Scone Island

by Frederick Ramsay

  He gave her the years each had occurred.

  “Just those three missions, right? You want me to inspect any files that could conceivably be coupled to them? Sure, I would be happy to, but why don’t you access that information yourself? After all, you do work there.”

  “Yes, I do, it says here on my ID badge, but not at the moment.” He could almost see the frown forming on her face. “It’s a long story, Sam, but the short version is, I am in the doghouse, so to speak, and can‘t access anything more important than the men’s room at the moment.”

  “That can’t be good. So, okay, if I am successful and sneak in and out of the agency’s files and am spotted on the way, am I in trouble?”

  “Actually, yes. The agency takes a dim view of people reading their files and as you are employed by NSA, a sister agency, but a competitor nonetheless, it could go very hard on you. I wouldn’t ask but I don’t see any other way.”

  “I could be fired and maybe do jail time?”

  “Possibly, but hey, Ike would always take you back. Assuming you don’t go to jail, of course, and even then, I think he’d wait for you to come out.”

  “Wow, it’s wonderful to be so loved and admired. ‘Hey kid, where’s, where’s your mom?’ ‘In the Big House doing hard time but no probs, she’s got a cop job when she gets out.’ That about it?”

  “Well, I don’t think it will go that far but…”

  “My worry, not yours. Let me see if I have this straight. You don’t want me on the island or wherever because it might cost me my job, but breaking into the CIA’s files, which could earn me jail time, is okay?”

  “Well, when you put it that way, I—”

  “It’s okay, I’ll do it. Where do I call you when I’m finished? This number or another?”

  “This one. It’s cold and if you need to download anything, here’s an e-mail address.”

  Charlie spelled out one of his multiple, mostly anonymous e-mail accounts and hung up. Sam would be taking a huge risk. He closed his cold phone and dropped it in his jacket pocket.

  Satisfied that he had done what he could in the room, he stepped into the hall and made his way to the rear of the building. He peeked into a room marked HOUSEKEEPING and, seeing no one about, entered and then used the exit it provided to the rear of the building.

  He glanced around to make sure no one shared the alley with him. He powered up his traceable phone and sealed it in a plastic zip-lock bag which he tossed up on the roof of the Motel Six. Until the battery went flat as far as anyone who was tracking his phone signal was concerned, he would be located outside Denver. He took the shuttle back to the airport and boarded his flight to Manchester. He could be on the Scone Island by noon the next day.

  ***

  Charlie’s plane had a mechanical problem and sat at the gate for twenty minutes while technicians made sure it had been fixed or did not pose a safety hazard serious enough to delay the flight any longer. Either way, once he landed in Chicago, he had to rush to catch his connecting flight to Manchester and only had enough time to glance at his phone. He had two urgent messages. The first declared his battery needed charging. The second, that he had an urgent text message. He slipped into the plane seconds before front door thumped shut. The flight had not filled so he had two seats in the back to himself. He resisted the temptation to incur the wrath of the flight attendant and turn his phone on again. Besides, he’d noticed the reception bars had effectively disappeared when he’d entered the boarding ramp. He would have to wait until he reached New Hampshire to read his message; that is, if the battery would hold up long enough for him to do so. Either way he could do nothing about them until he landed anyway. He bunched up his jacket to make a pillow and scrunched into the angle between the window and seatback and fell asleep.

  ***

  In Manchester, he managed to read the message before the phone turned itself off for lack of power. It sent him scurrying to a twenty-four hour coffee shop with free Wi-Fi. He wasted another ten minutes searching for an electrical outlet because when he turned on his laptop, a desktop window opened and announced his computer battery had the same problem as his phone. The phone would have to wait, he needed to get on line and read whatever it was that Sam Ryder had mined from the agency’s files that she described only, in text-speak, as; IS WAT U LOOKN 4?, U R GO 2 B SPRZ—CK EMAIL—S. He finally managed to get his laptop plugged in and booted up. When the absence of a rotating hour glass told him the machine was ready to go to work, he opened Sam’s e-mail and then several attachments she’d appended to it.

  He read them several times. His coffee had turned cold before he made up his mind what he had to do next. He didn’t like it, but it had to be done.

  He dialed the director of the CIA.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Tom Stone and the Hancock County forensic team arrived on the island with the dawn. The police launch bobbed in the tide at the end of the floating pier. Evidence technicians and police were in place and working when Ike and Ruth strolled to The Bite. As he’d predicted, nearly all of people on the island had turned out to gossip and watch the police do their job. Henry Potter had an urn of coffee set up on a portable table, and at two dollars a cup, was making an unforeseen but, judging by the happy expression on his face, much appreciated profit. Who said crime doesn’t pay? Stone nodded imperceptibly as Ike passed by. Ruth turned to a woman who Ike thought looked familiar. He couldn’t say why.

  “Ms. Smithwick, What’s happening?”

  “It’s just like the TV show, isn’t it? All those men in coveralls and flashlights—so exciting.”

  Ike conjured up a blurred impression of the woman darting out of the door of Henry Potter’s store the day before. So, this was Mary Smithwick. The image of the woman taking a hurried departure had been fleeting at best. So, why did she appear to be someone he knew?

