“Why would someone in your position risk traveling to Central America in a small plane?”
“It was a private plane, but it wasn’t a small plane. It was a Cessna Conquest. A dream to fly; we used it several times. It was part of what we did -help people. Anonymously. There’d been an earthquake that wiped out a village in western Nicaragua. They are common in that part of the world. We were taking supplies and a medical team. Our friend was a gifted surgeon.”
I had personal experience with the earthquakes and volcanoes of the region but said nothing.
Flying supplies to people in trouble, the president explained, wasn’t an unusual thing for him and his wife to do.
“When we began work on the Wilson Library, we also created the Wilson Center to stay involved with issues important to Wray and me. It was her idea to establish a response team that could get help to disaster victims fast. We are small, we’re privately funded, so we’re already on scene while the big bureaucracies are still dealing with red tape. It’s a hands-on project. We work hard, and always anonymously.”
Because of his schedule, the president said, he could only occasionally join the Wilson Center’s volunteers. He’d cleared the decks, though, for Nicaragua.
“But Secret Service talked me into canceling because of that damn death threat. The day after my wife was killed, I told my security people, and the director, that I would never again allow them to overrule me.”
“Someone targeted the plane because they thought you were aboard.”
His finger tapped at the back of the photo. “I’m convinced that’s true.”
“An incendiary rocket?”
He shrugged. His finger, I noticed, was tapping in synch with the distant drums.
“How many people knew you planned to make the trip?”
“Dozens. The Wilson Center has a full-time staff, plus many volunteers who have administrative responsibilities.”
“How many knew you canceled?”
“Fewer, but still a sizeable number.”
“You told me the plane made a scheduled landing. But newspaper accounts said the plane crashed while making an emergency landing. Are you sure you’re right?”
He nodded. “Wray and her group got a message that a pregnant woman was in desperate need of medical attention. The woman and her son were to meet the plane at the airstrip.”
“You must have someone feeding you solid information.”
“Smart executives put together first-rate intelligence networks or they’re not smart executives. Even nine years after leaving office, it’s not an exaggeration to say that my sources are beyond the comprehension of most. Many of the world leaders I dealt with have also retired, but we stay in contact, advise each other, and share information-even some of my old adversaries. No one in power wants our input anymore. In a strange way, we’re like a secret and exclusive little club.”
“Are you telling me you know who did it.” I waited through a long silence. “I would assume it was the same group that came after you tonight. Muslim fanatics.”
The former president’s hand stilled. “ Islamicists, you mean? It’s true they’d love to have my head on a platter. Literally.” Abruptly, he resumed neatening his gear. I had the feeling I’d missed something.
“Maybe Hal Harrington can provide more information,” he said. Wilson was good at that-dodging questions by putting you on the defensive. “Or are you still pretending you don’t know the man?”
Why was he asking about the covert intelligence guru again? Harrington was a member of the deep-cover operations team the president had discovered: Negotiating and Systems Analysis. To give members legitimate cover while operating in foreign lands, the agency provided them legitimate and mobile professions.
Harrington, trained as a computer software programmer, later founded his own company. He’s now listed among the wealthiest men in the country. Did that have something to do with it?
I had no choice but to reply, “You’ve mentioned Harrington before. Sorry, I don’t know the man.”
“You didn’t contact him after our meeting in your laboratory?”
“Even if I knew who you’re talking about, the answer would be no.” True. Harrington was still with the team. The head of it now. But I no longer trusted him.
“You’re good, Ford. If you’re proving you can keep a secret, it’s working. But I’m tired. We can talk about this later. Otherwise, I’ll give you information as you need to know.”
He sounded tired. My eyes had adjusted to the light and I saw that his face was the same mushroom gray as No Mas ’s hull. His hair had been shaved boot camp close but he looked monkish, not military. In every photo I’d ever seen, he had the silver, sculpted hair typical of politicians and anchormen. The change in his appearance was remarkable.
