Castro Directive (6 page)

"Good morning, Nicholas."

The voice was cheery and familiar, but Pierce couldn't place it.

"It's Ray Andrews. Hope I didn't wake you."

He cleared his throat, sat up. "Ray, hello. No, it's okay." He rubbed his face, trying to clear the sleep from his head. A vague memory of his dream, something about the crystal skull, jumbled together with the woman he'd met, tracked across his mind.

"You sure?"

He looked over at the clock on his bed stand, saw it was almost eight-thirty. "It's time I got up."

"How are you feeling? I read about what happened to you."

"I'm okay, Ray. Just a lump on the head. Appreciate your concern."

"I'm glad you're all right, because we need to get together as soon as possible."

Pierce cleared his throat again. "What's up?"

"I'm the one who hired you."

An hour later, Pierce was crossing the MacArthur Causeway when traffic slowed to a stop as the drawbridge rose. He knew he'd be stuck for several minutes, suspended above Biscayne Bay. He shifted into neutral and pulled up the emergency brake. He lowered the back of his seat a notch and gazed out over the aquamarine bay. He saw in the distance the vague outline of the Rickenbacker Causeway, which he would take to reach Key Biscayne, where he was to meet Andrews.

His front pocket bulged from the roll of cash. Andrews hadn't asked about the money, but a couple of grand was nothing to him; the man was a multimillionaire. But Pierce was still going to give it back. He didn't like being indebted to anyone, especially Andrews. After all, he was hardly as naive as he'd been when he'd met the man.

That had been the summer of his sophomore year at Columbia. He'd answered an ad in the student newspaper that had said: "Help wanted, international travel, Spanish required." The telephone number had been Andrews'. It hadn't taken Pierce long to figure out that the job involved being an accessory to an international marijuana smuggling scheme, and at first he'd wanted nothing to do with it. But Andrews had convinced him that he would act only as an intermediary, setting up the time and place of exchanges, delivering messages. For Pierce, no money and no drugs 'were involved.

The summer job had meant four trips to Santa Marta, Colombia, and had earned him $3,200 tax free. That fall, he and Andrews had gotten an apartment together. Those days had been a time of almost childlike innocence, when drugs were new and mysteriously mind-expanding, instead of mind-destroying; when only the cops carried guns; when cocaine was only a rumor; and when those in the business lived by the countercultural motto: You go to be honest to live outside the law.

Andrews had majored in business and philosophy and had continued operating his importation and distribution network while attending classes. He'd reaped windfall profits from his cannabis connections, and by the end of the academic year he was already starting to invest his profits in legitimate businesses, some of them small, high-risk, high-tech ventures involving the manufacture of what was then a virtually unknown product called the microchip.

Pierce remembered Andrews as generous, but obsessed with amassing wealth. He'd once confided to Pierce that it was a mystery to him why so many of their friends seemed ambivalent about seeking their own pots of gold. Pierce knew that Andrews considered him one of them, and that Andrews would soon move on to a new circle of friends.

Maybe it was his unstable childhood that had provoked the search for quick wealth. He remembered Andrews telling him that he was lucky to have grown up with a father who came home from work every day and a mother who stayed at home to raise the family. Andrews's memories were of a father who was in the air force and a mother who worked in a mill. His mother, he'd once told Pierce, had been obsessed with her fading youth and had started drinking after his father walked out for good. By age ten, Andrews was living in the homes of relatives and family friends, and by thirteen he was working his first job after school each day.

The next fall, his senior year, Pierce saw less and less of his former roommate. Andrews arrived on campus driving a new Porsche he'd paid for with cash, and he no longer needed to share the rent with anyone. A couple of years after graduation, Pierce saw an article in Esquire listing Raymond Andrews as one of the top twenty-five young millionaires in America. There was little doubt at that point that his old roommate's ambitions were quickly being fulfilled, and that he was no longer relying on New York pot smokers.

