The Island--A Thriller

by Ben Coes

  He had his head beneath the faucet and was chugging cold water from the tap. After more than a minute of gulps, he felt something rubbing against the back of his legs. It was large, soft, and furry. He looked down and saw Wrigley. Wrigley was Dewey’s dog, a massive Saint Bernard, covered in brown, white, and black fur. A dog Dewey had rescued, a big dog with a square head and a perennial smile. Dewey shut off the water and turned, giving Wrigley a scratch on his block of a head as the dog licked Dewey’s sweat-covered leg.

  “Wrigley, that’s gross, dude,” said Dewey, though Wrigley kept right on trying to help dry off Dewey’s leg. Dewey knelt and let Wrigley slather his tongue across his face, shutting his eyes, enduring it.

  “Okay, Wrigley, good boy,” he said, standing back up and reaching for a paper towel. He wiped slobber from his face. “You want a snack?”

  Dewey opened the refrigerator and looked for something to eat. The refrigerator held little except for a few six-packs of beer and some random items he’d aggregated on those rare occasions when he was in town and had thought about making himself a meal. There wasn’t much—some cheddar cheese, eggs, ground beef, milk—and as he discovered, it was all several months past expiration.

  Dewey took out two cans of beer, opened both, chugged one, then took a sip from the other.

  He shut the refrigerator door.

  “I guess maybe we won’t have a snack,” said Dewey. “We could both probably skip a few meals anyway.”

  Wrigley looked up at him, his huge tongue dangling down as he panted.

  Dewey put the beer down. He leaned down and wrapped his hands beneath the large dog and lifted him up into the air, holding him. It looked awkward, but no one was around and Dewey didn’t care, and Wrigley didn’t seem to mind.

  Dewey nuzzled his sweaty face next to Wrigley’s snout. Wrigley’s warm, gooey tongue slapped across Dewey’s forehead, eyes, and nose. Dewey just shut his eyes and endured it, laughing.

  When the doorbell chimed, Wrigley started barking. Dewey put him back down. He glanced at his watch. It was eight thirty.

  “Uh-oh,” he said to Wrigley.

  Dewey walked to the door and opened it. Jenna was standing on the brick doorstep. She was dressed in a pink dress suit, the bottom part shorts that went to the middle of her thighs, with a wide leather belt across her torso. He looked at her for a few seconds, trying not to check her out but not being successful at it.

  “Hi, Jenna,” said Dewey.

  “Hi,” said Jenna. “Is this your place?”

  The front entrance foyer of the town house was high-ceilinged, with coffered woodwork, ornate, old-fashioned wallpaper of a hunting scene, and gorgeous furniture. Yet whatever interior design awards the stunning town house perhaps might’ve won before Jessica died and left the town house to Dewey were long since obliterated by the current occupant. Dewey’s eyes followed Jenna’s as she registered large piles of mail, weapons, ammo, dog toys, a dog bed, and what appeared to be dirty clothing. A half dozen submachine guns lay on the ground to the left, along with a cache of knives and a stack of cardboard boxes filled with ammunition. At the far wall was a rolltop desk, opened, yet stacked with handguns and boxes of bullets.

  “Yeah. Come on in. My, ah, house cleaner quit a few weeks ago.”

  Dewey’s eyes involuntarily glanced down. Jenna’s legs were smooth and defined. She had on open-toed high-heeled sandals with white leather straps that weaved up her calves to her knees. Her hair was neatly braided atop her head, a honeycomb of blond hair that revealed Jenna’s face, though her bangs remained dangling across her forehead.

  At the same time he looked at her, Jenna took Dewey in.

  He had on only a pair of shorts.

  He was half a foot taller than her and she looked up at his face, then her eyes scanned his thick chest. There was little subtlety to him. Dewey was a wall, layered in muscle, and he towered over Jenna, but not intentionally; if anything it was calming and safe having him there, and yet Jenna noticed evidence of conflict, scars both large and small; from bullets and knife blades alike.

  “I guess you’re not ready?” Jenna said.

  “I lost track of time.”

  “If you’ve had second thoughts, I understand.”

