"Okay. Then that means they're stuck for now, as far as the files," she said. "Right?"
"Right. You said Phorcys has the files, now. They'll try to decrypt them, won't they?"
"I'm sure they will. I didn't discuss that with them. My deal was to deliver the files, so as far as they're concerned, I'm done."
"Do you think you might be able to find out anything from your contact? Without causing a blowup?"
"Maybe. Let me think about how to ask; I have to give some logical reason why I need the information. Otherwise, it would set off alarms. You said your friend found some info on Phorcys?"
"Yes. We'll get there, but let me take it in order, so I don't forget anything."
"Sure," Mary said. "Go ahead."
"The next thing was the mystery man. They were still piecing stuff together, but they think it's a Russian operation. They — "
"Russian operation?" she asked. "You mean the Russian Mafia's behind the mystery man?"
"They think it's the Russian government — not sure there's much difference. But they think there may be more than one person, too. Aaron said they've found several possible agents in the places you pointed to. So, it may not be one person."
"Was that Dimitrovsky man you killed in St. Vincent a Russian? The name sounds Russian."
"We didn't know about his national origin for sure. He was a Russian agent, wherever he was from. He was feeding money to extremists in the States, stirring up any kind of trouble he could. You said Phorcys sent you to make sure I got him. Any idea why they cared?"
"No. But maybe I can find out. If I'm going to call in favors and start asking questions, I might as well get 'em all on the table. But you wanted to talk about the mystery man. Are we ready to move on to Phorcys?"
"Not quite. Some of the people Aaron said were candidates for our mystery man are the targets of an ultra-hush-hush DOJ investigation."
"Really? How did he find out, if it's so hush-hush?"
"He doesn't tell me things like that, unless there's a reason. But that's not all. The same DOJ investigation is looking into the killing of an FBI agent in St. Thomas."
"Kelley?" she asked.
"That's Aaron's guess, but he's trying to get confirmation."
"What could that mean, Finn? I'm feeling a little overwhelmed, here."
"You and me both. I can't even guess, except there must be a link between Kelley and the mystery man," I said. "Otherwise, why would they both be under scrutiny from the same DOJ investigation?"
"But wait. We know Kelley was working with Nora."
"Yes. That's right."
"And Nora ordered the hit on Dimitrovsky," Mary said. “Then — "
"Hold it for a second. Nora gave me the order for Dimitrovsky. But she doesn't make those decisions on her own."
"You mean, she's not supposed to make them on her own, don't you?"
"You're right. What else are you thinking?"
"When she assigned you the mission, you thought it was government-sanctioned, didn't you?"
"Yes. But now I doubt that."
"I see why," Mary said. "I've been working on the assumption that Nora was acting for O'Hanlon, but why would O'Hanlon want Dimitrovsky killed?"
"Good question. Maybe he saw him as a competitor. Dimitrovsky was smuggling drugs to bankroll his other operation."
"Okay. That could be. Phorcys sent me to make sure that nobody interfered with your hit. That means they thought somebody might. You with me so far?"
"So far," I said. "Go ahead."
"From what you and I saw, it looked like Frankie Dailey was the one trying to stop you. You agree?"
"Well, he told me the three men who jumped us in Puerto Real were working for him," I said. "And the three people who attacked you in Bequia. But are you sure they were looking for me and not you?"
"As far as any of them knew when they attacked, I was just some girl you picked up along the way, remember?"
"That's right. Okay, so you think Frankie was trying to stop me from killing Dimitrovsky."
"Yes. It looks that way to me. Not to you?"
"Well, it does, but it doesn't square with the idea that Frankie was working for O'Hanlon," I said.
"No. But Frankie double-crossed his own parents. Tortured and killed them. Seems loyalty was not his strongest trait," Mary said. "He did that to his own parents; O'Hanlon was only his uncle."
"You're saying he double-crossed O'Hanlon, too?"
"That's the way it looks," she said. "But then who was giving Frankie his orders?"
"Dimitrovsky was working for Russia," I said. "That's not much of a stretch; he was funding the lunatic fringe at both ends of the political spectrum, making all kinds of trouble in the States."
"Are you saying Frankie was part of the Russian operation Aaron was hinting at?" she asked.
"He might not have known it. Or maybe he did. But you just said he didn't have any loyalty to anybody."
"Except himself," Mary said. "He was an ambitious bastard."
"What makes you say that?"
"Stuff I overheard when he was grilling his parents."
"Okay. That makes him a good candidate for manipulation by our mystery man."
"I agree," Mary said.
"Yes. But even though Aaron said there might be several Russian agents at work here, one of them is bound to be in charge. That's our mystery man. The others are just his troops."
"This all fits together, Finn. If Frankie was selling out O'Hanlon to the Russians, it makes sense that they might use him to protect Dimitrovsky, don't you think?"
"Yes. And if O'Hanlon already had a bunch of high-level politicians in his pocket, it makes sense that the Russians would want to take over his game. Ready to talk about Phorcys?"
"Sure, but do you think we could open another bottle of wine?"
