without him. The workboat was little more than a frothing, receding wake, throwing small craft around like wood chips. Somehow the kayakers had managed to stay human side up.
“I think Blue Water wanted to establish an unremarkable profile for
“New owner and new girlfriend taking new boat for a cruise?”
“Pretty much. Nothing special. Nothing different. Nothing unexpected. Absolutely nothing to notice.”
“Amanar didn’t expect the FBI to say that we’re smuggling in enough champagne for a party of two hundred,” Emma said, thinking about Steele’s call. “If we don’t get through Canadian customs…” She hesitated. “I can’t figure out if that’s good or bad. It’s certainly a game changer.”
Mac eased through the kayakers without upsetting anyone. The sailboat had lowered yards of flapping cloth and gone back to good old diesel power.
“But since we don’t know what the game is,” he said, “we don’t know if this is opportunity knocking or an IED ticking by the roadside.”
She winced. “I don’t suppose Alara gave any hints to Steele. Beyond the champagne charade.”
“You don’t suppose correctly.”
She started to say something, then looked at him. “Was that grammatically possible?”
“Did you understand me?”
“Yes. Frightening, but true.”
“Then it was possible.”
Laughing, enjoying his quick mind, Emma put her head against Mac’s shoulder. And bit him.
He gave her a look that went from startled to smoky in one second flat.
“Shouldn’t we go through the border protocol again?” she asked as though nothing had happened.
“There are a lot of things I’d like to do. Doubt that they’re in the protocol manual.”
“You’d be surprised. The manual is very…thorough.”
“Some day you’re going to read it to me,” he said. “Thoroughly.”
Emma thought of all the dreary paragraphs and subparagraphs. “You’d fall asleep.”
“Try me.”
She wanted to. Really wanted to.
“Border protocol,” she said.
“Nothing we haven’t covered. You help me dock-”
“That’s a whole different thing we haven’t talked much about.”
“-then get back aboard immediately,” Mac said, ignoring her interruption. “I take our passports and
She nodded.
“Are you worried that we won’t get the magic number?” he asked.
“I’d be surprised if we got turned back,” Emma said. “The FBI isn’t stupid. They’ll get in the CIA’s knickers just to remind everyone to play nice, but they won’t intentionally blow an op.”
“Unintentionally?”
“It happens. Too many agencies. Too many secrets. Too little real cooperation, because budgets depend on delivering departmental success stories. Partial gold stars for taking part in joint operations doesn’t get you as many points as getting a job done within your own department.”
“Sounds like branches of the military fighting over whose elite ops get used in a high-profile rescue,” Mac said, disgust clear in his voice. “None of the brass cares about the poor sucks caught behind enemy lines, just who gets the glory for saving the day.”
“The really good news is that our enemies are the same.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah. Petty, jealous, kiss-up, shit-down humans.”
“Huh,” he said. “Never looked at it that way.”
“Feel better?”
“I don’t know.”
She smiled rather grimly.
“Makes the amount of cooperation between Canadian and American border guards all the more impressive,” Mac said. “And I don’t mean the tit for tat of international politics. I mean that the Canadians and the U.S. exchange information on boats crossing the border. The entry number you get from Canada is logged in right next to your return number when you check back into the States.”
“I’m guessing that’s post-9/11,” she said.
He nodded. “Even with ‘heightened security,’ most of the yacht traffic between countries doesn’t get more of a look-over than a car full of tourists at the land border crossings.”
“Probably because the terrorists everyone is worried about don’t use expensive yachts for transport. Neither do smugglers. If you’re caught with contraband, it’s not worth the price of losing a multimillion-dollar yacht. Not cost effective.”
“But yutzes with small, fast boats and smaller brains…real cost effective,” Mac said.
“Cannon fodder.”
“What would a barbecue be without hot dogs?” Mac asked bitterly.
Emma remembered the reservation and wished she’d kept her smart mouth shut.
37
DAY FOUR
NEAR NANOOSE BAY
12:00 P.M.
Demidov looked at the lower set of latitude and longitude numbers on his cell phone, the ones that were direct from the locator aboard
“I’m surprised this isn’t all on a computer,” he said.
In the daylight pouring through the front windows, Lina’s red hair was younger than her skin. She tossed stray locks behind her shoulder with the practiced moves of the flirt she’d once been. But her blue eyes didn’t tease. Their color was a bit faded and a whole lot harder than it had been back when she was an untried agent assigned to Taras Demidov.
“I have a chart plotter and sonar on my boat,” she said. “It’s all I need for fishing.”
Demidov didn’t bother saying that it wasn’t enough for him. He checked the numbers again, then nodded abruptly.
“What?” she asked.
He glanced at her, then back to the charts.
After that, it depended on
“Taras?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”
“Something is always wrong. It’s just a matter of finding out what and where and when,” Demidov said. “Your boat. Is it ready to use?”
“Always. That’s how I make my living.”
“Come, you will show me about this living.”
