by David Dun
“You know, don’t you?”
“Only because my mother loved the movie. Raved about it.”
“Who’s my agent?”
He smiled. “You’re a woman with a lot of questions.”
“Either you know the name or you don’t.”
“I know her name. I’m making spaghetti tonight.”
“One of the articles was about how they found Peter’s thieving CPA—the one that took him for two million—and a lot of other people as well—handcuffed to the steel railing in front of the police station with a sign around his neck.”
“Pretty amazing.”
“And your name is?”
“Sam.”
“Sam ... ?”
“Sam of the Silverwind.”
“Well, obviously I’m pleased to meet you. You’re brave, Sam of the Silverwind, and I’m alive because of it.”
He cleared his throat. “I neglected to mention that in the drawer of the forward stateroom—the same place you found the scrapbook—you’ll find a brush, makeup, that sort of thing.”
“Sounds good.” She rose and disappeared while he pulled out the spaghetti pot and began cleaning up. There was going to be an issue here.
“How can I get out of this bay? Back to civilization?” She had returned with the brush, trying to draw the tangles out of her hair.
“How did you get here?”
“In a seaplane.”
“Well, then, tomorrow we find a seaplane.”
“I really have to go, and I’m going to need your help. It might not be safe here in the open.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t know. Call it intuition.”
“You could swim to that beach, on Sonoma Island, get hypothermia, and warm yourself inside a bear’s gut.” He grinned. “Just intuition of course.”
“Come on,” she said. “Be nice. You know that New York traffic is more dangerous than the bears.”
“Absolutely. You’re much more likely to be eaten by the cold, and then the crabs, but eaten just the same. The dinghy and emergency life raft are both gone. There is no good way ashore and then no place to go should you happen to make it to the beach. Unless you know something I don’t.”
“Or we could stay here, is that it?”
“The beach is not practical. So a delightful evening with me and my spaghetti is really the only option.”
“Now you’re trying to make the bears sound good,” she joked as she walked toward him. “Look. I can’t talk about my situation. You apparently have lots you can’t talk about either. But we could trust each other.”
“Who was the guy who walked off and left you?”
For a split second she looked troubled. “What guy?”
There was a story here. For her sake he hoped nobody in the media found out. Stars magazine would pay a fortune for this piece, BACHELOR ON SAILBOAT SAVES BIG STAR AFTER MYSTERY MAN LEAVES HER TO DIE.
He wanted a smoke.
“What is your last name, Sam?”
“I’m just Sam. Here’s my card.” He handed her a neatly embossed, gold-lettered card. It read “Sam of the Silverwind,” with nothing but an e-mail address.
“People usually have a last name.”
“Yes, indeed. But then when someone is fleeing for their life they usually talk about it.”
“You’re making a lot of assumptions.”
“Okay. Tell me what happened so I can understand the desperation to get out of here.”
“Do those toiletries you told me about belong to anyone in particular?”
“Yes. My mother.”
“She travels with you?”
“Occasionally.”
“She’s the one who put together the scrapbook. Probably forgot it.”
Sam shrugged.
“I need to get off.”
“You know a lot more about what’s going on here than I do. So why don’t you enlighten me?”
“Look, I know this is strange. And you did save my life. And I’m very grateful. But please trust me. We both need to get off this boat.”
“We’ll trust each other, and we can begin by you telling me what we should run from.”
She shook her head no. Sam could see that she was anxious, but he needed to know why she wanted to leave. Running was often more dangerous than waiting. There was a dry suit on board that he hadn’t mentioned, and he could start the motor and proceed more or less aimlessly to the beach, where he could ground the boat on one of many rocks perhaps fifty yards from shore. A less expensive alternative would be to use the dry suit and tow Anna to shore. There was a kid’s blow-up boat that would hold two adults maybe, half submerged and totally soaked with this chop and the wind. With one adult it would be just as wet but not as deeply submerged. But keeping her on the boat, or seeming to, was the only leverage he had to get her to talk. Unless he knew the why of it all, he couldn’t make a good plan.
