The Opening Chase

by Cap Daniels

  Watching the stars wink over my head, for some reason, made me want to go home, wherever home was. The closest thing I had to a home was an anchorage off Jewfish Creek in Key Largo, so that was the next sandy bottom my anchor would taste. I would have seven hundred fifty sailing miles to ponder all the questions I may have never been able to answer.

  I’d been at sea for several weeks, but in many ways, it felt like only days. The passing of time on the ocean is a concept only perceived by humans. The sea has no clock other than what she feels when the moon pulls at her as it makes its nightly circumnavigation. I imagined the creatures in the ocean who lived their entire lives, be they days or decades, without ever seeing a human or man-made object or speck of dry land. For those creatures, was there any time? Are we humans the only creatures insane enough to try to measure the passage of time, to measure something that doesn’t truly exist? Perhaps I’d been at sea too long. I was turning into some sort of nautical philosopher. Had other men of the sea had such thoughts?

  Are there other men like me? Is Dr. Richter like me? Was my father like me?

  As the evening sun kissed the western horizon, I sailed from Georgetown, Grand Cayman and set my course toward the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. Watching billions of stars in their predictable and timeless journey gave me something dependable to believe in.

  My father taught me about a great and mighty God who loved me and who created everything that exists. He taught me about the responsibilities that God placed on us to care for and love each other. I think he believed those things. I think his heart was the purest heart ever carried by a man. Throughout my childhood, I watched him and my mother care for sick, dying, and starving people all over the Caribbean. Knowing what my father actually was—a killer—made me believe that he needed his faith in God to deal with the unthinkable acts he committed in the name of freedom.

  Will I ever have such faith? Will I ever possess the character my father had? Would my family still be alive if he’d only been a missionary?

  Most men probably have philosophical moments of self-doubt when they find themselves alone and hundreds of miles from home. How would the rest of my life look? How many missions would I accept? When would I accept a mission that would ultimately be my last? No one lives forever, especially not in my profession. I was far wealthier than I ever imagined being. I was free to come and go as I pleased, with the exception of the times I spent serving my masters. There was no reason I shouldn’t enjoy the spoils of victory. Besides, I’d earned every penny that I had scattered across half a dozen Cayman banks.

  * * *

  The wind had shifted to the south southeast, and that suited me just fine. Had it kept blowing from the southwest, I would’ve been on a downwind run all the way back to the Florida Keys. Downwind sailing sucks. The boat just lumbers along with its sails flapping and the main boom threatening to come violently roaring across the deck in an accidental gybe, stressing the rigging and scaring the hell out of me. I had rigged boom preventers, lines running from the end of the main boom to the bow, to keep that from happening, but I somehow felt that was cheating. Instead of practicing good seamanship and keeping Aegis on course, I was relying on lines to protect me from my inattention. That just didn’t seem like something a real sailor would do. Fortunately, none of that mattered with the wind blowing from the south southeast. I would sail home on a beam reach with the sails trimmed off the port side and the wind blowing nicely across the deck. It looked like the remaining ride home would be pretty close to perfect.

  I was correct. The trip was something straight out of a Jimmy Buffett song. The wind blew exactly as I would’ve ordered if I had some direct line to the weather gods. More importantly, no armed patrol boats raced out of Havana Harbor to greet me when I skirted the northwest coast of Cuba by less than forty miles.

  Four days of cruising put me off Tavernier Key, northeast of Islamorada. Having grown more homesick than expected, I bypassed Key West and continued homeward. I finally let the anchor fall in at Point Lowe, a protected anchorage off Tavernier, just as the sun was dissolving into the ocean.

  I’ve never really felt a sense of home anywhere on Earth. As a child, my family moved around so much we always felt like refugees. The four years I spent at UGA was the longest time I’d ever spent in one place. To say that Jewfish Creek was my home wasn’t accurate, but it was close enough. I looked forward to motoring into the anchorage on Blackwater Sound the next day, but I wasn’t willing to risk navigating Jewfish Creek in the dark, even if it was my temporary home.

