by Michael Crow
The hundred thousand euros in the fanny pack Nadya tossed me is only down maybe two thousand, even after I buy a nicely maintained CAR-15 and ten thirty-round magazines from an ancient man with skin like an old shoe, his stubs of teeth stained red from chewing betel, in an airless tin-roofed shack on the Zamboanga waterfront. He seems disappointed I won’t take the time to haggle down the price.
Another five hundred and I’m skimming the calm Sulu Sea in an Evinrude-powered outrigger piloted by the ancient man’s grandson, who’s a part-time pirate and occasional fisherman. Two-fifty at a village built on stilts in the shallows off northeastern Borneo gets me another outrigger ride up to the very tip of Sabah, to this village fronting the Balabac Strait. It’s two hundred klics from Kota Kinabalu, heavily jungled four-thousand-meter mountains between the international airport there and here. No roads over that green hell to here, no airstrip. Accessible only by sea.
The headman has heard of European adventure tourists, though none have ever come here before. A hundred euros gets me a bamboo hut with a thatched roof, three meals a day, and honorary membership in his clan for six months. Once every month or so, an old steamer comes by to trade simple goods for dried fish, maybe bring back one of the village’s young men who went to Kota looking for work, or take one away. The headman seems proud of this.
He understands I do not want my presence known when the steamer comes. It has to anchor five klicks out, the water’s too shoaled, reefed, and shallow for closer approach. The villagers go to it in their outriggers. No one, he promises, will ever mention me. No one wants any attention from the authorities in Kota. Because most of the villagers are smugglers as well as fishermen.
So I live. Some dawns I go with an outrigger and help a man fish. I doze in a hammock most afternoons when the sun’s brutal. I swim in the waning day. Evenings, I sit here in my redoubt, the CAR in my lap, watching my imaginary fireflies, my unknown constellations.
I never doubt Nadya made it back. I’m sure Company craftsmen have forged and mailed a postcard or two to Annie, from Honduras or Salvador perhaps. Luther’s probably written that he’s decided to stay south for a while, to postpone his return to Baltimore. It is not in the Company’s interest for a cop named Luther Ewing, who took a road trip to the Yucatán, to be reported missing.
So I’m here. If they want me, they will find me. Six months? A year? Doesn’t matter much. If they come hard, they’ll get hit hard. That’s what the CAR is for.
But for now, I’ll just sit quietly. I did the job, I got paid. Contract completed. Maybe they’ll bring me in easy. Maybe one day a little boat will beach and I’ll see a small figure walking toward me, shimmering in the heat haze. Hear Nadya, calling clear. “Terry, darling! Ready to come home? Well of course you are!”
Sure. It will be Nadya. Real as the sound of the sea in a shell held against your ear.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Marjorie Braman for helping me stay on target.
About the Author
MICHAEL CROW is a pseudonym. As a journalist he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting for a series on the New York Mafi a. He has written two previous Luther Ewing novels—Red Rain and The Bite—and divides his time between New York City; Woodstock, New York; and Europe.
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Praise for the novels of MICHAEL CROW featuring LUTHER EWING
“Michael Crow joins Michael Connelly (and Dennis Lehane and James Ellroy) in exploring the bleakest outer limits of crime.”
Boston Globe
“Luther is a satisfying enigmatic hero, much like Hawk in the Spenser series. He has a moral center, but exactly where it is and when he will pay attention to it seem up for grabs. Crow is the pen name of an acclaimed literary novelist; he’s soon to be an acclaimed crime-fiction writer, too.”
Booklist
“Crow writes an entertaining thriller.”
Charleston Post and Courier
“Crow knows how to lay out a tale.”
Denver Rocky Mountain News
“For all of Ewing’s bloody past, his unsentimental, often funny first-person narrative voice made me a fan…Crazy or not, Ewing is an honest man, a formidable cop, and a fascinating invention.”
Washington Post Book World
“I like Luther Ewing. He’s not on the edge, he’s way past it.”
Cincinnati Enquirer
Books by Michael Crow
NO WAY BACK
RED RAIN
THE BITE
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
NO WAY BACK. Copyright © 2005 by Michael Crow. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition May 2007 ISBN 9780061750878
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