Over the years, he'd read about Andrews' success in commodities and foreign currency investments. He'd financed two blockbuster movies and others that had fared well. He had been president and major stockholder of World Cable Network before selling his interest and buying an airline which he'd taken from insolvency to prosperity in three years, renaming it Tropic Air. He owned a real estate development company, large land holdings, restaurants, a shopping mall, and God knew what else. He was a financial whiz, worth more than three hundred million . . . and counting. But he was much more than just another wealthy, successful businessman. He considered himself a man of vision, one who saw a future in which mankind emerges from conflict and chaos.

Pierce didn't see Andrews in person for almost fifteen years. Then suddenly one day he'd received an engraved invitation to the dedication of the new headquarters of Tropic Air in Miami. He and Tina were still married, and she'd been stunned to find out that he knew Andrews, that they'd been roommates.

He remembered Andrews speaking from a platform in front of the new building. He was in his element, and charisma emanated from him like a hypnotic scent. It was more than his handsome face, the authority in his voice, or his demeanor. Andrews was born to galvanize a crowd. He commanded your attention, made you feel as if he were talking to you and only you and that he was putting into words what you had been thinking yourself. Here was a man, you thought, who could not only put this vision of a better world into words, but who had the ability to carry it out. Even Pierce, who knew him like no one else in the crowd, had been caught up in the talk that day.

"The course I will follow from this day on will be dedicated to building a peaceful and prosperous world, a world community. Some say why bother, enjoy your wealth. Others say, nothing can be done; the tide of the times is washing us over the edge of the world into oblivion, the end of history.

"But I say that is the flat-world vision. And I see the world and mankind as multidimensional. With proper guidance to avoid the inevitable pitfalls, we are headed into an holistic future where mankind prospers in a vision larger than the ordinary. In science as well as society, new paradigms, or visions of reality, are emerging. Indeed, the era of the New Enlightenment is almost upon us. Of course, we may see instances of chaos as our vision shifts. But keep in mind that no system can be completely understood by the properties of its parts. I promise you that through it all, the power of the vision, the dynamics of the whole, will radiate through the darkness."

Andrews stepped down from the podium and was immediately surrounded by a throng of reporters and admirers. On the edge of the crowd, Tina urged Pierce to approach him. "Go say hi to him, Nicky. He must want to see you."

"He probably won't even recognize me."

"Of course he will."

Pierce made his way through the crowd with Tina behind him. He wasn't sure why, but he felt ambivalent about talking to Andrews. When he was within a few feet of him, he saw a hulking man who looked like a professional wrestler and realized that it was Andrews's bodyguard.

He ignored the man's cold stare and after a moment caught Andrews's eye. "Hello, Ray."

Andrews looked blankly at him a moment, then his face lit up, and he grinned broadly. "Nicholas Pierce. Great to see you. Hang on a minute, will you?"

He greeted several more people, told them to help themselves to the food and drinks that were being served from long tables on the lawn. Then he excused himself, and motioned for Pierce to follow him. Pierce took Tina by the hand and noticed that the bodyguard stayed close to Andrews.

They stopped near a tall, attractive blond woman, and Andrews introduced her as his wife, Ginger. "Hon, Nicholas is an old college friend, and I bet this is—"

"Tina, my wife," Pierce finished.

"Mr. Andrews, it is so wonderful to meet you. I am a great admirer, and I did not believe it when Nick received your invitation. He never told me you were friends."

Andrews turned to Tina, looked at her as if no one else existed. His eyes glistened, his toothy smile, brilliant, affable. At close range, Andrews permeated a sense of vitality, enthusiasm, an undeniable charm. He took Tina's hand, leaned into the introduction giving her a full second of his presence. His voice was smooth as silk. "Very nice, nice to meet you. Nick always had a wonderful eye for beauty," he confided. "I see that attribute of his has only improved with time. You're lovely."

Tina was mesmerized as if Andrews were a snake charmer and she the captivated cobra. She was wide-eyed, dumbfounded. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. Finally, she blurted, "Thank you."

He turned to Pierce as Tina exchanged a few words with Ginger. "We've been out of touch a long time. I happened to see a list of private investigators working in South Florida and saw your name. When I verified that it was you, I couldn't resist sending you an invitation."