  I fell asleep within minutes of feeling the big Danforth anchor set firmly in the sand in just over eleven feet of water. I’d put out sixty feet of chain, so there was almost no chance that Aegis would do anything other than sit right there until I wanted her to move.

  I awoke with the morning sun and a feeling of excitement that didn’t make sense. I would be back in the shallow water up Jewfish Creek in less than two hours, but there would be no one waiting for me there. There was no house, no dog to come wagging his tail and licking my face when I arrived, no mailbox to check, no grass to mow, and no one to welcome me, but in spite of all of that, I was still happy to be home. I would drive my car. I would eat a Quarter Pounder and for the first time in weeks drink a Coke that tasted like American Coke. Home, as it turns out, is much more a feeling than an address.

  I motored gently over the anchor and hauled it back aboard. I was pleasantly surprised to see it come up perfectly clean. There are few things worse than some of the muddy filth from the bottom of the sea that rides an anchor. As I stood on deck with the water hose in my hand, ready to spray the anchor clean, I realized that I was beginning to view the world as a morally filthy place, and cleanliness was becoming the exception rather than the rule.

  I secured the anchor and stowed the water hose. The wind was light as the sun made its appearance over the eastern horizon. Seagulls screeched through the morning sky and a pair of dolphins played just off my starboard bow as I motored from the anchorage and headed northeast. I watched dive boats heading for one of the most beautiful coral reefs in the world. I hadn’t been diving for fun in so long that I’d almost forgotten how much I loved being under water. I promised myself to go diving as soon as possible.

  The tide was rising as I motored up Jewfish Creek. I dropped the hook in thirteen feet of water at high tide and patted Aegis’s wheel as I quietly thanked her for bringing me home. We’d put about three thousand miles beneath us in the last few weeks, and she made every mile like a warrior. Aegis had been the one thing in my life I understood. I didn’t know if I was becoming part of her, or if it was the other way around, but either way, I liked how I felt at her wheel.

  * * *

  “Thou shall have no other gods before me.” That was the first commandment God handed down to the Israelites when they wandered around in the desert a few thousand years ago. I remember my father, the humanitarian, the missionary, teaching me what God expected of his children. Was I still one of those children, or had I let eight million dollars become my god?

  “Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image.” I was never sure about that one. I seem to remember that it was number two, but that whole graven image thing was never clear to me.

  “Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” I had that one covered. I’d never been a fan of hearing people doing that. I didn’t think twice about chopping bad guys into little pieces with boat engines, but I tried to leave God out of it.

  “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” I blew that one at least once a week. I talked to God every day, but I never really remembered what day it was. Sabbath is one of those words like graven. Who says it can’t be on Tuesday?

  “Honor thy father and thy mother.” I missed my family, especially my little sister. I thought there was no better way to honor them than to live the life I’d been given. I doubted that my father would’ve chosen it for me, but when I thought of how he loved me and the sacr
ifices he made for his family, I think that maybe, just maybe, he might’ve been proud of me.

  “Thou shall not kill.” That’s where it gets a little tricky. My father said it actually meant “commit no murder.” I liked that better than “thou shall not kill,” but that’s not what it said, regardless of how my father interpreted it.

  Adultery, stealing, bearing false witness, and coveting finished the list if I remembered correctly. I was good on those four, but I’d have to think about the graven images and the killing. Man, I really missed my dad.

  30

  Yuri and Boris

  The Earth kept spinning, the sun kept rising and setting, and the moon traversed the night sky as it had for millennia, but I was stuck on the thoughts of Michael Pennant, the ghost of Suslik, Dmitri Barkov, and Anya.

