At the side door, Ike reached into his pocket and pulled out the scrap of soda can he’d cut and bent at the watch tower. He had the lock off and door open in under a minute. Once inside, he eased the door shut and lighted his flash. The building had only a few windows, but he shielded its beam anyway. The last thing he wanted to do was explain to Henry Potter or one of the permanent denizens of Southport what he was doing snooping around in the abandoned station. For all he knew, one of them might have replaced the government’s big brass lock with the cheap one he’d breeched.
Three yards inside the foyer he discovered a small office, a roll top desk with papers and charts scattered across its surface. A small Coleman lantern sat on its top. Ike shook it. Empty, no fuel. He edged into the darkness. The wall that faced The Bite had multiple garage-like doors which were probably used to launch boats of some sort. In one corner, to the right of the first set of doors, the wall had been built out with what appeared to be a mount. At one time equipment of some sort must have been bolted to it. A trap door had been let into the floor immediately below. Perhaps tide and temperature gauges or some form of sonar to track German subs had been lowered through it into the sea.
The building extended out onto the scree well past the high tide line. He could hear water lapping against pilings. The tide must be at flood. Lifting the trap door took less effort than he’d expected. He aimed his flash down. Seaweed streamers festooned the pilings and almost hid the body wedged between one of them and its cross beam.
Ike stood and scratched his head. He would like to know who lay head down in the tide. He did not need another distraction. On the other hand, another death might be useful. He retreated to the desk and using a pencil, he didn’t want to leave any finger prints, pushed the papers aside. There were maps and studies of the island—hydrological, geological. This must have been Barstow’s hidey-hole. And that meant that the body in the water must be he.
Did he have an appointment with Staley/Archie that night? If he did, might he have witnessed what happened? And if so, mightn’t he have high-tailed it to the one place he considered safe? Ike tried to visualize Barstow crouched in this dismal office. He must have been followed. Ike shook the lantern again. Barstow must have lighted the lantern and given himself away. They, whoever they were, found him, and…they must have left the lantern lit and it burned off all its fuel.
Ike called Tom Stone on the sat-phone.
“Deputy Stone?”
“Is that you, Mister Schwartz?”
“No, it is not me. It is an anonymous caller. An anonymous caller reporting a body jammed in the pilings under the old Coast Guard Station on Scone Island. This anonymous caller might speculate it is the missing Frank Barlow, were he available to be asked, which unfortunately, he is not.”
“I don’t understand.”
“In the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, son, this island is going to play host to some very nasty people. They are coming to kill me and anyone else who gets in their way. They have already done in Staley and Barstow and two other people you do not know or need to. You will do me and yourself a favor if you will get your forensic people out here investigating this new killing and stay here in The Bite for a few days. A police presence would be a great help to me.”
“Wait, you say Staley’s killers also killed Barstow and are coming back to the island for you?”
“They are.”
“But wouldn’t the fact we are in The Bite keep them away?”
“Possibly, but not for long. What it will do is limit their points of entry. If I’m to take them down, I need all the help I can get.”
“You? Why you? It’s our murder—”
“Murders.”
“Okay, murders. They’re ours. You are way out of your jurisdiction, Sheriff. This is our job.”
“So, you will go to your boss and say, ‘You know that dead guy out on the island? Well there’s another dead guy out there and that visiting copper says bad guys from who knows where are on their way to up the body count.’ And he will say what?”
“He’d want to know why the killers are coming and why you.”
“Exactly. And do you know what I can tell him?”
“Well, no, how could I?”
“You couldn’t and I can’t. I have no idea why they are coming. All I know is they are. Do you think you can sell that to your boss?”
“It wouldn’t be easy, but…”
“I don’t want you to try, Stone. If you did, and if the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department shows up, they will not come.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“No, that’s bad. It only delays the inevitable. And for reasons I do not understand, there is an urgency to get this job done; that is to catch the guys. So, I am going to catch them. You can help by being here, but not being here, if you follow me. Make their job more difficult but not impossible.”
“You don’t want help?”
“Oh, but I do. But the kind of help I need has to have a particular skill set, which you do not have, and freedom to act in certain, shall we say unorthodox ways, which you definitely do not possess.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Don’t try. Trust me. You can help me best by responding to this anonymous tip about a body in the water and making more of it than necessary and while you are at it, keep watch on the west beaches during the night.”
“Watch the beach? Why?”
“In case whoever is out there tries to land there. I’d like to know.”
“I can do that, but…you’re sure that’s all?”
“Positive. When the fireworks start, however, I would appreciate a little back-up by limiting the island’s exit points.” Ike thought a moment. “One more thing, watch for helicopter flights headed this way. If you see one, find out who it is. Legitimate flights, even hush-hush ones, will give any requesting authority a clearance code. If one is headed here and doesn’t, give me a holler.”
“I’ll try, but I’m not sure I know how to do that.”
“First time for everything, Deputy.”
