Obviously, the FBI had sent additional agents to the island to back Jessica Coran’s move. Jessica, no doubt, had alerted Peter Kylie, the resident undercover FBI operative whom everyone on the island knew, a man who lived the good life here while ostensibly on the lookout for bad guys. Now there was no telling how many other FBI agents were crawling about the island. This man standing before Ja could hardly be heard above the still whirring rotors, but after introductions, he made himself quite clear. He was desperately seeking Jessica, wanting to know her whereabouts. Something about information that could not wait.
Ja breathed deeply and realized that this could be a stroke of good fortune. After all, with an American agent aboard with him, when the sailing vessel carrying the Night Crawler came within Cayman’s watery jurisdiction, the FBI’s own agent could attest to the fact that the monster- who had murdered young women on the islands as well as in the U.S.-was, technically speaking, a prisoner of the Cayman Island government, and so he would become the bargaining tool with which Ja could further his own personal and professional ambitions and help his community in the bargain. This tack might lose him some favor with Jessica and the FBI, but it could gain commerce, industry, money for the islands and his people-legitimate money. After all, it seemed the U.S. wanted this bastard badly enough to make some assurances…
Using the Night Crawler in this fashion seemed the preeminent path to take. It could open economic doors now closed to his island nation; it could mean more import/export trade, perhaps reduced tariffs. There was no end to what it could mean for the Caymans, and it would all be due to his excellent investigatory work.
And as for a witness to this, who better than the tall, suntanned American whom he now invited along with him- Mr. Upstanding American Police Officer.
“ We are following Dr. Coran’s footprints now. You are fortunate. Please, take a seat aboard.” Ja indicated the back hatch and the grateful agent climbed aboard.
Through their headphones, as the chopper lifted and took off, Ja and his pilot cousin spoke in their Dutch- French tongue. “If they take the Night Crawler in our waters, we can claim him as our prisoner,” Ja confided.
“ Do you want this scum to dirty your prison cells?”
“ It would mean great things for us, Cousin. Trust me…”
Ja’s cousin pursed his lips and nodded, accepting his kinsman’s words as gospel. Ja had never guided him wrong. “But I thought these people-the Americans-were your friends.”
“ Friendship is important, not to be denied, but so too is blood; besides, I do not make the laws in Cayman. I can only enforce them.”
“ Ahhhh,” the other man said, nodding, smiling as they made their way north across the emerald mirror below them. James Parry, fresh out of Miami, where he had jetted to from Hawaii in search of Jessica, had gotten as comfortable as his tall frame would allow in the small rear section of the cockpit. Seeing that the other two men were talking, Parry donned headphones. He only caught the tail end of the conversation, but he knew enough Dutch and French and innuendo to make out the tenor of what was being discussed.
He wondered where Jessica was at this moment. He’d come halfway around the world to find her, to take her in his arms and to profess his love for her. In Miami the morning before, he’d been told that she and Santiva had left for Grand Cayman on a small plane. He’d managed to book a jetliner for the next morning, the flight requiring only seventy minutes. He had been in Cayman for hours, but had been unable to locate Jessica. He had tried the various hotels when finally he called the authorities, who had informed him that she and Santiva and their pilot had stayed overnight with the chief of the police department here, a man Jessica had spoken highly of-and here he was, Ja Okinleye, plotting to rip Jessica’s prisoner out from under her. What a guy, what a friend, James thought now.
“ How far out are they?” Parry asked over the headphones.
“ We are not sure. Be patient, Mr., ahhhh…” Okinle- ye’s voice trailed off. “I am most sorry. Did not catch your name over the noise of the helicopter. You are?”
“ Agent Parry, Chief Okinleye.” Okinleye’s neck almost came off as he twisted to look at the stranger once again. “Parry? Jim Parry of… of…”
“ FBI’s Honolulu bureau chief, Hawaii.”
“ Yes… yes, I have heard from Jessica of you.” He was in a state of shock. “Did she know you were coming?” Okinleye’s mind raced. This meant Parry had likely come alone, that he was on a lover’s quest and cared little or nothing about the Night Crawler case. “Does she know you have traveled here?”
“ No, no, she hasn’t any idea.”
“ Aaaa… But she had to know you were in Miami? You flew in from Miami?”
He nodded, saying, “Yes, but she didn’t know I was in Miami. Our paths crossed there yesterday, but I missed her, so here I am.”
“ It is a strange thing to imagine…”
“ What’s that?” Parry was confused.
“ Imagine: Jessica Coran without a clue.” Ja laughed good-naturedly, even clapping his hands like a small boy who has learned a naughty secret. His laughter and enthusiasm was infectious, and the pilot caught the giggles, too. As for Parry, the contagion only brought on his bright smile.
Finally recovering his composure, Ja added, “It will please her! Your surprising her here in our lush tropical paradise, Mr. Parry.”
Parr›‘ threw up his hands. “I can only hope so.”
“ It will be a shocking good surprise for her, one which will benefit you both, I’m sure. Do you dive as well?”
“ Yes, as a matter of fact.”
“ You must take her to The Wall.” Parry, like all divers the world over, had heard of Cayman’s Wall. He had never been to the Caymans before, and he knew he would love someday to make the dive down the sheer face of The Wall, but for the moment, Jessica alone was on his mind.
“ She, I think, loves you very much, Jim Parry.” Ja’s smile was catching and Parry settled back, smiling in return, giving his attention to the horizon now. There appeared nothing and no one out there, but just as he thought so, his eyes registered the tiny dots of movement over the water-sailing vessels running before the wind like so many dolphins.
At his feet, Parry now saw what it was he was kicking- a coiled rope ladder half hidden beneath the seat ahead of him. Rolling about also was a flare gun, fully loaded.
Damn fools’re going to blow us all up, he thought, reaching down for the flare gun and making sure the safety was on. He snatched the flare from the weapon, rendering it harmless and placing it and the flare back into a metal container jutting from the bulkhead over the seat to his right. He then stared out toward the sailing ships again. Some were taking shape now; but there was no sign of the helicopter Jessica was supposedly out here in.
TWENTY-FOUR
Her beams bemocked the sultry main, Like April hoarfrost spread; But where the ship’s huge shadow lay. The charmed water burnt alway A still and awful red.
Despite the ship’s teakwood beauty and its huge, golden- orange, godlike eye-a glowing sunrise against a silken white sail-Jessica saw that it was indeed now eerily deserted, bereft of human occupancy; it was oddly still and silent even as it ran before the wind at top speed. It presented a strange, sleek, modern version of a ghost ship, its colors bright and beautifully new-too new. The other ships in the race showed tattered sails by comparison. Something strange and unusual crept over Jessica as she stared down over the silent schooner. It was as if the ship had a secret life of its own, one which it wanted to tell Jessica all about. She felt a cold stab of ice like a knife blade at her spine. Something rancid skittered about the recesses of her brain. Something told her this was it, Patric Allain’s killing ground, Warren Tauman’s place of revenge on a world that had been too unkind to him.
“ We all three saw someone on the earlier pass,” said Lansing, a master of the obvious, Jessica thought.
