FIFTY-TWO
Waking in the morning, Nadja felt like a seabird washed up on some befouled and blackened beach, plumage matted and viscous with crude oil.
Gray light dribbled through a gap in the curtains of Eddie Jones’s hotel room and found her still lying in bed beside the photographer, who gargled and grunted in his sleep.
The empty bottle of Stolichnaya on the bedside table explained why she had slept until nearly 8:00 AM.
Nadja eased her throbbing body—the cameraman had been relentless in collecting his reward—from the beneath the covers and dressed. She recovered her purse from under the bed and as she lifted it her phone fell out, the message light blinking in admonishment.
Making way out of the room to the bank of elevators she rode down alone, avoiding her reflection in the mirror.
She walked through the lobby into the cauterizing cold, a fresh fall of snow icing the low-rise cake that was D.C. and stood huddled in the entrance while the doorman flagged a cab for her.
On the drive home she assembled what she could of the photographer’s testimony.
It had been brief.
Michael Emerson had gone to Jordan to do a piece on the kingdom’s role in the war against Islamic State. He’d had no intention of crossing into Syria. The night he’d arrived he’d met up with Eddie Jones for a few drinks, and had left the photographer in the bar saying he’d see him in the morning when they’d travel together to the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base.
When Michael hadn’t shown, Jones had spoken to the hotel desk clerk who told him the reporter had checked out sometime during the night. Jones could get no other details.
Jones had stared at Nadja over his vodka glass as he’d lounged on the bed, shirtless, his hairy white gut swimming over his belt. “I had a feeling, though, that palms had been greased. There’s the story I was told and then there’s the truth and there’s a fucking desert between the two. Those towelheads are born liars, darling.”
Yes, she’d wanted to say, we are.
But she’d merely spread herself across his bed and let him drip his flab and his sweat onto her, and she’d shut out the pain and the sickness and thought of Michael.
The taxi dropped her outside the townhouse and she walked up the steps and opened the door.
The TV was gabbling in the kitchen and she saw Lucien sitting in his shirtsleeves, smoking a cigarette.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning.” She didn’t look his way as she headed in the direction of the stairs.
“Not so fast, my dear,” he said, lifting a Boone & Sons Jewelers gift bag from the table and holding it out toward her. “I have something for you.”
“What is it, Lucien?”
“Oh, you’ll love it,” he said, flashing one of his most lethal smiles. “It’s a bracelet.”
Nadja opened the bag and saw a matte black box the size of a pack of cigarettes with a black rubber belt looping from it.
It took her a moment to understand what she was looking at.
“Fuck you,” she said, “I’m not wearing that.”
“Oh yes you are,” he said, “unless you want to return to the detox facility on a, shall we say, permanent basis.”
She heard a scuff and Mr. Morose stood in the kitchen doorway, his hands behind his back, his face impassive.
“Put it on,” Lucien said.
Nadja sat at the table and removed the penny loafer from her right foot, lifted her jeans to her calf and slid on the ankle monitor. She battled to attach the device and Morse, as unctuous as a sales assistant in a shoe store, kneeled before her, pulled the strap tight enough to bite into her flesh, and clicked the connector closed.
FIFTY-THREE
Hook, sluggish after the late lunch of freshly caught kingfish that JP had grilled on an open fire, was dozing on the balcony of the bungalow, the ocean breeze like hot breath on his face, when the warble of his cell phone roused him from a dream that dispersed like smoke the moment he opened his eyes.
Disoriented, for a moment he thought he was back in his house in the jungle until Kate, wearing a brightly patterned cloth over her bikini, stepped out of the bungalow and handed him his cell. It fell silent as he took it from her.
He saw Bob Carnahan’s name on caller ID and dumped the phone on the wooden floor beside his chair.
“Nothing urgent?” Kate asked.
“No, just a guy I play chess with.”
“You play chess?”
“The way I paint. Poorly.”
“Don’t be coy. You know that painting was a big hit.”