Ike punched off and headed for the door. At the desk, he paused and picked up a better hydrological survey than Archie’s, folded it and shoved it into a pocket. He relocked the door and headed back to the cottage. Whatever he’d hoped to find in the station did not include a dead Frank Barstow. But even in death, the poor man could serve a higher purpose. Assuming, of course, that keeping the sheriff from Picketsville, Virginia, alive qualified as a higher purpose.
Chapter Forty-one
Ike slipped through the front door. Ruth started up in her chair and reached for the pistol Ike had given her “for familiarization.” It wasn’t loaded.
“It’s only me. No problem,” he said.
“No problem? I’m sitting here attempting to digest fried Spam, without much success, by the way, and you sail off into the dark with some lame excuse about a padlock. Tell me again why you had to go break in to the Coast Guard station?”
“I don’t know exactly. I think I had an idea there would be something useful stored in there, but it was mostly curiosity. The lock, you see. Why did the side door have a brand-new lock? I felt sure someone else had been in the station fairly recently. I had an idea that I might not be alone in thinking that. And I thought it would be important to know who or why, maybe both.”
“So, did you find someone?”
“I did, in a manner of speaking. There’s a body in the water under the building. It’s been there several days. I think it must be Barstow, the real estate wheeler-dealer who Stone thinks had dealings with Archie and may have been the last to see him alive. I called Stone. He’ll have a forensic team in place in the morning, and that will slow our killers down a little, I hope.”
“How would that slow them down?”
“With police moving around, asking questions, people gawking, it makes The Bite a very public place. Not the sort of environment the folks who knocked off Archie and undoubte
dly killed Barstow as well would want to be found in. Its proximity also makes most of the west coast a dangerous place to land. One entry point blocked, you see?”
“Okay, fine, but you said they might fly a helicopter in. Cops in The Bite won’t stop that, will it? I mean, doesn’t this make it worse?”
“Actually, flying a chopper in would be better. Look,” he unfolded one of the maps he’d collected. “This is the island. I took a pencil and cross-hatched all the areas covered by trees. What do you see?”
“What am I looking for? I don’t know. There are little clear spots here and here,” she tapped the map with her finger, “and a bigger one here next to the foot path.”
“Right. Forget the small ones. They are too small to accommodate a chopper, particularly at night. The large spot is the only place they can land. If they use it, they will have to put it down there. Okay, what else is in the area?”
“We built our first ‘lurk’ right across the path.”
“Exactly, and if they drop in there, we can sit behind the log and take them out as they disembark. Here, where the path divides is a copse of trees and heavy brush, remember? We’d have them in a cross fire. We only have to sit here and wait for them to show up.”
“That’s good?”
“Better than chasing around the island looking up and down beaches and cliff faces.”
“If you say so. But they may not fly in, right?”
“Right, they may not.”
“We won’t know how they’re coming until the minute they actually arrive.”
“Yes.”
“Oh goody, I feel so much better now.”
Ike checked his watch, nine o’clock, time to start moving the pieces across the board. He picked up the sat-phone.
“Are you ready?”
A very frightened Ruth stared at him. “How would I know? How can you tell? This is really going to happen, isn’t it?”
“There is still time to leave, you know.”
“Forget it. I’m here. If you are going to do this insane thing, I am doing it with you—operative word, insane. Make the call.”
Ike dialed Charlie’s open phone. “Charlie, how are you?”
“Ike, nice to hear from you at last. Where are you?”
“Can’t say. On assignment.”
“Assignment? What assignment?”
“Not supposed to say but…do you remember Archie Whitlock?”
“Oh yeah. What about him?”
“He was murdered. I’m up here investigating it.”
“Up here? Where would that be?”
“Sorry, can’t say. Where are you?”
“Stuck outside of Denver, director’s orders. When will you be back?”
“Soon, I think. It depends what happens in the next few days.”
“Great. We’ll touch base then.”
Ike signed off. Ruth looked at him, hollow-eyed. The reality of what was about to happen hit her. “It’s really happening,” she repeated. A tear rolled down one cheek, from fear or sadness at the possibilities that lay ahead, Ike could not say.
“Game on, kiddo. We’d better grab some rest while we can. We have twenty-four hours, maybe forty-eight before the sky falls.”
“Rest. That’s a joke, right? You are going to rest?”
“Ruth, I didn’t want to put you through this, okay? But since you insist, the first rule of an engagement like this one is to compartmentalize. You have to be able to separate all the elements out. We have at least twenty-four hours. That has to be a separate compartment from the next twenty-four. And that from the one after that. In this block of twenty-four, we rest. The next will require a different set of actions.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
***
The door crashed open. Mark burst into the director’s office. No Trumpet Voluntary this time either.
“He’s in Maine on that island where Whitlock died.”
“What the hell is he doing there?”
“He said he was sent to investigate Whitlock’s murder.”
“Sent? Sent by whom? That’s crazy. He could not have had any idea Whitlock was on the island and no reason to investigate his murder even if he had. Never mind. He’s there and he wants us to know it. He also wants the hit team to know it. He’s drawing them in.”
“Yes, sir. What do we do now?”
“Now? We move in. We need to be there to clean up. Who have we got up there?”
“No one, sir.”