Outthinking ill-intentioned people had been Sam’s calling in life—all kinds of criminals, but sometimes the worst of the worst, those who by natural gift were uncommonly intelligent and by some means, natural or unnatural, had become twisted and/or nearly conscienceless.
Those with no conscience were less a problem for businesspeople or celebrity types because they were psychopaths devoted to killing people they encountered in their daily life. They remained the province of homicide detectives who worked long hours under the influence of black coffee and nervous politicians.
Sam’s company worked both in the private sector and under government contract. Powerful people, celebrities, and governments paid small fortunes for his skill and the cold logic of a silicon beast called CORE (an acronym for Common Object Repository for the Enterprise), affectionately christened “Big Brain” by Grogg, the man who helped conceive her according to Sam’s vision.
Sam’s greatest asset was a strong mind, housed in a near-perfect tabernacle tainted only by the occasional doses of cigarette smoke that he perpetually swore would end. Scholarships at Yale and MIT—specialty: computer science—had enabled him to create a so-called “expert system” that revolutionized data analysis using a programming method known as forward- and backward-chaining heuristics.
His skills had forged for him a unique occupation, a job that kept him in high demand, a job that he had found profoundly satisfying until recently, when he’d left it altogether. It was a line of work that required he keep an extremely low profile, something that, even in premature retirement, Sam did not intend to abandon.
Anna Wade was no exception: Unless she became a client, she could know nothing of him or the exotic trade he had once plied.
“I’ll make the spaghetti sauce. Relax. You have been talking about both of us leaving the boat Somewhere along the line you decided I must leave too. Why?”
“I was going to get you accepting my exit and then drag you along.”
She walked back to the forward stateroom and closed the door, obviously disappointed. He was acutely aware that she hadn’t answered the question.
Sam went to his stateroom, took out night-vision equipment, and went topside. It was uncomfortably cold in the wind. He looked to the near shore, then out across the channel behind him to Windham Island. A small island called Double Island that lay off the shore of Sonoma Island formed the shelter for their secluded anchorage. There was no one and nothing that looked like trouble. It didn’t appear that anyone else was anchored in the bay, not surprising since this place made sailors nervous even when the tide was slack. The rocky channel was a little tricky to negotiate—high tide at slack water was definitely the preferred time. No bilge alarm was sounding so it was unlikely that he was taking on water. The next high tide was many hours away, and it would be dark. Without a rudder they would run aground if they attempted to weigh anchor and leave.
He considered whether he should just leave with Anna and trust her judgment. Anchoring overnight or longer with no one aboard would require putting more scope on the anchor, so he went
topside and released more chain. It was wise to be prepared for any eventuality. After the boat drifted off he would drop a stern anchor with very little scope.
The boat wouldn’t go anywhere. He wanted a smoke and a drink, but first he should take care of an emergency escape method. Rummaging around in a locker he found the kid’s raft and pumped it up in the wheelhouse, wondering how long it would take for Anna Wade to stop pouting or whatever she was doing. He lashed the small rubber boat to the lifelines midships where it could easily be cut loose. As he was turning to go back inside he noticed that the rubber boat had lost its turgidity. Leak. Typical with kids’ rafts. Then he remembered the relatives’ kids in the early part of the summer and the barnacles. After dinner he would try to find the little pinhole and fix it. In the meantime, if he and Anna had to leave they would use the dry suit and an air mattress.
When he returned to the cabin, he opened a cupboard and took a look at a bottle of Caymus Cabernet, 1996 vintage. He considered it. He had quit the hard stuff completely, and would have a glass of wine only when he knew he could stop at three. Or even more likely, a German beer with similar limitations. So far he had never been wrong. Taking a careful measure of himself, he closed the cabinet. The arrival of Anna Wade and the near destruction of his sailboat could put a man on the bottle.
