Chameleon's Death Dance

by BR Kingsolver

  “So,” I said, “some impressionist paintings turned up in Europe about five years ago. You were called in, and then all information dries up. I would assume that reputations and valuations were at risk.”

  With a sigh, he waved me to a chair.

  “I assume your father told you of this.”

  I didn’t answer him. Instead, I said, “That’s why you pounced on the paintings here so quickly. You recognized the technique.”

  “A very astute observation, Miss Nelson.”

  I waited. He waited. Finally, I asked, “Has the painter gotten better? You said these forgeries were practically undetectable.”

  “Yes, he, or she, has improved considerably. I don’t know if I would have identified them if I hadn’t seen the technique before. Of course, I had a bit of a head start. I appraised the Degas when it was sold to the Gallery. That’s what tipped me off to start looking closer at all the paintings. I knew it wasn’t the same work I had seen before. We’ve dated the canvas they’re painted on, and the forgeries are confirmed.”

  “Have you found any more besides the ones you showed me?” I asked.

  “Three. At this point, I have to assume that Boyle and the forger were partners.”

  I walked into Wil’s office at the Chamber, closed and locked the door behind me. He looked up and said, “Well, hello. I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Wil, do you have an operative that you absolutely trust? Someone that you know can’t be subverted by money?”

  He eyed me, then sighed. A lot of people sighed when I asked questions. I thought I should pay attention to whether Wil did that with other people.

  “What do you need this operative to do?”

  “Actually, I could use two, but one for sure. I want someone to monitor when Reagan is in town. I assume he always uses that jetcopter.”

  “It is his,” Wil said. “I checked. And what would you use the other operative for?”

  “Someone to chauffeur me around. If he could swim, it would be even better.”

  “I wasn’t aware you’d forgotten how to drive. But if you need a ride somewhere, I’ll be glad to drive you.”

  I put my hand on my hip and glared at him. After enduring my imagined daggers for a couple of minutes, he gave up.

  “Oh, okay. I assume you need someone who isn’t overly concerned with the letter of the law. Why someone who can swim?”

  “Someone who believes the end justifies the means would be good. It turns out that there aren’t any roads to Reagan’s estate. It’s only accessible by boat.”

  “You don’t trust the local Chamber people, do you?”

  “I trust you.”

  He sighed again. “I can have a couple of people here tonight. Portland office.”

  “Thanks!” I skipped across the room, plunked myself down in his lap and gave him a big kiss. “What are you doing for lunch?”

  “I’m not really hungry.”

  “That isn’t what I asked,” I said and kissed him again.

  When I left an hour later, I was really hungry.

  Chapter 14

  James Worthington and Karen Lee were a study in contrasts. He was so non-descript as to be unnoticeable, standing right in front of me—brown hair, brown eyes, medium height and build, with absolutely no distinguishing features. Karen, on the other hand, was almost his height, slender and beautiful, with eyes I could have stared into forever, straight, shiny black hair to the middle of her back, and boobs that seemed a little too large for her frame.

  “Did Director Wilberforce explain what I need?”

  “In vague terms,” James said. “He set me up with a job at the private air terminal out on Stanley Island. The Chamber has also parked a jetcopter out there in case you need it. If so, I’ll be the pilot.”

  It was a lot more than I expected. I handed him pictures of Reagan and Kieran, and a picture of Reagan’s jetcopter. “I need you to call me and let me know when either or both of them come to the city, and again when they leave.”

  James grinned. “That’s easy enough.”

  “And me? I was told that I would be your bodyguard.”

  I choked. I was about five inches taller than Karen, and outweighed her at least fifty pounds. I’d been training in weapons and martial arts since I was four years old.

  “That isn’t exactly what I need,” I said. “More of a chauffeur and a gofer.”

  She gave me a perky grin. “I can do that, too. But I am a certified marksman with a black belt in Hapkido.”

  “Let’s hope you don’t have to use them,” I said.

  Karen and I took a bus down to the ferry terminal south of the city and booked passage to Victoria. We didn’t talk much on the bus, but it was a beautiful day, and we had a chance to get to know each other on the four-hour ferry ride.

  “My mother came here from China with her parents when she was three years old,” Karen said. “My father’s parents came from Korea before he was born. So, I speak barely-passable Mandarin, enough Korean to get by, fluent Spanish, and I have a degree in English.”

  “So how did you end up working for Chamber Security?”

  “They liked my language proficiency and promised I’d get to see the world. So far, I’ve been stationed in San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, and now in Portland. It turns out the world is far smaller than I thought.” She laughed.

  “I’ll put in a bad word for you,” I said. “Maybe I can get you exiled to Europe or something.”

  “Probably get sent to Kansas City or Dallas. Or Siberia. I think I’ve pissed off the gods.”

  “That’s a very distinct possibility. Are you aware that I asked for an operative with a flexible attitude toward legal and societal norms?”

  “Oooo, I’m your girl. Tell me more.”

  In between ooohing and ahhhing over the islands scattered throughout the channel and the mountains in the distant south, we discussed my plan to break in to Reagan’s estate to look for stolen art.

