by Orca Various
I’d taken the bullets out of the clip in the Walther PPK back in Canada and just left the unloaded gun in my luggage when I crossed the border. So it wasn’t really a weapon now, just my grandfather’s empty keepsake. In fact, I had found a small document at the cottage calling the gun a “collectible.” I’d brought that with me too. Still, I was pretty tense. Thank goodness, I went through without an inspection.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been bringing it with me at all, but I knew it was part of the puzzle I was trying to solve. If I brought it to the address on the envelope, it might somehow answer some questions. Also, for some reason, I just couldn’t leave it behind.
The house had been empty when I got back to Buffalo. I love being alone when my parents aren’t around. Lots of things to do, things they might not let me do if they were home. Bad Adam really loves it. But I hadn’t had a minute to waste. I’d wanted to take a really early flight (one that left at about five in the morning, or, as I imagine they say in the secret service, zero five hundred hours) to New York. I’d thrown some clothes into a small bag—no fuss; just get in, find the information and get out of Bermuda fast. I had to be realistic. That’s all I could handle. I’d grabbed the Le Carré novel and the American Airlines annual pass Dad had given me for the trip to France. All the pilots can get them, and he’s one of the best in the airline, the one and only Captain John Murphy, a decorated Gulf War hero whose calm and expertise have saved lives in a few hairy situations. I’m proud of him. Bad Adam resents him sometimes, but not me.
I’d texted my cousin Rennie and gotten him up to speed on everything. He’d written back immediately, intrigued by what I’d told him and especially curious about the Argentine passport and accompanying newspaper clippings among Grandpa’s things. He’d asked if I could scan the stuff, along with relevant pages from the notebook. So I’d emailed it all to him in South America and wondered what in the world he’d discover down there. But that was his deal—I didn’t have a minute to even think about it.
The pilot’s pass gets you get through airline customs really quickly. They hardly even look at your bags. Dad says the best thing to do at an airport is to always tell the truth, even if the truth is a bit outrageous. So I told them when I checked in that I had something in my stowed luggage that I thought they needed to approve. Although I don’t think he’s ever used it, Dad has a hard-shell metal carrying case, which is what’s required for transporting a small firearm on a plane. That’s the law. I had put the PPK in it and then placed it in my bag. I also had the document saying that it was a collectible and that its firing pin had been removed. I knew that wasn’t true, since Bunny had actually fired the gun back at the cottage, but it was just a tiny lie, a harmless one too. Grandpa had had all the appropriate papers but had kept this thing loaded. Why? From what or from whom did he feel he needed protection? My heart was absolutely pounding when I opened my luggage for inspection. It was James Bond’s gun, and it had a deadly look to it. I took a deep breath.
“I have an unloaded weapon in here,” I told the man at the special-baggage check. He was of East Indian heritage, kind of old, wearing a white turban and sporting a pretty cool beard and shades like a shady character in a movie. I supposed it helped him hide the emotion in his eyes. Another employee, a bit younger but almost identical, was standing nearby, and so was a young woman, East Indian too, wearing black pants, white shirt, a tie and badges. She had beautiful long hair, raven-black like her eyes, and wore a fair bit of makeup. It looked like she had shrunk her uniform to make it more form fitting. And her form, Bad Adam noticed, was pretty awesome.
“I am going to take it out now,” I said. “It’s just a show model, a collectible; the firing pin has been removed. I have the documents.” I gave the paper to him. “I’ll take it out and hand it to you, butt first. My father is Captain John Murphy. You have his pilot’s ID.” I’d brought the copy Dad kept at home in his desk. I’d already given them the pass.
“Step away from the luggage, sir,” the old guy said quickly. He had a strong accent, but I got what he said, loud and clear. “Stand back behind that line, please. I will do this.”
I stood back, my heart racing. Why had I brought the gun?
