Assassin's Shadow

by Striker, Randy

  She buried her face in her hands. The tears in the lamplight were real.

  “Hey, I’m a Rogue, remember?”

  She nodded silently.

  “Rogues don’t get involved with organizations—you told me that.”

  She sniffed, then half cried, half laughed. “You’re already involved, MacMorgan—with me.”

  “Does that mean you’ll leave with me? Tomorrow night?”

  “You know I will.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Listen carefully. Just before midnight, anchor off the Captiva Pass end of Cayo Costa. As close as you can get. Watch out for the shoal waters of Pejuan Point. You’ll see them on the chart.” I took her hands in mine and forced her to look at me. “This is the most important thing, Marina. Whatever you do, don’t come ashore. Understand? Under no circumstances leave your boat. I’ll have a flashlight. I’ll signal three times from shore, then swim out. We’ll pick up Sniper, then cruise anywhere you want, and for as long as you like. Got it?”

  She nodded, stood up. I took her in my arms. Her face tasted of salt, and her hair smelled of shampoo.

  “Why not tonight, Dusky? Why don’t we just leave now?”

  Her lips were full and soft against mine. Her breasts pressed tight against my chest, and I could feel the quickened thumping of her heart.

  “No, Marina.”

  “I could have my things ready in five minutes. In an hour we could be far away from all of this . . . whatever it is you’re involved in.”

  “I can’t.”

  She took my face roughly in her hands. “Dusky, I want to be with you. I want to be with you now and for a long, long time to come. . . .”

  I pulled away, kissing her on the forehead. “Tomorrow night, beautiful lady. Tomorrow night.”

  She walked me down to the dock, shivering in the cool March night. She held me with one arm around the waist like high school lovers on a walk through the park.

  We kissed briefly, deeply. “Sleep tight, Marina.”

  “And you sleep safe, MacMorgan.”

  There was an odd forlorn expression on her face as I pulled away from the dock.

  And she did not return my farewell wave....

  I had a final preparation to make before I was ready.

  I cut the little skiff around the back side of Cabbage Key, zigging and zagging along the dark mangrove points. I knew that the only place the St. Carib cruiser could get in to drop our group off on Cayo Costa was the public dock on the bay side of the north end of the island, where there were a few neat cabins.

  But how would they decide who would go in which direction?

  It really didn’t matter.

  I beached the skiff well away from the dock and headed through island back country. Australian pines leaned in the predawn breeze. Coons rustled in dunes and clumps of sea oats.

  I needed a place I could find easily the next day.

  It wouldn’t do to hide my weapon and the other equipment someplace where even I couldn’t find them.

  Halfway across the island I found the perfect spot. Like the other barrier islands in Pine Island Sound, Cayo Costa had been inhabited by fishermen at the turn of the century. The only thing remaining of that brief civilization was a graveyard. The graves were barren—as if weeds refused to grow there. A few had stone markers. Most were just outlined with old horse conch and whelk shells.

  Near one grave was a loblolly pine. The ground was covered with needles. I buried the rifle, the baggy clothes, and the Styrofoam cooler beneath the needles near the grave, then covered my tracks as best I could.

  That done, I headed back to my skiff. There was an eeriness in the island quiet. Like for an athlete who visits the stadium the night before the game, the silence seemed to echo with screams soon to come.

  The screams and the gunshots . . .

  16

  Our group met by the dock at noon. The other forty or so people clustered around the yard by the water, all divided into their little four-man societies.

  Say what you want about St. Carib, but its program seemed to work.

  They looked like different people from the rich male and female fatties who had assembled there that first day. They had good tans, their eyes shone, and they had all lost a bunch of weight.

  The St. Carib staff hustled back and forth, clipboards in their hands. And more than once I heard them curse Matrah for leaving them alone with the final preparations for Solitary.

  I expected Sonya Casimur to treat me coolly after our little parting scene. Instead, she gravitated toward me as always. She wore the standard warmup suit—as we all did—and she had her duffel bag slung over her shoulder like a sailor.

