“Exactly,” Gannon said. “You’re on the run for the seditious crime of wanting to do your job.”
Gannon looked up at the sky.
“You ever see them from way out in the ocean?” he said.
Ruby shook her head.
“Come on. You were in the navy, weren’t you?”
“They started me in the Office of Naval Safety straightaway. I’ve never been assigned to a ship.”
Gannon looked up.
“This is nothing,” he said. “You should see them thirty, forty miles out in the Atlantic off Eleuthera.”
“Yeah?”
Gannon nodded.
“It’s like outer space. Tell you what. If you ever get down to the islands, I’ll take you out. I’ll teach you how to swordfish. You can give me an astronomy lesson.”
He held the screen door for her.
“Are you putting me on?” she said.
“No,” Gannon said. “I’m serious. Once we get this garbage sorted out, we’ll go out on my boat. We’ll have ourselves a whistle-blowers’ night cruise.”
Gannon watched Ruby’s face brighten for a moment as she thought about it. Then her expression collapsed.
“You mean if we get this sorted out,” she said quietly as they stepped out of the cold back into the warmth of the trailer.
64
It had started snowing when Reyland left the house at 10:00 a.m. that morning, and by the time he made it to Annapolis and finally pulled to a stop before Griffin Island’s one-car bridge, a square of snow fell in one piece from the gatehouse’s sliding window.
He gave his name to the guard. Then he looked over the water at the snow falling gently onto the misty trees.
He had grown up a navy brat in Annapolis nearby and always thought Griffin was more like a resort or a private country club with its own zip code than an actual town. Most of its small body of land was taken up by its world-renowned golf course, for one thing, and there were exactly zero businesses or stores. Even the island’s narrow roads were like golf cart paths, and in the summer, there were more golf carts in the circular driveways of the mansions than cars.
When the booth’s stick went up, he drove to the other side of the causeway and made a left into a zillion-dollar neighborhood they called Cherry Hill Forest. Down on the other side of it was the island’s East Shoreline Road, and he sat for a moment at the stop sign.
Across the road was the island’s famous country-club boathouse and there was a huge peace sign lit up with Christmas lights hanging upon its clapboard side. In the pale yellow glow beneath it was a Crayola box–colored row of flipped-over canoes peeking out of the snow.
Reyland often fantasized about buying a Griffin Island bayside vacation villa one day, and as he sat there, he closed his eyes, imagining it was summer. Breathing deeply, he thought of him and Danielle and the kids walking a canoe across the boathouse dock in life jackets as their goofball hound dog, Charlie, barked excitedly, trying to catch up.
He thought of three hundred–yard drives pin straight down the fairway, martinis at sunset, cookouts with fireworks. Towheaded toddlers collecting fireflies in mason jars. In his mind, he saw himself at exclusive parties where all the wives were blonde and thin and pretty, and all the men were lean and tan and wore dinner jackets with Bermuda shorts.
After a few more deep breaths, he opened his eyes and looked at himself in the rearview mirror.
“Now go and get your future back, you son of a bitch,” he said as he put the Audi back in Drive.
The driveway that Reyland pulled into two minutes later was the only one on the shore road with wrought iron perimeter fencing and a solid gate. There must have been a hidden camera somewhere because the gate opened inward as he slowed for the call box.
The gatehouse he’d been told to park at was a whimsical fieldstone-and-glass castle-like building with a pointy Romanesque roof. Up the stairs on the cold, windy porch stood two large hard-faced security men in black overcoats who asked for his cell phone. There was another security team inside on the first floor who wanded him before he was guided to the stairs.
Up on the dimly lit second floor, it looked like an arcade at an amusement park. There were pool tables and poker tables and a foosball machine and a pop-a-shot basketball court. There was even one of those dance machine games with the floor squares that lit up.
Beyond it were the men he was there to explain himself to.
They didn’t seem like they were in the mood for any boogying, Reyland thought, taking a deep breath as he stepped over.
65
By the huge water-view window, the three old men sat side by side silently at a poker table.
The man on the left side was wiry and buzz-cut and pointy chinned and had a professorial air about him. The one farthest right was quite fat and had tortoiseshell eyeglasses.
In between them, the eclectic owner of the bayside estate gave Reyland a pleasant nod, which Reyland immediately returned.
He was small and handsome and blue-eyed and had backward-swept steel gray hair and baby-soft skin so pale and white it looked powdered.
That the pointy-chinned man and the fat man were midlist Forbes 500 billionaires would have been quite impressive had it not been for the striking ghostly blue-eyed man sitting between them.
He was from one of those old European banking families whose whispered-about wealth was so vast and unfathomable, it never showed up on any lists at all.
Without prompting, Reyland stood up as straight as his six-foot-six height would allow and delivered his full report to them. He left out nothing. He didn’t try to minimize his role.
When he was done, there was no yelling or outrage from the three highly intelligent worldly men sitting at the table. What mattered blame at this point?