“I’m just pleased she liked it.”
“Suzie loved it. Thank you.”
After lunch he’d presented the watercolor to the child who’d gushed and kissed him which had made him feel happy and melancholy all at once.
“Are you going to tell her?” he asked. “About me?”
Kate found a few grains of beach sand trapped in the crease of her elbow and dusted them off with her index finger, staring at him.
“I haven’t decided yet. She’s lost so much in the last few years, I need to be careful.”
Hook nodded and looked away from her gaze.
JP appeared from the jungle carrying the spade he used to bury their garbage. He dropped the spade near the steps and came up off the beach smelling of wood smoke. As he passed Kate in the doorway she touched him on the hand and smiled up at him and Hook knew they were sleeping together. They were being discreet, but the signs were unmistakable.
The man in him was pleased for her. The ex-spy wasn’t. Distractions were dangerous. As a creature prone to distractions, he’d learned that the hard way.
Kate followed JP into the bungalow and the Frenchman whispered something and she laughed softly.
Hook sat and watched the lazy swell of the ocean, the small waves nibbling silently at the shore. His cell rang again.
Carnahan.
Hook grabbed the phone and walked down the three steps onto the beach, scuttling like a crab for the shade of a tree, the molten sand torching his bare soles.
“Bob?”
“Permission to come aboard, Skipper,” Carnahan said.
“Where are you?”
“Across the way from you, Harry. When I got here the Zodiac wasn’t moored on the beach so I figured you were over there.”
“You’re alone?” Hook asked.
“Hell, yes,” Bob said. “Just me and a little baggie of primo weed.”
Hook hesitated. “Okay, Bob, I’ll come and get you. Give me a couple of minutes, okay?”
“Sure.”
Hook ended the call and loped across the sand like a firewalker, and went into the house to where Kate sat reading the dog-eared paperback of The Quiet American that he’d left there months ago. JP was in the kitchen washing dishes. Suzie helped him and they chatted about fishing and the ocean.
Hook beckoned Kate out onto the balcony and told her about Carnahan. Told her that she should pack up all of her and Suzie’s things and get JP to pack his, too.
“You believe this joker’s here on a whim?” Kate said, her hands on her hips, leaning in toward Hook, her face gaunt and serious in the slant of hard yellow sun.
“Yes,” Hook said, “I think so.”
“Think? There’s no fucking room for ‘think.’”
He held up a placating hand. “I’ll get you and Suzie and JP across to a resort on the south beach on the big island.”
“There’s another beach?”
“Yeah, it’s a little more remote.”
“And?”
“Then I’ll collect Bob and bring him here. If he’s set on staying a couple of days, I’ll tell him I’ve got to get back to the mainland and he can take me across in the morning. We’ll connect and figure out what to do next.”
She shook her head. “I don’t like it.”
“Relax. He’s just an old geezer escaping his wife.”
“What if he’s not?” Hook just stared at her. �
��Do you have a gun?”
“No.”
“Jesus.”
“I was never much good with them, anyway.”
“Why don’t you stay over on the big island?”
“And what do I tell Bob?”
“That you’re leaving early in the morning.”
“He won’t buy it. He’ll be suspicious.” Hook was about to put a hand on her arm, but he let it drop. “Okay, get moving. He’s waiting for me.”
Hook stepped into his flip-flops, rescued his T-shirt from the tree and dragged the Zodiac from the beach to the ocean. The tide was low and he was sweating freely by the time he got the craft into water deep enough to float it. He clambered inside and lowered the outboard into the water, checking that the propeller had clearance.
Kate, Suzie and JP hurried across the sand and splashed through the low water to the inflatable, throwing their packs onto the PVC floor and climbing aboard.
“You didn’t leave anything?” Hook said.
“I’ve done this before, Harry,” Kate said. “Too many times.”
He nodded and yanked at the pull cord twice before it caught. Taking hold of the tiller and he set course for trio of limestone cliffs that rose like sentinels from the ocean. Once the Zodiac was behind them they were shielded from view from the neighboring beach.