  “Ready to do some surviving?” she asked. The dark hair was neatly styled, as if she were going to a dinner party instead of two days alone on the beach. I didn’t know if it really was an odd question to ask, or if it just sounded odd because I hadn’t gotten any sleep the night before. I studied the brown peasant eyes. They seemed to hold nothing but wry humor—and maybe just a touch of affection.

  “More than ready. And you?”

  She sighed. She had completely dropped the actress routine by now. The Italian accent was light. “I guess. God, anything to get away from all these drooling men.”

  “They’ve been bothering you? I thought they all got the message by the second or third day.”

  She reached over and patted my hand. “Do not worry about it. It is nothing important. But last night someone left me a very strange note. Men think they know other men. They don’t. Only a woman can truly know men.”

  “Hey, what’s that? One of y’all got a note—is that what I heard?” The fat Texan had been standing within earshot, talking to Samuel Yabrud. The two of them came strolling over. Like most at St. Carib, Yabrud looked much better than before. It seemed as if his skin had tightened over the elephantine body, and there was a smile on his face. Only the Texan seemed worn by it all. Folds of skin sagged beneath the pale, piggish eyes, as if he was very tired.

  “I got me one of them weird notes myself, little lady. Just what did yours say?”

  I felt Sonya move closer to me, as if to use me as a shield against the Texan’s loud voice. “It was nothing,” she said, unconcerned. “It’s not worth talking about.”

  “Well, little lady, if it was anything like the gibberish in mine, you’re absolutely goddam right about it bein’ unimportant.” He turned to Yabrud. “Sam, I’m tellin’ ya, you think you Jews got trouble with the Arabs—why, it ain’t nothin’ to the shit that’s goin’ on here in America. People gettin’ crazier and crazier all the time. I’ll damn sure be glad to get back to Texas, mister man, and you can bet your firstborn on that. Imagine payin’ two grand to come to this island so they can starve us and berate us, and leave us weird-ass notes in the middle of the goddam night. . . .”

  Yabrud gave me a private, tolerant wink, and led the fat Texan away. It was a strange pairing, those two. And I knew that if Yabrud could put up with the Texan, he richly deserved his reputation as a diplomat.

  St. Carib’s sportfisherman was sixty feet of luxury, an oceangoing fishing machine that seemed humbled by its mundane life as a ferry for the fat and wealthy.

  Our group was the last to board. I had seen Heinrich Keppler several times that morning, but he had always been too busy to stop and talk. Now he came lumbering up to the dock, a clipboard and a walkietalkie in hand. He smiled and wiped imaginary sweat from his brow.

  “Whew!” he said. “Some busy morning, eh, my big American friend?”

  “Looks like everyone’s all set to go, Heiny.”

  “Ya! Finally, it is prepared!” His face described sudden rage. “That Matrah bastard goes hunting the girl tail, and leaves all the work to us, hah! My money pay is not big enough to cover such work. Me, I am just the trainer—but no, that is not enough. Now I must sign the papers. Answer the questions. Tell the cook if he must wipe his ass while we are gone only two days!” He threw up his hands. “I tell yo
u, Heiny is looking forward to the rest. Me, I am going to lay in the beach on the sun and read the dirty magazines, ya!”

  He grinned at me and slapped me on the shoulder as we went down the dock and joined the others aboard.

  The few friends Sonya had made on St. Carib were fat women outside our group. She was forward in the main cabin with them, talking animatedly about their coming adventure.

  I stood on the broad fighting deck with Heiny, making idle conversation.

  In one way, I hoped he’d bring it up. He was a likable guy with his broken English and his big grin. Besides, he’d helped me out on Cabbage Key with Matrah.

  But in another way, I hoped he would never mention it.

  Because that would leave only one other alternative.

  And it wasn’t a pleasant alternative at all.

  Finally, tired of waiting, weary with no sleep and the continual suspense, I brought it up.