  “So, what’s in the bag?” Karen asked, toeing the bag on the deck between my feet.

  “Equipment. We’ll go through everything in case you need to use any of it.” I pointed to her bag, almost as large. “Your makeup and nighty for an overnight stay?”

  “Of course. Along with some explosives, a sniper rifle, and a raincoat. A girl should be prepared.”

  We checked into a hotel in Victoria, then rented a car and a boat. It was too late to go out to Reagan’s and give me time to scout the place. Karen had been to Victoria before, so she gave me a walking tour. The city was charming, and I could see why people had second homes there.

  “I understand that it used to be absolutely incredible,” Karen said. “More than half of the original city is underwater now.” She pointed toward the harbor. “All of those islands were connected to the main island back then.”

  I’d always liked Vancouver. But dinner in a lovely little seafood place and then drinks and dancing at a couple of places cemented my love of Victoria. I vowed that I would invest the money I made from that case in a house there. I couldn’t wait to show it to Nellie.

  At dawn the next morning, Karen steered our boat into the shore a few hundred yards south of the wall surrounding Reagan’s estate. Orange buoys stretched out into the harbor for two hundred yards from the walls, setting out a space for his yacht and seaplane to rest undisturbed in front of the mansion.

  I hopped out and shouldered my backpack, then I waved to Karen and trekked off into the forest. I carried a GPS tracker that she could use to locate me when I needed retrieval. She planned to wait for me at the town of Duncan, about twelve miles south.

  As soon as the trees shielded me from Karen, I blurred my image and headed for the estate. Slowly approaching it, I discovered just how paranoid Reagan was. The first thing I came across was a chain-link fence with razor wire along the top. Beyond that was an electric trip wire running about a foot from the ground, then the wall a hundred yards beyond. The plans I studied simply showed the o
utline of a stone or brick wall, but no detail. The wall I saw before me was smooth poured concrete and twenty feet tall. Not a hand or toehold in sight.

  I knew from the plans that the compound inside the wall covered about ten acres. I followed the fence all the way around the property, stopping when I saw the water on the other side. I sat down on a log, pulled out my lunch, and ate while I thought. With no knowledge of the number of people inside, or their additional security measures, going over the wall wasn’t my first choice. I gazed out at the water and the buoys floating past the boat and the floatplane bobbing in the waves.

  My skills didn’t include scuba diving, but it looked as though the water route would be the best way into the place.

  It started to rain, so I triggered the GPS signal for Karen to come pick me up. There wasn’t anything else for me to see from outside.

  Karen texted me when she was ten minutes away, and I moved as fast as I could farther up the coast away from Reagan’s estate. When I saw our boat turning out of the channel toward the shore, I stepped behind a tree and unblurred my image. I walked down to the beach, tossed my backpack into the boat, pushed it off again, and jumped in.

  “Head toward the island out there,” I shouted over the noise of the motor, gesturing toward the small island a mile across the channel. She nodded and steered the boat around. Scooting close to her, I brandished my monocular and said, “I want to run back and forth a few times, so I can scout things out from this side.

  We drove back and forth a couple of hundred yards from Reagan’s shore, travelling a mile in each direction and acting like we were fishing. The boat had fishing poles as part of the equipment when we rented it. Since neither of us had ever fished in our lives, we had a good time pretending to fish, laughing our asses off. At the same time, we took a lot of pictures of Reagan’s compound as we passed by.

  In addition to the main house, several smaller buildings sat near the compound’s walls. We discussed them and decided that was probably where the staff lived.

  In mid-afternoon, we watched the jetcopter rise from somewhere behind the mansion. It headed in the direction of Vancouver, and we turned our boat toward Victoria.

  James called me when we were halfway to Victoria.

  “The jetcopter you wanted me to monitor just landed.”

  “Who were the passengers?” I asked.

  “Other than the crew, a man that matches the picture of Reagan, a woman who matches Murphy, and four bodyguards.”

  “Thanks, James. Let me know when they leave.”

  I turned to Karen. “Those were our targets leaving in the copter. I’m assuming that security will be more relaxed when Reagan is gone. The problem now is how to get inside.”

  We had dinner in Victoria and brainstormed various ways to get past Reagan’s security.

  “I could requisition a jetpack from the Chamber,” Karen suggested.

  “Don’t you think he has something in place to keep his enemies from hitting the house with missiles?”

  She thought about that, then pulled up some of our pictures on her tablet. “Probably. The damned place is a fortress.” Zooming in on some white domes, which probably were three feet in diameter, she said, “Maybe those?” She took a swig of her wine and punched the automenu for another one. “So, what do we do?”

  I looked into my glass, shrugged, tossed off the last of my beer, and punched in my own order.

  “We keep watching. There has to be a vulnerability we can exploit.”

  “How long do you usually…uh…”

  I grinned. “How long to case the joint? It depends. The idea is to get inside undetected. I’m not in a hurry. We just have to be patient and watch, and figure out people’s movements, and find a time when they drop their guard.”

  “That sounds terribly boring.”

  I clinked my glass against hers. “It is.” I looked out the window at the falling rain. “Probably wet and cold as well.”