He filled his wineglass instead with sparkling water and fed Harry. Judging from the homey little galloping noise, his guest was running water in the sink. It made him smile that in the midst of begging to jump overboard and swim, this woman was still going to be well groomed.
He closed the companionway hatch and turned up the diesel heat. The sound of the sink pump stopped. Like a lot of landlubbers she ran the water whether she needed it or not. He proceeded to clean the galley and main salon of the few items that had fallen from cupboards. Most of his things had stayed put behind heavy-weather barricades.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a blow-dryer. Quickly he started a generator so she wouldn’t drain the batteries through the inverter. At the rate she was going she’d find his mother’s curling iron. Better whip up some vegetables and rush the spaghetti sauce; it seemed she was settling in for the evening. If it was that easy to persuade her, perhaps she wasn’t desperate after all.
He went to the cupboard, and beside the wine was an unopened pack of Marlboro smokes. He studied them.
“Come on, Harry,” he said. After he was up topside, he tapped the carton until a cigarette slid partway out. “I know,” he told the dog. “But I’ve got Miss Manhattan on board. One smoke is understandable.” He lit up and took a drag, inhaling deeply. The wind was still whipping and he could feel the chill even in goose down. Once more he pulled the smoke into his lungs, the ember a tiny glowing furnace.
After the third drag he ground out the smoke with a pinch of two wet fingers. Then he took one more look around with night vision and was reassured by the isolation. Never before had he left his sat phone behind, but it had broken last week and it hadn’t seemed a priority until now. At this moment he would give a lot to call Grogg and get Big Brain started on some probing questions about Anna Wade. He figured he’d better get down to his guest. As his last act topside, he opened a lazzarette and put the butt in a plastic garbage bag.
“Filthy damn habit,” he told Harry, promising himself it would be his last.
It would take two hours to cook the spaghetti if he did it half right, twenty minutes if he sacrificed quality and cheated. She could drink wine while he decided exactly how nosy he was going to be.
He had the pot full of Italian-spiced tofu balls, beer, more Italian spices, tomato paste, and stewed tomatoes.
The curlicue pasta was on and he was marinating the avocado for the salad when she walked out of her stateroom. It was a mere fortuity that he had fresh lettuce. He had bartered it from the captain of a packer boat coming down from Alaska.
“What you been doing up there?”
“After my makeup, shivering under a blanket, looking through your books, and snooping.”
“Least you’re honest.”
Her hair was soft now, her lipstick even, smooth, and warm; the touch of eyeliner and mascara made pools of her eyes. He saw it coming—at any moment the next assault would arrive.
Harry trotted over to her for a second pat.
After fussing over Harry for a moment, she came to Sam and put a hand on his arm. “Can’t you think of some way to get us out of here?” These words and the warm hand were accompanied by her truly charming smile. It would make most men want to please her. It made Sam want a drink with another smoke. This was the old life and it had come roaring back with the adrenaline rush.
He shrugged. “I’m sorry you don’t want to stay for dinner. It’s a good recipe. Ever had beer in the red sauce?”
“Beer?”
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”
“Could you use your radio to call someone—a seaplane maybe?”
“We went over this. It’s a line-of-sight VHF radio, we’re in a natural bowl, the shortwave radio is in the shop. I don’t have a sat phone that works. There is no cell signal here.”
“Get me off this boat. Yes or no?” This time she was direct.
“No.”
She looked at him with a level stare and he looked right back.
“Don’t you have a beacon?”
“An emergency locator beacon won’t get anyone here tonight.”
She folded her arms and exhaled as though it were her last breath on this earth. It moved him but not enough to overcome his own determination. He made it a point not to be impressed by celebrities.
“The Mounties could get me off the beach,” she said.
“With some luck we’ll find a way out of here tomorrow. Of course if I knew what was going on, I might try to figure some way off this boat ... some way that didn’t entail freezing my ass in the salt water and then facing death from exposure on shore. Maybe.”
