The dog came back out, went to Chase, and rubbed against his leg. He scratched behind its ears.
Without looking at Devlin, he said, “What are we talking about here?”
“I want to get on that island. I’m looking for someone to take me out there, drop me off. That’s all. They don’t have to stick around.”
“And how will you get back?”
“I’ll work that out later.”
“Seems to me you’ve only got half a plan. Or a half-assed plan.”
“Part of the deal is they also forget it ever happened, if anyone asks afterward. Other than that, they’ll have no connection to me whatsoever, nothing that could tie them in.”
“Deniability.”
“Safest way.”
“I hear you.”
“How much?” Devlin said.
The dog grew bored, snuffed around the deck, then padded back inside.
Chase took off his cap, resettled it. “You sure you don’t need someone to come with you, watch your back?”
“Absolutely not. I need a ride out there. That’s it.”
“Well, with gas and mileage, the risk involved…say five hundred U.S.?”
“Say three hundred U.S.”
“Cash?”
“Of course.”
“Well, in that case, say four hundred. And better make it in advance.”
Devlin put out his hand. Chase took a moment, then shook it. “When do you want to take this trip?”
“Tonight,” Devlin said.
Lukas walked the grounds, trying to get a feel for the layout. The sun was high. He’d slept heavily the night before, woken late, but was dogged with a tiredness he couldn’t shake.
He’d counted six guards on the island, including Winters and Bishop. Some of them he’d seen before. All were armed.
Most of the palm trees around the house showed blight, with large swaths of branches brown and dying. Weeds sprouted through the flagstones on the verandah. On the north side of the property was an empty swimming pool, its walls decorated with a mural of elaborately drawn mermaids and sea creatures. Rainwater had gathered at the bottom, where the drain was clogged with dead vegetation and palm fronds. Flies buzzed around it.
Back in the house, he got a bottle of water from the big steel refrigerator in the bare kitchen. Bishop and a guard called Kane were playing poker at a butcher-block table, money in front of them. Bishop looked at Lukas, nodded, went back to his cards.
Kemper was out on the observation deck, talking on a cellphone. A cast-iron table and chairs had been set up on the verandah, along with a propane grill. Lukas went out the sliding glass door, took a seat. Shadows were lengthening as the sun dipped behind the house. On the pad below, a man was wiping down the helicopter’s canopy.
Kemper finished his call, nodded to Lukas, came over, and took the chair beside him. He set the phone on the table. “Isabella. She wants to know when she can come down here. I think she misses me.”
Lukas nodded at the man below. “He looks familiar.”
“That’s Chambers, my pilot. He’s one of my Lear captains. That’s likely where you know him from. I’m keeping him here now to care for the chopper, take me wherever I need to go.”
“Won’t all these guys get bored?”
“Not for long,” Kemper said. “Don’t say anything to anyone yet, but I’m making arrangements to bring some women in from Nassau. That’ll keep them quiet, for a while at least. I’ll rotate some of them back to the States, if they insist. In the meantime, they’re being well compensated for taking an extended Caribbean vacation.”
“You trust them?”
“I’m paying them.”
“You trust me?”
Kemper looked at him. “Why would you ask that?”
“I’m a liability to you, aren’t I? Like Farrow was.”
“Not at all. If I thought you were, you wouldn’t be here.”
Kemper took a dark habana from a shirt pocket, sliced off the end with a trimmer. He got a lighter from another pocket, worked the wheel, but the wind kept blowing out the flame. Lukas leaned over, took the lighter. Kemper cupped the cigar against the wind as Lukas got a flame. The cigar tip flared.
“Thank you,” Kemper said. “I could never smoke around Isabella, so it’s a relief now to have one whenever I want.”
Lukas watched whitecaps dot the water below.