"You bet," I said.
32
Mary sipped her wine and listened without comment as I told her what Aaron learned about Phorcys. A frown creased her face when I mentioned the special operations group.
"Does that ring a bell or something?" I asked.
"No," she said, "but it makes me wonder why they would hire somebody like me, if they have that kind of talent in-house."
"Aaron didn't say they had the talent in-house. Could be that's the part of the organization that hired you."
"Maybe," she said. "Sorry to interrupt. You were about to tell me what he said about the senator's suicide."
I watched for a reaction as I told her about the three alibi witnesses who disappeared. She gave no sign that she knew anything about it. But that didn't mean much. She fooled me several times before.
Even though we were being more open with one another, that wasn't the kind of thing people like us talked about. I wasn't surprised that she kept her own counsel, but I decided to press my luck.
"Was that what you were doing while I was sailing back and forth to St. Martin? Cleaning up after Phorcys?"
She looked me in the eye, hesitating before she answered. "Yes. I would have told you, but it didn't seem to matter. Does it?"
"No, I don't think it matters. But I wondered. Did they call you about it, or did you figure it out yourself? That it needed to be done, I mean."
"They called. Actually, they called before the mistress went to the cops. Whoever set up the bogus backstory on the senator realized the vulnerability at the time they set it up. They had planned to fix it somehow before they used the backstory. Maybe bribes to the witnesses — I don't know. But once she went to the cops, there was only one possible solution."
"What happened that caused them to miss that problem with the witnesses?"
"We rushed them. That's my guess, anyway. Pushed them into it before they could get the fix in. As best I can tell, they were planning to leak the dirt to force the senator to resign. They weren't going to do away with him until we came along. But then we decided to kill him."
"Did they have a problem with that?"
"With our
deciding to kill him, you mean?"
"Yes. With that."
"No. Not since he was involved in the kidnapping. Once he did that, they would have probably hit him on their own. But my contact said it was our call, anyway. They wouldn't have second-guessed us. But until then, they weren't sure he was anything more than a typical scumbag politician. So they would have ruined him, but not killed him."
"You're saying they would have killed him on their own? Once they found out he engineered the kidnapping, I mean?"
"I don't know for sure, but that was the implication."
"I want to ask more questions about your work for them, but I don't want to piss you off, or embarrass you."
"Okay. Ask. I'll do my best."
"I understand if you don't want to answer. I'm just trying to figure out what Phorcys is all about. My questions are about them, not about you."
"I said okay, Finn. Whatever you need to ask, I'll answer. If it ruins things between us, I'll have to live with that. I know what I've done; I have to live with it all. You don't."
She held my gaze, waiting, a grim look on her face.
"The other jobs you did for them," I asked, "were they hits?"
"Most of them, yes. But a few times, they needed somebody to — "
"It's the hits I want to talk about. I don't need to know about other stuff."
I watched as her face relaxed.
"Okay. What about the hits?"
"Aaron seemed to imply that they only put out contracts on traitors, and then only the ones that the government wouldn't prosecute. How does that square with your experience?"
"One hundred percent. But that's only my deals. I guess maybe they have other people like me. I don't know. But the people I killed, they deserved it. You know where I draw the line."
I nodded. "Thanks for leveling with me. You're a brave woman."
"Brave?" Her brow wrinkled. "I don't see that, Finn."
"Trust me. I see it."
She looked at me for several seconds, then nodded. "Thanks. I needed that. Is there more about Phorcys?"
"You mean from Aaron?"
"Yes."
"No. That's about it. At least so far. He's got a source that seems to know a lot about them. He said that she thinks they can do no wrong."
"Even though they kill people? When I listened to you telling me what Aaron said, Phorcys sounded like a vigilante group. Who is this woman? His source?"
I shook my head. "I have no idea. I don't want to know. But she's probably one of us."
"One of us? What do you mean by that?"
"Somebody that lives by their own rules. Somebody with an Old Testament sense of morality. Somebody who thinks vigilantes have their place."
"One of us, you said. You think you and I are that way?"
"You know damn well we are."
"Then why am I so ashamed of the things I've done, Finn?"
"I don't know. My guess is that you think you need approval from somebody you see as an authority figure."
"And you don't?"
I shook my head. "Once you've been around a while, you realize the people in authority are no different than we are. The honest ones, anyway. There are always a few who're full of shit, claim they know better than the rest of us. But they don't. We all screw up every so often. The best we can do is try to do what's right. We fall short sometimes. Get used to it."
"I'm trying."
"Good. Keep the faith. You know right from wrong; trust your judgment."
"I love you, Finn."
"I know. And that makes me the luckiest man alive. I love you, too. But there's one other thing we need to talk about before we get all mushy."
"What's that?"
"I have to call Nora tomorrow."
"Oh, yeah. That," she said.
"That, indeed."
"Are you worried about it?"
"Not particularly, but I need to have an idea of how to play it."
"You said the boss was going to give her orders to kill you."
"Yes. That's what he said."
"So what's the problem?" Mary asked.