I said, “There’s something that can’t wait. You told me to pack a passport and enough clothes for a week. But if we’re going after Mrs. Wilson’s killers”-I made eye contact, trying to communicate my meaning without risking details-“I need more than socks and a shaving kit. There are some items at my lab that might be useful.”
He was unaccustomed to being pushed. It was in his face.
“That’s something we’ll discuss. But not now.” Blinking, Wilson leaned forward, removed his contact lenses. Then he pulled a bottle of pills from his backpack, and tapped two into his hand. “Is there water around here?”
I wanted more answers. If we were hunting professional killers, I had to stop at the lab. And there was no reason to bring Tomlinson. It wasn’t coincidental that he’d been at the party on Useppa and was now on this remote island.
Tomlinson is my trusted friend, a solid travel partner, and possibly the most intelligent person I know-when he’s not stoned or word-slurring drunk. But the man doesn’t have the skills or the stomach for the variety of violence Wilson was hinting at. On this trip, he would be a liability.
But I didn’t push because the former president was a sick man-for the first time, I could see the disease in his hollow, knowing eyes.
I hurried to the canoe and returned with water.
9
The former president was asleep. Finally. And Tomlinson still didn’t know we were on the island. As I headed down the beach to say hello, I realized that I, too, was moving in rhythm with the drums.
I’d changed into a khaki shirt and shorts and was carrying a Sage fly rod I’d found in a storage room. I’d broken the angler’s rule about borrowing equipment, rationalizing that I would return it in better shape than I found it. The reel needed oiling, and its sink-tip line was moldy.
As I walked, I made a hasty leader using spider hitches and surgeon’s knots, then tied on a streamer fly of chartreuse and silver. Still walking, I began false casting, stripping out line. It was the last hour of a falling tide. The beach was stained pink at the high-water mark. Below was exposed sand, sculpted by current, smooth as wind-blown snow. Its surface was crusted. It collapsed beneath my weight.
I made a cast uptide, waited until the line matched the speed of the current, then began to strip the lure toward the beach. Water was freighting out faster than I could walk. Whirlpools formed at my feet, and swirled over dark water at the drop-off’s edge. It was an intersection where predators would lie-saltwater snipers, awaiting bait that was overpowered by the lunar draw.
As I fished, I noted a buoyant darkness to the east separating itself from a velvet horizon. Soon, the sun would begin diluting shadow with rays of color. The moon had disappeared behind the tree line, but it would be visible from the island’s southern point, where Tomlinson and his painted friends were drumming and dancing.
They hadn’t noticed us land. I was now close enough to feel the percussion of the drums through my ribs, but there was still no indication they saw me. Fishermen, like joggers, are invisible to the uninitiated. And to the un-sober, in this case.
Drum circles attract mystic types, big on celestial rhythms. On full moons, sunrise and moonset are s
imultaneous, balancing for a moment on opposite horizons. My guess was, they’d keep playing until the moon disappeared into the sea. Especially if Tomlinson was in charge. The man sought balance in everything but the excesses of his own life.
In that way, at least, Tomlinson and Kal Wilson had something in common. The president had refused to lie down until he’d gone exploring. The place we were staying wasn’t just one cabin, it was a camp comprised of several one-room buildings-a kitchen and eating area in one, shower and toilet in another, and a bunkhouse set beneath trees next to the storage shed where I found a little Honda generator.
Nice place. Friendly, too, with its laid-back touches. DON AND JOAN WELCOME YOU, read a sign above the outdoor shower.
The former president insisted on helping me get the generator running before he settled himself in the bunkhouse. He was snoring when I checked a few minutes later. The photograph he carried was on the nightstand, its glass panel flickering with the reflection of ceiling fans overhead.
The last thing he said was, “If the fish are hitting, call me. I haven’t had a morning alone with a rod in my hand since I ran for the Senate.”