Reyland stood calmly in the silence, waiting for their reply. Like a baseball manager who had put in his best pitcher yet still lost the World Series, he stood by the logic of his decisions. Given another chance, he would have done it exactly the same again.
The fat man spoke first, and when he did, his Texan’s voice was unexpectedly deep and gruff and buzzy with what linguists call vocal fry. It could have been the voice of a drill sergeant who smoked three packs a day.
“And is there any trace of them now?” he said.
Reyland was about to tell him the difficulty of the task, to tell him how many analysts they had at this moment sitting in front of computer screens, devising new algorithms and looking for anomalies and clusters in the data mine.
He was going to tell him how thorough a proctology exam they were giving to the life of Ruby Everett and the mysterious, now-missing NYPD detective Daniel Henrickson. How several of his staff would literally be living at the office until they were found.
Instead he said simply, “No.”
The old men pondered that some more.
The pointy-chinned man spoke next with an East Coast lockjaw voice that was high and almost effeminate.
“Damage control aside for the moment. What is your recommendation for moving forward on Director Dunning’s initial mission?” he said.
“Glad you asked me that, sir. London is a green light. I just got off the phone last night. Despite everything, we’re still looking very good. Our asset is ready to operate as scheduled.”
“So it’s just a matter of discretion, then,” the ghostly white blue-eyed man beside him said with a pleased surprise.
“Yes, sir,” Reyland said. “We just need to keep it all under wraps for five more days.”
The old man looked down at the table, his striking eyes half-hooded. There was a strangely amused look on his face, like he was about to tell the punch line of a funny joke. Reyland watched him. This mysterious man who collected CEOs and senators and Congress people like baseball cards.
When he suddenly smiled, it was like
the whole dim room lit up. He flashed deep dimples, and his soft multibillion-dollar Dodger-blue eyes twinkled like the lights on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge out the window behind him.
“Then by all means I think you should continue, Robert,” he said with his plum-in-the-mouth British accent. “Plug this potential leak. We’ll handle the media. You leave that to us.”
“Still with no parameters, correct?” Reyland said, staring at this famous secretive man who many said had economically devoured his first country, a small South American one, before he was thirty.
“Correct,” the blue-eyed man said.
“With all available resources at my command?” Reyland said.
The elegant old man’s amused, ever-playful smile didn’t waver one iota.
“By any and all means necessary, Robert,” he said with a slow wink. “How could we have it any other way?”
66
Happy to have the situation somewhat stabilized and still have his head attached to his shoulders, Reyland was turning from the table when the infinitely rich old blue-eyed Brit stood.
“Robert, wait. I’ll walk you out,” he said.
Oh, boy, Reyland thought. An audience with His Serene Eminence. What now? he thought as the rich man stepped over.
The old man put his arms behind his back in a formal, almost military posture as they walked slowly alongside the arcade games.
“Tell me, who is your contact on the London end? That Watkins fellow?” he said.
“No, Wrenhall,” Reyland said. “Brooke Wrenhall.”
“Ah, yes. Ms. Wrenhall. She is quite good. Sharp. Yes. Quite sharp. Her father worked for me once years ago. Or was it her grandfather?” the billionaire said, wrinkling his brow.
They continued walking.
“I’m sorry to further burden you, Robert, but I have a question concerning the director’s plane.”
“Of course,” Reyland said, stooping to listen.
“I was told that this Mr. Biyombo individual brought a package with him out of the Congo. Is that true?”
“Yes,” Reyland said, nodding. “He did.”
“May I ask how you know this?”
“I was on the phone with Dunning before they took off,” Reyland said. “Biyombo showed him the case. The director told me there was what appeared to be a very large amount of diamonds inside of it.”
The rich man nodded.
“And your report said this case is still missing?”
“Yes. Along with the money. We’re still looking. As I mentioned, we still have a team down in the islands working solely on that,” Reyland said as they made the top of the stairs.
The ghostly blue-eyed man nodded again.
“Now, this is just an ancillary matter, Robert, but we believe Biyombo’s diamonds were actually stolen from a convoy out of one of our mines on the Zaire border three years ago.”
Reyland blinked as he thought of whom the rich man meant by the word our.
“If you come across these diamonds in your travels, Robert, I would be forever in your debt if you brought them directly to me.”
Forever in debt to a man with an infinite amount of money, Reyland thought, looking into the icy blue of the man’s eyes.
It was here, Reyland realized.
The opportunity that he had always dreamed of but was hesitant to ever actually expect, even to himself.
He would be a player. That was what he was being offered here. World-Class Player Status.
If he retrieved Biyombo’s satchel, he would get his own golden passport into the sky city.
He thought about the boathouse again, about the fireflies.
“I’ll make it a priority, sir,” Reyland said with an impossible-to-hide smile as he started down the steps.
67
Gannon woke up at around five thirty in the double-wide’s small bedroom. When he went into the living room, Stick and Ruby were sitting silently watching the news.
“Are we still the lead story?” Gannon said.
“Yes,” Ruby said. “But at least they’re not showing photos of us yet.”
