by G. R. Cody
But after that night, Felix couldn’t seem to shake Katherine. His mind and dreams for almost three days swam with images of her striking light golden hair, her bronze skin, and her sharp, freckled nose, with the subtle cadence of her distinctly South African accent, and with the waft of pineapple and coconut of her scent. What made it worse was that for the next two days, it seemed as if she was off duty. Each time he passed the concierge desk leaving in the morning, and every evening when he arrived back from the ferry from Vieques, the station was manned by a tall, skinny, well-tailored mulatto boy of no more than 20, who smiled much too broadly and sat much too erectly when Felix caught his eyes in passing.
Felix lay in bed that night, and convinced himself it would be best to fly back to Miami and spend his 48 hours in South Beach. He awoke early the next morning, showered, packed his bags, and called for the porter to collect his things. He shaved and dressed in all white for the flight, as he had been in black suits all week while working.
The porter knocked, and Felix swung the door open. As he did so, he noticed the breeze carried the hint of pineapple and coconut. His heart leapt, and before him stood Katherine in her white cotton trousers, royal blue blazer, and crisp, white blouse which, he instantly noticed, was not fully buttoned so that he saw just a hint of her white lace bra.
Felix moved his eyes quickly up to her green eyes, and felt his face flush.
“So, I hear you’re leaving us?” Katherine said sardonically, and smiled. “Anything I can do to keep you in paradise for a little longer?”
“Well, I am a sucker for a gal in uniform…” The words tripped out of his mouth without conscious thought, and he wondered for a second whether he might have overstepped a boundary, or misread her intentions.
But Katherine surveyed him up and down, stepped into the room, and closed the door behind her. She placed her hands gently on either side of the back of Felix’s neck, and more breathed than spoke…
“We’ll, I’m a sucker for a man out of his.”
Felix and Katherine were inseparable for the next two days. On his last evening, she took him back to Vieques. After a quick supper of Conch soup and plantains at the Hotel bar, they rode the ferry across, where a driver was waiting for them. He took them to the south end of the island, where he dropped them off at a short pier.
As the driver turned and called back that he would return in a couple of hours, she led Felix to the pier. Katherine was wearing a white dress that seemed to only be held on her slight frame by the knot around the back of her neck. Katherine held Felix’s hands, and kissed him deeply, pressing the whole of her body against his. Then, she broke away, gave him a devilish smile, tossed her sandals aside and untied the knot at the back of her neck. The sun had already set, and the only light was the crescent moon above them. The dress seemed to cascade down in slow motion, revealing every bit of her body to him as reflections of faint moonlight against shadows. She stood there for only a moment, then turned and raced down the pier toward the black water ahead.
Katherine dove headlong off the end of the pier, and for a brief second, she disappeared against the blackness of the water. But once he heard the splash, the entirety of her body shone a brilliant blue against the black water. He could see every inch of her as she cut through the water, as if the water had ignited her in blue flame, a trail following her for a second, and slowly succumbing back to black. She surfaced and turned toward him. As she tread water, the luminescent blue stirred and glowed around her body, hiding her from his sight and then lighting her up again. It was as if she were a water nymph, her life light showing itself in her natural element.
Katherine giggled. “Come on in! The water’s fine!” Felix quickly undressed, and dove in and saw that he, too, lighted up in the water.
Katherine explained that Mosquito Bay, or as the Spanish had dubbed it “Bayo El Diablo,” is a sanctuary of a bioluminescent micro-organism, which glows whenever the water is disturbed, leaving a trail of neon blue. The Spanish had thought that the light was the work of the Devil, and thus had named the spot Bayo El Diablo. The Spanish, fearing letting the devil out into the open water of the Caribbean after disturbing it, had attempted to shut the bay off from the sea by stacking huge rocks in the estuary. But all they had managed to do was to contain them more securely in the bay.
Felix could almost feel the cool water on his skin, smell the pineapple and coconut again, taste the Conch on her tongue, the sting of betrayal in his heart…
Another cargo jet blazed by, and the cool water was gone. Katherine was gone. For so many years, she had been gone. The smile had faded, and he noticed his hip beginning to hurt again from being in one position too long, so he stood up. He wished she would hurry up…
Just then, two things happened at once.
The door to the terminal not twenty feet in front of him opened. A tall woman wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and a royal blue hat, a large bag hanging from her shoulder, emerged in the doorway. She had a confused look on her face, like she had done as much as she knew to do, and she was looking for someone to direct her on what to do next. This was Felix’s cue, and he began to walk toward her.
Eve gave a hopeful look to Felix, and he smiled and opened his mouth to greet her.
But before the words could come, a black SUV raced toward them. Both Felix and Eve turned to the revving engine and followed it until the SUV skid to a stop between them. The three doors other than the driver’s swung open and men in black suits leapt out and jumped toward Eve. Felix instinctively drew his sidearm and crouched where he stood. It didn’t appear that they had seen him; they were obviously of one mind, focused on Eve. Within seconds, they had Eve bundled up and in back seat of the SUV, which screeched forward.
