Twice a Spy

“How can I help you?” she asked with a none-too-subtle undertone of “You are obviously not a wealthy yachtsman or someone a wealthy yachtsman would want to see, so what the heck are you doing here?”

“I’m a reporter,” Charlie said.

She looked him over. “Doing something on the G-20?”

“Actually I write for South Magazine.”

“Uh-huh. Don’t know it.”

So much for the Limelight Effect.

“Lead times what they are, my story won’t run until the spring issue. We’re doing a piece on the prettiest harbors in the South, and so far this one gets my vote. Could you by any chance direct me to the harbormaster, Glenny Gorgas?”

“I’m Glenny.” She took in Charlie’s mock surprise. “Short for Glendolyn.”

“Pretty name.”

She warmed, but only by a degree. “So how can I help you?” He needed to find out which yachts had arrived in the last day or two. This time of year, the number wouldn’t be high.

“Do you, by any chance, have time to give me the dime tour?”

They walked the docks for twenty minutes, Glenny paying no attention to the sprawling golf course or the tennis courts, or the resort hotel itself, a town’s worth of pert three-story brown clapboard buildings, many of which loomed over the marina. Her focus was on the two hundred or so yachts, which she referred to as if they were their owners. Passing a sleek and towering catamaran, she said, with pride, “He made a hole in one last weekend.”

This was the opening Charlie had been waiting for. “Here in Mobile?”

“Mr. Chandler has a condo on the course at the Grand.” She smiled. “Sailing for him is an excuse to play golf.”

“Do a lot of the boat owners have homes here?”

“A few have condos here, but most live close enough, up in Montgomery or Birmingham. A handful in Tennessee.”

“How many people do you see during the winter?”

She sighed. “Winter’s a lonely time to be a harbormaster.”

He stopped, pointedly looking around. There was no sign of anyone, just the groans of ropes holding yachts to docks. “Is anyone here now?”

The harbormaster brightened. “Actually, I had two parties in yesterday, and one the night before that. January and February I get the occasional excursion to the Caribbean or Mexico.”

With manufactured fascination, Charlie scribbled each in his notebook. “It must be fun, when the people come back, to hear about their adventures?”

Glenny’s step added a skip. “Best part of the job.”

“Heard any good stories lately?”

“I’m expecting a really good one any time now, actually.” She pointed to an empty slip at the end of the far dock. “Anthony and Vera Campodonico, retired couple, spent their whole careers at Auburn-he used to be a dean. Now they go down to the Caribbean and South America looking for lost civilizations and stuff like that. He actually writes books about it.”

Probably not Bream, Charlie thought, given the Campodonicos’ ages.

Glenny strode ahead. “And of course there’s Mr. Clemmensen-Clem Clemmensen. Great guy. He just got in from Martinique.” She smiled at a relatively plain cabin cruiser. “Even when he goes on fishing trips ‘just to do some thinkin’,’ as he says, he comes back with yarns that involve either a girl or a barroom brawl, or a barroom brawl over a girl. Lately he’s been cruising around trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. He made a bundle in flight simulator software and basically retired last year at forty. Not bad, huh?”

“Sounds like a good story,” Charlie said, struggling to keep a lid on the high-voltage conviction surging through him that flight simulator software was a chapter in a cover story: Clemmensen was Bream.

Motion on the pier behind them seized their attention. Heading their way were two men in dark suits and sunglasses, one white and the other black, both athletic, clean-cut, and in their late twenties. Their stride was all business.

Once within hailing distance, the black man asked, “Charles Clark?”

Charlie tried to appear relaxed.

The men shared a nod. He’d failed.

“We’re Secret Service,” the white man said. “We were hoping to talk to you privately, sir.” For Glenny’s benefit, he added, “We have to interview everyone in the vicinity with out-of-state tags. Standard operating procedure.”

6

The Cavalry’s not as dead as they’re supposed to be, Charlie thought.

Because his hands were bound in front of him by plastic cuffs, each turn slammed him into the door or the window as the SUV sped away from the marina.

The black man drove. Washington, according to his ID. The Secret Service badge the white guy had flashed identified him as Madison. Either the names were flagrantly fake or a simple instance of truth being stranger than fiction.

As the sun fell into the woods lining the two-lane country road to the local police station, their purported destination, their SUV approached an identical black vehicle, which slowed as it drew near. Washington stopped so that he was even with the other driver. Both drivers’ windows glided down. In the burgeoning darkness, Charlie could make out only a thickset man in the other car.

“How’s it going, Wash?” the man asked.

“Can’t complain-no one would listen. You?”

“Another day, another advance team packed off to Dauphin Street. You heavy?”

Washington glanced at Charlie in the rearview. “A Class Three.”

The thickset man yawned. “You boys hitting happy hour?”

Leaning across the seat, Madison said, “We sure hope so.”

“I’ll be waiting. Wash here’s been ducking me at Miss Pac Man.”

With a round of Later’s, they were off.

Charlie was almost convinced that Washington and Madison were indeed who they said they were. The laptop computer, bracketed to the console between the front seats, had a Secret Service gold star as its screen saver. The muted chatter from the police radio continued to include “Grand Hotel” and “protectees.” And if these guys were Cavalry, he would either have been dead by now or on a waterboard.

But why would the Secret Service want him? Aside from the fact that he’d been exonerated-although it wouldn’t be the first time in government annals that paperwork was slow to be processed-how did they even know where to find him?

Bream might have told them. He could have seen Charlie through a porthole.

“So what are we supposed to talk about?” Charlie asked the agents.

Madison turned around in the passenger seat, no trace remaining of his happy-hour banter. “Mr. Clark, for a heads of state event prep, the Secret Service is required to conduct advance interviews of all Class Threes in a two-hundred-fifty-mile vicinity.”

“I’m guessing Class Three doesn’t mean VIP,” said Charlie.

“It’s an individual in our database who-”

Washington cut in. “Who, we hope, won’t give cause for concern.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“We received a tip from a civilian who has a working relationship with law enforcement.”

“Not the private eye, LeCroy?”

Madison looked to Washington.