“Take it easy, Doc. Jesus Christ. We’ve been at this a long time together.”
This was true. They could bicker and bluster and sometimes draw blood, but the rock-bottom measure of trust was this: who would run toward the gunfire to save your ass if your ass was on the line?
Ford sensed his ass was. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Oh?” The man was suddenly paying attention.
“I’m trying to make this work. It would be easier if I had more details. That name I mentioned. Shepherd. You recognize it?”
“We’re not getting into that. The best I can do is”—the man had to think about what he could or couldn’t say—“Well, put it this way. I wish you’d gone three-for-three. But, Jesus Christ, not without . . . you know . . .”
This was a surprising admission. “Then you understand.”
“About the thing we’re not discussing? Or the overall situation?”
“The keyhole view,” Ford said. “Something has changed, a serious breach . . . I can’t say here. I don’t read newspapers. Maybe you remember I avoid them for a reason.”
“That’s almost funny. There are no newspapers. Not really. Just the Internet. Fewer and fewer countries, too. Cybernations instead. The last guy in charge almost brought the house down. Still might. Some think intentionally, but I don’t buy into the conspiracy crap. You really don’t know any of this?”
“I was talking about the business.”
“Ah, that. What’s left of it. The pros are suddenly scared of politicians. Some are even choosing sides. That’s a first; unprecedented, in my experience. As long as the wings don’t fall off, the ship’s supposed to stay in the air, right? That’s all changed. And you, ol’ buddy, are up to your ass in something I don’t even want to think about.” The man let that sink in. “The cavalry’s not coming if you call, Doc. I’m not even sure who controls the cavalry anymore. The major players change every four—”
“Whoa, back up. You honestly don’t know—”
“I said it, didn’t I?”
“Geezus.” Ford took a moment to process this. “I’m surprised you bothered to call.”
“Don’t change the subject.” The man cleared his throat, which was a signal to listen up. “You’re not quite a movie star, but close enough, and no one wants to be in the movies. With me so far?”
“Keep going,” Ford said.
“You’re not the autograph type, so I’d think about closing shop, if I were you; a nice vacation, maybe. But don’t stray too far from home. About that other matter . . . Are you listening?”
“Yep.”
“It’s about their head guy, not ours. Their boss, if you want to call him that. He can have his backers cut you out of the deal. Or do it himself, if he wants. Not now, but a week or two down the road. It’s possible—depending on how fast he recovers.”
A lot of information was cloaked between those lines. Some obvious; the rest had to be extrapolated. Ford had been photographed or videoed, presumably at the resort, and identified. The religious crazies and another party—the Chinese, most likely—were looking for him, probably building a case for extradition. He should leave the country, but don’t choose a place that had ties with China, or Mexico.
The bad news: the “head guy,” David Abdel Cashmere, was alive and well enough, or still sufficiently in control, to have Ford killed. Or to use his ruby-handled knife up close and personal.
During three days of hard travel, he’d had time to anticipate variables, some of these included. He sniffed to signal subtext. “Sanibel’s nice this time of year, plus it’s the holidays. Like I said, I’m staying right here. I’ve got research projects—”
The man interrupted, then went silent. If Ford wanted to give away his location, there had to be a good reason.
“Too much work to do,” Ford continued, “and I hate quitting a project before it’s done.”
The man knew what that meant. “Tell me about it.”
“In the Gulf, there are what geologists call blue holes. Well, actually, they call them remnant archaic springs. So, most days, I’ll be offshore in my boat. Diving spots as far north as Tampa, maybe Crystal River.”
He added details; islands, towns where he might put in for the night. Then went on for a while about blue holes and jellyfish to camouflage what came next. “I don’t know if you’re interested in any of this.”
“I figured you were intentionally trying to piss me off,” the man said. “Scuba diving in December—we’ve got three feet of snow up here.”
Yes, he was interested.
