Death Echo (4 page)

“One hundred!” called out the dockhand.

Mac loosened his grip on the nozzle, replaced the tank cover, and walked around the stern to the tank on the other side. The dockhand leaped forward to feed more hose aboard.

Emma looked at the thick hose, stepped behind the dockhand, lifted a few coils to help, and almost staggered.

Heavy. Who knew yachting was hard work?

Silently she revised her estimate of the captain’s physical strength. He was handling the stuff like it was garden hose. That rangy frame of his was deceptive.

“Hey, no need to get that cool top dirty,” the dockhand said. “I can handle it.”

“That’s what washing machines are for,” Emma said. “Do you do this all day?”

“Every day. The other dockhand quit. But I’m making a lot of money toward my degree.”

“In what?”

“Engineering.”

“That’s a lot of hose hauling,” Emma said.

“Beats waiting tables. I love being outside with boats.”

“Ready,” Mac called from the other side of the yacht.

“Coming on,” the dockhand said as she flipped a lever on one of the pumps. The dial began to spin, fast.

Another smaller yacht nosed in behind
Blackbird.
The dockhand went quickly to catch the lines.

Emma watched the dial on the fuel pump for a time. She was just reaching for the shutoff lever when the dockhand appeared, turned off the pump, and went back to feeding hose to the second boat.

“One hundred,” Emma called to Mac.

Moments later he appeared with the nozzle and heavy hose trailing. “New job?” he asked Emma.

The dockhand teleported into place, took the nozzle, then began dragging hose back and coiling it out of the way.

“Just a helping hand,” Emma said. “Poor kid has her work cut out for her.” She rubbed her hands on her jeans. “Permission to come aboard?”

“I’m on a short clock, but I can spare a few minutes.” He called out to the dockhand. “Go ahead and take care of the other boat. I can wait for the fuel ticket.”

She waved and looked grateful. The other customers were fishermen, eager to get out on the water.

Short clock.

Emma noted the military phrase as she headed for the stern of the boat. She grabbed the yacht’s stainless-steel rail, felt the grainy residue of salt spray, and lowered herself to the swim step. Her weight was nothing compared to that of
Blackbird;
the boat didn’t bounce or jerk as it accepted her.

Yet she sensed immediately the difference between dock and deck.
Blackbird
was alive with subtle motion.

Years peeled away and she was ten again, fishing with her father on the Great Lakes. She shook it off and concentrated on the mission.

“You aren’t staying in the marina?” she asked Mac.

He’d already decided to tell her the truth, because she could easily find it out anyway. Nothing like appearing helpful to catch someone off guard.

“I’m a transit captain,” he said, waving her toward the steps leading up to the deck. “I’m being paid to deliver this boat to the commissioning yard in Rosario.”

She walked onto the deck and looked around. “What’s a commissioning yard?”

“The hull and most of the interior of the boat is built in Shanghai. The navigation electronics, water maker, satellite linked chart plotter, TVs, radar, computer uplink, speakers, dishwasher, washer-dryer, stove, microwave, refrigerator, freezer, CD,
DVD
, and all the other expensive toys are added in the commissioning yard.”

She glanced at him. “So what kind of navigation system are you using to get to Rosario?”

“Paper charts and experience.”

He gestured her into the main salon.

“How long will the final work take?” she asked, looking around at the covered furniture—and the open panel on the breakers.

He shrugged. “Depends on how jammed up the commissioning yard is. Why?”

Emma stuck to the role she had developed over the last year on her St. Kilda assignment. “Have you ever worked for someone really, really, really rich?”

“No.”

“That kind of money makes people impatient,” she said. “My client wants a yacht like
Blackbird
and he doesn’t want to wait a year or more for it. That’s how long the list is. A year, minimum, no matter what kind of money you have.”

“So he’s going to make the owner an offer he can’t refuse?”

She rolled her eyes. “Nothing that physical. Just a lot of green. Bales of it.”

Mac decided it was barely possible that her story was true. “Nice finder’s fee for you?”

