Charlie could almost see lucidity surging into his father: As Drummond walked, he appeared to grow taller, his stride becoming more resolute, and the old glow returning to his eyes. Had Hector Manzanillo sparked him whereas du Frongipanier or Odelette’s children had not? Possibly. Sticking his head inside a washing machine might also have sparked him. Whichever, Charlie was elated. They needed an exit strategy, and when Drummond Clark was on, he was an escape artist.
“Rico blew out his shoulder last season,” Hector said.
“I’m sorry to hear it,” said Drummond.
“Don’t be. He’s doing way better now selling ‘bananas’ for the Bucagas.”
“First-class operation,” said Drummond of the drug dealers.
The trio reached a staircase whose eight flights zigzagged down a cliff face speckled with patches of grass and scrawny trees. From this far up, the choppy sea looked like tinfoil.
Hector pointed down to the beach that wrapped around the rock wall. “Follow the shore ’round to the pier, shouldn’t take you no more than a minute, then blast off in that fancy-ass speedboat you came in. I’ll go the other way, gunning one of the launches from the private dock, do what I can to draw away the cops.”
Drummond nodded his approval. “I owe you one, Hector.”
“I still owe you way more than that, senor.” The guard clambered down the stairs, unconcerned by the creaks and groans that suggested loose moorings.
Right behind him, Drummond said, “Hector, do you have any idea what Fielding did with the other washing machine?”
“The Perriman Pristina? Wish I did. Woulda saved me two broken ribs and fuck-near getting drowned.”
Drummond reddened. “Who did that to you?”
“They said they was Interpol.”
“That means we can rule out Interpol.”
Struggling to keep pace, Charlie surmised that whoever Bream was working for had interrogated Hector. They would have exhausted every means of locating the bomb before mounting their Gstaad operation.
Continuing down the stairs, Hector said, “I told those fuckers what Senor Fielding told me, which was pretty much
“Tell me anyway,” Drummond said.
“When we loaded the Pristina onto his boat, he said he was gonna run it over to some new hiding place he got on Bernadette Islet or Antoinina Islet-you know, there’s tons of them little isles around here, no people on ’em, no nothing. The boss, he liked to cruise around, find new ones and draw ’em onto his map. He’d name ’em after the ladies he took there …” Embarrassment tinted the guard’s beefy face. “On dates.”
“I imagine your ‘Interpol officers’ searched all these islands?”
“Bernadette’s just a giant-ass sandbar, maybe three kilometers north of here. High tide, thing’s underwater. So you couldn’t really hide nothing there. So of course they didn’t find nothing.”
“What about Antoinina?”
“That’s the thing. There’s no Antoinina on any of Senor Fielding’s maps. Or on any map. Closest thing’s Arianne Islet, which is far, forty clicks easy. They tore that rock apart too. Found shit.”
“Could there be some meaning to ‘Antoinina’ that they missed?” Charlie asked Drummond.
“Damned if I know,” he said.
Which was reason to hope otherwise. Drummond opposed even mild profanity.
28
Charlie had difficulty keeping up with Drummond on the slender beach, which was piled with round, sea- smoothed stones that could broadcast their whereabouts.
“While it’s on my mind, I should say that I might know what Fielding meant by those islets,” Drummond said.
“That could come in handy,” Charlie said. He’d presumed Drummond had chosen to keep mum in the presence of Hector. Nice guy and all, but probably a hardcore criminal who would have been less concerned for their well-being once he knew the whereabouts of a weapons system that could net him enough of a fortune to buy this island several times over.
“Do you remember the false subtraction cipher?” Drummond asked. “Yeah. You’re thinking alphanumeric values of ‘Bernadette’ and ‘Antoinina’?”
“Ought to yield the latitude and longitude of Fielding’s hiding spot. I’d need to do the math on paper. But perhaps you can do it in your head.”
With each letter assigned a number based on its alphabetical order, BERNADETTE minus ANTOININA translated to:
As the cipher’s name implies, false subtraction isn’t true subtraction. Charlie worked left to right, subtracting numbers on the bottom line from those directly above. 2–1 = 1, 5–1 = 4-if this were true subtraction, 5–1 would yield 3 because the 1 that comes next borrows from the 5 in order to subtract 4. As for the rest …
“One-four-seven-six-one-three-six-five-four-eight-one-one-six-four,” said Charlie.
“Good.” Drummond nodded. “That gives us latitude and longitude, using decimal values. Latitude of 14.7, longitude 61.3. Or about fifteen nautical miles off the coast of Martinique.”
Bream’s people surely used potent decryption software to parse every permutation of Bernadette and Antoinina, but without the simple cipher Drummond had taught Fielding years ago, they might as well have searched for the mythical treasure of San Isidro. The single-degree latitudinal difference between the 14 and the 13 yielded by actual subtraction equaled 69 miles, a margin of error of some 15,000 square miles.
Charlie was suddenly distracted by the sound of an approaching police boat’s siren-what had been a distant drone became a shriek.
Drummond broke into a jog, continuing to stay close to the seawall, depriving DeSoto or anyone else atop the cliff a glimpse of him. Over the resulting ruckus of stones and clamshells, he shouted, “Now all we have to do is get there.”
Charlie joined Drummond in peering around the edge of the rock wall to see DeSoto on the pier, pacing alongside the bobbing Riva. The real estate agent’s back was to them. They could easily overpower him, if it came to that.
As Charlie followed Drummond onto the pier, DeSoto spun around, the pistol in his hand ignited by the sunlight.
Instinct sent Charlie sprawling onto the hot, splintery slats.
Drummond remained on his feet. Without flinching, he stepped toward DeSoto.
“You best stop right there.” DeSoto’s salesman facade was history.
Drummond continued walking toward him.
“They’ll be here in less than a minute.” DeSoto gestured to sea. The police cutter was now visible, its siren growing louder.
“Give me the gun, please,” Drummond said.
Taking a measure of the older man, in his beach garb and Crocs, DeSoto scoffed. “I suppose you want my ten-thousand-euro reward too?”
Drummond advanced until only the length of the runabout separated them. “I want to avoid hurting you.”
DeSoto aligned the muzzle with Drummond’s chest. “Stop now,” he said evenly.
Drummond took two quick steps, wound back and threw something, some sort of shimmering white disk, too fast for Charlie to track.
The object struck the real estate man in the hip, then dropped to the deck with a clink.
A clamshell.
Glancing down, DeSoto smirked. “That’s all you got?”