“We’ll cook steaks out here tonight,” Kemper said. “We have enough supplies laid in for a couple weeks. Then I’ll send someone over to Green Turtle or Treasure Cay, get what we need. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, of course. But I need to ask, is there anything I should be aware of that might connect you to what happened at the house?”
“No. I was careful.”
“We’ll give it some time regardless, keep you out of the way here. But after things calm down, I may need you to go back to the States to handle some business.”
“Whatever you need.”
“Real business. Not like what you’ve done in the past. There won’t be a need for that type of activity anymore. Have you met all the men?”
“Most of them. I recognized faces.”
“Solid, to a one. Gordon had an excellent eye when it came to hiring.”
It was almost dark. Behind and above them, lights flickered inside the three big windows, then went on, cast shadows on the flagstones.
Kemper exhaled fragrant blue smoke.
“All things have their time,” he said. “Men too. In his time, Gordon was the man I needed. We built Acheron together. That was the start, the bedrock for all that came afterward. But it’s more like scaffolding. You need it to get the work done, but afterward you pull it down.”
“That’s a cold way to put it.”
“Acheron had its day, then its day was over. The same with Core-Tech. Gordon couldn’t see that, resented it even. You solved a problem I was eventually going to have to deal with myself.”
Lukas closed his eyes, felt the breeze. This is where Farrow imagined he’d be someday, he thought. Sitting outside with the old man on a tropical island, shooting the shit. Knowing he’d finally arrived, gotten what he’d worked for.
“How long do you intend to stay here?” Lukas said.
“I’m not sure. I’ve applied for Bahamian citizenship. I’ll spread around some cash, build a couple schools, a new wing on a hospital. They love rich Americans. No reason I can’t run Unix from here. You can be my eyes and ears back in the States. I’ll need that now.”
A shadow appeared on the flagstone a few feet away. Lukas turned and looked up to see Winters standing in the center window, watching them. After a moment, he turned and walked away.
They sat that way without speaking, watching the night grow darker, the sky fill with stars.
“This is our reward,” Kemper said. “For everything we’ve had to do, whether we wanted to or not.”
Lukas looked at him. Kemper’s face was lost in shadow.
“You and I both, we’ve come a long way,” Kemper said.
“We have.”
“This is what we’ve earned. Enjoy it.”
“I will,” Lukas said.
Forty-One
Tracy listened to Devlin’s line buzz for the seventh time, then click over to voice mail. There was no outgoing message, just a tone, then dead air.
Alysha looked across the conference-room table at her. Tracy shook her head, disconnected the call.
“He didn’t punk out on us, did he?” Alysha said.
“I don’t know. I hope not.” She set down the phone, picked up a pen, double-clicked it.
The table was covered with piles of paper and folders. Everything they knew or could pull about Roland Kemper, Unix Technologies, Core-Tech, and Acheron. In front of Tracy were Freedom of Information Act requests that would go out in the morning to the departments of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security, asking for any and all files related to Kemper and his companies. She knew it might be months be
fore they saw any documents back—and those likely heavily redacted.
“It’s what, two days since you’ve heard from him?”
“Almost. I don’t like it any more than you do.”
Alysha took a sheet of paper from a folder open in front of her, scanned it. “Hello. Here’s something interesting.”
“What?”
“I know how rich people love their tax-shelter vacation homes, so I asked Sylvie to see if she could find any other residences that might be in Kemper’s name.”
“She turn up anything?”
“Not beyond his Virginia address. But she cross-referenced Unix as well and found this.” She handed the paper across.
Tracy took it. It was a list of companies and addresses.
“Am I supposed to know what this is?”
“Tax filings tied to international sales of certain restricted security systems. That’s a list of contracts from the previous fiscal year in which both Unix’s and Core-Tech’s names come up as vendors. Check out the final listing.”
“Isabella Properties? In the Bahamas?”
Alysha waited.
“I don’t get it,” Tracy said.
“Where have we heard that name before?”
It hit her then. “Kemper’s wife.”