His eyes still on me, he approached the bag very slowly, as if a bomb were in it. I felt like making a joke about it, but wisely kept my mouth shut. He continued to stare at me, reaching blindly for the case, feeling around for it. When he found it, he kept eyeballing me. It was almost funny. But I didn’t laugh. I’d left the gun case on top on purpose, so he found it quickly. Slowly, ever so slowly, he pulled it from the bag. He snapped open the case and took it out. It glistened under the terminal’s bright lights. He turned his attention from me to it, as if he couldn’t resist. His eyes glowed, and he seemed to forget about me for an instant.
“It’s a Walther PPK,” he said quietly, in admiration.
“James Bond?” said the younger man, peering over the older guy’s shoulder, his mouth open, staring at the weapon.
“Daniel Craig.” The young woman grinned.
The old guy’s smile vanished.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, glaring at me.
“It’s just a—”
He hadn’t looked at the documents I’d given him. The sight of the gun had thrown him.
“Can I hold it?” asked the younger man.
“Ladies first,” said the woman, reaching out.
“No one will hold it!” snapped the old guy. “Not even this young man. He is going straight back to—”
“Mr. Petal, may I speak with you for a moment?” said the younger guy.
They all stepped aside, the old guy still holding the PPK. It was like he wanted to keep it. They started whispering. I heard just a few bits of their conversation, as the younger man and woman made their case. I had a pilot’s pass, they said, from a pilot with pedigree; the gun wasn’t loaded; the boy had been up-front. It wasn’t illegal to transport a gun, especially an unloaded collectible with papers, placed in a proper container. “We could give him a permit.” They didn’t bother to check the firing pin.
About an hour later (zero ten hundred hours), after filling out all sorts of forms, I was on the plane and so was my pistol. I had a permit to take it to Bermuda and bring it back. I also had the empty envelope on my lap, with the address on the island written clearly across the front.
I used to be a nervous flyer, which I’d never told Grandpa because I thought he might be ashamed of me. (This was a guy, after all, who had been shot down over enemy-occupied Europe in the war.) But with his guidance I got over my fear when I went to France. So on this trip, I loved being in the air. I loved staring down at the world below. It was funny how it was so cold in New York and seemed so cold outside while we headed out over the Atlantic, but about an hour and a half later, when Bermuda came into view, everything looked warm.
From the air, Bermuda looks like a giant fish hook, a fish hook for the rich. Or maybe it’s more like the head of a thin dinosaur with its mouth open. Whatever it is, it’s pretty amazing, sitting there way out in the Atlantic Ocean, green even in late December, surrounded by sandy beaches and incredible blue water.
We came in over the eastern tip of the island. I could see the single runway of the airport below. It seemed like everything else was covered with a green carpet; there were many golf courses and parks set off by startlingly colorful houses—purple and pink and yellow—all with shining white roofs. There were boats everywhere too, gathered in the turquoise waves off the island’s shores—everything from sailboats to motorboats and yachts to cruise ships. They looked like baby birds flocking close to their mother. People were walking around in shirtsleeves.
It was early afternoon, about thirteen hundred hours.
My pass got me through customs and onto the street quickly. I walked out into an almost perfect day, about like late spring in Buffalo, maybe even early summer. It was cloudy, but the sun poked through every now and then. Palm trees above
me cast shadows on the wide sidewalk and out over the pickup lanes at the arrivals area. I pulled my shades over my eyes, looked up and down a line of cabs and motioned for one. As I waited, I checked out everyone who passed. Bad Adam eyed the women, dressed in summer clothes. A bearded Bermudian with long Rasta hair, wearing long camo shorts, a colorful yellow-and-red shirt and a porkpie hat, leaped out of a taxi and approached me with a smile.
“That is all your baggage, sir?” he asked.
“That’s right,” I said. My plan was to say little to anyone. But he was a smiler and a talker.
“Not want to stay on the beautiful island long, sir?”
He had a bit of what sounded to me like a Jamaican accent, but it was British too—more British than anything, in fact. Whatever it was, it sounded relaxed and gentle.