  On our way from the pub to our hotel, I called James. “Would it be possible for someone to stow away on Reagan’s helicopter?”

  “There is a small cargo hold,” he said. “It was designed to hold luggage, and it would be tight, but you might fit. The problem is, a truck just showed up with a load of food, and they loaded it into the copter. I’m told that happens regularly.”

  “Yeah. They have to have some means of supplying the place. Thanks, James.”

  “The boat. The yacht,” Karen said as I hung up.

  “Yeah? What about it?”

  “I’ll bet the yacht is what they use to haul in supplies. And the staff, the security detail, you know they don’t travel back and forth by jetcopter.”

  It made sense. Reagan’s yacht was huge, about a hundred feet long. Boyle’s boat was half that size.

  “That boat is large enough to sail to Seattle or San Francisco,” I said.

  “It’s large enough to sail to Australia,” Karen said.

  “And I’ll bet it’s expensive and takes a lot of preparation and crew, right?”

  Karen nodded.

  “I wouldn’t turn a yacht like that over to a bunch of half-wit thugs. I’ll bet there’s another boat, a smaller one, that the staff uses.”

  Before setting out to spend another day spying on Reagan, we made some discreet inquiries and discovered that a smaller boat did exist. One of the workers at a charging station told Karen that the staff at Reagan’s came down to Victoria to shop and party a bit on their days off. He pointed out the boat.

  “He says it comes in almost every day, with anywhere from six people to a dozen,” Karen said when we met at our boat. “That’s why we didn’t see it yesterday. It was here in town.”

  We walked over to a hill overlooking where the boat was moored. Through my monocular, I could see two men lounging on the deck of a boat probably a third the size of Reagan’s yacht.

  “If we can get them off the boat, or distract them somehow, I might be able to find a place to hide,” I said as I passed the monocular to Karen.

  “How?” she asked as she lowered the monocular after scanning the boat for some time. “There can’t be very much of a place to hide. The guy I talked to said the crew will come back with a truckload of food and other stuff.”

  “I don’t know. I have to get on board first.”

  “But what if you do?” she asked. “What are you going to do at the other end? And how are you going to get out?”

  Two days later, Karen strolled down the dock in a skimpy bikini with a cooler full of beer. Reagan’s boat was next-to-last of the boats moored there, and we had established that the family who owned the boat on the end were currently on holiday in China. As she approached the boat, the two men on board—different guys from those we’d seen the first time we observed the boat—perked up and catcalled her.

  Karen smiled at them, said hello, and stopped to chat. She set the cooler down and, after a couple of minutes, asked them if they would like a beer.

  While they rattled beer bottles and ice, I slipped past her in my blurred form and stationed myself near the bow of the boat. I waited, and after a few minutes, the men invited Karen aboard.

  When she stepped onto the deck, so did I, using the bobbing she caused to mask my getting aboard. As she settled into a deck chair, I found an equipment locker fore of the cabin. Inside was a large rope, similar to the ropes tying the boat to the dock. It appeared to be a spare, so I pulled it out and dumped it over the side. I had to be very quiet, and had to keep looking for anyone who might look askance at a rope floating through the air by itself.

  It took me about ten minutes to quietly feed the heavy rope into the water. I used a lever bar from my pack to break the latch, then I crawled into the locker and pulled the cover closed. It was tight, but not too uncomfortable. I hoped they would pull out that evening. Sometimes they stayed overnight, as they had done the night before. Pulling out my phone, I texted Karen her signal to bail out. Fairly confident that I wouldn’t be disturbed, I set an
alarm on my chrono for three hours and took a nap.

  Chapter 15

  I said a silent prayer when I heard people come on board. About an hour of scuffling and shouting and banging around, then the engine started. Shortly afterward, the boat started moving.

  Once we were out of the harbor and the driver opened up the engine, the other occupants quieted. I risked cracking the lid of the locker a little and let some fresh air into the stuffy space.

  The ride from Victoria to Reagan’s estate took about forty-five minutes. When the driver slowed the engines, I peeked out and saw the lights on the buoys start blinking, then three of the buoys went dark. The boat glided between them, and though I couldn’t see behind us, I was sure the lights went back on.

  We passed the yacht, then the seaplane and pulled into the dock. I listened to people coming and going for another hour, then things got quiet again. It was ten-thirty at night by my chrono.

  Blurring my image, I slipped out of the locker and onto the deck. Twenty minutes later I was sure that I was alone on board and the dock was deserted. I called Karen and she answered on the first ring.

  “Where are you? Are you all right?”

  “Sitting on the boat, all alone, taking a look at the house. Most of the lights are out.”

  “Yeah, at least from where I am. So, you’re all right? No problems?”

  “Smooth as silk. I’m going to check out the security at the house. I won’t call you again until I’m ready to get out.”

  I kept to the shadows as I made my way to the house. The periphery near the outer wall of the estate was well lit, but only a couple of lights were on at the house itself. It was a sprawling place, two stories high.

  The outbuildings showed a little more activity. That was good for me, as it meant the staff were at their homes rather than at the mansion.