“The last time I was on a boat it met with a sad ending. Isn’t this a sitting duck?”
“In this weather it’s nearly invisible. Of course we could try a Vancouver police station with our story and see how it goes.”
“I just thought maybe a house with a large grounds.”
“This moves constantly and in this weather is nearly impossible to find, unless you knew exactly where to look.”
“I’m not entirely convinced, but you’ve managed to keep us alive so far.”
By the time Sam showed her the owner’s stateroom and living space just behind the bridge, the weather had closed in so thoroughly that no land was visible even though they were less than a half mile from shore. The crew had weighed anchor and they were inching slowly forward out the narrow mouth of the harbor.
Sam took her to the bridge that by itself was worth a million dollars in electronics. They turned south, edged across the channel, and stopped midway, still completely fog-bound.
“What’s happening?” Anna asked.
“We’re getting off,” Sam said.
“But we just got on.”
“Surprising, isn’t it?”
“That’s why you told me to leave the bags on the deck.”
In minutes Sam, Anna, Grady, Spring, T.J., Yodo, Sanford, and an anxiety-ridden Jason got into a Zodiac inflatable speedboat and quietly motored off into the fog.
“I’m not believing this,” Anna said above the whispering motor.
“No one else will either. And that’s the point.” Sam said. “If anybody figured out that we went to Galliano, they will eventually find the dock boy. And what’s he going to tell them?”
“We went north. To Alaska. A bachelor party.”
“And when they learn about the yacht they’ll figure we can tick off over three hundred nautical miles every twenty-four hours-easily. Leaves a search area that’s utterly massive. We could have gone out the straits of Jaun de Fuca and down the coast to California, we could have gone to the west side of Vancouver Island, or Puget Sound and Seattle. Or as I said, we could head all the way to Alaska.”
“Where will the Inevitable go?”
“First to Vancouver, where three women and two men will leave the boat and board a private jet for Europe. They will land in London, leave the plane, and disappear. The yacht will sail on.”
“And go where?”
“Wherever they want as long as they keep moving. Those guys get a free winter cruise. But they will act exactly as if we were on board and they were protecting us. When they go into a harbor the men will watch the boat from the shore.”
“So all the guards went that way?”
“Uh-huh. All those guards did. We have others.”
“And was I the last person to find out what’s going on?”
“Oh, no. The crew and all those men were planning for us to be on the yacht. They had no idea we were getting off.”
“When did you tell them?”
“I told only T.J.”
“God, you are paranoid. What is this costing?”
“I’ve learned through hard, sad experience that a ruse works better if everyone involved actually believes it. People act according to their expectations. I pulled in some chits to rent the place we’re going for less than two hundred thousand dollars. A bargain for a woman worth two hundred fifty million.”
They traveled through the fog and mist to a long, slender harbor at the very end of the bay. There a passenger van waited, cloaked in the night, its engine running and lights off.
Anna knew only that they were winding up the side of a mountain, the headlights flashing on the green of trees, grasses, and ferns, a few aluminum mailboxes on white wood posts, grass a foot tall clumped at the bases. There were no streetlights and, after a time, no houselights, only the black illuminated to gray, and then it became so thick that they crawled up the road clinging to the center strip. Billions of tiny droplets grabbed headlight beams and spread them to a halo of rainbows-the result of driving in a cloud.
Finally, after going higher on an island than Anna would have thought possible, they came to a wide drive with beautiful iron gates. The driver pushed a button and the gates trundled on steel wheels.
Devan Gaudet’s mind was like a free-flowing river finding its way down a familiar canyon. Within ten minutes of leaving Taveuni, using a cell phone shipped out of the U.K., he was talking to his travel agent in Geneva. Fifty minutes after his arrival at Nadi Airport, he was on a jet to Sydney, Australia. Given years of discipline, he was able to sleep the entire flight. Upon his arrival in Sydney he went to work. First he would get control.
In a safe house in Sydney established the week prior, Benoit had seen to it that the GE phone costing about $50 was replaced by a scrambler phone built by Grace technicians at a cost of about $150,000.
“I’m afraid that moron, your boyfriend, will screw up our lives,” Gaudet began when he got her on the line. He liked to bring up that she had sex with Chellis, hoping that if he rubbed it in, her hatred for the man would continue to grow. “We need to move up the timetable. Doing nothing is not an option. We’ve got to move fast and hard or we’re going to lose this. Chellis will get too aggressive or talkative, so it’s time to proceed as I have laid out. You’d better call your friend Jacques.”
“Okay,” she said, exhaling a bit too long.
“Did you send a man to Grady’s apartment?”
“Of course.”
“And?”
“She had a cat.”
“So?”
“She boards it when she’s gone. A place called the Critter Sitter. She also has a computer. We’ve got the password and total access. Our guys have also broken into the Critter Sitter’s computer and written a program to divert any incoming mail from Grady. We will get it instead, and she’ll think she’s talking to the Sitter. We’re hoping she’ll use her e-mail account from the road to check on her cat.”
“Long shot,” Gaudet said. “Sam wouldn’t let anyone use a local computer to send anything. She would have to break the rules, and I wouldn’t count on that. It nearly killed her the last time. I’ve got another way. They need Nutka and the oil. She had a supply. I’m working with Samir. Some strangers came for Nutka in the night and I’m sure it was the Sam group. But we were faster, we have a radio transmitter in her bag, and more important, Samir has men in a cabin with her family. If she doesn’t tell us where they take her, Samir makes AK-47 stew. And I have other means.”
“Samir would do that?”
There was a quiet that made Gaudet smile and the quiet spoke more than words. Even with their love- making, she didn’t trust him.
“I didn’t know you talked with Samir,” she continued.
“Did I forget to mention that?”
“You’re an aloof bastard.”
“Don’t you suppose that’s how it is with most people who kill others for a living? The real standout here would be the personal assistant who screws everybody for a living.”
“You’re talking your way out of my bed.” The ice over the line pleased him. He liked sex with the rebellious ones.
“A woman of great poise can take a small joke.”
“Soon you’ll be no fun.”
“I will make it up to you.” It galled him to say it, but he wanted this woman. Apparently there were lines that he could not cross. Maybe in the end killing her would provide his only complete satisfaction.
“You mentioned other means of finding them.”
“Nothing is certain. It is, shall we say, a real coup d’etat? Something that is working out very well. You can trust me. We needn’t go into it.”
