One look at my father’s face said it all. As much as he was looking forward to spending time with me, he had no desire to part company with Lara to do it. It was my turn to fight for the cause of the man in the banana leaf shirt.
“Yes, definitely,” I agreed genially. “Please take pity on my poor father and stay here, Lara. He is better served by discussing his ideas with someone who actually understands what he’s talking about when he starts spitting out genus after genus.”
The hopeful expression on the botanist’s face spoke volumes. It was clear Lara wanted to get to know my father better, and with the help of the owners of the Paradise Coffee and Spice Company, she was going to have ample opportunity to do just that.
“Perhaps I could remain here an extra week or two, Woody. I’ll check with the front desk.”
“I’d really like that,” my father told her.
Jeff’s mother was pleased by this turn of events and let us all know it. She even made my father’s companion a tempting offer to seal the deal. “I have a much better idea. You can move into my second bedroom, Lara.”
“What about Jeff? He said he’ll be coming back for a visit in a few weeks,” the botanist pointed out.
“Mr. Money Bags can just rent his own place, if and when he returns,” said Liz, giving her son a sly glance before she changed the subject. “What are your plans for the next month, Chris?”
“Hawaii seems like a great place to have a wedding business, but it’s going to take some time for me to establish myself. I’ve got to get to know the locals, make connections, and meet the potential vendors. I thought I might start with Camille’s friend, Molly.”
“Maybe we could help each other out.” Jeff’s mother smiled knowingly.
“In what way?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to tag along when you talk to Molly about setting up a wedding venue on her farm. Ever since you mentioned your experience as an event planner, I’ve been kicking around an idea for a twist in my story.”
“That would be fine,” I replied, opening the door to our future relationship. Liz smiled at me and then at Jeff.
“Is this going to be a murder mystery, Liz?” Lara wanted to know. A second later, she corrected herself. “Oh, what am I saying? No one ever tried to kill anyone at a wedding.”
I was about to blurt out that I nearly lost my life at the Gilded Nest, but I stopped myself in time. With effort, I put a humorous, lighthearted spin on my response. “Actually, I’ve seen some folks come mighty close in my time.”
“Really?” P. J. chuckled. “Are we talking about knock-down, drag-out cat fights over the bouquet?”
“Oh, the horror stories I could tell! Weddings bring out the worst in some people.” I rolled my eyes, remembering. “The deceits, the betrayals, the battles over the budget....”
“You’ll have to tell me all about that,” Liz decided.
“Name it and I’ve seen it, every thing from runaway brides to grooms with cold feet.”
“At the moment, I’m thinking of creating a plot where the mother of a prospective groom gets positively homicidal when her son makes an idiot of himself by not making a move when he has the chance.”
“Wow, very subtle, Mom.” Jeff laughed good-naturedly. “I think you’ll find my mother is an unrepentant, dyed-in-the-wool romantic at heart, Chris.”
“And I think you’ll find my son is a reluctant, foot-dragging-all-the-way-to-the-altar one. Beware of bachelors who just can’t settle down, Chris. Some men are just too fickle to figure out what is in their own best interests, even when it’s standing right in front of them.”
“That’s my cue to say I’d be an idiot to pass up the chance to get to know the lovely Chrisanth Neeson better,” he replied, giving me a wink. “Don’t let her marry you off to anyone until I have a chance to come back and sweep you off your feet.”
“Is that your stated intention, declared in front of these witnesses, Jefferson Cornwall?” she shot back. “You plan to return to Hawaii and woo her properly?”
“I do,” he laughed.
“You heard it, folks,” Liz crowed. “He’s already practicing those magic words for that trip down the aisle!”
“Here, here!” P. J. raised his glass in a toast. “Let’s hear it for smart men who have the good sense to fall for smart women.”
It was just after eight when we got back to the resort. Jeff and I excused ourselves to walk Cooper. After a stroll around the grounds with the tiny terrier, Jeff came upstairs with me and stayed for about an hour as we continued our conversation out on the balcony. Just before eleven, he rose.