He returned to the stove and stirred the spaghetti sauce. Without a word she walked back into the stateroom and closed the door.
So it’s going to be like that, he said to himself. Maybe she really can’t even pretend to be like the rest of us.
Three
Anna Wade had been aboard a few yachts, some lavish, some ordinary. Sam’s seemed compact but cozy and tasteful. In the forward stateroom there was a walk-around queen-size pedestal bed and a small vanity next to a door to the forward head. Additionally there was a desk. The woodwork was lustrous and warm, a little reddish in tone, and looked very custom—similar to handmade furniture that she had specially ordered for her Manhattan apartment. Obviously expensive. The fixtures were also unusual. From what little she had seen of yachts in this size range, they usually had flimsy doors and elf-sized handles that rattled in their holes. Everything on this boat was substantial and solid, nearly as large as the fixtures in an expensive house. Sam cared about his things.
She couldn’t tell if she was making headway with him or not. For a second she had thought he might be about to give in. As a last resort she would try a few minutes of the silent treatment—just sitting with the door closed while he wondered.
The way the boat was stocked—the books, the stuff in the drawers—it was owned, not chartered. There were scented candles, and she couldn’t put that together with the man who had yanked her from the sea. So Sam was a man of some means. Definitely not a reporter, and no garden-variety businessman either. Despite his firm insistence on secrecy, she felt for the moment that he was trustworthy even if stubborn. Something told her he’d had a hand in nabbing Peter Malkey’s thieving accountant. Perhaps he was some sort of high-powered investigator.
The shelves held books about Native American mythology; one compared New Age mysticism with Native American spiritual beliefs. An interesting woven-cloth bookmark protruded from a volume entitled Tilok Life, and another from On the Trail of the Tiloks by Jessie Mayfield Wintripp. There were some spy novels along with some trad
itionally male biographies. Even more interesting, he had a copy of The Mind. In trying to learn about her brother, she had read the book and others like it. Although not per se about paranoia, it was a stunning discussion of human consciousness and self-determination, a look at how mind might be derived from matter.
The desk was sizable, even out of proportion, and obviously served as his workplace when he didn’t have guests. On the desktop she found a map with many notations apparently having to do with Native American tribes—the Salish, Kwaikutl, and Nuuchahnulth. Historic villages were marked in black, whereas currently existing villages seemed to be marked in blue. Sliding open the drawers, she found more maps of larger scale with notations about various sites. Perhaps the man was an archeologist. No, that didn’t seem right.
In one drawer she found a collection of cosmetic items including shampoos, hand lotion, skin cream, lipsticks. Some of the liquid materials were in a large Ziploc plastic bag. Although the plastic case had remained nearly dry, she had been careful to rinse Jason’s plastic computer CD in fresh water to remove all traces of salt, but if she went in the ocean again she wanted better protection. Feeling only slightly larcenous, she emptied the contents of the Ziploc bag, inserted Jason’s CD, and carefully sealed the bag. If she did nothing else, she had to preserve that CD. The Ziploc then went into the waterproof bag in her fanny pack.
In the corner of the large drawer was an album full of pictures of Sam with a young man. The way they stood she could tell they were close. It was probably his younger brother—Sam seemed too young for such a son. In one of the plastic sleeves, on the back side of a photo of the young man dressed in cap and gown, presumably at graduation, was a folded-up piece of personal stationery. Feeling a little guilty, she pulled it out. It was a letter. It was only four lines.
My only son. You came from me. You will go on with me, then without me. Carry me with you in your heart as I will always carry you in mine. Do not neglect a good beer and a sunset.
Dad
So Sam was the young man’s father. Odd to have a letter that you’d sent to someone else.
Several pictures toward the back there was one of Sam with an older gentleman, obviously a Native American, wearing a heavy wool shirt, blue jeans and what looked like lace-up hide boots, and a green medicine bag around his neck. Behind that picture was a letter, very brief but written in a foreign language and bearing a signature that was obviously a foreign name.