Stories I read described him as an “avid angler”-a term used so often that I’d dismissed it as the invention of some PR firm. “Image management,” political consultants call it. The ideal presidential candidate attends church, fishes, wears a rubber watch, and owns a retriever. But there is no contriving the authentic inflections of fishermen. I hear them every morning around the docks at the marina.
Wilson had had almost no sleep, though, so I wasn’t going to disturb the man even if fish were hitting. Which they were. My third cast, I hooked an immature snook. As I led it ashore, a pod of larger snook surfaced behind, including a couple of yardlong females.
Next cast, I came up tight on what felt like a snag’s deadweight, but then I discerned the muscular ruddering of a fish as it turned laterally to the current. I locked fingers over the line, lifted… then lifted again before the fish reacted, accelerating cross-tide so fast that line sizzled as it ruptured the water’s surface.
As the fish moved, I glanced at my feet-the line was clearing while the reel ratcheted. The handle banged skin off my knuckles as I slipped my hand beneath the spool, fingertips creating heat as they touched the line experimentally: too much pressure, the leader would break; too little, the fish might take all my line.
The fish was fifty yards into the backing before it turned, then stripped another fifty yards, running seaward. I began following it down the beach, trying to recover line. I was almost to the drum circle-they still hadn’t noticed me, Tomlinson included-when the fish turned and angled cross-tide again… then began to fight its way uptide.
Until that moment, I’d thought it was one of the big female snook. This behavior, though, was unusual.
I turned and retraced my footprints up the beach, leashed to the fish, my hands sensitive to vibrations transmitted through the line. I could feel the steady oscillation of connective tissue as the fish angled into the current, using its body mass to resist as I leveraged with the fly rod, steering it toward the shallows.
It turned… sounded… then ascended. More unusual behavior. I pumped and reeled, the morning breeze keening through the line I gained.
I didn’t care about landing and killing the fish, although I would if it was breakfast-worthy. I wanted to find out what it was. Swimming against the tide, its erratic descents, didn’t mesh with the behavior of familiar species. I at least wanted to get a look at the thing. So I waded waist-deep to the edge of the drop-off, trying to narrow the point of intersection. The tide was running so hard, it eroded the sand beneath my feet, and I had to keep moving or I would have been swept away.
Then, abruptly, the line went slack. It didn’t break; there was no elastic recoil. It collapsed, like a balloon deflating.
The fish was gone… I thought.
But it wasn’t gone.
The line, I realized, hadn’t broken. The line was moving toward me
… no, it was torpedoing toward me at high speed… hissing now as it ripped the water’s surface.
The fish I’d hooked wasn’t alone, either. Its erratic behavior was explained. A shark’s dorsal fin, two feet high and gray, was tracking the line, closing in so fast that it pushed a bulbous wake like a submarine.
I turned my side to the shark, watching the line as I tried to hurry into shallower water. But the sand was like snow and collapsed under pressure. I could walk but I couldn’t run.
There was no escape. So I stopped and just let it happen, resigned but also fascinated.
The shark was a great hammerhead, as long as our canoe but triple the girth. It had to weigh a half ton. The dorsal was backlit by the dawn horizon; its bizarre head was a transient shadow wider than my shoulders. I lifted my feet from the bottom and let the tide move me as the fish I’d hooked shot past my legs. The shark’s wake followed, close enough that I felt its bulk graze my thigh.
An instant later, water imploded. The hammerhead breached. In its jaws was a barracuda, my chartreuse fly pinned neatly to the hinge of its mouth. Plasticine flakes glittered as the shark twisted and crashed into the water-barracuda scales. Then it swirled massively, so close I could feel the suction created by the hammerhead’s tail stroke.
My feet had found the bottom. I walked and crawled until I was on the beach, the fly rod still in hand.
“An interesting fishing technique, Dr. Ford. But shouldn’t you have a large hook strapped to your butt?”