  “I found some kind of weird note under my door this morning, Heiny.”

  He didn’t look surprised. Just puzzled. “Ya? The strange note?”

  “Read like gibberish, really. Sonya got one. And so did the fat Texan.”

  He touched his lips with his index finger. “What did this strange note say, my American friend?”

  I told him.

  “Ya?”

  “You don’t seem surprised.”

  He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I am surprised, yes. I am surprised because I got such a note. Though my English is highly good, I sometimes do not understand the American humor. I thought it was to be a joke.”

  “It didn’t seem very funny to me.”

  He made a circling motion with index finger against temple. “The little piggies on our island. Perhaps the hunger makes one of them looney-tuney.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I guess.”

  They began dropping off the four-person groups on islands. All were told to spread out on the beaches, at least a mile apart. They were told that these two days alone were a very important part of the St. Carib philosophy, and that they should not violate the privacy of others.

  The message was simple: Get the hell off by yourself, lose even more weight by fasting, and then stay there until we come to pick you up.

  We made stops at several unnamed sand-spit islands, then at both ends of Punta Blanco, where Marina Cole and I had stayed that first night together, at Johnson Shoals, and, finally, at Cayo Costa.

  Much of the hooting and laughter had disappeared in the knowledge that they would be staying on the islands alone.

  It sobered them: the fat Texan, Yabrud, and Sonya, too.

  The last time any of them had been truly alone was in the executive washrooms of their corporations or film studios.

  I walked Sonya partway down the beach. She had insisted on carrying her own duffel. Heiny, the Texan, and then Yabrud had peeled off miles back up the island.

  “It will be very lonely out here, no?”

  I laughed. “No.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder. She still had that electric touch. “Does that mean you will not come to visit?”

  “What, and break the St. Carib creed?”

  “Damn their rules.” She slipped her arm through mine, holding my elbow against the heat of her breast. “Even as a friend you would not come to see me?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “As a friend, Sonya.”

  After an appropriate spacing, I said goodbye to the actress, then headed on down the beach. I wanted to get as far away from all of them as I could. I stopped a half mile short of Captiva Pass. The beach was an expanse of white sand backdropped abruptly by cabbage palms. The Gulf of Mexico was winter-clean. I could see the magnified darkness of rock beneath translucent swells. The first instinct of anyone camping alone is to build a shelter. I was counting on Samuel Yabrud to do the same. Using the Randall knife, I hacked limbs off a dead casuarina tree, made a frame on the beach, then covered the frame with palmetto fans. I had positioned the hut so that the back of it was hidden by sea oats and a series of dunes. Just in case someone was watching, I surveyed the hut as if satisfied, yawned like an actor in a silent movie, then crawled inside.

  I gave it ten minutes, then slid out the back in the cover of the high sea oats.

  Walking the back country of Cayo Costa is not easy. There is cactus, mangrove, and sand spurs. Fish crows cawed in the trees, and I hoped the assassin was not hunter enough to know the significance of that.

  Behind Sonya Casimur’s camp, I played voyeur for longer than I should have.

  I couldn’t help it.

  With clothes on, she was beautiful.

  Naked, she was magnificent.

  She worked nude on the beach, oiled in the bright sunlight. She built her lean-to of palmettos, whistling while she worked. Despite her age, hers was the body of a twenty-year-old goddess. She seemed without a care, alone and female and perfect against the swollen turquoise of sea. The vision of her yanked at the heart and clamped the breathing.

  Finally, I pulled myself away and headed up the island. The fat Texan, Samuel Yabrud, and even Heiny worked at their shelters. Yabrud was building his in a clearing of casuarinas, and for that I was glad.

  I located the graveyard, felt strangely compelled to pause in respect, then recovered my gear from beneath the loblolly pine. That done, I headed back for my camp.

  I hadn’t slept in far too long.

  And with darkness only a few hours away, I didn’t have much time.

  After a lifetime of assorted deadlines, we all have brain clocks. Mine awoke me at six p.m., just before dark.