"The problem is I don't want her to do that. I had a different outcome in mind."
That got a smile from Mary, which pleased me. I didn't like her being somber. "But her boss said he would sandbag her, didn't he? Fix it so her backup would turn her over to you?"
"We both know that's bullshit," I said. "They're setting me up. You, too."
"So that makes it simple," she said. "You need to let her lead you into the trap, that's all. She'll think she's got the upper hand. Just play along with her."
"Right. But she's going to need to be face-to-face with me."
"Why's that a problem?" Mary asked.
"She thinks we're in the Bahamas."
"Oh, yeah. I forgot that. And she knows I'm with you. Assuming somebody saw us together in Guánica and lived to tell her."
"That's a safe bet," I said. "There was somebody there besides the two idiots who lusted after you and my laptop."
"We're what, five or six hundred miles from where that tracker says we are?"
"That's right."
"And we could make 100 to 120 miles a day, so that's five days, roughly. Is that too long? Will she be in a hurry?"
"Guaranteed, she'll be in a hurry. What's going on in that devious mind of yours, Mary?"
"Just weighing the options. What if you made her think you were spooked?"
"Spooked?"
"Scared of her; suspicious that she's up to no good," Mary said. "Could you bring that off?"
"I don't know. Probably. Why?"
"The tracker's been sitting still for 24 hours, now, right?"
"Yes. So?" I frowned.
"So, what are the chances they're already moving on us?"
"Shit, I didn't think of that. Probably good. Say they spent several hours getting their act together and then started moving. They would probably use go-fast boats."
"Could they have discovered we're not where the tracker puts us?" Mary asked.
"Maybe. I don't know. They could have, especially if they used a spotter plane."
"Where did you put us? Some deserted island?"
"No. I had a wild notion that since we were really going to an uninhabited island, I would put us in the middle of a crowd." I laughed. "Just my perverse nature, I guess. The tracker thinks we're anchored in Georgetown, in the Exumas."
"I don't know the Bahamas well. Georgetown's crowded, I gather?"
"This time of year, it is. There're probably several hundred cruising boats there. They'll have a tough time discovering we're not there."
She grinned. "You're pretty sneaky. What if you shut off the tracker? Can you do that?"
"Sure. I can just yank the batteries."
"Yes. Like that. So they'll think it broke."
I chuckled. "That'll confuse them, all right. But it doesn't solve my problem with Nora."
"No. But it can't hurt. You're worried about where to meet her, right?"
"That's right. Any thoughts?"
"Yes. This is supposed to be her party, right? Not yours."
"Right. So?"
"So, let her pick the place."
"She'll pick somewhere close to Georgetown," I said.
"Then tell her that's a five-day sail for you. See how she reacts. Negotiate a different spot, maybe. If you could pick a place to meet her and the assassin, where would it be?"
"Good question. I've been struggling with that. Either crowded or deserted. Nothing in between."
Mary nodded. "Crowded would favor us more. Deserted would let them pick us off from a distance. I figure they'll be better equipped, with weapons and such. Right?"
"Probably."
"How will they feel about collateral damage?"
"You mean innocent bystanders?"
"Yes."
"They won't like that," I said. "They want to keep a low profile. Plus, they'll want to disable us and then interrogate us."
"Then a
densely populated area would give us more protection. That's what I'd pick. Maybe even an airport, or a ferry terminal. Somewhere with cops."
"How will we turn the tables on them, then?" I asked.
"Distract her backup and drug Nora. I'd guess drugs are easier to come by than weapons are, most places down here."
"Yes. With ship's papers, I can walk in a pharmacy and buy anything we need in the way of drugs."
"Really? Why ship's papers?"
"Under international law, the captain of a vessel can stock any medication in the ship's stores. And pharmacists in seaports know that."
"Then we have the makings of a plan," Mary said. "Since she knows you, you can be the bait to attract Nora, and I'll hang back and take care of her backup. Once they're out of action, we'll dope her up and pretend she's drunk. Lead her away and work on her. What do you think?"
"Like you said, the makings of a plan," I said. "Good enough for now, anyway."
"Anything else we need to work through?" Mary asked. "I'm about ready to call it a night."
"One thing. Aaron wanted me to check the blind drop this evening; he thought he might have something on the DOJ and the Russians."
I powered up the hotspot and connected the laptop, finding a message from Aaron.
"Mind if I read over your shoulder?" Mary asked.
"Be my guest," I said, opening the message.
URGENT!!! Call ASAP! You are in immediate danger.
"Not what I was expecting," I said, deleting the draft. "Can you hand me my phone?"
33
"What do you mean, 'in immediate danger?'" I asked, when Aaron answered my call.
My phone was set to speaker mode, and Mary was listening.
"Thank God you got my message," Aaron said. "I'm relieved that you're okay. I'm not sure how long you have."
Mary's eyes were like saucers. I put my hand over the phone's microphone and raised my eyebrows, inviting her to speak.
She shook her head and gestured for me to continue.
"How long I have? Before what?" I asked. "What are you talking about?"
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