“You bet.” She wandered toward the open panel. “The boats I’ve handled have been from one to eight million.”

“Relatively modest, for the kind of wealth you say your employer has.”

“He has five other boats,” Emma said, running her hand over the beautiful teak wheel. The cover story came easily to her lips. All those years of lying for a living, people dying, everybody lying, and no one gave a damn. “His wife saw a picture of a boat like
Blackbird
in a yachting magazine and decided that she had to have it. Yesterday.”

“Why?”

“Blackbird
is small enough for the two of them to handle alone. Roomy enough for a captain if she changes her mind. And luxurious to the last full stop. You can get bigger boats for the money, but you can’t get better.”

Emma crouched down, rubbed her hand over the glorious teak, and glanced casually at the electronics panel.

The scratch was right where it should be, which meant
Blackbird
‘s twin was still missing.

Good news or bad?

Both, probably. Luck seems to go that way.

Mac said nothing while Emma straightened and moved on to the galley. He decided he could get used to watching her.

“I doubt that
Blackbird
would go for much more than two, maybe three million after she’s commissioned,” he said. “Depends on the electronic toys and the demand in the marketplace.”

“And on how stubborn the present owner is about selling.” She shrugged, then faced Mac. Nice wasn’t getting the job done. Time for something else. “Price isn’t my problem. Getting the boat is. So just who owns
Blackbird
and how do I get hold of him? Make my life easy and I’ll see that you get paid for your time. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Sell your time?”

Her eyes were clear, green, patient, cool.

Stubborn.

Mac’s smile was thin. He knew all about stubborn. He saw it in his mirror every morning. The razor edge of her tongue didn’t bother him. He’d been insulted a lot worse for a lot less reason.

But it meant that he didn’t have to play the amiable and easy game any longer.

“Yeah, that’s what I do,” he said, smiling. “Sell my time.”

This smile was different. It had Emma wishing the gun in her backpack was in her hand.

“How much time do you have on your clock?” she asked.

Blackbird
moved restlessly, responding to a gust of wind. Mac didn’t have to look away from Emma to know that the afternoon westerlies had strengthened. The overcast was now a faint diamond haze.

Time to get going.

“I’m delivering the boat to Blue Water Marine Group,” Mac said. “Today.”

“In Seattle?”

“Rosario. San Juan Islands.”

That could be checked. And would be.

“Is Blue Water Marine Group a broker?” she asked.

“Sometimes.”

Emma throttled a flash of impatience. “Do they own this boat?” He shrugged.

“Do you have their telephone number?” she pressed.

“I use the
VHF
. That’s a radio.”

She told herself that she didn’t see a gleam of amusement in his nearly black eyes, but she didn’t believe it. She hoped he couldn’t see the gleam of temper in hers. She felt like a dumb trout rising for pieces of indigestible metal.

“I’d like to go with you to see how
Blackbird
rides,” she said evenly.

“I don’t want to sell my boss a pig.”

“I’d like to have you along.” He shrugged again. “No can do. Insurance only covers the transit captain.”

“I’ll risk it.”

“Blue Water Marine Group won’t.”

Emma knew a wall when she ran flat into it. She pulled her sunglasses out of her crop top and put them on. “Is there some way I can contact you?”

“I’m right here.”

She flashed her teeth. “So am I. I won’t be for long. How do people who aren’t standing on your feet get hold of you?”

“I move around a lot,” he said. “That’s the life of the transport skipper.”

“But you have a cell phone, right, one that rings almost anywhere?”

Mac decided that baiting wasn’t going to get him anywhere with this woman. She had a temper, and she kept it to herself. So he pulled out one of the stained business cards he always carried in his jeans.

She took it and slid it into her backpack as she walked to the swim step. “See you around, Captain.”

Mac didn’t doubt it.

Nor did he doubt that someone would be running his fingerprints soon. She had handled that card almost as carefully as a crime-scene tech.