Felix took aim as it sped away and squeezed off two quick blasts, which found their target of both back tires. As the SUV swerved and ground to a halt, sparks flying, Felix turned and dashed up the stairs, into the doorway of the Gulfstream and flattened himself against the floor, his gun pointed at the SUV and, he hoped, completely invisible to whoever they were.
As soon as the SUV had come to a complete stop, the two passenger side doors swung open and two men popped out, handguns drawn and scanning the air for someone, anyone who could have shot out their tires.
“Drop them!” Felix shouted. But they continued to point their guns in the air, so Felix squeezed off another blast over their heads. Both men immediately dropped their weapons onto the tarmac.
“Now, everyone else out of the car!”
The driver’s side doors opened slowly, and two men and one woman emerged and walked toward the back of the SUV. “Stop! Now, everyone other than Miss Pemberton, on the ground, face down, noses on the pavement!” The men slowly knelt and then lay face down onto the runway, while Eve stood there, arms meekly up and visibly shaking.
“Thank you, gentlemen. Now, Miss Pemberton,” Felix said in a more gentle tone, “Walk forward toward the small jet, climb up the stairs and in.”
Eve stuttered forward at first, but steadied herself, and walked toward the stairs leading up to the jet.
Felix kept his eyes on the men lying on the pavement while she walked toward him. Just as Eve reached the base of the stairs, Felix thought he saw one of the men’s arms move. He squeezed off another round that hit the pavement not two feet from his head, and the arm stopped moving. This startled Eve, and she shuddered and stopped.
“Come on up, Eve,” Felix said almost in a whisper, “I’m the one that was sent you to meet up with.”
Eve glanced up, and their eyes met for a brief moment. Something in his eyes told Eve that he was telling the truth, that she should trust him. Eve climbed the stairs, stepped over Felix in the doorway, and disappeared into the cabin.
Felix was now faced with a tricky situation. If the men had correctly guessed that their assailant was on the plane, it was four against one, and Felix did not like his odds against four men with obvious training. If he showed his position, even wors
e. He also had no way to know what, or how many, weapons they had, or even if there were others in the SUV that had stayed behind.
“Is that all of them that were in the car?” Felix asked to Eve.
“Yes.”
Felix thought for a few seconds, and waited. None of them were moving to get up, so Felix was convinced that they were not sure where the shots had come from. This was the advantage he needed.
“Okay, all four of you,” Felix shouted out. “Back in your vehicle!”
The men slowly got to their feet and walked back to the SUV and got back in, leaving their doors open.
“Close your doors, for chrissake!” Felix yelled, and all four doors snapped shut.
Felix looked around at the terminal door that Eve had just walked through just minutes before. Next to the door to the right hung a fire extinguisher and, on the opposite side of the door, Felix could make out the fire alarm on the wall. He took aim at the alarm, fired one shot, and sirens blared and a blue light started flashing above the door. Felix turned his gun back to the SUV. The doors did not open, and within seconds, more sirens and flashing lights were approaching. Two white TSA cars were speeding toward the SUV, and Felix could hear a fire engine siren in the distance coming toward them.
The two TSA cars stopped behind the SUV, and what sounded like a bullhorn said, “Whoever is in the SUV, come out with your hands on the back of your heads!” The men in the SUV obeyed. The TSA agents got out of their cars with pistols drawn.
It would only be minutes, perhaps less than a minute, before the TSA agents realized they were arresting Homeland Security agents. But he knew that once the jet was moving, neither the SHA or TSA agents would shoot at it. Felix leaped to his feet, shoved the stairs forward away from the plane, and quickly shut the door to the Gulfstream.
“Let’s go! Quickly!” Felix shouted toward the cockpit, and they began moving. Felix holstered his sidearm under his left armpit, and then fell into the seat across from Eve who, despite all she had been through, looked calm now.
“Sorry, Miss Pemberton,” Felix said to Eve. “Felix Leiter, U.S. Treasury officer.”
Eve’s eyebrow rose. Felix extended his hand, and Eve reached across as a matter of habit to shake it. But Felix could tell from her eyes that she was terribly confused.
Felix held her hand and looked into her eyes, and said, “Miss Pemberton, I’ll fill you in once we are in the air. We have about a three hour flight ahead of us, which should be plenty time to explain, or at least attempt to.”
Eve looked at Felix and said, “That would be helpful.”
The Gulfstream was picking up speed quickly, and within seconds they were in the air.
CHAPTER 5
Felix had gone into the cockpit just after takeoff, leaving Eve alone with her thoughts for a few moments. A range of emotions washed over her. Fear, confusion, uncertainty, but the strongest, and most concerning, was excitement. Her heart was still racing, and she simultaneously wished it would either slow down, but shockingly, more that something else would happen to keep it going.
Felix emerged from the cockpit and turned back to say something more to the pilots that Eve could not quite discern. Felix seemed to Eve, in almost every way, to be average. He had short, light brown hair in an early 60s, Kennedy type cut. He wore a full black suit and black tie, with the standard white button down. But Eve noticed that there was a pattern to the suit, like small diamonds in vertical lines just barely visible from the ten yards that currently separated them. The lapels and his tie were a bit thin for the modern style, and his shoes were leather soled, not gum soled like most men’s shoes these days. He had a hint of sideburns, but just enough to make one wonder whether he meant for them to be there, or they were just a vestige from years ago and missed by an inattentive barber since.