  “No, not at all,” said Dewey. “I went for a run but apparently I’m not as fast as I used to be. Can you give me a few minutes?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Suddenly, Wrigley inserted his large black and brown head between them. He came up to Jenna’s torso. She smiled and reached out for him.

  “That’s Wrigley,” said Dewey. “Wrigley, this is Jenna.”

  Jenna clutched Wrigley’s head as he sniffed her. She was smiling, then she looked at Dewey.

  “Should you maybe put a shirt on? Maybe even take a shower?”

  Dewey laughed.

  “Oh, yeah, of course. I’ll be right down. Make yourself at home.”

  * * *

  Jenna watched Dewey walk upstairs, trailed by Wrigley.

  She looked around the first floor of the town house. There was a large round table in the middle of the entrance foyer. A white vase sat in the middle of the table, with stems of flowers now brown and dead, hanging listlessly. She walked to the table. Around the vase were magazines, covered in dust. A pile of newspapers. On top, a yellowed Wall Street Journal.

  Jenna roamed around the downstairs. She felt a lump in her throat. The kitchen looked as if it had never been used. She opened cabinets and found plates, pots and pans, and, in other cabinets, a spice rack and then boxes of pasta and cans of tomatoes. They, too, looked as if they’d been there a long time.

  A small, intimate room off the kitchen had walls of deep, soothing yellow, a large flat-screen television, shelves filled with books, a luxurious sofa and club chairs facing the screen. Beneath the screen, on the ground, was a flannel shirt, crumpled up, and an empty Jack Daniel’s bottle. Jenna knelt and picked it up.

  Her eyes were drawn to a shelf behind one of the sofas. There were photos and she walked slowly to them. The first she picked up had a silver frame. Inside the frame was a picture of a woman, a head shot of a stunning woman with auburn hair, green eyes, and a chiseled, elegant, dignified look.

  The next frame was also silver and showed Dewey with the former president of the United States, Rob Allaire, inside the Oval Office, as he wrapped a medal around Dewey’s neck and Jessica looked on from the side, smiling. A medal awarded for stopping the infamous Lebanese terrorist Alexander Fortuna.

  A third photo made Jenna fight back emotion. Unlike the others, it was in a wooden frame. It was a picture from a dinner somewhere, and there were plates and wineglasses, candles, and, in the background, a sweeping lawn, lit by lanterns around the edges of an outdoor terrace. She recognized Hector, of course, and Rob, and Katie Foxx—and then there was Jessica in Dewey’s lap, folded into his arms, her head tucked against his neck.

  She didn’t like to think about all the cruelty in the world, the randomness of events that were so final, so unfair, so brutal, but she’d watched as her husband was killed by a car bomb meant for her, and for whatever reason the photo made her swallow hard.

  * * *

  Dewey took a quick shower, dried off, and stepped into the bedroom. Wrigley was watching him from a dog bed in the corner of the room.

  The bedroom was massive, with ceilings of antique brown beams, and four large windows that looked down on a cozy, cobblestone Georgetown street, across from other town houses of historic brick, flower boxes filled with blooms, brass lanterns burning natural gas and flickering inside glass-and-gold sconces.

  Jessica had bequeathed the home to him. It’s where they would’ve lived. Now it was his, but it was like a sarcophagus to him. It was only Wrigley that made him able to stay in the town house.

  Still, despite the hard memories, no one could walk through the historic, perfectly decorated, eight-bedroom town house and think it was anything but gorgeous, including the Chippendale dresser Dewey now ap
proached, set before red Farrow & Ball wallpaper.

  He tried not to think about it, willing thoughts of the past from his mind. Then a drop of blood dripped from his arm to the carpet—and he remembered the attack. He stared at himself in the mirror.

  War that has no end.

  Dewey went to the dresser and removed a few items—pants, shorts, T-shirts, button-downs, a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste—and packed them into a small leather weekend bag. He opened the top drawer and removed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and tucked it in. He pulled on a pair of khakis and a short-sleeved white button-down. He put his watch on—a green beveled Rolex with a gold band, a gift from Tacoma—and stepped into a pair of Bean boots. Dewey turned around and looked at Wrigley. He had moved and was now on the rug next to Dewey’s bed. Wrigley was looking up at Dewey with a sad look. He knew Dewey was about to leave again.