The president had been watching. He looked fit in running shorts and a T-shirt. He was also wearing owlish, wire-rimmed glasses with tinted lenses-even in photographs I’d never seen the man wear glasses. It had been less than half an hour since I’d left him.
I was laughing, adrenaline wired. “Did you see the size of that bastard?”
“Yeah. You’d look nice in his trophy case.”
I was searching the water. No fin. “It wasn’t after me. It was locked onto the fish I was fighting. Probably didn’t even notice I was there.”
“You’re the expert. But I think I’ll give it a few minutes before taking a swim.” He was a dry one-irony as understatement, a trait common in people comfortable under pressure.
“I thought I told you to call me if fish were hitting.” Wilson put his hand out, not joking now. I realized he wanted the fly rod. He took it, looking around, seeing the sunrise, the painted dancers, then he smiled, touching an index finger to the bridge of his glasses. “God, I’ve missed this. Mind if I see what’s on the other end?”
He reeled in the line. Nothing left but the barracuda’s head.
“Five-footer, you think?” Wilson had done some saltwater fishing.
“A little over four maybe. Big.”
I showed him the drop-off where I’d caught the snook.
“The barracuda was using it as an ambush point. The shark was doing the same thing. It’s possible the barracuda didn’t know.”
“One predator using another predator as bait.”
“Yeah.”
That meant something to Wilson. I wasn’t sure why but I could guess.
“Good,” he said. “ Another good omen.”
As the man turned down the beach, though, I noticed a purple hematoma on his thigh and a smaller bruise on his calf.
Bad omens.
I stood at the edge of the drum circle observing as a lone drummer started, offering a baseline rhythm. Others joined. As the noise grew, some added solo riffs and counterbeats. After a few minutes, the chorus broke down and a new tempo emerged.
The objective, Tomlinson once explained, was to connect with the Tribal Mind. If you found that magic zone, he said, you vanished into the sensation that your body was being played by the drum circle, not your drum.
Tomlinson looked as if he’d found the zone.
As I approached the circle, I saw people I recognized. There was a fishing guide, a couple of nurses, several restaurant people, e
ven a Sanibel cop. Mizzen, the nautical setter, was there with Dr. Bill and Sherry Welch. We exchanged waves. But Tomlinson was too lost in drumming to notice. He didn’t recognize my voice, either, when I came up behind him and said, “Do you take requests? Or only original material?”
The man’s eyes weren’t just dreamy, they were glassy, but opened wide, like miniature TVs reflecting images of painted figures dancing by the fire.
Without looking, he replied, “I can’t take verbal requests, man. But if you feel what you want, I might tune to the vibe. Comprendo? ” His head bobbed, hands blurred, as he added a triple-time riff. “Reason I don’t take requests is… rhythm, it’s the mother tongue. Earth’s first language. Words, man”-he motioned vaguely, somehow without missing a beat-“they’re pointless here. You gotta feel it to communicate. So far, though”-he inserted another flourish-“you’re not putting out a signal. It’s like you got no soul, dude.”
I didn’t answer. Stood looking over his shoulder until he got curious and turned. “Why… it’s you, Doc?” His expression was theatrical. “ That explains it.”
When he grinned, I realized I’d been set up.
“How long have you known we’re here?”
“Since before you landed, man.”
“Uh-huh.”
His hands slowed on the drum, then stopped, but he continued keeping time with his left hand. “Seriously. I went down the beach to take a whiz and saw you riding that track of moonlight. You’re the only guy I know who paddles a canoe like he’s harvesting potatoes. And he’s with you.”
“Surprised?”
“Nope. I was expecting him.”
“I bet your friends are excited.”
“No need to test me, Doc. The man gave me orders. It’s top secret.”
I looked toward the cabin. Wilson was a solitary figure in the dawn light. He was fishing: smooth backcast, a tight loop; doublehauling and making it look easy. Impressive.
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