I spent the next two days provisioning the yacht for the trip to Cyprus. The work was the perfect distraction from the thoughts and memories that had been haunting me for the past weeks. I still hadn’t named the boat the evening before I set sail for the Mediterranean. I considered and discarded hundreds of options and couldn’t find one I liked. The ones I liked—like Susu, Cheryl, Rising Sea, and Sam Houston II— defeated my goal of anonymous ownership. I was at the kitchen table reviewing the weather report on my laptop when Maria came in carrying a big package.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It was delivered by courier for you this afternoon. It doesn’t say who sent it,” she said as she lifted the big package that was an inch thick and had dimensions of 4 x 1 foot.
“Let’s open it.”
Maria cut the paper wrapping off revealing a white signboard with black trim underneath. She tilted the sign so I could see it better. It read Wayward Nomad.
“What is it?” Maria asked.
“I think the CIA has named my new boat for me,” I said.
“Do you like it?”
“Not especially, but I don’t disagree with the description. It’ll work.”
“Do you want me to have Jonah put it on?” she asked.
“Yes, thanks. Make sure he knows the hull’s composite. I don’t think you can screw the name on—he might have to glue it.”
“He’ll figure it out.”
Chapter 18
Atlantic Ocean
The first leg of the journey was due east from the Bahamas to the Canary Islands, which are west of Africa. The journey is two thousand miles, which is the maximum range of the Nomad and I expected it to take a little over a week. The Wayward Nomad was built in Italy, but it made its first transatlantic crossing as cargo; this would be its first real sea trial and I was excited to learn how to handle the yacht and see how it would perform. Although the yacht has a cruising speed of forty knots, to conserve fuel I was planning to make the crossing at twenty-one knots.
Father Tellez drove to the marina with me early in the morning to see me off and return my truck to the house. He gave the yacht a blessing. My first task was to check how Jonah had mounted the name above the garage door at the stern of the boat; it looked good.
“Why this name?” Father Tellez said with a disapproving look, pointing at the nameboard.
“The Chinese tracked us down and killed Cheryl by tracing the Sam Houston to me. The CIA bought this one through a bunch of shell companies to hide my ownership. They’re the ones who named it. It was probably Mike who chose the name.”
“This is not a name to aspire to,” he said.
“No, I don’t think it is.”
“You should change it.”
“I’m going to leave it for now.”
“It’s a very showy boat. I don’t think it’s practical for your work.”
“I’m not a spy; I never was. I don’t like the clandestine stuff. I never have.”
“You work for the CIA. The Agency bought your boat to hide your ownership. How does that not make you a spy?”
“It’s a complicated world. All I know is that I like to travel, and I like to live on a boat, and this is a really great boat. The contract work Trident does is mostly logistics and where I live and how I live has nothing to do with the job.”
“Mostly logistics, but it’s not the logistics that you need to worry about.”
“Come on up. Let’s have a cup of coffee on the flydeck before I depart. It’s a beautiful morning.”
The tiny fishing fleet from the marina had already departed for the day. The marina manager is an elderly Bahama native, a rail-thin black man named Bill. He’s a master mechanic who’s always looked after my boat when it’s in the Bahamas. He notified me that he checked everything out and filled the water and fuel and we were ready to go.
Father Tellez chose a couple of K-cups and we brewed two cups of very good coffee before we walked up the stairs to the roofless flydeck. We sat at the table on separate couches looking out at the turquoise waters of the Caribbean. It was a typical winter morning in Eleuthera, the weather was eighty-one degrees, the water was glassy calm, birds were circling around, and there were only a few clouds in the sky with a warm gentle breeze coming in from the south.
“When will you come back?”
“I don’t know; probably not for a few months.”
“Where are you going?”
“Cyprus.”
“Then where?”
“I don’t know where to after that.”
“Why don’t you know?”
“I just don’t.”
“Could you tell me if you did?”
“No, I don’t think I could.”
“Why do you do this work, Pat? You don’t need the money.”
“Every time I try to quit, something brings me back.”
“That’s not a very good reason.”
“I like to have a higher purpose. A reason to get up in the morning.”
“Do you ever wonder if you have an addiction to danger?”
“No, I think I have a healthy fear of danger.”
“Yet you do very dangerous things.”
“Not very often.”
“Compared to normal people, it is more than very often.”
“What do you recommend?”
“Maybe you should see someone. A professional.”
“I get shrinked by an Agency psychiatrist once a year.”
“You do?”
“Yes, I do. For the work I do, I’m apparently the epitome of mental hygiene.”
“There is nothing normal about any part of your life.”
“I know. It’s part tragedy and part comedy, but I can’t exactly unwind the film.”
“You can change the direction you’re heading.”
“I run a small company that does work for the US Government. I know it’s corny, but I believe in what we’re doing. I have employees and associates like Mike that count on me and I have other obligations like the foundation that you manage. If I gave everything up, what would I do that would be as worth doing?”