  An Agency-approved and -hired dog walker came every day, whether Dewey was there or not. He knew Wrigley was taken care of. Sometimes he was gone at a moment’s notice. That’s why he had the dog walker. Dewey knelt next to the huge Saint Bernard and scratched him with two hands, then leaned closer and kissed Wrigley on the head.

  “You’re a good boy,” said Dewey.

  Wrigley leaned up and gave Dewey a big lick across his face.

  “Thanks,” said Dewey, standing.

  From a bedside table, Dewey removed a worn leather sheath and strapped it around his ankle. He found a shoulder holster and strapped it beneath his armpit. He counted four mags, took three, and put them in the duffel. He took the last mag in his left hand and closed the drawer. He opened the drawer beneath and took out a handgun—pistol, .45 caliber, semiautomatic, with a patina of scratches and sheen from oil. Colt M1911 A1. He slammed in the mag and tucked it into the holster. He found a blue blazer in the closet and pulled it on. Finally, he went back to the dresser and opened the top drawer. He took out a long cylindrical object made of black alloy, a custom-made suppressor, and pocketed it.

  From under his pillow, Dewey took a knife: it was a fixed-blade, double-serrated, eight-inch Gerber combat blade. He ran his thumb across the ornate script carved into one side of the blade.

  Gauntlet

  A gift from his classmates in Ranger School.

  On the other side of the blade, his initials, etched in block letters:

  D.A.

  He tucked the knife into the sheath at his ankle and walked to the door.

  * * *

  Jenna was looking at the photo of Dewey and Jessica when she heard Dewey enter. She turned and saw him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, putting the photo back on the shelf.

  “For what?” said Dewey.

  “Prying? Snooping?”

  “You already know everything about me.”

  “No, I don’t,” she said. “She was so beautiful.”

  Dewey smiled. “Yes, she was very pretty and smart, like you.”

  Jenna blushed. There was an awkward moment of silence.

  “Shall we get going?” Jenna said.

  “We shalleth,” said Dewey, in a very inaccurate and exaggerated British accent. “Forthwith, milady! Call my footman and get my trusty steed!”

  Jenna shook her head, laughing. “You really apparently think you’re funny?” she said.

  “You seem to be laughing,” said Dewey.

  * * *

  Jenna slammed the gas and shot the white Porsche 911 C4S Targa down the block, then left, and was soon moving across Washington at a fast clip.

  “So, is there anything I should know?” said Dewey.

  “This isn’t an operation, Dewey,” said Jenna, “and by the way, thank you for coming.”

  “You don’t have to thank me, Jenna,” said Dewey. “I’m glad you invited me. I’m just saying, I wouldn’t mind some basic information.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, what are your parents’ names? How many people will be there? Who are they? How long is the boat? How many people are there in China and what are their names? What’s the meaning of existence? When a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Basic stuff.”

  Jenna giggled as she drove.

  “I can answer some of those questions,” she said. “The boat is two hundred and forty-three feet long. I don’t know how many people will be there. There are twenty-eight staterooms but my mother doesn’t like it when it’s overcrowded, so I’m guessing six or seven couples. And yes, a tree makes a sound.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Friends from England, maybe some New York society friends of theirs. My father and mother cruise the American coast every summer,” Jenna added. “Tomorrow is his seventieth birthday. I promised my mother I would be there.”

  “Where’s the boat?”

  “Off the coast of Long Island.”

  “And what should I call them?” said Dewey.

  “Just call them Bobby and Jemima,” said Jenna. “That’s all. My father is the kindest person I know. My mother can be a bitch but it’s only because she loves me.”

  “Jemima?” said Dewey. “Did you just say Jemima?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Nothing, just seems like an unusual name.”

  “It’s been in our family since the Reformation.”

  “Does she make good pancakes?” said Dewey.

  Jenna glanced at him with a confused look.