Unless Andrews had changed, he didn't simply invite him for the hell of it. There was a reason. "Well, I work as a P.I. only part-time right now. I own a travel agency."

"It is the child in him," Tina interjected. "I keep telling him to stay with the travel business. But his mind wanders."

Andrews nodded, laid a hand on Pierce's shoulder.

"Same old Nicholas. Listen, I have to go, but I wanted to mention to you that I have a friend in the auto industry who's looking for a reliable detective to investigate insurance claims in South Florida. If you're interested, I'll recommend you."

The bridge lowered, and traffic was moving again. In the aftermath of that conversation with his old roommate, Pierce's life had shifted from the travel industry to investigations. Within months his income had doubled, and after a year he was taking cases from several auto manufacturers. Andrews had called on occasion to ask him how it was going, and more than once Pierce had wondered if he was being primed for an assignment. But then he'd taken Gibby's case, and he hadn't heard a word from Andrews in more than a year. Not until this morning.

Pierce crossed downtown to the Rickenbacker, where he accelerated back across the bay. He quickly passed through Virginia Key and drove onto Key Biscayne, the verdant stronghold of the wealthy. In spite of the pricey real estate, almost half of the island was dedicated to parks covered with banyans, palms, and wild growths of lush vegetation. Most of the remainder was claimed by mansions and million-dollar condominiums.

He followed Crandon Boulevard, passing a golf course and a small shopping district. The road narrowed as he motored through quiet, tree-lined residential streets. Suddenly, ahead of him, he saw the gate to Cape Florida State Park and realized he'd missed the turn. He backtracked at fifteen miles an hour until he found Mimosa Lane. Andrews lived at the end of it, on the beach—or more precisely, above the beach. He pulled up to a guard booth at the entrance to the high rise and told its uniformed caretaker who he was visiting.

After jotting down his name and license number, the guard punched a three-digit number on his phone and spoke into it softly, announcing Pierce's arrival. A moment later, the guard told him where to park and motioned him through.

"There you go, Swedie," Pierce said to his car as he closed the door, "a parking spot with an ocean view."

Once inside the lobby, he looked around for the stairs. He walked past the elevator and took the steps two at a time. Heavy metal fire doors separated each flight. He counted eight of them by the time he reached the top floor. Whenever anyone asked him why he took the stairs, he usually said he liked the exercise or he didn't like waiting for the stupid box. The truth was that every time he stepped into an elevator—and he hadn't done it for several years—he experienced a cold-blooded, phobic chill, a sensation that ran up his spine and was accompanied by an irrational terror that he'd be stuck between floors. It had happened once, and he felt a certainty it would happen again.

Andrews's condominium occupied the southeast corner of the top floor. He knocked on the door, and a moment later, the same bodyguard he'd seen four years ago opened the door. His neck was the size of Pierce's thigh and met his shoulders at a forty-five degree slope. He wore a T-shirt that looked as if it would rip at the seams if he flexed his muscles.

"Morning," Pierce said brightly.

The man nodded without speaking, motioned him to enter. Pierce stepped into a spacious living room that afforded a sweeping view of the ocean. He knew that Andrews owned several other homes and that he spent about three months of the year at this residence.

The bodyguard led him through the room, past a dining room, and down a hall to Andrews's study. In the few seconds it took to walk through the apartment, he saw a man and a woman in the kitchen cooking, a maid vacuuming, and several men in suits seated around a table in a meeting room. He had also noticed something else, a blur of cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks, wall clocks, and table clocks. He glanced around the study. More clocks. On the wall behind Andrews's desk, clock hands stretched over a metallic world map. Another, the largest he'd seen, was embedded in the face of an octagonal coffee table situated in front of a black leather sofa. Yet another, this one near the door, said
Tempus Abire Tibi Est
on its face. Pierce laughed. It was the same phrase that Andrews had handwritten on the door inside his bedroom when they roomed together. It meant: It is time for you to go away. At least his sense of humor hadn't changed.