disappeared. “We ought to go after them.”
Hadley opened her purse and drew out her BlackBerry. “And take them ourselves, with no weapons?”
“Just tail them. In a minute or two, they’ll have a whole new wardrobe from that beach supply shack or the shops in the lobby. Another ninety seconds and they’ll have helped themselves to a car in the guest parking lot that no one will realize is gone until morning at the soonest. By the time our backup mobilizes, the rabbits will have blended into the half a million people on this four-hundred-square-mile jungle.”
“They’ll know we’re tailing them, though.”
“I can live with that. If we can stall them for as little as two minutes, we’ll have half a dozen police cars and a helicopter in play.”
By way of agreement, she started back to the hotel, scrolling down her phone menu. “I’ll call the dry cleaners.” She meant their backup unit.
Stanley looked past her, toward an odd rustling in the bamboo.
Drummond and Charlie emerged from the stalks just a few feet away, crisp new Hotel L’Imperatrice T-shirts over their wet suits. They brandished pistols of sorts with four-foot barrels and spearheads protruding from the muzzles.
Stanley was hit with a one-two punch of surprise, then fury. Why hadn’t he heeded his instincts and rushed the criminals the first moment he saw them?
“Fort-de-France Dry Cleaning,” came the Yankee-accented voice of the backup unit’s chief over the BlackBerry.
Holding a finger to his lips, Charlie held forth a thick sheet of hotel stationery. With the point of his speargun, Drummond directed Stanley and Hadley to the big block letters on the stationery, although Charlie’s intent had been obvious.
By the light of Hadley’s BlackBerry, Stanley read: FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS IMMEDIATELY OR WE WILL SHOOT YOU:
RAISE YOUR HANDS.
ONE OF YOU, SAY, ENTHUSIASTICALLY: “LET’S GO FOR A DIP ANYWAY!”
SAY NOTHING ELSE.
Raising his hands, Stanley glanced at Hadley in hope that she had a better plan. Her hands were already in the air, and though the night made it hard to tell, she was pale.
“Let’s go for a dip anyway,” she said with enthusiasm so convincing that Stanley wondered if she weren’t in fact happy to enter the water.
As Drummond frisked him, Stanley waited for an opportunity to launch a knee into the old spy’s groin. The spear pressed into his own inner thigh made him think better of it.
Drummond snatched away Stanley’s phone and flung it into the sea. The satellite device splashed down and sank, followed by Hadley’s.
Now that they were at liberty to speak, Charlie looked to Drummond, who just shrugged.
“It’s okay, I got this,” Charlie told him, before turning to Hadley. “Ma’am, gently toss your purse onto the sand in front of you.”
Trembling-or probably pretending to be trembling-Hadley needed both hands to do it.
Charlie scooped up the bag and sifted through its contents. “I hope it won’t inconvenience you too much, but I’m going to keep all of this stuff. After seeing your fellow civil servant Nick Fielding shoot Burt Hattemer with a keyless remote from a Lincoln Town Car, I’m not taking any chances with lipsticks and eyeliners.”
According to a brief Stanley had read, the national security adviser was killed with a single.22 caliber round. Although Stanley had never seen such a device, a keyless remote could be rigged to fire a bullet; the museum at headquarters had an entire exhibit of pens, lighters, and even a roll of Tums that fired small-caliber bullets, most of the weapons dating from World War II. However, since forensics had conclusively determined that Drummond Clark had fired the.22 caliber bullet that killed Hattemer, either Charlie hadn’t seen the shooting or he was simply a good liar, in which case he’d likely inherited the trait. Back in the day, another CIA brief had noted, Drummond Clark could have convinced a polygraph that it was a toaster.
Hadley’s chattering teeth seized their attention.
Stanley gleaned her intent. “It’s going to be okay, sweetie,” he said, adding a tremor to his own voice.
Charlie tightened his grip on his speargun. “Please cut the act. You’re way too teenagers-on-a-date for a married couple your age.”
Ironically, the affection was authentic, Stanley thought. At least on his part.
“I wouldn’t have given you a second thought,” Charlie added, “but while we were trying to get into the supply shack, my father kept looking back down the beach. You weren’t there. And you weren’t in the water. Which meant you’d ducked behind this grassy rise just after we passed you. Now why would you do that?”
Hadley blushed. “My husband was a bit frisky, that’s all.”
Charlie shook his head. “By your stage of the game, everyone knows it’s just not worth getting sand in those parts. Also you were calling the dry cleaners … Come on!”
Continuing to play dumb was futile, Stanley thought. Better to just stall. The backup unit commander probably had people on the way.
“All right, Charlie, you’ve made us, except we’re on the same team as you.” Stanley turned to Drummond, who peered back as if through a thick fog.
“In that case,” Charlie said, “before more of our ‘teammates’ show up, you two need to turn and head to the hut, holding hands, like you were before. And if you try anything, you will get speargunned in the leg-wait, I should qualify that: We’ll
Stanley turned toward the hut and took Hadley’s hand, which was cold and clammy. Not part of the act, unfortunately.
17
A few minutes later the couple sat on the hut’s linoleum floor, Charlie aiming his speargun at them while Drummond bound their wrists and ankles with kite string.
They looked like Superman and Lois Lane fifteen years after their first meeting, Charlie thought, out on a date night now while their kids were home with a sitter. According to their driver’s licenses, their names were Colin and Eleanor Atchison. Odds were high that their real names were something else. And it was even money that they were now plotting to turn the tables.
For fear of drawing the attention of hotel security staff, Charlie kept the lights in the hut off. Drummond worked by the pink beam of a children’s flashlight, a miniature of Mount Pelee-squeezing the green mountain activated a tiny bulb within the red peak, theoretically simulating a volcanic eruption. His technique was to thoroughly tie captives’ legs together at the ankles, knees, and thighs, then practically mummify them from the waist up. Although the process was complex, Charlie had previously seen him execute it with the same dexterity that party magicians display when turning balloons into dachshunds. But now, lids heavy, head lolling, Drummond faltered.
The conditions weren’t helping. With the doors and windows shut, a small grate provided the only ventilation in the hut, which was stifling and thick with the scent of suntan lotion to begin with. Perspiration streamed down Charlie’s face, soaking his shirt. Like being slow-cooked in coconut oil, he thought.
The woman broke the heavy silence. “So … have you been in Europe?”
“I don’t believe so,” Drummond said before pausing to reconsider.
“Didn’t you just fly in from there?”
Almost certainly, Charlie thought, the spooks had gotten hold of Bream’s flight plan listing Warsaw as his point of origin, a ruse capitalizing on Poland’s lax documentation requirements. A minimal amount of detective work on their part and Gstaad would be blown.
Unwilling to assist them, Charlie looked away, which, he realized, probably served as an admission-in his experience, people like these two were human lie detectors.
