Death Echo

“I’d like to have you along.” He shrugged again. “No can do. Insurance only covers the transit captain.”

“I’ll risk it.”

“Blue Water Marine Group won’t.”

Emma knew a wall when she ran flat into it. She pulled her sunglasses out of her crop top and put them on. “Is there some way I can contact you?”

“I’m right here.”

She flashed her teeth. “So am I. I won’t be for long. How do people who aren’t standing on your feet get hold of you?”

“I move around a lot,” he said. “That’s the life of the transport skipper.”

“But you have a cell phone, right, one that rings almost anywhere?”

Mac decided that baiting wasn’t going to get him anywhere with this woman. She had a temper, and she kept it to herself. So he pulled out one of the stained business cards he always carried in his jeans.

She took it and slid it into her backpack as she walked to the swim step. “See you around, Captain.”

Mac didn’t doubt it.

Nor did he doubt that someone would be running his fingerprints soon. She had handled that card almost as carefully as a crime-scene tech.

5

DAY ONE

BELLTOWN MARINA

AFTERNOON

Taras Demidov leaned against the sturdy pipe railing that kept careless pedestrians from falling fifteen feet into the waters of Belltown Marina. Part of him was amused by the railing. It summarized the difference between Russia and America. Russia believed citizens should watch out for themselves; if they got hurt, it wasn’t the government’s fault. America’s citizens believed the state should take care of them like children. Russia accepted a world of good and evil. Americans believed only in good.

Demidov enjoyed working with a culture that believed in God but not in the Devil. Americans were so genuinely surprised when flames burned through their flesh to the bone.

Unfortunately, the world wasn’t made up of Americans. The so-called nations of the Former Soviet Union understood about the reality of evil. Some of them contributed to it at every opportunity.

A movement in the marina caught his eye. He lifted his camera again, bracing the long lens on the railing. A light touch of his finger and the automatic focus homed in on the brunette who had reappeared from the cabin of Blackbird. Even though he knew that he wouldn’t be able to identify her at this distance, he took a series of quick pictures. Digital cameras were useful for fast transmission of images, but they just didn’t have the resolution of a good, slow film camera.

But tourists carried digital cameras. As long as he appeared to be a tourist he could vanish among the crowds. He was pushing it by having a long lens on the digital frame, something few tourists had. He wasn’t particularly worried. People saw what they expected to see. If anyone asked him a question, he would answer it in genial American English.

To the crowds around him, Demidov was just one more sightseer enjoying Seattle’s long summer days.

That startling, useful naivete about strangers hadn’t changed since Demidov had first come to the U.S. many years ago, as a young commercial attache in the Russian Consulate in San Francisco. He had been amazed then at his freedom of movement from city to city, state to state. He was still amazed. His movements were unwatched, unmarked, anonymous. As long as he stayed away from any Russian Federation consular buildings, he didn’t have to worry about FBI counterintelligence watchers.

All he had to do was wait for Shurik Temuri to appear and claim Blackbird. Unless the sullen old wolverine was disguised as a supple brown-haired female, Temuri was staying hidden in the background. Shadow man in a shadow world.

As was Demidov, who tracked the woman through the camera lens. She walked like an American, open and confident. Maybe she was the captain’s “friend.” Maybe she was a player. If she got close enough to the camera, he would find out if Moscow had any record of her.

Like a hunter slipping from blind to blind, Demidov tried to take pictures of the woman as she approached. If the crowd around him moved, he went with it. He was careful never to be alone against the sky. That could attract attention. Attention was the death of many a careful plan. And man.

He lined up for another attempt. She was almost close enough for a useful shot. He held his breath, waiting, waiting…

At the last instant the woman turned away, attracted by the white flash of a seagull diving for food thrown by laughing tourists. Turning away like that was a trick experienced agents had, an instinct that made them duck.

Or it could be what it looked like. Coincidence.

Demidov swore silently and turned in another direction, giving her his back as she reached the top of the ramp and slipped into a group of pedestrians. Like the woman, he didn’t want to give away his identity to strangers.

When he turned back, camera and hands shielding his face, he couldn’t find the woman. His mouth flattened. Thinking quickly, he took more pictures of nothing. He could follow her or follow Blackbird.

Demidov turned back to Belltown Marina. If the woman was a player, she would reappear when the yacht was delivered in Rosario. If not, it didn’t matter.

All that mattered was Blackbird.

6

DAY ONE

NORTH OF SEATTLE

4:15 P.M.

Emma pulled off at a rest stop and sat for a few minutes, pretending to talk into her cell phone. The people in the two cars and one long-haul rig that had followed her off the freeway got out, went into various restrooms, walked dogs, and stretched out cramped muscles. Everyone piled back into the same vehicles and left.

She watched her mirrors and told herself to stop being paranoid. Herself didn’t listen.

She blew out an impatient breath and punched two on her speed dial. The outgoing call to St. Kilda was automatically scrambled, just as incoming calls from St. Kilda were automatically decoded by her phone, which could use either satellite or cell connections. All of St. Kilda’s field agents carried the special phone. In a pinch, it could double as a camera, still or video, with or without sound.

“Faroe’s phone,” said a woman’s voice. “Grace speaking.”

“Emma Cross. Is he around?”

“Annalise has her daddy in a chokehold. Anything I can do for you?”

Emma laughed. “I’d like to see that.”

There was a brushing sound, then Faroe’s voice said, “Where are you and-”

“I’m north of Seattle, heading for a Puget Sound waterfront town called Rosario,” Emma cut in. “The captain is about six foot two inches, rangy, stronger than he looks, unusual coordination, maybe thirty-five, very dark brown eyes, short black hair and beard, no visible scars or missing digits or teeth.”

“Name?”

“MacKenzie Durand, called Mac, no ‘k,’ according to his card.”