  A sun as red as Venus balanced on the lip of sea horizon, then dissolved into a windy dusk.

  Pelicans drifted on the wind in the formation of Canada geese, and sea birds came roosting landward.

  I crawled out the backside of my shelter, gear in hand. I hacked, spit, and urinated when I was safely hidden by the jungle growth of island.

  Sandflies were out for their sundown feast, and they were like specks of acid on bare skin. Mosquitoes vectored.

  The nervousness was low in my stomach. Would it work? Yes, it had to work.

  I was no longer the hunted.

  I was the hunter.

  But the question was: Could I bring myself to kill the quarry?

  I slipped through the back country. In the coolness, Sonya had pulled on her warmup pants and jacket. She had built a fire. Against the dusk sky and flickering light, she was a lovely silhouette.

  After making sure that the fat Texan and Heiny were still at their camps, I made my way to Samuel Yabrud’s lean-to. He was having trouble getting his fire going—and for good reason. He was trying to burn red mangrove. He talked to it in Yiddish, as if swearing.

  It scared the hell out of him when I tapped him on the shoulder. And when he saw the rifle I was carrying, his eyes grew round with terror.

  “What is it? Why . . . why do you . . .”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m on your side. The CIA gave you those two bodyguards for a reason. Someone wants to kill you.”

  “But why!”

  “Damned if I know. But we don’t have time to talk about it. Just do as I say, and you won’t get hurt. At midnight, a couple of Navy helicopters are going to land at the southern end of the island. They’ll fly you out of here.”

  He shook his head, resigned. “This is all such a crazy business.”

  “I’m just beginning to realize that.”

  I pulled him along behind me through the back country. He had lost weight, but he was still no athlete. I had to stop twice for him to rest. When we were well away from all the camps, I picked out a narrow point of beach.

  “You’ll stay right here until you hear the choppers coming, got it? Don’t stray out on the beach—that’s important. If you hear someone coming, just get low. No one could possibly know you’re here. They’ll expect you to be at your camp.”

  “But what will they do when they see I’m not there?”

/>   “They won’t get a chance to do anything.”

  “You will kill them?”

  “It seems like the thing to do. . . .”

  17

  The assassin came an hour before midnight.

  A few minutes earlier, I had heard the dull kerwhump of a small explosion. The flare of light on the distant beach told me that it had been my lean-to exploding.

  A hand grenade?

  Probably not. They would want it to appear—superficially, at least—like an accident.

  Maybe a can of gas thrown into the campfire.

  It didn’t matter. By now the assassin would know there was no scream from within; no body to find. The assassin would be hunting me.

  I sat hidden in the gnarled limbs of a buttonwood tree. Yabrud’s camp was at the narrowest part of the island. Through the Star-Tron scope of the sniper rifle, I had a clear view of the beach on the Gulf side, and an almost equally good view of the bay side. I could see the lighted water tower of Cabbage Key. Beyond that, I could see the window glow of Useppa, and then the darkness of St. Carib.

  After depositing Yabrud, I had made my way back to his camp. Quickly, before darkness brought the assassin, I had thrown the red mangrove away and got a good fire going near his lean-to.

  I piled on the big driftwood so that it would burn a long time. Salt deposits added color to the flames: green and orange and blue.

  Then I had built my dummy between the fire and the lean-to. I made arms and body of branches, then covered it with the baggy shirt I had brought. I broke apart the Styrofoam cooler and carved a head from it, giving special attention to copying Yabrud’s round face and hawkish nose. I skewered the Styrofoam head onto the body, then covered the head with the mosquito netting.

  From a distance, in the darkness, the silhouette was convincing.

  Even through the Star-Tron scope it looked lifelike enough.

  So then I had climbed the tree to wait.

  And wait.

  And wait.

  When the urge to leave the tree and hunt the assassin on foot was upon me, I would comfort myself with a pinch of snuff, spitting silently in the darkness.