champion tennis player he had been in college. 'I knew I could count on you, Sam.'
Sam left the room with the pleasant thought that his imminent retirement enabled him to be a statesman thinking of the next generation instead of a politician thinking of the next election.
And being a statesman didn't include showcase conferences and amnesty solely for the purpose of vote pandering, not with misguided if intellectually honest conservationists, nor with their criminal fellow travelers.
Chapter Three
Saint Barthelemy, French Antilles
Two days later
Jason Peters navigated the Zodiac across Gustavia Harbor to the public dock at the south end. Tying the small inflatable up to a cleat already crowded with several other hawsers, he climbed up and merged with the winter crowd of visitors shopping along the Rue du Bord de Mer. His white T-shirt and shorts might have led an observer to conclude he was just one more hired crew buying supplies for one of the dozen or so yachts that annually brought the rich, beautiful, and famous to the island's eight square miles of beaches, Parisian shops, and French cuisine. Ninety-nine meter ships, the largest the tiny inner harbor could accommodate, contained more living space than most people's homes. And more expensive art and furnishings.
Like an elite private club, St. Bart's was desirable more for who was excluded than included. With no chain hotels, high-rises, or mass-market resorts, the island was the playground of the wealthy. With hotel rooms or private villas at well over a thousand dollars a night during season, the average family was likely to look elsewhere for a vacation site. Even the airport catered to the select few. The narrow fifteen-hundred-foot strip required a special logbook endorsement from the French government after demonstration of specific skills. The laws of gravity required only small aircraft with STOL (short takeoff and landing) capabilities. Anything larger would either wind up very wet or part of the permanent scenery among the island's hills.
Instead of entering the chandler's shop or the grocery store, Jason paused in front of the Hermes window display of handbags bearing the price tags of small automobiles. He shifted position once, twice, until the reflections in the glass satisfied him he was not being followed.
A block farther he stopped again, this time to admire a young woman, one of those who came from France for a year or two's work to support their time on beaches where swimwear was optional and tans uniform. On St. Bart's, as the island was known, clothes were a fashion statement, not a requirement of modesty. Undergarments were virtually unknown.
His interest was more than returned. A number of these nymphlike creatures turned for a second look at Jason. He was obviously someone who had spent more than ten days or two weeks out-of-doors. His skin was an even copper color, not the red that resulted from an effort to get a tan in a limited time. His hair was sun-streaked and brushed back over the tops of his ears. Muscles stretched the sleeves of his shirt, and his stomach was flat, unlike those swollen by the rich fare for which the island's restaurants were famous. He was not only a handsome American, but, more important, he might be a rich one.
At the end of the street, he paused for a moment, watching the crowd in the open yard of La Select, a restaurant noted more as a meeting place for the young than for haute cuisine. The establishment basked in the story that its version of American junk food had inspired Jimmy Buffett's 'Cheeseburger in Paradise.' In fact, the musician's voice and the twang of the Coral Reefer Band could be heard on the sound system, but just barely over the jagged shouts of conversation of those occupying the plastic tables and those waiting for room to do so.
He doglegged left, then right onto Rue de la Republique. There was hardly room for him to squeeze between the slow parade of cars jammed into every available parking space along the street. He stopped in front of Le Comptoir du Cigare, a store that not only sold cigars but liquor, smoking accessories, and Panama hats almost as expensive as the Hermes bags.
Inside, a woman in her early twenties was seated outside the humidor, listlessly turning the pages of a magazine while her companion, an overweight man in his late forties or early fifties, inspected a Dunhill lighter and haggled with the proprietor in Parisian-accented French.
Jason made eye contact with a leggy girl whose physical attributes were hardly concealed by her ankle-length cotton dress. Her height was emphasized by the remarkably ugly four-inch rubber platform sandals that had inexplicably become fashionable that season. She followed him into the humidor, a twelve-by-twelve-foot room enclosed in glass. Besides keeping a large stock of Cuban tobacco moist, the glass was soundproof.
Reaching into one of the open boxes on a shelf, Jason ran a thick Hoyo de Monterrey under his nose and sniffed his satisfaction.
'May I help you?' she asked in heavily accented English.
Jason replaced the cigar and grinned as he nodded toward the couple outside. 'Touching that a man would bring his daughter to St. Bart's.'
She lengthened her face and gave him the shrug that was the unmistakable Gallic display of urbanity. 'Cinq a sept.'
Five to seven, the hours between work and home, the time a Parisian had for his mistress. Disdainful French idiom for such a relationship.
'You joke,' she continued. 'And I think you did not come to chose a cigar.'
'You're right. I still have most of the box of Epicure Number Two's I bought from you yesterday. Besides, that Double Corona is too large to look good in my delicate hands, don't you think?'
'Always the joke, Jason. Soon someone else will want to look at the cigars and we cannot talk.'
His smile vanished. 'You're right. What did you find out?'
'He is on the Fortune. It has the Cayman flag.'
Most of the superyachts in the harbor flew Cayman colors. Such conspicuous wealth would draw the unwanted attention of the tax man in other countries. The Caymans allowed anonymity by registering vessels to untraceable corporations.
'Unimaginative name.' He turned and pretended to read the brightly colored brand names on a stack of cigar boxes. 'The ship is the size of your average Holiday Inn. Where is the master stateroom?'
She glanced over her shoulder. 'The sternmost stateroom on the second level. Almost directly under the salon. Go…' She. picked up a cigar as the man with the girlfriend came into the humidor. 'I believe you will find this one has the taste you describe.'
The Frenchman surveyed the stock carefully before selecting a box of Partagas. He left to inquire as to price and argue with the store's proprietor again. Jason assumed the owner had properly inflated the cost. It was anathema to the French to pay the first price asked.
'Could you draw me a diagram?' Jason asked.
Turning to the wall so those outside could not see, the girl reached into the front of her dress, stepped back, and brushed against Jason. He felt a thick wad of paper slipped into his hand.
'It is the best I could do.'
Jason stuffed the paper into a pocket of his shorts and grinned salaciously. 'The best you could do when you were doing something else?'
She looked as though she might have eaten a bad snail. 'Do not overwork your, er, imagination. I delivered a box of cigars the ship's captain ordered for the crew the day before. Nothing more. Now go.'
A few doors down the street, an art gallery was late removing the sunscreens in its windows after the afternoon quietus observed by most of the island's shops. Jason stopped so abruptly the couple behind him had to dodge into the street to avoid a collision on the narrow sidewalk. Jason stood in front of the store, all but oblivious to his surroundings. His attention was on an acrylic painting, a photorealistic depiction of a hummingbird feeding from a hibiscus blossom. The colors were vibrant, almost as though lit from within. Without being conscious of it, he grasped a small gold ring that hung on a chain around his neck.
What was the painting doing here? It had been sold to a wealthy developer in the Bahamas over five years ago. What were the odds of it being for sale again here in St. Bart's?
According to the date above the signature, it had been completed weeks before the artist's life had turned upside down.