  I’d been hanging on the hook in Jewfish Creek for a few weeks, fishing, drinking, relaxing, and thinking. Occasionally, I’d take the dinghy ashore and spend some time on Key Largo. There were a few really good seafood places that would cook whatever I caught and let me drink their beer while I was waiting. The psychologist in me liked watching the tourists and listening to their accents, but every twenty-five-year-old blonde made me yearn for Anya. Each time I saw a ponytail, I hoped it was hers. After all, she promised she’d find me. I knew very little about her, but I knew she was a woman who kept her promises.

  I was sitting at a concrete picnic table outside the Fish House one Friday evening, listening to the cars fly by on U.S. 1, when a voice behind me cut through the night like a lightning bolt.

  Hearing Spanish in the Keys is pretty common. I could tell the difference between Cuban Spanish and Mexican Spanish within the time it took the speaker to spit out two or three words, but hearing Russian in Key Largo was like seeing a sumo wrestler at Sunday brunch—impossible to ignore. It caught my attention. I suppose it has something to do with our fight-or-flight reflex that makes us capable of blocking out everything in our environment that isn’t directly related to what we perceive as a threat. Cavemen probably got pretty focused when a saber-toothed tiger showed up in the entrance of their cave.

  My current saber-toothed tigers were a pair of Russian-speaking men sitting behind me and talking quietly about one of the few Russians I knew.

  In painfully informal Russian, and in a dialect I didn’t recognize nor fully understand, I heard one of the men say, “It does not matter why. When Barkov wants someone found, we find her. No questions.”

  Why are two Russians in Key Largo talking about finding a woman for Dmitri Barkov?

  My pulse raced, but I tried to stay calm. I was wearing one of those boater’s hats with the long flap down the back to protect my neck from the sun. My back was to the Russians, and they couldn’t identify me unless they’d been following me.

  It was time to play a little cat and mouse with Yuri and Boris. I didn’t know what their names were, but those were the first Russian-sounding names that came to mind. I feigned looking at my watch, then stood with my back still to their table, and walked toward the parking lot. I listened for either or both of them to follow me. The whole area was covered with gravel, so hearing footsteps would’ve been easy if it weren’t for the traffic on the highway twenty feet away.

  My caveman fight-or-flight senses calmed me as I got my mind under control. Every time either of my feet would hit the ground, the unmistakable crunch of gravel was obvious. That meant I could probably hear either of the Russians if they had chosen to follow me. As I lifted my left foot to take a stride, I froze in midair. There was no way the Russians could anticipate that I’d stop with my foot raised, and they’d continue to stride. That would allow me to hear their feet hit the ground the same time my foot would’ve hit if I had continued walking. The crunch didn’t come. Either they were mind readers or they weren’t following me.

  I continued my walk toward the parking lot and around the building, using car windows as mirrors to check for a tail. I entered the building through the kitchen and made my way into the dining room so I could peer through the front windows of the Fish House to get a good look at the Russians. Thankfully, they hadn’t moved.

  Yuri was lean and fit with a few days’ growth of stubble. His hair was exactly the same length as his beard, so he probably shaved his face and head at the same time; I’d keep that in mind.

  Boris was heavier, but not fat. He was thick through the chest like a man who spends a lot of time doing bench presses. His hair was dark and much longer than Yuri’s. Yuri wore an oversized button-down shirt over cargo pants, and brown boots. He was smoking an unfiltered cigarette and letting the ashes fall into his lap. Boris wore a tight black t-shirt tucked into his cargo pants, which were tucked neatly into the tops of his boots. The pockets of his pants were pressed tightly against his muscled legs. He had no place to conceal a weapon, although at his size, he could probably handle most men without the need for a gun or knife.

  Yuri, on the other hand, was scrawny and had plenty of places in his baggy clothes to hide a collection of weapons. I was far more afraid of Yuri than Boris. Even the biggest and strongest men are vulnerable at their knees, eyes, throat, and groin. It was impossible to protect all four places simultaneously. I could deal with Boris hand-to-hand, but Yuri was small and nervous looking. Guys like that tend to be unpredictable and quick to draw a gun. I didn’t mind a little fisticuffs, but I had no desire to get into a gunfight beside the Overseas Highway.