“Tomorrow,” Ford replied, “the weatherman says low eighties, but a little too windy to dive. A friend and I were supposed to go out, but we postponed. Next week, there’s a nice four-day window; calm, mid-eighties.”
“Why I put up with this shit, year after year,” the man said. “This morning, way below zero, I sat on the Beltway for an hour, traffic all backed up because of sleet. That’s what I thought anyway, but turned out some third-world dignitary needed extra security. It’s always either them or the White House screwing things up.” He gave that a beat. “Then almost fell on my ass when I hit a sheet of ice on the steps.”
The White House?
Ford played it straight. “Sounds like you’re the one who needs a vacation. Why not come down for a few days of fishing while I work? Pick a place, I’ll meet you.”
“Did you say as far north as Tampa?” the man asked. “I still have friends there. We went to a couple of Rays games; some of the women in the stands, they were worth the price of a ticket alone.”
Rays stadium was in St. Pete, not Tampa, but Ford replied, “Send me a couple a dates.”
• • •
On the Internet, he checked news summaries, dateline: Washington, D.C. What dignitaries had been to the White House recently? He had already started a file on KAT and Winslow Shepherd, but he would do more on that later.
Next, a cursory search on unmanned aerial vehicles. He’d heard rumors that the Special Ops base at MacDill could pilot a UAV from Tampa to the Mediterranean, carry out a mission, then land it safely again at the little runway near Raccoon Creek—more than ten thousand miles fueled by solar energy.
The missing drone had solar panels but didn’t seem stout enough to weather a squall, let alone the Atlantic Ocean. What was a more reasonable operating distance?
Ford preferred books or charts to Google Earth, so he got out the atlas. Using a draftsman’s compass, he drew radii of fifty, one hundred, and two hundred miles, then focused on possible launch sites. Due east, two hundred miles away was Freeport, Bahamas. Cuba was 210 miles south. The Yucatán was nearly four hundred miles southwest. A hell of a lot of water and unstable weather separated those spots from Sanibel. Ford had to admit it was possible, but it was more likely the aircraft had been launched from somewhere in Florida.
Twenty minutes later, he put the atlas and compass away and was back in the little galley, working on the ceviche, despite a hundred other things that demanded his time. What he had told the man about living dual lives was true and never more evident than when he had just returned from an assignment overseas.
Like now: there were stacks of mail and phone messages to answer, a dozen email inquiries from school biology departments regarding specimens they needed.
All would have to wait. He’d been through this transition too many times not to consciously reboot by focusing on some small, pleasurable task.
It was a process: jettison recent events by reminding himself he was here, not there. He was no longer paddling his ass off to put distance between himself and what had happened at the resort. There had been bribes and boats and jungle roads, then more bribes to slip across the border into Guatemala. Outwit the hunters; a fight-or-die mentality that required behavior not acceptable in the gentler enclaves of Florida.
T
he islands of the Gulf Coast, among them.
He was here, not there. Sanibel’s weekly shopper’s guide provided confirmation. On the front page was a list of holiday activities. Tonight was Luminary. The bike path would be lined with candles in paper bags. Next came the Marching Mullet Band Parade, with Junkanoo dancers, then the Lighted Boat Parade, and a whole long list of church activities and potlucks. Next week, South Seas Resort would host its annual Holiday Stroll. At Dinkin’s Bay, a community known for excess, the Twenty-six Days of Christmas were already under way. Tonight was Day 13. At the marina, they were roasting oysters near a keg of beer, awaiting Ford’s arrival with ceviche.
In contrast, two days ago . . . no, three, he had been confronted by a couple of teenage thieves carrying machetes. This was Belize, south of Placencia, near some mud-and-junkyard village off the Monkey River. A defenseless ecotourist, they’d assumed. No idea who he was.
Not true of the border patrol cop who had motioned him into a room later that evening. Both were What to do? moments; sources of an adrenaline rush that even now, thinking back, caused his stomach to knot, but also sparked in his brain a sensation of purest clarity and purpose. Soaring but in control. It was a little like that.