BELLTOWN
MARINA

AFTERNOON

T
aras Demidov leaned against the sturdy pipe railing that kept careless pedestrians from falling fifteen feet into the waters of Belltown Marina. Part of him was amused by the railing. It summarized the difference between Russia and America. Russia believed citizens should watch out for themselves; if they got hurt, it wasn’t the government’s fault. America’s citizens believed the state should take care of them like children. Russia accepted a world of good and evil. Americans believed only in good.

Demidov enjoyed working with a culture that believed in God but not in the Devil. Americans were so genuinely surprised when flames burned through their flesh to the bone.

Unfortunately, the world wasn’t made up of Americans. The so-called nations of the Former Soviet Union understood about the reality of evil. Some of them contributed to it at every opportunity.

A movement in the marina caught his eye. He lifted his camera again, bracing the long lens on the railing. A light touch of his finger and the automatic focus homed in on the brunette who had reappeared from the cabin of
Blackbird.
Even though he knew that he wouldn’t be able to identify her at this distance, he took a series of quick pictures. Digital cameras were useful for fast transmission of images, but they just didn’t have the resolution of a good, slow film camera.

But tourists carried digital cameras. As long as he appeared to be a tourist he could vanish among the crowds. He was pushing it by having a long lens on the digital frame, something few tourists had. He wasn’t particularly worried. People saw what they expected to see. If anyone asked him a question, he would answer it in genial American English.

To the crowds around him, Demidov was just one more sightseer enjoying Seattle’s long summer days.

That startling, useful naïveté about strangers hadn’t changed since Demidov had first come to the U.S. many years ago, as a young commercial attaché in the Russian Consulate in San Francisco. He had been amazed then at his freedom of movement from city to city, state to state. He was still amazed. His movements were unwatched, unmarked, anonymous. As long as he stayed away from any Russian Federation consular buildings, he didn’t have to worry about
FBI
counterintelligence watchers.

All he had to do was wait for Shurik Temuri to appear and claim
Blackbird
. Unless the sullen old wolverine was disguised as a supple brown-haired female, Temuri was staying hidden in the background. Shadow man in a shadow world.

As was Demidov, who tracked the woman through the camera lens. She walked like an American, open and confident. Maybe she was the captain’s “friend.” Maybe she was a player. If she got close enough to the camera, he would find out if Moscow had any record of her.

Like a hunter slipping from blind to blind, Demidov tried to take pictures of the woman as she approached. If the crowd around him moved, he went with it. He was careful never to be alone against the sky. That could attract attention. Attention was the death of many a careful plan. And man.

He lined up for another attempt. She was almost close enough for a useful shot. He held his breath, waiting, waiting….

At the last instant the woman turned away, attracted by the white flash of a seagull diving for food thrown by laughing tourists. Turning away like that was a trick experienced agents had, an instinct that made them duck.

Or it could be what it looked like. Coincidence.

Demidov swore silently and turned in another direction, giving her his back as she reached the top of the ramp and slipped into a group of pedestrians. Like the woman, he didn’t want to give away his identity to strangers.

When he turned back, camera and hands shielding his face, he couldn’t find the woman. His mouth flattened. Thinking quickly, he took more pictures of nothing. He could follow her or follow
Blackbird
.

Demidov turned back to Belltown Marina. If the woman was a player, she would reappear when the yacht was delivered in Rosario. If not, it didn’t matter.

All that mattered was
Blackbird
.

NORTH
OF
SEATTLE

4:15 P.M.

E
mma pulled off at a rest stop and sat for a few minutes, pretending to talk into her cell phone. The people in the two cars and one long-haul rig that had followed her off the freeway got out, went into various restrooms, walked dogs, and stretched out cramped muscles. Everyone piled back into the same vehicles and left.

She watched her mirrors and told herself to stop being paranoid. Herself didn’t listen.

She blew out an impatient breath and punched two on her speed dial. The outgoing call to St. Kilda was automatically scrambled, just as incoming calls from St. Kilda were automatically decoded by her phone, which could use either satellite or cell connections. All of St. Kilda’s field agents carried the special phone. In a pinch, it could double as a camera, still or video, with or without sound.