“I’ve known you for a long time. The wind seems to be gone from your sails. No offense, but you seem to be going through the motions. I don’t know much about the work you do, but I know it’s far more dangerous than you let on. Staying alive must require someone who is doing more than just going through the motions.”
“I’m grieving in my own strange way. I’m hoping that a few weeks at sea, alone, will make me feel better than I feel right now. My plan is that when it’s time to get back to work, I won’t be on autopilot anymore.”
“Then you admit I’m right.”
“Of course, you’re always right about such things.”
“How do you feel right now?”
“Guilty. Very guilty and very sad.”
We were silent for a couple of minutes while we drank our coffee and watched the birds dive into the water for their breakfast.
Father Tellez reached over and grabbed my arm.
“We should pray,” he said.
Chapter 19
Abu Dhabi
I was on the flydeck of the Wayward Nomad reading a book on my iPad. I was lying on the couch facing toward the open Arabian Gulf. Off to my left was the enormous Presidential Palace and to my right the equally massive Emirates Palace Hotel. My boat was docked in the Emirates Palace Marina. The sleek one-hundred-foot Nomad wasn’t the most impressive yacht in the marina by a long shot.
The Emirates Palace Marina is home to more than a hundred boats ranging in size from twenty to two hundred fifty feet. I had used the marina in the past when I had the Sam Houston, but I preferred the Intercontinental Marina because it’s a much more casual and relaxing place than the Emirates Palace Hotel which has a lot of pretenses. The biggest difference between the Palace and the Intercon were the live-aboards. The boats in the Intercon were much smaller and were used mostly for weekend recreational boatin
g. The Emirates Palace had a lot of those as well, but it also had its share of billionaires’ big boats and a fairly large community of expats who lived full time in their boats. Rents in Abu Dhabi rival London, New York, and Tokyo for the most expensive in the world. Rather than paying rent, a lot of western expats use their sizable housing allowance to buy boats to live in. The unusual circumstances of the Abu Dhabi housing market create a very unique situation. Abu Dhabi is possibly the only place in the world where buying a boat can actually be a pretty good investment.
I’ve been living in the Palace Marina for a month, waiting for instructions from Mike. I stopped in Paphos along the route and uploaded the equipment I’d taken off the Sam Houston. I also used the opportunity to covertly arm the boat and cache emergency funds and documents. I took a room in the hotel next door so I could use the gym and the pool. The restaurants at the Emirates Palace are all very good, my two favorites being the outdoor BBQ and the Chinese. The hotel also has a very nice cigar bar. I spent my days waiting for the assignment going to the gym and puttering around the boat. At night I would go to dinner at the hotel and then often find myself on one of my neighbor’s boats. The after-dinner cocktail party rotated nightly from boat to boat. Initially, I rebuffed the invitations, but after three refusals, I realized my fellow live-aboards weren’t going to relent. My reticence to socialize was inviting more scrutiny than attendance and so, in yet another act of sacrifice for my country, I now find myself on the cocktail circuit—most nights, drinking late into the evening with my fellow mariners.
“Permission to come aboard?” I heard a voice yell from behind me. I turned around and found Mike standing at the side gate. I waved him in. I got up and met Mike on the stairs. We embraced.
“Let’s talk in the salon. Not much privacy here in Stepford,” I said while looking around, checking for the peering eyes of my nosy neighbors.
“Can I get you a drink?” I asked. Mike walked over to the bar with me and then opened the door to the wine cooler and, without checking, pulled out a bottle of red.
“This will do,” he said.
“Aren’t you even going to read the label?” I asked.
“If it’s in here, I’m sure it’s good and that I can’t afford it.”
I took the bottle from him to open it. It was an Italian, a Sassicaia 2010. It was a good choice.
“You could’ve given me some warning,” I said.
“I thought I would surprise you.”
“You’re looking fit and tanned,” he said.
“I crossed the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Red Sea. That’s a lot of time outside and I’m not that great of a cook.”
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m good. Ready to get back to work.”
“The life of leisure with the rest of the boat people isn’t doing it for you?”
“It gets boring after a while.”
“No doubt. You’re a popular guy. All the wives and girlfriends keep trying to set you up.”
“You planted someone in the cocktail circuit, didn’t you?” I asked.
“I did. A psychiatrist. We’ve been keeping an eye on you, making sure you’re up to working again.”
“I have nine combat tours; you’re worried about me falling apart over what happened?”
“I wasn’t worried. Some people wanted to be sure.”
“Are you going to make me guess who was spying on me?”
“Figure it out; let’s see how good a detective you are.”
“It was Linda Chaplin, Stan Chaplin’s wife.”
“That didn’t take long. How did you figure?”
“Because of all the guys in the crowd, the only one I can’t stand is Stan Chaplin.”
“Why is that?”