“Let’s have breakfast at seven tomorrow. I have to leave for the airport by eight.”
“Sure.” I kissed him, hesitant to let him go. “I’ll take whatever I can get.”
“That’s my girl. Don’t worry, Chris. It will all work out in the end.”
“That’s what you keep telling me.”
“And I’ll go on saying it because it’s true,” he insisted, planting a final kiss on my lips before he slipped away.
Chapter Fifty Six
A short time later, I settled myself in bed, my little dog at my side. Reaching out, I picked up the copy of Dangerous Deception on the table beside me, ready to read on.
The chapter started with Fin being summoned to Lisbon by a former SEAL buddy who was in serious trouble:
I stood looking down at the bloated corpse bobbing in the water fifty feet off the bow of the “Lady of the Seas”. With my right hand in the pocket of my trench coat, I felt for the cold metal handle of my Glock and grasped it, ready to pull it out, safety off. The waterfront was quiet at this time of night, almost deserted. All the more reason to be cautious, I reminded myself, especially with the dead body rocking back and forth in the dark water below me.
Domino had called me for help forty eight hours ago from Monaco. My old SEAL buddy, now head of security for Mardi Gras Cruise Line, told me he was in a jam. There had been a lot of intercepted terrorist chatter lately about tourist targets by intelligence services. Worried that Islamic jihadists had recruited “Lady of the Seas” crew members for a terror attack, he had sailed aboard the ship to do a security audit. Now, in a crew comprised of over a thousand people, three members were unaccounted for and he was worried it might be an effort to substitute bad guys for the missing people.
“Why not just call your bosses and ask for help?” I wanted to know. That seemed the prudent thing to do under the circumstances.
“It’s more complicated than that, Fin. You see, I developed some sources on the ship and two of them are among the missing.”
“All the more reason to turn it over to the big guns, Domino. You’re not a SEAL any more. You don’t have a special ops team at your beck and call. I’m just one guy.”
“I can’t do that, Fin, at least not yet. I need a little more time to line up my ducks.”
“I don’t personally think it’s worth the risk. You’re talking about a possible terror attack on a cruise ship carrying, what...three thousand passengers?”
“Four actually. Meet me at Doca de Alcantara on Saturday night. I need you to do me a big favor.”
“I’m supposed to be in London on Saturday, a business thing for Riparian Marine. They want me to sail their new catamaran to San Sebastián.”
“Can’t you delay it for twenty four hours? I’ll make it worth your while. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, Fin. I’ll pay you your normal fee.”
“Fine, you owe me a six-pack of Sagres,” I replied sardonically, knowing I would never expect a penny from an old shipmate. I heard him laugh bitterly on the other end of the phone line.
“Believe me, amigo. I’m going to owe you a lot more than beer before this is over.”
He turned out to be right about that. I had no idea just how deep the water was, but he was definitely in over his head.
It was all because of a woman; not just any woman either. Maria Beleza de Lourdes, the tall
, willowy lounge singer, who had signed onto the current Mediterranean tour of the “Lady of the Seas” for Mardi Gras after she met Domino at the Hot Clube de Portugal.
Footsteps echoed on the hard pavement, coming my way. I knew immediately they belonged to a fairly heavy man in leather-soled shoes, probably not a professional. He made no effort to conceal his movements, nor did he seem to be in a hurry. I kept my finger on the trigger, just in case I was wrong. I made a point of turning my face toward the lights, knowing that whoever it was would probably focus on me, rather than the ghastly sight below me. I was right.
“Pardon me, sir. Do you know where I can find Rua Mirante?” the elderly man asked in pigeon Portuguese.
“English?” I inquired. Relief flooded his face.
“I am.”
“Cross the road to the train station and follow Rua Caminhos de Ferro to the first left. It’s one of the connecting roads in that vicinity.”