“No.” I didn’t look at him. And I didn’t offer him the bag. I was keeping it with me. I was wearing long pants and my hard black boots, a Skyfall T-shirt and a jean jacket. I liked the fact that I was tall and, especially with my shades on, could probably pass for a few years older than I was, maybe even twenty or twenty-one. That might come in handy here, all alone. I’d shoved the envelope into a pocket, deep down so no one could see it. I simply got into the backseat and closed the door.
“Whatever you like, man,” he said to me through the open window. He looked a little disappointed.
When he got back in, I gave him the address. I didn’t take the envelope out at all. In fact, I’d considered burning it or leaving it at home. But it was the only lead I had.
“That is in Paget Parish,” he said, turning to look at me with a big smile.
“I wasn’t aware of that.”
“Well, it is. Nice area, not too far from Hamilton, the BEEG city here.” He laughed loudly. I didn’t. “Right,” he said. “To Paget.”
We headed out of the airport and across an amazing causeway, a thin needle of road connecting the airport to the rest of Bermuda. That’s all it was: a highway right out across the water. From the side it looked like it was made of stone, but when you were on it, it was just a modern, smooth highway with short concrete walls on either side.
“Shall I give you the tour, sir?”
“No.”
“Just a short one?”
“No, thank you.”
“We have many things of interest here. Do you like caves?”
My heart gave a quick beat. Caves? Why would he say that?
“We have the world’s greatest, most beautiful crystalline caves.”
“I…I’m not into caves.” That was a lie. I’d been in the world’s most awesome cave in France. And it had changed my life.
“How about—?”
“I’m just here for part of a day,” I said quickly. I hadn’t even booked a hotel. My airline pass was open—I could leave whenever I wanted.
He seemed disappointed again.
We crossed over onto land, and then the road curved toward the ocean. We moved along the beautiful blue water under palm trees mixed with other coniferous trees that looked just like something you might see in northern Ontario. It was a strange combination. I was wondering if they’d imported the palm trees. That would be just like the Brits. I’d read a bit about Bermuda in some of the tourist material on the airplane. Main facts: about 65,000 people on a small island, lots of golf courses, colorful houses, rich people, great shopping, nice beaches and loads of sightseeing for tourists—loads of tourists period, even in December. The British had run the place for a long time, even though now there was a real mosaic of races. As I looked out the window, everything I’d read was confirmed. Rich people in luxury cars, stunning fairways, beautiful beaches with a few people on them…and a driver who liked to drive slowly and talk a lot. Folks here were supposed to be friendly. I’d become a friendly guy myself. But today I had a mission, and I had to get it done. Grandpa’s reputation depended on it.
“Do you like history, my friend?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?” He seemed relieved—and excited.
“Shall I share some history of the island for you as we drive along in this paradise?”
“Yeah…sure.”
He began by telling me that Bermuda had been uninhabited for a long time, and then the British came in the seventeenth century and set up tobacco farms. They brought slaves to work on the farms, and later on tourists started to vacation on the island, Americans brought their influences, and then there were the spies—
“Excuse me?” I asked, stopping him in mid-sentence.
“Yes, man?”
“Spies?”
“During the Second World War, sir. Bermuda was an important place then. We had spies all over. They say the Princess Hotel, the beautiful pink hotel in Hamilton, was filled with them, intercepting the mail that came through our lovely island from Nazi Germany, reading it all, looking for invisible ink messages and microdots on letters and full sentences on the heads of pins, sir. They say many important spies lived here.”
“Which ones?”
“If I knew that, sir, then I would know what no one knows.”
“Huh?” When I said that, I thought of my Canadian cousins, who make fun of me when I say it, especially if I bring up the fact that they say “Eh?” all the time (which they do). They like to respond with, “It’s better than HUH?” and make it sound like I’m a hillbilly or something. They’re such cards. Bunny says “huh” about a thousand times a day when I’m around.