Hook approached the big island from its south side. This beach was smaller and rockier. No long-tails plied their trade here, the stretch of coastline accessible only by road. Or by a shallow draft vessel like the inflatable.
Hook got the Zodiac as close to the shore as he could and his three passengers clambered out, JP taking Suzie on his shoulders. Hook watched them wading in toward land and then he gunned the outboard and went back around the cliffs, the restaurants, bars and wooden boats growing larger as he neared them, the low thump of a reggae backbeat reaching him as he cut the engine and elevated it, allowing the inflatable to beach itself beside a row of long-tails.
Carnahan was sitting in the shade of a palm, away from the tourists, and raised a hand in salute. He stood, slung a small pack from his shoulder and walked over to the Zodiac.
“Hey, Harry.”
“This is a surprise.”
“Yeah. My fuckin beach is overrun with farang man—it’s like Rockaway on the Fourth of July. I need some air. Some space. You down with that?”
“Sure.”
Carnahan dumped his pack and clambered into the inflatable. Hook gunned the outboard and pointed the nose toward the bungalow.
Wiping his forehead on his arm Carnahan said, “Jesus, it’s wicked hot.”
He dug in his pocket and emerged with a spliff. Sitting with his back to the breeze he set it alight, took a mighty hit and offered it to Hook, who shook his head.
Carnahan shrugged and sat smoking and staring out at the ocean, the bandana around his head, the droopy mustache and stubble bringing to mind Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now.
A cell phone rang. An old Credence number that Hook couldn't quite name.
Carnahan fished the phone from his shorts and jabbed at it with a thick finger.
“Hey baby,” he said as he sucked on the joint. “Yeah, I’m on a boat. Uh huh. Well you know, Phuket is fuckin Phuket.” He winked at Hook. “Okay, miss you too, sugar.” He sheathed the phone.
“You told Betty you're going to Phuket?” Hook asked.
“Yeah. Truth is, I’ve had a few hassles with the old ticker,” he tapped a finger against his chest. “Nothing serious, but Betty doesn’t like me being alone out here.”
“But you’re not alone.”
“Sure, but I didn’t know that when I left home, now did I?” He took a hefty toke on the blunt. “Women just don’t fuckin get it about us, do they, Harry?”
“Get what?”
“That we have to kid ourselves that, like gods and despots, we’re beyond the reach of custom, obligation, and law.”
“And cell phones.”
“Amen to that, brother. Amen to that.” Carnahan sucked the last life out of the joint and flicked the end into the ocean, exhaling a plume of fragrant smoke at the sky.
FIFTY-FOUR
Kate went out onto the tiny balcony of the beach hut that stood in the sand on rickety wooden legs, watching Suzie play at the water’s edge. JP emerged from the one room that was almost filled by a double bed and stood beside her.
“I have asked you no questions,” he said.
“I’m grateful for that.”
“But I know who you are.”
“Okay,” she looked at him.
“Don’t worry. I will say nothing.” Nussing.
“Thanks, JP.”
“I also know you are ’Arry’s daughter.” When she stared at him he shrugged. “I have ears. And eyes.”
“Yeah, well, daughter in name only.”
“You trust him?”
“Don’t you?”
He held up a hand. “Maybe that is the wrong word. Trust. I mean, you’re sure he can get you through this?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” Even though she wasn’t.
“His heart is good, I think.”
“Yes, it is.”
“And long ago he was sharp up here.” He tapped his temple. “But now, maybe, not so much.”
“What are you saying, JP?”
“I know some people. On the mainland. Who can help.”
“This isn’t your fight.”
“Now, maybe, it is.”
Kate touched his face and felt a flare of desire. “No, it’s not. It’s mine. And Harry’s. ”
She left him and walked down onto the beach where her child was playing against a sky wild with the colors of sunset.