  “Yes, I suppose it is.”

  “Just imagine. That tiresome man who wished to turn the island into some kind of tacky tourist trap has been found dead under the pilings beneath the old Coast Guard Station. Heaven only knows how he managed to do that.”

  “Really? Do you think he might have fallen out of a boat and washed up there?”

  “Could be, but the police pulled him out from inside the station. There must be a hole in the floor in there. Lord knows what with the sea washing under there for eighty years the floor boards could be rotten. But then that begs the question, doesn’t it?”

  “The question?”

  “Well, certainly. What was he doing in there in the first place? That building is government property.”

  “Government property—the Station?”

  “Oh, yes. There’s still a great deal of property, bits and pieces, on the island that were taken during the war and are still on their property roles.”

  “Like Pine Tree Island?”

  “Oh, yes. I never understood that one. They never did anything on that island that I know of.”

  “Well, there’s another mystery, for sure. I guess they had a plan and when the war ended, they just took off and dropped everything, like that orange jeep up at the old barracks.” Ruth helped herself to one of Henry Potter’s coffees. “Put it on my tab, Mr. Potter.”

  “Yes. Now that is interesting. No one remembers how it came to be on the island and what they used to fuel it. I don’t know how true it is, but the story is the troops and Coast Guard people were to be inspected by an important personage from Washington so they brought the thing over from the mainland on a barge with a full tank of gas just for the occasion, you know, to drive her around.”

  “Her? The important person was a woman…in 1944?”

  “Or five. They said it was Eleanor Roosevelt herself who was scheduled to come.”

  “Did she?”

  “Apparently not. The President died in Warm Springs about that time and the visit was called off. The visit was not rescheduled with Bess Truman. She wasn’t much for acting the part of First Lady, you know.” />
  “I didn’t know that; a bit before my time.”

  “Before mine, too, but if you spend as many years on the island as I have, you pick up the stories.”

  Ike had been listening to the two women with half an ear but something in the old lady’s voice or mannerisms triggered something buried deep in his memory. He couldn’t place it, but it was down in there somewhere.

  “I understand you arrived early to the island this year,” he said.

  “I did. I usually come up after Memorial Day, but the thirty-day weather forecast called for a mild spring and so, here I am. Must have something to do with global warming,”

  As Mary Smithwick rambled on Ike realized that whatever it was he wanted to remember about her had submerged back into the depths of his long-term memory and wasn’t likely to resurface anytime soon. He excused himself and wandered down to the station. He wanted to check with Stone on the ID of the victim. He’d assumed the body to be that of Frank Barstow. If it wasn’t, he had another problem to sort through. He didn’t need another problem.

  A cop in an olive duty sweater stopped Ike at the door. Stone glanced his way and motioned for him to enter.

  “You were right,” Stone murmured. “It’s Barstow and I need to know why you were fooling around the station and how did you get in?”

  “You saw the lock on the side door?”

  “Yeah…so?”

  “It’s new and for sure, not government issue. It’s the kind of lock you can buy in any drug store. It didn’t belong there. I saw it and wondered. There’re too many odd things happening on this island and I had a hunch.”

  “You had a hunch you’d find a body?”

  “No, I had a hunch I’d find something. I didn’t know what it would be, just something important.”

  “So you…What, you broke in? How?”

  “Opening a cheap combination lock is a ten minute operation, start to finish. If you have the pick ready, thirty seconds, max.”

  “Breaking in here would be a federal crime.”

  “You could call the FBI.”

  “Would you want me to?”

  “That depends on what you found out about helicopters.”

  “Nothing yet. I have a friend who is a refueler at the Bangor Airport. I think that would be the most likely place for anyone coming this way to jump off, don’t you think?”

  “Is it? I don’t know. The problem is we also don’t know who’s coming, when, how and from where. A boat could launch from anywhere on the coast.”

  “Except they would need to know the tides to make effective use of a water approach. If they’re not local, they might not want to try.”

  “They’ve been here before, deputy. The tides were not a factor then, why would they be now?”

  “Right. How long do you need me to muddle around this crime scene?”

  “As long as possible. At least post some people to secure it for a day or two.”

  Stone’s radio crackled to life. He stepped to one side to respond. He nodded and glanced at Ike.

  “Okay,” he said after he signed off. “My buddy in Bangor tells me a chopper has arrived at the airport. He said they had none scheduled for today. That’s not all that unusual, but this one he’d never seen before.”

  “Did he check the tail number?”

  “Yeah, he said it belongs to some company called Five One Star. He never heard of them. The owner is registered in Idaho someplace.”

  “That’s it?”

  “All he could manage. I told you he’s a refueler. He only got that much information because he sweet-talked the dispatcher into peeking into her computer. Oh, he did say one thing. He thought the paint job on the chopper seemed a little odd.”

  “How, odd?”

  “He said it’s painted a flat black. Like a night fighter. That’s how he described it—night fighter.”

  “Thanks, Tom. That is very useful.”

  Ike worked his way through the gawkers back to Ruth.