“Is there anything about Wheldon? About the fire at the hotel?” Gannon said.
“No,” Ruby said. “Not a thing.”
After the news was over, the only thing to eat was more pancakes, so they had them for dinner along with some bacon that Gannon defrosted from the otherwise empty freezer.
After they were done eating, they stared at each other in silence. Then it was Stick’s turn to do some pacing. Ruby and Gannon sat at the small kitchen table, sipping instant coffee as they watched Stick walk the length of the small living room to the pellet stove and back.
“Hell, I need a drink. Is there anything to drink?” Stick said.
Gannon got up and looked in the pantry where he’d found the pancake mix.
“You’re in luck. There’s beer,” Gannon said, kneeling down. “No, no. Wait. Sorry. False alarm. It’s just that O’Doul’s nonalcoholic stuff.”
“Screw it. Bring it out,” Stick said, making a gimme gesture with his big hand. “I’ll take even a pretend beer at this point.”
They watched him crack the bottle open and drink while he continued to pace.
“Okay, so there’s obviously something there about the plane,” Stick said. “Something about the director and the people there with him that is so unholy, there isn’t anything they’re not going to do to cover it up. So what the hell could it be?”
“Before he was shot, Wheldon was speculating it had something to do with the uncut diamonds,” Gannon said. “He said maybe they were illegal blood diamonds from some war-torn African country and that the exposure of the FBI director on the plane with the diamonds would expose some kind of Iran Contra–type deal with African warlords.”
“Maybe that’s true,” Ruby said. “The range on a G550 is transcontinental. They easily could have traveled from Africa to the East Coast of the US.”
“Or maybe the dead guy in the hoodie was some kind of African terrorist or something?” Stick said. “And they were doing some kind of off-the-books deal with him? Sneaking him into another country or something?”
“Awful lot of maybes and somethings to go on there,” said Gannon.
“You’re right,” Ruby said, letting out a breath. “We can’t really say what it is.”
“So what do we do?” Stick said.
“I think we need to do what Wheldon said before they shot him,” Gannon said.
“Which is what?” Stick said.
“Get the tape out there,” Gannon said. “We need to go back to my place and get the video. Get it out to the world. It’s the one thing they don’t want.”
“That actually makes a lot of sense,” Ruby said. “They’re willing to kill us to cover it up, right? But if the truth gets out, it’s out. The reason to kill us suddenly disappears.”
“Plus, at the very least, we’re going to need money and plenty of it to keep staying under the radar with these jacks hunting us,” Gannon said.
“Just one little detail,” Stick said. “How do you plan on getting us from here to the Bahamas with the FBI and probably every cop in the United States out looking for us?”
Gannon smiled as he thought of something.
“We’ll take the back roads,” he said.
68
They were just over the border of Kentucky the next morning when they saw the gas station.
They were on a two-lane strip of desolate Tennessee hill country road heading downward into a valley, and Gannon saw it ahead on his left off by itself in the middle of nowhere.
It was a blue-and-white Marathon station with a little mart attached to get doughnuts and Gatorade and lottery cards. Behind it was a tree-filled hill edged with a small cliff of striated brownish-gray rock.
“Guys, what do y
ou think? Stop for gas?” Gannon said.
In the back seat, Stick lifted the binoculars they’d brought with them from the hunting trailer.
“Do it,” he said. “There aren’t any cameras that I can see.”
It was cold when Gannon stepped out by pump number one. He looked up at the dawning overcast sky. The forecast called for rain, but snow made more sense. He stepped past the cigarette ads and the propane cage and opened the door.
There was a middle-aged couple inside, a heavyset lady with silvery blond hair and a skinny man with a mustache and glasses.
“Forty bucks on pump one, please,” Gannon said, putting a couple of twenties on the counter.
He saw the cruiser straight off as he came back out the jingling door. It was a Tennessee state trooper Dodge Charger detailed in cream and black with a yellow stripe. Gannon had the pump clunked in and had just squeezed the handle as it pulled to a stop right behind them.
Just bad luck, Gannon thought, trying to calm his breathing. Just full-out bad luck.
The trooper who climbed out of it was pale and square-jawed and about thirty. He was medium-sized, five-nine or so, but bulked up wide with muscle from working out. Gannon, seeing the no-nonsense expression on his lean face beneath the green Smokey the Bear hat as well as the shine to his patent leather cop shoes, did what he could only do.
He smiled and nodded.
“Morning,” he said.
The trooper looked at him, looked at Ruby, looked at Stick, and gave him a fake smile back.
“Taking a trip, huh,” he said.
“Yeah, how’d you know?” Gannon said. Then he laughed. “Oh, right. The plates. Yeah, my old lady’s idea. Got a vacation week off from work, and two nights ago, out of the blue, she says she needs to see Graceland. Bucket list thing.”
“Happy wife, happy life,” the trooper said, peering into the back. “Got a buddy with you?”
“Kinda,” Gannon said.
They both looked out at the road as a rattling dump truck went by tugging a backhoe on a trailer.
Stop at Nothing Page 17