“He’s one of those guys who never seems to get tired of talking about himself; he finds a way to inject his history into every conversation. I always figured the reason his wife spent so much time talking with me was an excuse to get away from the self-centered boor. Now I’m guessing he was role-playing the one personality type I’m most tempted to choke out in a social situation.”
“You nailed it. You’ve been profiled. Did a good job, too. Impulses are fully under control. You didn’t toss the annoying bastard into the sea even while he was nonstop bragging to you about his many accomplishments in the Saudi Arabian oil business.”
“I just ignored him; the rest of my drinking buddies are kind of fun.”
“Not plants, they’re genuine.”
“You should’ve just sent Dr. Schneeberger over to examine me. She’s my favorite head shrinker.”
“She has a blind spot where you’re concerned. We wanted someone objective to check under the hood.”
“Linda played her role well. I might go to the party tonight and compliment her.”
“She won’t be there. Your vacation is over.”
We were sitting in the living area on opposite couches. I swirled the small amount of wine remaining in my glass, waiting for Mike to continue. I took a sip emptying the glass and then refilled both of our drinks.
“Don’t leave me in suspense. What’s my next job?”
It took two hours for Mike to give me a general outline of the plan. When he was done, we went to dinner at Hakkasan, the Chinese restaurant at the hotel. We finished the night smoking Cohibas and drinking Cognac in the Cuban Bar. I loaned Mike my room in the Palace Hotel. The next morning, I found him sitting at the breakfast nook in the Nomad’s galley.
I made myself a coffee and sat down across from him.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Good, how about you?”
“Not sure if it’s the jet lag or the booze, but I woke up this morning exhausted.”
“That’s the jetlag.”
“What’s the big picture on this operation? What is it the big bosses are trying to accomplish?”
“They want you to destroy the ports and they want it to look like someone else did it.”
“Yeah, I get that. But what’s the point?”
“We’re trying to discourage behavior.”
“What kind of behavior?”
“Predatory lending behavior.”
“What do you mean?”
“China loaned Montenegro money to build a highway from its port on the Adriatic Sea to Serbia. Right now, the highway is less than half built and they have no chance of finishing it. Montenegro has taken on debt equivalent to 80% of its GDP to start the job and nobody is going to finance them to complete the job. Montenegro will never be able to repay. China effectively owns Montenegro.
“Kenya accepted a ton in loans from China to build the Standard Gauge Highway stretching from Mombasa to Nairobi. Kenya is now in default, China is foreclosing and is taking over Kenya’s Mombasa seaport in exchange for loan forgiveness.
“Sri Lanka is so over-indebted to China that they were just forced to give a ninety-nine-year lease of the Hambantota seaport to a Chinese company owned by the Chinese Government.
“Pakistan embraced the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, using debt provided by China. With debt to China at $19 billion and rising, Pakistan will never be able to pay it off. China wants an overland link to Pakistan’s warm-water deep-sea port at Gwadar on the Arabian Sea. In exchange for loan restructuring, Pakistan granted another Chinese state-owned enterprise ownership of Gwadar’s port.”
“It’s like Payday loans on a global scale.”
“Exactly; it’s how China is expanding its dominance and it has to stop.”
“We force the Chinese to either give up the loan shark gains or we back them up with military force. That’s the plan?”
“Yes, that’s the plan. We believe that if the local people reject Chinese economic conquest of their national resources it will discourage what, up to this point, has been a very successful expansion tactic for the Chinese.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Chapter 20
Dubai, UAE
I met the team at
the Marina in Dubai. I docked next to the Address Hotel in the late afternoon and met Migos, McDonald, and Savage in the lobby. I walked them the hundred yards from the back exit of the hotel to the Marina and out to my new yacht.
“Wayward Nomad, how did you come up with that one?” Migos said.
“That name was assigned by the Agency.”
“I think they may have had me in mind when they picked it; are you sure this isn’t my boat?”
“You’re going to have to take my word for it. If you want a boat, sell the Emperor’s gold and buy your own.”
“I can’t. I’m fully invested, I found a woman who’s a genius at real estate.”
“Tell me that’s not true,” I said, as we walked inside the salon.
“It is. I’m going to be the next Donald Trump.”
“Let me guess; she’s hot.”
“Smoking. I would never invest with an ugly woman; they’re bitter and they only want to punish people because of it.”
“That’s a fool-proof investment strategy, Migos. You should’ve talked to someone who knows what they’re doing before blowing your pirate stash on a bimbo with a real estate license.”
“She’s not a bimbo, she’s famous; she even does her own infomercials,” Migos said, as the three of them occupied the couches in the salon of the yacht.”
“Enough on the real estate business. Tomorrow morning we’re going to set sail for Kenya. Our task is to shut down the Mombasa Port and make it look like it was a terrorist group that did it.”
“Rolling up in a ten-million-dollar yacht and wreaking havoc on the biggest port in Kenya is a good way to draw attention.”
“We’re not going to launch operations from the Nomad. We’re just going to use it to get into the country with the equipment we need to do the job.”
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