But he had two defining features.
Firstly, his skin was so bronze that Eve guessed he had a bit of either Native America or Negro blood. She guessed he, or his ancestors, were from somewhere in the Caribbean or the coast of Mexico. But the majority of his features were Caucasian.
Secondly was the way he carried himself. He had moved quite spryly on the tarmac when it had mattered, but, although it took some studying him, Eve noticed that in his casual motions, he tried very hard not to limp, and that his left arm seemed to be more of a vague suggestion rather than an integral part of his daily anatomy.
After a moment, Felix turned back and shut the cockpit door, opened a small refrigerator in the galley, sat down opposite Eve at a small table and handed her one of two Perrier.
“I bet you have a good deal of questions,” Felix said, looking a bit hesitant.
Eve took a sip, though she wanted to gulp it all down, looking into Felix’s eyes, which she now saw were placid blue.
“Actually, yes.” Eve stated matter of factly, trying to hide the nagging bit of fear mingled with thrill that lingered just below the surface. “First, who the hell are you, and why did Arthur tell me to come to you instead of the much more logical thing to do, which would have been for me to go to headquarters and meet with Homeland Security?”
Felix gazed at Eve for a second, seemingly considering how much he should or shouldn’t say. Then…
“Look, I know you are a journalist, so I need to caveat this by saying that none of what I am about to say will ever make it into the public domain. Do we understand each other?”
Eve considered for a moment, but given Arthur was the one who had put them together in the first place, Eve guessed that it was either agree, or he would tell her nothing. Eve nodded.
“My name is Felix Leiter,” he continued. “Technically, I am on the payroll of the U.S. Treasury as a field officer. I came out of retirement about six months ago to help them with some breaches of security. I worked for the CIA for 30 years or so. But let me ask you a question…” Felix paused for a moment seemingly awaiting her approval to do so, and being sufficiently satisfied that her expression did not indicate opposition, he continued. “I am of the understanding that you had a choice in the matter of your destination this evening?”
Eve glared at him, and her stomach dropped a bit. He was right; she had chosen to follow Arthur’s suggestion and come to Felix. She decided to continue her line of questioning instead of taking the bait to follow his.
“So, you are a fed, and HSA is a federal branch,” Eve continued, “I assume those men at the airport were HSA?”
“I am pretty sure they were. If not, I have much more to investigate.” Felix interrupted politely.
“So, the federal government is infighting?” Eve asked.
Felix couldn’t muffle a laugh. After a couple of seconds, he said, “Eve…may I call you Eve?...Federal agencies almost never see eye to eye with each other. In fact, people inside federal agencies rarely see eye to eye with each other. But, at least in this case, that’s not really the issue…”
Eve waited for Felix to continue, but he continued to stare at her, seemingly again considering how much he could trust Eve.
Felix indeed was considering how much more Eve should know, or even how much more she would believe. But in order to get her cooperation, he knew that he needed to let her in on everything.
“It’s more a question of which federal agencies are working together, which ones are being kept in the dark, and why,” Felix continued. “I am technically working for the Treasury department,” Felix said, “but that is just a cover. In my days with CIA, I often worked on joint assignments with MI6 in London. Back in the Cold War days, it was much more beneficial for Washington and London to cooperate. Hell, there are folks at MI6 that I still trust today more than at the CIA. Don’t get me wrong, the CIA does mostly good work. It’s more an issue of turnover. I can’t think of one person still in the CIA that I have known more than 10 years, and I still have contact with, and in some cases have deep friendships with, current or retired MI6 operatives.”
“MI6. Like the Ian Fleming, 007, British Secret Service MI6?”
Eve said incredulously, eyebrow unconsciously raised. “M, Q branch and all that nonsense?”
“Yes, MI6 is real, you know.” answered Felix. “I know it is pretty fantastic…”
“Yeah, it is,” Eve cut across him bluntly. “So, you’re a mole?”
Felix smiled broadly. “I suppose you could say that. I’m working under the direct orders of Interpol at the behest of the International Monetary Fund through their London offices. MI6 is also in the command structure because the World Bank needed something more than forensic accountants to help figure out where trillions of dollars of gold bullion have gone over the past couple of years, and why the U.S. Treasury, the Bank of England, and SwissBank supposedly just noticed its absence about five months ago. This gold was security for World Bank loans, and now a good deal of it has been ‘misplaced’.”
Suddenly, Eve could not locate in her mind any of the other questions that had been there just a moment before. The only thing she could verbalize after hearing this was…
“Why me?”
“Wrong place at the right time, I suppose,” Felix shrugged. “You have something on your video feed that HSA doesn’t want the world to see is my guess. Or, they don’t want you to be able to reveal what you saw.”
“But other than the aftermath of the explosion, what did I see?”
“Not sure, but a great way to start to find out is for me to have a look at that,” Felix said, eyes darting toward Eve’s camera bag.