FIFTY-FIVE
Hook cut the outboard and he and Carnahan dragged the Zodiac up onto the beach near the bungalow as the red sun drowned itself in the ocean and a sudden mauve dusk fell.
Carnahan turned to admire the view. “Fuckin paradise, Harry. Right?”
“Yeah, it’s paradise, okay.”
Hook turned and walked across to the bungalow, hearing the low chug of the generator, fruit bats bursting from the trees like shrapnel and buzzing the balcony. He entered the house before Carnahan and saw no sign that anybody but he had been here.
Carnahan came in and gave the place a once over, then he headed for the kitchen and opened the fridge. He held up a sweating bottle of Heineken, JP’s brew of choice, overlooked in the hasty clean up.
“Fallen off the old wagon, Harry?”
Hook shrugged. “You’ve got me cold, man.”
“Good for you. What did Bogart say? Never trust a bastard who doesn’t drink?”
“I thought he said that the whole world was three drinks behind.”
Carnahan laughed. “Here, catch up.”
He slung the bottle at Hook who caught it and popped the cap. He didn’t want the beer but he couldn’t refuse it now, and took a slug.
“Your health, sport,” Hook said.
“Uh huh.” Carnahan stood with his back to the kitchen sink. “So you just decided to head on down here?”
“Yeah, when I left your house the other day. On a whim. I brought nothing, only what I’m wearing.”
Hook set the beer down on the table and wandered across to the window and looked out at the jungle. The cicadas had kicked in, a high pitched whine.
By the time he heard Carnahan behind him it was too late and the man hit him with his full weight and grabbed him by his hair and smashed his face against the wooden window frame, stunning him.
Carnahan kneed him in the liver and Hook whinnied and folded. The big man kicked him in the gut and he sank to the floor.
Carnahan flipped him onto his back and straddled him. Hook could smell his sour sweat, the recently smoked weed and some kind of lemony hair product.
When Hook tried to speak Carnahan punched him in the mouth and he felt the salty heat of blood on his lip.
Carnahan had a filleting knife in his hand, the one JP had used on the kingfi
sh a few hours before, and he prodded the tip into the flesh between Hook’s eyelid and eyebrow.
“Where are they?” he said.
“Who?”
“Harry, don’t fuck with me. Tell me where they are or I’ll take your eye, man. I’m goddam serious.”
“Jesus, Bob, who the hell are you?” Hook said.
“Who I’ve always been.”
“You’re working for Lucien Benway, aren’t you?” Hook took the man’s blink as an affirmative. “When you were building those dams in Third World shitholes you were a fucking asset?”
Carnahan shrugged one shoulder. “Strictly small time, Harry. After I retired and moved here I put all that behind me and then you washed up on my beach.”
“And, what, Benway got you to keep tabs on me?”
“In a low-key way. He just wanted to know your movements.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Bob? Why’d you pretend to be my fucking friend?”
“That wasn’t a pretense. But Benway has threatened me, Harry. Threatened Betty.”
“Jesus.”
“Now I’m sorry as all hell about this, but I fuckin mean it, Harry, you tell me where Kate Swift and her kid are or I’ll take this eye. And then the other.”
Carnahan jabbed the knife tip into his skin again and Hook closed his eyes and said, “Okay, Bob. Okay, man. They’re on the big island.”
“You came over alone.”
“They’re on the south beach. I went behind the cliffs for cover and then doubled back to come and get you.”
Carnahan relaxed slightly and the knife moved from Hook’s eye.
“You’re not shittin me?”
“I am not shitting you.”
Carnahan reached up and wiped sweat from his walrus mustache. This displaced his weight a little and Hook wrenched a fist free and punched up into his trachea. The big man gagged and tried to bring the knife into play, but Hook drove the heel of his hand into Carnahan’s nose and felt the bone break.
Blood dripped from Carnahan’s nostrils and Hook bucked and unseated the bigger man. Hook gained his feet and kicked Carnahan in the ribs and he went down, gasping and spewing and bleeding.
The Truth Itself Page 17