  Clearly, the two men weren’t following me since they didn’t notice I’d left the table. I asked the hostess if I could have a table by the front window instead of sitting outside. She quickly accommodated my request with a flirtatious smile. I would take advantage of her eagerness for my attention by probing her for a little information. I placed my right hand behind her left arm and pulled her gently toward me, catching sight of her name tag. She gave no resistance and leaned in, placing her ear close to my mouth.

  “Your name is Angie, right?”

  She nodded, and I heard her hold her breath.

  “I thought so. Look at those two men sitting right out there, Angie. Have you ever seen them before?”

  She leaned in even closer and placed her hand on my thigh to brace herself as she peered out the window. Her level of comfort with me was going to make this easier than I’d expected.

  “No, I don’t think so. They don’t look familiar. I’m sure they aren’t local.” She whispered as if she knew she was part of my scheme.

  “Do me a favor, will you?”

  Her eyes widened, apparently thrilled to be a player in my conspiracy. She was cute in that Florida windblown way that women get when they live in one hundred percent humidity and ninety-five-degree heat. I liked the look, and she wore it well.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  I said, “I took those guys and their girlfriends sailing yesterday and some money came up missing from my boat. When they pay their bill, I need to know if they pay in cash or with a credit card. If they pay in cash, I want you to bring it to me, and I’ll exchange it with mine. I think I’ll be able to tell if it’s the cash they stole from my boat. Can you do that, Angie?”

  She took on a conspiratorial look. “Yeah, I can do that. No problem.”

  I knew she was hooked.

  “I’m Chase,” I said.

  She giggled. “I know who you are. This is a small island, and you’re the new boy in town.”

  I pretended to blush. “I’m flattered. What time do you get off, Angie?”

  “Around eleven. Maybe a little earlier.”

  She giggled again and looked back over her shoulder twice as she waltzed back to the hostess stand. I saw her recruiting a tall, dark-haired waitress into our plan. She leaned in close to Angie, looked outside at Yuri and Boris, then looked at me and smiled. I winked. Then, the waitress disappeared through the swinging doors and into the kitchen.

  My red fish and rice arrived with a fresh cold beer. I enjoyed the meal while I watched the two Russian
s demolish a pair of fish sandwiches and fries. Just as I had hoped, when their check arrived, Yuri pulled out a crisp, clean roll of hundred-dollar bills and peeled one off. He placed it on the check and tucked it neatly beneath the edge of his plate to keep it from blowing away. The tall, dark-haired waitress folded the check around the one-hundred-dollar bill without touching it, and tucked it into her apron. I was impressed. She hadn’t touched the bill, so the last set of fingerprints on it would be Yuri’s. I liked her. She had the makings of a spy.

  When the waitress came through the front door, Angie reached to take the bill and the money from her, but the waitress shook her head and turned toward my table.

  Angie’s face turned red and she stage-whispered at the waitress, “Crystal, no!”

  Crystal pirouetted and smiled at Angie as she continued toward my table. She slid into the booth beside me until her leg was touching mine.

  She retrieved the bill from her apron and slid it under my hand. “Angie said you’re like a cop or something and you need to see those weird guys’ money, so here it is. I didn’t touch it so you could like get some fingerprints or whatever, okay?”

  I discretely took the ticket and used it to slip the one-hundred-dollar bill into my shirt pocket. I pulled two one hundred-dollar bills from my wallet and handed them to Crystal. “Thank you,” I said. “You did great. Please tell Angie I’ll see her at eleven.”

  Crystal snatched up the two hundred dollars from my hand and stomped away. She wasn’t going to pass my message to Angie.

  I left the Fish House and headed north on the Overseas Highway toward Miami and David Shepherd’s office. When I walked into the bank, David greeted me warmly and ushered me into his office.

  “It’s great to see you, Chase. What brings you to Miami?” he asked with a little nervousness in his voice.

  “Do you have any tweezers?” I asked.