The sensation was much different from the way he’d felt in Mexico, that night on the balcony, after saying to the woman, “Tell me what happens next.”
Ford didn’t want to think about what had happened next but couldn’t help seeing the contempt on the woman’s face when he stepped out, pistol raised.
“Predictable,” she had assured Winslow Shepherd. According to research, the Australian math professor was a political activist, a word that had many connotations but usually referenced a person who was a pain in the ass, yet had noble intentions.
That wasn’t true of Shepherd. When applied to him, activist was a euphemism for anti-anything that had to do with Western society, particularly the United States.
In the intelligence community, the activist label was assigned to people with all sorts of political agendas. It denoted passionate concern without violent intent.
For the destructive ones who hid behind that banner, more accurate labels were assigned. There were thug opportunists, TV radicals, Sunday militia, and revolutionary socialites. Anarchist was still used to signal those who were intelligent, methodical, and truly dangerous. The word had biblical linkage but an updated credo: to start anew, first destroy the old.
Shepherd was a mix of both. Working under the radar, he’d done his share of damage. He was Australia’s version of Weathermen founder Bill Ayers, a rich kid who despised the source of his own good fortune—and probably himself as well. He’d become a self-styled guerrilla; an underground fighter who preferred mail bombs to putting his own ass in the line of fire. The world of academia, and his university tenure, had provided a shield while he tried to destroy the very political system that guaranteed his own freedom.
Shepherd was not a very good guerrilla fighter—the seventy-nine bombings with which he was associated had managed to kill only three. They were high school kids who had had the bad luck of being in a post office at the wrong time.
The young professor had been indicted, found not guilty, and released back into the system.
“Kill all the rich, kill your parents, bring the revolution home,” he was quoted as saying—but only after he was safely back on university soil.
Despite his best efforts, Shepherd had never achieved the Hollywood cachet of Ayers, but he’d come close by accomplishing something Ayers had been unable to do. Shepherd had fathered a like-minded son who was a genius. A true genius, not the suburbanite variety. The college prof had named the kid Julian Caesar Winslow Shepherd.
Julian had taken their game to a whole new level. By age sixteen, he had hacked the computer systems of the Pentagon, NASA, U.S. Naval Intelligence, and others.
Presumably, with his father’s help.
The son—or the pair of them—had damn near broken through into the National Security Agency’s files when the kid was arrested by Australian Federal Police. Dad came to the rescue and the teen was released after paying five hundred dollars in reparations. Over the next few years, that error in judgment allowed several Western intelligence agencies to be compromised—intel that was shipped straight to terrorist organizations.
The Australian Federal Police issued arrest warrants for both men, as did seven other world powers.
The duo disappeared into the underground while rumors bubbled here and there. Father and son were feuding. The son sued the father through a team of Swiss attorneys for a long list of wrongs, including copyright theft and slander. A series of news stories were fed to Reuters, presumably by the outraged father. The son, by then a computer wizard, took his case directly to the world via cyberspace.
Then they both vanished again.
The kid, Julian, now twenty-four, was rumored to be holed up at some embassy in South America, but continued to raise Internet hell worldwide. He had changed his legal name to Julian Solo—an intentional slap at his father, who, even now, claimed to be the real genius behind his son’s burgeoning software enterprises and his “activist” ventures. The whole long while, the FBI, MI5 out of the UK, and Interpol were hot on their trail.
No wonder Winslow Shepherd had behaved like a coward when asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
Ford still had a lot to learn about Julian, but if he’d known about Shepherd’s bombing spree, he would’ve handled matters differently that night on the balcony.
A damn sloppy job.
• • •
Ford took a breath and reminded himself, You’re home.