“I mean that the spies in Bermuda were very secretive,” continued my driver. “No one like James Bond was here, my friend.”
“Huh?”
“Real spies”—he turned to me and lowered his voice—“are invisible. They assume the color of the wall. They aren’t famous; they don’t carry guns. They just eliminate people, or have someone else do it for them.” Then he laughed out loud again. “I don’t know, sir. I don’t have a clue about spies! But I heard a particularly famous one lived in Paget.”
“A famous one?”
“Yes, sir. He was a Canadian. Imagine that! Canadians would make perfect spies. I’ve met a few of them, you know. Boring, but full of secrets! They are kind of like icebergs.” He laughed. This guy just loved to laugh.
“Canadian, eh?”
He laughed again before I realized what I’d said.
“That’s what I’ve heard anyway. This man was a very powerful person. But who knows?” He sighed. “Yes, indeed. Apparently, he had a very common name.”
“Like Bill or Bob.”
“Yes.”
“Or maybe…Dave?”
“Could have been. Here, we are approaching Hamilton.”
I could see the town—almost a city—getting closer. The number of buildings had been increasing, going from just a few hotels, resort-type restaurants and shops to many, some with a slightly more urban feel. Hamilton looked old and quaint and also had some buildings more than a few stories high. But we turned at a busy traffic circle (lots of those in Bermuda) and headed left, away from the town. It was countryside, but residential at the same time.
“We are now entering Paget. What was the address again?”
I gave it to him.
“Interesting.”
“Why?”
“I think that house is secluded.”
“Secluded?”
“And that is unusual in Paget.”
We were soon off the main road, making our way through streets with tightly spaced houses and then into an area where none were close together. I figured that most people here had enough money to be separated a bit from each other. Everyone seemed to have a good-sized lawn. But then there was a gap of several empty properties. We had gone along some rather hilly streets, and now my driver turned and went up a pretty steep one, with no houses on either side for about a couple hundred yards. He stopped at a gate with high walls. I could see a nearly white house up the hill, different because of its lack of color. The iron gate looked like the letter W. It almost seemed like it had
been designed that way.
My driver blew a low, admiring whistle as he got out and walked around to my window.
“This is quite the place. Who are you?” he asked, smiling. “An important man?”
“I’m no one,” I said quickly. It sounded stupid as soon as I said it.
“No one?”
“Just a Canadian…tourist,” I lied. I wasn’t sure why I did that. Maybe it was Bad Adam talking.
“Ah, a Canadian! I should have guessed. Lots of secrets…eh?” He gave another one of his huge laughs. “Well, Mr. No One, we apparently must ring this bell here to even get onto the property. Is this the King of Canada’s holiday home?” He pressed the button on the gate.
“Just a friend.”
“Friend?”
“Hello?” demanded a gruff voice coming over the intercom speaker on the gate.
“Yes, man, this is Emmanuel Robb, taxi driver extraordinaire for Island Cabs, and I have a passenger here for you by the name of—” He turned to me.
“McLean,” I said. “Adam McLean.” It was just a small lie.
Emmanuel turned back to the speaker. “McLean,” he said dramatically. “Adam McLean.” Then he paused and added, “From Canada.”
“Just a moment,” said the voice. “Stay there.” He said it like an order.
We must have waited for ten minutes. I stayed in the cab, Emmanuel leaning through the window, regaling me with Bermudian stories. It was actually getting hot. Finally, the intercom crackled.
“Hello?” said the gruff voice over the speaker, startling us.
Emmanuel rushed back up to the gate.
“Yes?”
“We have a question for Mr. McLean.”
I got out of the cab and approached.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Are you any relation to David?”
THREE
MR. KNOW
It was very weird. When I told the voice on the intercom that I was David McLean’s grandson, the doors began opening, almost as if some big boss was listening and had pressed an open sesame button the instant the words were out of my mouth. Whoever this person was, he or she was anxious to see me.