  “Um, I don’t know, I suppose, yes, but forgive me but that seems like a slightly random question,” said Jenna.

  “Will Mrs. Butterworth be there?” said Dewey.

  “Who? What are you even talking about?”

  Dewey started uproariously laughing at his own joke.

  “I see you really do find yourself quite amusing.” Jenna said, holding back a smile.

  “That was funny,” said Dewey defensively.

  “I don’t understand but maybe you can explain it to me someday? Now stop laughing at yourself. Whatever it was, it was not that funny,” she said as she abruptly started giggling, not at the joke, but at how Dewey was still laughing at something so silly and stupid.

  They both laughed for nearly a minute, not exactly understanding why; it was more about the sound of each other’s laughter and the knowledge that they weren’t laughing at the same thing but just laughing.

  They were on the highway for a while longer, speeding toward Andrews, and Dewey looked absentmindedly out the window as Jenna drove.

  “I’m so glad you came,” Jenna said politely.

  Dewey looked out the front of the car, not responding.

  There was a long stop in the conversation, several minutes, as Jenna drove and Dewey sat quietly in the passenger seat. It was hard to comprehend the fact that he was about to go somewhere and it would have nothing to do with work. To just escape for a few days and get away from everything.

  “I’m glad, too,” said Dewey. “Thank you for inviting me.”

  Dewey remembered what Tacoma said. He put his past thoughts behind him and just thought about the moment where he was. Jenna had on a very faint trace of perfume, or something that smelled good.

  It was Dewey who finally broke the silence.

  “So, do your parents know I’m coming?” Dewey said.

  “Yes, of course,” said Jenna. “I told my mother I was bringing a friend.”

  Dewey nodded.

  “Just so you know, my mother is a nut and thinks I should’ve been married a week after my husband died,” she said. “She already has us married with three children. That has nothing to do with you, as she doesn’t even know your name yet. She’s just a crazy but lovable old loon and I adore her. My father, however, is sane and will immediately love you … ummm … I mean like you.”

  “He won’t love me?” said Dewey with a sad face.

  “Oh my God,” Jenna giggled. “I’m trying to bloody drive, don’t make me laugh again!”

  “So she’s going to think we’re a couple?” Dewey said.


  “Yes,” said Jenna, “but before you start inflating your already overinflated ego she would think that if I brought a cadaver.”

  “Got it,” said Dewey. “So I’m basically a notch above a cadaver? I’m honored.”

  Jenna burst out laughing. “Stop.”

  “Shouldn’t we stay in the same room?” said Dewey.

  Jenna shook her head as she weaved in and out of traffic, smiling.

  “I’m just saying, if your parents think I’m your date, we need to own it.”

  Jenna swerved to the side of the highway and slammed the car to a sharp halt. They were in the breakdown lane along the highway. It was dark outside. Cars and trucks sped by at a furious clip. She looked at Dewey.

  “I know you’re kidding,” she said.

  Dewey leaned toward her and his lips met Jenna’s, as his hand found her thigh. Her eyes shut. Her lips were soft, and there was a cool, light taste, and her thigh was smooth and bare, and she shut her eyes and met him. Both of Jenna’s hands went to Dewey’s stubble-covered cheeks as her eyes closed, and the kiss lasted a minute or two.

  17

  8:55 P.M.

  LOTOS CLUB

  5 EAST 66TH STREET

  NEW YORK CITY

  Taimur sat in the driver’s seat of his Cadillac Escalade. The SUV was black on the outside, with a black leather interior, spotlessly clean. The engine was idling. Taimur had just dropped off a couple who’d flown into JFK.

  He prided himself on the fact that he was an Uber Black driver and could afford the expensive Cadillac. He cleaned the vehicle constantly.

  He’d saved more than $50,000 in the past two years from driving for Uber. Yet now, he knew, his plans to bring his sister and mother to the United States were irrelevant. All that mattered now was his part of an epic struggle against the Great Satan. He would spend the night in his car, waiting all night for the signal.

  “Finally,” he whispered to himself, as a young man approached and knocked on his window, though Taimur waved him off. He watched as the bald man in a tuxedo flipped him off.