Cuba.”

The commander started a new PowerPoint presentation with an aerial image of a sprawling facility along a shoreline.

“Here is a recent Homeland Security image of El Duende. It is thriving, if that’s the word, home to an estimated twelve thousand prisoners.”

He went through a series of satellite images showing buses arriving and leaving, prisoners getting on and off, yards filling with prisoners during exercise time, and so forth. Perelman listened with interest as the commander outlined the rumored horrors of El Duende. “Our number one hypothesis,” he concluded, “is that these feet are the fruits of torture and large-scale executions at El Duende. Whether the feet were the product of an intentional or accidental mass dumping is an interesting but, for now, irrelevant question. One way or another, they ended up here — and it’s our job to find the answers.” He straightened up. “Any questions?”