Yes, he was. He should have been tired yet felt like he was caffeine-buzzed. It was always that way. Finish the ceviche, he decided, then wander down to the marina; try to resume his role as the kindly biologist who was thoughtful, dependable, and always on time.
On the cutting board was the superb chunk of mangrove snapper. The fillet was cold in his hand and possessed the density of cheese. He set aside a piece for the marina’s cat and diced the rest into a bowl that had been chilled in the freezer. With a clunky old lever press, he juiced a dozen limes. Then added Spanish onion, garlic, coarse sea salt, a whole bunch of cilantro, and diced half of a mild jalapeño.
After fermenting in lime juice for an hour, the fish would no longer be raw but had to be kept chilled. On his way to the fridge, his eyes landed on the pocket laser near the window. Stupid to leave it out, even if it looked more like a flashlight than a weapon that could shoot a military-sized UAV from the sky.
That is exactly what he’d done. He’d made a snap decision; no thought as to what the fallout might be if the aircraft tumbled into the water. The laser had probably fried the electrical system, or gyro sensors, or . . . hell, who cared? It’d worked.
He stood at the window. Dinkin’s Bay was a dark canvas with a halo glow from the mainland. No boat lights, or anything else out there, to cause concern.
Except for the drone. Someone would come looking for the damn thing. If not tonight, soon.
• • •
The path to Ford’s house exited through mangroves into the parking lot, just outside the gate, which was open, but only a few vehicles were inside. Fast Eddie, who was doing dive charters again now that his engine was fixed, was talking to Vargas Diemer, the Brazilian. Both lived at the marina; both were commercial pilots, although Eddie had lost his license or been grounded for some reason.
At a marina where an anchor was the only tether, it wasn’t the sort of question one asked.
They had been talking about the drone. Ford could tell by the way they went quiet as he approached; then Eddie, a little too cheerfully, said, “Welcome back to the land of coconuts and money. What’s shakin’, professor?”
Any other time, Eddie would have first asked about the dog. Vargas knew enough about Ford’s cl
andestine life not to bother. A safer subject was the dive business, which transitioned to great white sharks.
“People say Dolly ain’t a problem no more? Hell, not two hours ago, Mack was complaining; said he wished she’d come back. You believe that shit? Said business had never been better; and the local chamber of commerce types, they want her back, too. Know what I told that fat Kiwi? Told him, ‘Come to the next meeting of dive operators and we’ll stick all the money we’re losing up your ass.’”
Vargas was laughing while Ford said, “Take it easy, Eddie. Mack’s the one who helped you get into the business. And he’s also a friend.”
“Aw . . . I know; sorry, Doc. I get carried away. But it’s been almost four weeks since that big bitch pinged. She’s gone, right? Does that make headlines? Hell no. Now the rumor mill is killing us, too. Like that bozo drunk who claimed he saw Dolly cruisin’ the beach—turned out to be a freakin’ kayak. Then, last week, some guys on a head boat claimed they saw her thirty miles off near the Mohawk wreck. Total bullshit. Forty people on that stinkpot, but only a couple see her? Did you see the video that asshole shot?”
Ford had seen the blurry footage. “I couldn’t tell what it was for sure, but it certainly wasn’t a shark.”
“Exactly,” Eddie said. “Great whites don’t hang out in the Gulf.” He looked to Vargas. “You ever seen one out there?”
“I’ve never seen any fences out there either,” the Brazilian replied, his accent not thick but evident. “Sharks, they do what they want. I used to fly a C-5 for an oil sheik. He had a mistress on an island off Africa. Reunión Island—Doc, you know that island. Name one place in the world I wouldn’t swim, that’s it. Tiger sharks and bulls mostly, but probably white pointers, too. Reunión is the tip of a volcano in the middle of nowhere. Understand what that means? All around the island the ocean’s black, it’s so deep; no reefs or structure, so what’s a shark going to eat? People, that’s what, because sharks are animals and animals learn. Go where the food and sex is. They’re no different than us.”
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