“Thank you,” he nodded, walking on.
A shadow moved in the darkness to my left. Out stepped Domino. His grave expression told me he had already discovered the dead man.
I paused on the page, lost in thought. Jeff was so good at figuring out how to make me not only disappear, but also how to make me reappear -- almost too good.
What if he knew all those tricks because he was running some sort of covert security network? Tom, Terry, Nancy, Jojo, even Lincoln...they all had one thing in common; they were FBI employees, retired or current. Rocky and Vince -- they had been cops. That was a lot of well-trained manpower to keep on the payroll for a TV production company. Was Jeff using the fortune he amassed to protect people like me, those of us who fall through the cracks when things go wrong?
Maybe I didn’t need to know the whole story, especially if it was classified. Could fictional characters tell me what I needed to know about their creator? I picked up where I left off, with Domino talking to Fin.
“Let’s walk,” he said. We moved forward, out under the street lights. “So, you saw?”
“I saw.”
“That was one of my sources, Fin. I still don’t know where the other man is.”
“That leaves you one crew member short. Are we talking about a woman?”
“Maria got off the ship last night when we arrived in port because she was planning to see her family. At least that was her cover story. What she was really supposed to do was deliver a package for me to my contact at the American Embassy. She never made it. I need you to find her, Fin. I need to know whether she’s a victim or part of the terror plot.”
“But....”
“No buts. I can hold this ship in port until tomorrow at noon, under the guise that we have a mechanical problem.”
“What am I supposed to do, conjure up the missing woman out of the ether?”
“If she’s working with the terrorists, Fin, I know where you’ll find her.”
“Tell the CIA station chief.”
“I can’t. He was attacked last night in a bar. It might be related.”
“Man, you do have a problem.”
“I have to know whether Maria is involved. I’m the one who approved her for the job.”
“As a lounge singer?”
“As an undercover operative on my security team. Fin, she’s got all the information on the ship’s operations to enable a successful terror attack, including our security protocols.”
“I take it back, Domino. It’s going to cost you a case of Sagres.”
As thrillers went, it was a tense, hard-driving tale. I could see the problem for Domino, especially if Maria was actually part of a terror cell. But what if she wasn’t? What if she was in danger?
A part of me wanted to believe that Fin really was just a fictional character inspired by Jeff’s research, but there was something nagging at me. The tale read like a genuine counterterrorism exploit, even if the details were changed here and there to obscure the truth.
I glanced at the bedside clock and saw it was just after one. Torn between sleeping and finishing the book, I chose the latter. The love of my life would be leaving in the morning, but before he did, we were scheduled to have breakfast together. I wanted to know as much as I could about the real Jefferson Cornwall by then. I’d have plenty of time to catch up on my beauty sleep after he left.
What fate awaited Maria, Domino, and Fin? If I could understand how Fin handled these situations, would I better understand Jeff? With Cooper snuggled up beside me, I fell back into the story:
“I started with the puzzle of the two men who disappeared. They seemed to be the most important factor in the equation. One was dead. Wahlid was an older man from Indonesia who regularly sent home his savings to the family he left in Jakarta. He had nearly fifteen years of stellar employment with Mardi Gras Cruise Lines, working the Mediterranean route in the summer and the Western Caribbean route in the winter. His body, when it was finally pulled out of the water, showed signs of torture.
“Get an imam here to take care of the du’a for the dead,” I advised Domino.
“Are you crazy? I have a possible terror attack underway on my ship and you want me to invite an imam on board?”
“Sure. Then you pay attention to those Muslims who don’t show up, because they’re likely to be the masterminds. After all, if they killed your man as part of the security for their organization, they probably aren’t going to want mercy for his soul.”
“Ah, thanks. I wasn’t thinking like that.”
I insisted on seeing the crew’s quarters, where the two slept, and their assigned work areas. I wanted to believe that they somehow left clues behind that I could use. Unfortunately, I came up empty. From everything I examined, I was forced to admit there wasn’t enough evidence to draw a reasonable conclusion as to what occurred.