“Bingo. Can’t be coincidence, right?”
“Can’t be.”
“And that business address? It’s a private island.”
“His own island? What’s that cost?”
“Nice place to run to if you’re trying to avoid annoying reporters.”
Tracy sat back, looked at her. “You think Devlin knows about it?”
Alysha shrugged. “If you knew about it, and you were holding a big enough grudge…”
Tracy’s phone buzzed. It was Russ Jones in Virginia. She opened the line, put it on speaker. “Hey, Russ. It’s Tracy. Alysha’s here with me. Any luck?”
“Yes and no.”
“What’s that mean?”
“That Gordon Farrow we’re searching for?”
She looked at Alysha. “What about him?”
“We can stop looking.”
Devlin sat on the deck, watched the sun sink, dyeing the water blood red. Then he went below, dressed in dark jeans and T-shirt, black sneakers and nylon jacket. He lay back on the bunk, closed his eyes, and drifted into a thin sleep.
He woke just before 8 p.m., the time they’d agreed on. He got out the Glock, checked it again. Two extra magazines went into his jeans pockets. From a drawer in the counter, he took out the envelope with the six hundred dollars in traveling money he’d drawn from ATMs in Florida the day before. He counted out four hundred in twenties, put them in another envelope.
The Glock didn’t fit in the jacket pocket, so he tucked it tight into the waistband of his jeans, switched off the cabin lights, and went on deck.
Chase was standing on the pier. He wore a black sweatshirt with the hood down, dark pants.
“This baby belongs in a museum,” he said. “Sweet lines, though. Gasser or diesel?”
“Gas.” Devlin zipped up the jacket to cover the gun.
“A pair of the old Crusader engines, right? Chargers or Challengers?”
“Chargers. V8s.”
Devlin could hear music and laughter coming from other boats. He stepped up on the gunwale, and Chase caught his hand, helped him onto the dock. “You ready?”
“I am,” Devlin said.
Chase had an old Chevy pickup parked in the marina lot. As they drove, Devlin took out the envelope from an inside jacket pocket. “All twenties, if that’s all right.”
He untucked the flap so Chase could see the bills there.
“Good enough,” Chase said. “Why don’t you go ahead and stow that away there.”
Devlin closed the envelope, put it in the glove box, shut it.
“I’m not sure what you’re getting me into,” Chase said. “But I guess I’m along for the ride.”
“That’s all it is, a ride. You drop me, and then you go home.”
“Roger that,” Chase said.
They drove to the other side of the island, where Chase kept his boat, a nineteen-foot Bayliner inboard runabout, red and black. It was fiberglass, with a low profile on the water, light enough to move fast on the open sea.
They walked out on the old dock, the boards loose and uneven beneath their feet. A handful of small wooden fishing boats were moored here. One was all but sunken, only the tip of the bow and the roof of the wheelhouse showing above the surface.
The clouds had parted, and the half moon was bright, lit the surface of the water. They stepped down onto the boat.
“Come have a look,” Chase said. He took a folded piece of paper from his hoodie pocket, opened it on the dashboard above the controls. He switched on a penlight, said, “Hold this.”
Devlin took it, shone the beam on the paper. It was a rough map, drawn in pencil, of a kidney-shaped island.
“I asked around, got an idea of what this place looks like from all sides,” Chase said.
“Was that smart?”
“People I trust. I wanted to know as much as possible before we go out there. I figure it was worth the risk. Now here”—he touched a straight line extending from the island—“is the only real dock. It’s on the west side, the way we’ll approach. It goes out about thirty yards. They usually keep a boat moored there, a forty-foot Cantius cruiser. That’s the main vessel they use to go back and forth when they need supplies.
“Over here on the east side—the Atlantic side—there’s a place where they store another boat, a Sea Ray, that’s smaller and faster. A twenty-footer, from what I’ve seen of it. It’s kept in the boathouse most of the time. The helipad is higher up—here—and the house itself has big windows that look out on it all. Great view. Though I guess they paid enough for it.”