  “Time to go.”

  “Go? Go where?”

  “We have to get ready for an air assault, I think.”

  “Oh shit. I keep thinking this is a really bad dream and at any moment the alarm clock will go off and all this will go away. Any minute now I will wake up and be twenty-one and going to my first graduate-school class.” Ruth squinted at the sun climbing in the east and shook her head. “I’m not going to wake up, am I?”

  “Oh, yes you will, tomorrow, the next day—for a long time to come if I have anything to do with it. But not at age twenty-one and not right now. Now we have to stock our ‘lurk’ on the path and get some rest. I need to contact Charlie or somebody…maybe Sam. I need to know what a company called Five One Star does. I expect the bad guys will arrive after dark.”

  “When, after dark?”

  “No telling.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  The phone call between Charlie and the director ratcheted quickly from conversational, to annoyed, to shouting. In the end, Charlie announced he would meet the director and an extraction team in Bangor. He would wait for one hour and if he had not arrived by then he, Charlie, would go to the island and take care of business himself.

  Before he rang off he asked the director what he knew about Martin Pangborn.

  “Major contributor to the Presidential campaign, for one, why?”

  “I’m waiting for more information about him—information, by the way, which would be easier to get if you hadn’t slammed the door on me. But he’s tied up in this somehow. In the meantime, you need to load the bus and get up here ASAP.”

  “You expect me to mount an operation on the scale you suggest on your say-so, Garland?” The director did not seem to be in a generous mood. “You’re supposed to be in Denver. We’ve been tracking you and have you…oh, you SOB. You left your phone in the airport or somewhere, didn’t you? So, okay, where are you now?”

  “Manchester, New Hampshire, Director, but not much longer, and to answer your question, yes, I do expect an operation, as I said. I would opt for something bigger, but we don’t have time. It is not just on my say-so, either. I have information that you need to see.”

  “Send it to me and then I’ll decide.”

  “Not a chance, Director. If you haven’t seen it already or are playing possum, then you have a local problem which will only get worse when the data appears in the logs at Langley. You need to see it, but not on station.”

  “Garland, listen to me. If you don’t want a career ending set-to, you will e-mail that information to me pronto.”

  “And, with respect, sir, if you do not want a career-ending set-to of your own, you will meet me in Bangor, Maine, in…” Charlie checked his airline ticket and watch, “two and a half hours.”

  Charlie switched off and headed to the gate. He’d scotched his plans to drive to Mt. Desert Island. He’d thought by doing so he’d avoid any alert his presence at a public transportation facility would trigger at the agency. Now, of course, that would not be necessary. They knew where he was and where he was headed. He needed to get to Scone Island; he hoped with help, but with or without it—either way, get there.

  ***

  The General Aviation Terminal at Bangor International had a few machines that dispensed snacks and a K-cup coffee dispenser. Charlie helped himself to a cup and munched on some stale potato chips. A tray of catering from a recently landed G4 sat behind the dispatcher’s desk. Charlie eyed it hungrily. From his limited experience flying on corporate aircraft he knew the food would be excellent. He hadn’t had time to eat before his flight to Maine, and the potato chips were not doing much to ease his hunger. He considered making a new friend with the dispatcher, a thirty-something with suspiciously red hair and a tattoo of Tinker Belle on her wrist. He had an approach line on the tip of his tongue when a Twin Star Helicopter hovered over to the ramp and settled with a whine of decelerating turboprops for refueling. The fuel truck moved into place as the rotors whooped to a stop and a young kid
in a smudged uniform jumped out, secured his ground wire, and began pumping Jet A into the chopper’s tanks. The odor of kerosene found its way into the lobby in spite of the filtered air provided by the facility’s HVAC system. It took a long time to top off the tanks. Charlie wondered about that. He guessed it must have flown non-stop from somewhere pretty far away and burned off all its fuel in the process. Except that it had been painted a flat black and had a civilian tail number, it could have been from an Army facility, or a tour company, or possibly a company in the business of shuttling hunters into the deep woods. The fact of its odd paint scheme and fuel requirements suggested it was none of the above.

  Charlie’s stomach only allowed him to be diverted from the tray of sandwiches long enough to memorize the tail number—force of habit. Then he turned his attention back to the counter only to discover that while he’d been speculating about the chopper, a lineman slipped in behind the dispatcher and requisitioned the tray, its contents, and had carted them off to his break room. So much for making new friends.

  He booted up his laptop and looked up the helicopter’s tail number. It belonged to an outfit called Fifty-first Star and was based in Idaho. Idaho? Next, he searched for Sam’s latest e-mail. She had posted what appeared to be a confidential file FBI file. Apparently she’d convinced her husband, Karl, to help. The new information explained the Idaho connection but not why it was involved. He had to look up The Fifty-first Star to make that.

  The dispatcher smiled at him and turned to peer out the window at the ramp. She keyed her headset and began a conversation with a pilot on approach. The woman at the desk rattled off a series of instructions which seemed to relate to space and fuel and then “rogered” a tail number Charlie did recognize. The director had arrived. He glanced at his watch—ten minutes early. Wow.