Maria’s room yielded real results. She was a messy woman; it was impossible to ignore the pantyhose and sexy lingerie she left lying around. But it was her Internet activities on one of the computers in the library of the ship that gave her away. In a desk drawer in her cabin, I had found the data card she purchased for the trip. She had written her screen name and password on the hard plastic rectangle. Logging in under her alias, I was able to access the sites she used. It was an eye-opening experience.
Once Domino and I went over all the information Maria had gathered in the last several weeks, we realized she had to come back to the ship in order to carry out the planned attack. And when she did, we would be ready for her.
I found myself fascinated by all the things Fin did to uncover the truth, and when he knew what the plan was, he turned it over to the CIA to handle, making sure that Domino had the chance to redeem himself. The planned terror attack was thwarted by a very simple deception. Knowing that Maria was working in concert with her fellow terrorists, the CIA arranged for a disruption of the ship’s schedule. The two substitutes were waylaid on their journey to infiltrate the ship’s crew and were replaced by CIA operatives, who substituted fake explosives for the real thing.
Maria had an unfortunate accident involving a Vespa and the driver insisted on taking her to the hospital, so she got back to the ship with only enough time to board, missing a meeting with her handler to get her last minute instructions. The moment she signed into her email account in the ship’s library, she opened the fake email the CIA sent her, with the photos of their operatives; it confirmed she was to proceed with the attack, which resulted in a resounding failure.
The two CIA substitutes convinced Maria that the detonators were faulty and urged her to contact her real boss for further instructions. By the time the ship landed in the next port, the CIA knew all about the man for whom Maria was working. It was time to send her packing, but they had to do it in a way that allowed them to penetrate the terror network. Maria was caught passing a package of pure heroin to one of the other entertainers on the cruise, a man with a known drug habit. Since Mardi Gras Cruise Lines had a zero tolerance drug policy, the two were immediately fired and escorted from the
ship. Suddenly jobless, she was distraught, until a man passing by on the dock took pity on the pretty lady and introduced her to his friend on a competing cruise line. Domino had arranged it all, and the CIA was able to keep an eye on the femme fatale as she entertained passengers on the Empress of the Seven Seas.
Just before three, I began the final chapter. Fin and Domino sat at a Lisbon street cafe, clinking bottles of Sagres and toasting each other and another mission accomplished.
“Ah, the first beer is always the tastiest,” Fin declared.
“Indeed. And the last is never as satisfying. Why is that?” asked his companion, putting his lips to the mouth of the bottle and drawing a long, determined sip.
“Because we work so hard for it,” laughed the first man. “We go through hell and back to earn it. We come home from our missions with our feet scorched and our throats parched.”
“We do.” Domino removed a corner of the paper label from the glass bottle with his thumbnail, scratching at it until it loosened. Fin recognized it as a nervous habit his teammate developed in the Philippines, right after the Abu Sayyaf landed on Jolo Island with Western hostages. The SEAL team had been assigned reconnaissance duties in anticipation of an international rescue mission.
With his Hispanic good looks and fluency in Spanish, Domino could mingle more easily among the Filipino population on the nearby island of Basilan than the others; it was his job to get as close to the Abu Sayyaf watchdog, Anwar Salih, as possible.
No one had expected what came next. It was supposed to be a simple job of tailing the suspected terrorist to his lair in Isabela City, but it became a nightmare Domino would never forget. Three young women, just barely out of puberty, were walking down the dusty street, chattering away, when they caught the attention of the watchdog. Domino recognized the danger signs in Salih, saw the man’s interest rise as the girls drew nearer. In that split second, the Navy SEAL had to decide whether to err on the side of caution and hold back, or move forward to prevent another kidnapping. Knowing the fate of the Jolo hostages were in his hands, he waited and watched.
Reluctant Witness Page 48