“How about coming in that way?”
“Won’t work. There’s no real dock there, just the boathouse, and you have to watch the tides. There’s a reef on that side that’ll knock the bottom out of a boat if you don’t see it in time. And there’s no beach to speak of at all there. If you tried to swim in, you’d get pounded into the rocks. The north and south sides are steep cliff, so forget about going in that way. The only place to land a boat is out front.”
“How do they get up to the house from there?”
“A wooden staircase runs up from the dock, with a couple landings along the way. That’s the only route in from the front. There’s a gate at the end of the dock, though, and I assume they lock it. I don’t know what you’re going to do about that.”
“Are there walkways on the east side?”
“Two sets of stairs, one from the boathouse, one from the helipad. They both run up to a big porch-verandah-type thing there, right below the windows.”
“How do they get their power?”
“There’s a propane-fueled stationary generator in a concrete blockhouse here”—he touched the map—“on the south side of the property. Everything runs off that.”
“So if someone interfered with the generator, they could shut down power to the whole place.”
“Maybe, if they didn’t get shot first. And I’d say there was a good chance of getting shot first, all the men they have up there.”
“Any sense how many?”
“From what I’ve heard, six or seven, at least. Now, this moon is going to be good for me, but not so good for you. We’ll be going in at midtide, so it’ll be easier for me to navigate, bright as it is. But it also means you’ll be easier to spot once I drop you off.”
“We go straight in to the dock? That’s a lot of exposure.”
“Thought about that too. It’s not ideal, but we can make it work. We’ll run dark the whole way, no lights. There are pole lights on the dock we can fix on. Depending on which way the wind’s going, I’ll cut the engine halfway across. Then we use those.”
He pointed to the inside of the gunwale, where two fiberglass oars were rac
ked. “Commando raid, right? Cockleshell Heroes. Ever see that movie?”
Devlin shook his head.
“We row the rest of the way in, hope the current’s not too bad. We’ll pull right up to the dock, just short of their cruiser if it’s there. It rides high, so it’ll give us some cover. I’ll let you out, then push off, row back out past the channel, and start the engine again. They might hear it when I do, so be aware of that. Sound travels far out here at night.”
“Got it.”
“Can I make a suggestion?”
“Go ahead.”
“I have no interest in getting involved in whatever you’re doing over there. Not my business. But I hate the idea of dropping you off, and you not being able to get back in a hurry if you need to. And there’s probably a good chance of that, right?”
Devlin didn’t answer.
“Here’s my idea. You give me an estimate of how much time you need to do whatever it is you have to do. I come back then, still running dark, pick you up. You gotta be there when I do, though, because I won’t be able to hang around long without being seen. Then, when I get you back to Green Turtle, we can talk about how much more money you owe me.”
Devlin shook his head. “I don’t want you more involved than you are.”
“I said my piece.”
“You did.”
He folded the map, put it back in his pocket. Devlin clicked off the light.
“Then let’s get to it,” Chase said.
The lights of the island grew brighter as they neared. The runabout bumped along, the bow flinging spray. Chase had already throttled back, and Devlin knew they must be nearing the halfway point.
“Glasses in that chart drawer,” Chase said.
Devlin opened the compartment under the dash. Inside were a pair of binoculars and a .45 automatic.
“What’s this?” he said.
“Souvenir.”
“Is it licensed?”
“Down here? No way. I keep it for sentimental reasons—and sharks.”
“Wouldn’t a rifle be more practical?”
“Yeah. Probably.”
Devlin raised the binoculars. He could see the dock clearly now. There were three pole lights along its length. A sign at the end of the pier read PRIVATE DOCK! NO MOORING! NO TRESPASSING! in bright white paint. The pilings were out of the water with the ebbing tide, and he could see wide strips of rubber fastened to them.
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