“Excuse me, no one? Where the bloody…where are the men you put on this operation? Why aren’t at least some of them nearby?”
“They’re all south.”
“South? What do you mean they’re all south? Why south?”
“He bought a tent.”
“Excuse me? ‘He bought a tent.’ Who bought a tent and what has that got to do with finding Schwartz?”
“Sir, we tracked Schwartz’s movements before he disappeared. He bought camping equipment, cold phones, and a tent. We assumed he decided to camp. Who goes camping in Maine in May? We figured he headed south to the Great Smokies or maybe Florida. Our people are scattered across the Carolinas and Georgia looking for him at the moment.”
“Damn! Pull them in. Send them north, chop-chop. Requisition a plane to collect them and a chopper to shuttle over to the island. I hate to be in a race with the bad guys. See to it. What about Garland?”
“We have a trace locked in on his cell phone and he seems to be somewhere in Wyoming. What do you want me to do?”
“As long as he stays put, Garland is not a problem. If he moves, I want to be told immediately. Right now, however, our focus has to be on that island. Get in touch with our babysitter up there and make sure we receive round-the-clock updates. I want to know everything and anything that’s goes down from now on.”
“Yes, sir. Sir…?”
“You still here? What?”
“Suppose the others get there first?”
“Then we all could be looking for new jobs by Monday.”
An almost identical exchange between two other men took place in a room that could have been located anywhere in the world, but, in fact, was in a house set on a hillside in the middle of a three-hundred-acre estate in central Idaho. Its only distinguishing feature was a weather tower that looked like it might have been part of the Idaho Mesonet but wasn’t.
***
Eden Saint Clare’s flight had touched down at Logan as the sun slipped behind the skyline of greater Boston. It took at least forty-five minutes to clear the airport and taxi to her hotel. Now, comfortably wined and dined, and ensconced in a bed with fresh sheets, she should be falling to sleep. She had made a point of ordering decaf coffee, and yet sleep eluded her. She could not erase an image of Ruth, age six, standing on a box set atop a kitchen chair, teetering precariously, one hand in the cookie jar and the other waving frantically trying to reestablish her balance. Eden had caught her before she fell and hurt herself. The cookie jar shattered into a thousand pieces. She had no reason to go to the kitchen at that particular moment, she recalled, but she had gone. So, why remember the incident now? Was she on her way to another kitchen? Was that why she couldn’t sleep?
She stared at the ceiling until four in the morning.
Chapter Forty-two
The Great Lakes flight lifted out of Laramie and jounced through a thunderstorm most of the way to Denver. After touchdown, Charlie disembarked and made his way to the Southwest desk where he booked a flight east. He selected a later flight, one that would provide him with a two-hour layover before boarding. It provided the window of time he needed to finish one or two things that would allow him to disappear. He took the first shuttle in line headed to a motel.
At the motel, he checked in for two nights prepaying with the agency’s credit card. He went to his room and repeated the process of messing the bed, running water, filling trash cans and dirtying the sink. He made one last call on his store-bought cell phone —two calls actu
ally. As Ike had suggested, he decided to enlist Samantha Ryder into the game. The time zone differential meant he’d be calling her very late, but he knew NSA worked round the clock and the chances of finding her at her desk then were as good as not. She wasn’t in. The section chief said she had not been in all day, because she had to take a personal day at home and declared that as near as she could tell Sam had got herself in a family way. Very quaint. Who said “family way” anymore? Charlie fumbled through the scraps of paper in his pockets until he found the one with the home phone number Ike had given him.
She sounded sleepy, and Charlie apologized for calling so late in the evening. He explained Ike’s predicament, the need to keep the impending operation compact and contained, and asked her to help.
“Wait. Someone is trying to assassinate Ike? Why?”
“That is the proverbial sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”
“The what-dollar question?”
“I can’t believe you don’t…how old are you? Never mind. I don’t know why they are, but I need you to help me find out. Will you?”
“For Ike, anything. Do you want me and Karl to take off and go to that island? We could, you know.”
“No, that is probably not a good idea. You could both lose your jobs. But, there is something you can do that would be much more helpful.”
“Really? What do you need me to do?”
“Among your many virtues, Ike claims you are Kryptonite to fire walls and a hacker nonpareil. I need those skills.”
“Ike has a higher opinion of my abilities, because when it comes to computers he has none, but that’s okay. Go on.”
“Some years ago when he worked for the CIA, Ike participated in missions in Nigeria, Bosnia, and Libya among others. I need you to find out what happened after they were shut down.”
“Afterwards? I don’t understand.”
“I’m not sure I do either. But here’s the thing, as a general rule when an operation shuts down, the file is closed and locked away, figuratively. Any new activity in the area, even the immediate area, starts a new file. Only when something that must relate to the previous one happens does anyone attempt to merge them, you see? Coverage that is linear and continuous is your department over at NSA. We, that is the CIA, are hunter/gatherers, you could say. In these particular operations, once Ike and the men he worked with were pulled out, the file ends. What I need to know is if anything significant happened later in the area or with the local people afterwards and if so, what.”
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