Hunter's Moon (2 page)

I stood. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Sharing personal information? Because you've proven you can be trusted. You know the incident I'm talking about. You refused to discuss it.”

He was referring to something that happened eleven years earlier, in Cartagena, Colombia.

I replied, “You're giving me credit for something I didn't do.”

“Wrong. I'm giving you credit for keeping your mouth shut. Remember who you're talking to, Dr. Ford. I trust you with my secret because I know your secrets. Or should I say, I know
enough.
Surprised?”

No, I wasn't surprised.

“Do the feds still call that ‘coercion'?”

“Not in the executive branch. It's called ‘doing business.' Something else that may interest you is information I have about a friend of yours. Mr. Tomlinson. Things I doubt even you are aware of.”

Tomlinson is my neighbor at Dinkin's Bay Marina, Sanibel Island, Florida. He's part sailor, part saint, part goat. Picture a satyr, with salty dreadlocks, bony legs, wearing a sarong. Tomlinson and I are friends despite a convoluted history, and despite the fact that, as polar opposites, we sometimes clash. We'd clashed recently. I hadn't seen the man in two weeks.

I returned to the microscope and toyed with the focus. “Tomlinson has secrets worth knowing? I'm shocked.”

He wasn't misled by my careful indifference. “You may be. When you learn the truth.”

I looked up involuntarily.

The man's smile broadened.

“Yes. I can see you're interested.”

FOG ISN'T MENTIONED IN GUIDEBOOKS ABOUT SUNNY Florida because tourists are seldom on the water at midnight, when a Caribbean low mingles with cool Gulf air.

The cloud now settling was as dense as any I'd seen. Gray whirlpools of vapor descended, condensed, then re-formed as moonlit veils. Water droplets created curtains of pearls, so visibility fluctuated. Each drifting cloud added to the illusion that the island was moving, not me, not the fog. Ligarto appeared to be a galleon adrift, floating on a random course and gaining speed. I had to start paddling soon if I hoped to keep up.

I did.

Took long, cautious strokes. Paddled so quietly I could hear water dripping from foliage, drops heavy as Gulf Stream rain. The reason I didn't want to make noise was because I knew a security team was guarding the island. Pros, the best in the world.

They would be carrying rocket launchers, exotic weapons systems, electronic gizmos designed to debilitate or kill, no telling what else. Probably five or six men and women, all bored—a little pissed-off, too—forced to work on a favorite adult party night: Halloween.

A dangerous combination for any misguided dimwit foolish enough to attempt to breach island security.

Dangerous for me, the occasional misguided dimwit.

Every few strokes, I paused. In fog, there's the illusion that sound is muffled. In fact, fog conducts sound more efficiently than air. If there was a boat patrolling the area, I would've heard it. Instead, I heard only an outboard motor far away—someone run aground, judging from the seesaw whine. I could also hear the turbo whistle of a jetliner settling into its landing approach, as invisible from sea level as I was invisible to passengers above.

Maybe the patrol boat was at anchor . . . or maybe a few yards away, hidden by mist.

If so, there was nothing I could do. I was alone, in a canoe, miles from my Sanibel home, in a chain of bays that links cities along the Gulf Coast. Tampa was somewhere out there in the gloom, a hundred miles north. Naples, Marco, and Key West were south. Maps in airline magazines show bays but not the smaller islands between beaches and mainland, islands the size of Ligarto.

There are hundreds. Most are deserted mangrove swamp, bird rookeries of guano and muck. A few are privately owned, havens for wealthy recluses. From a jetliner, on a clear day, passengers may spot cottages among groves of citrus and bananas. They may covet the isolation, the quiet swimming pools, the docks—compound-sized islands rimmed by water.

They won't find them mentioned in tourist brochures. Admission is by invitation. Wealth is requisite, power implicit.

Ligarto Island is private. An industrialist tycoon bought the place during Prohibition and built an elegant fishing retreat. The industrialist's heirs still own the compound.

That was the rumor, anyway, and rumor is all locals ever heard about Ligarto.

Visitors came and went without interacting with neighboring islands—Gasparilla, Siesta Key, Useppa, Palm Island, Captiva. Silence is not always passive. The silence associated with Ligarto Island was hostile. It discouraged contact.

Ligarto was a place where the powerful enjoyed anonymity. Software moguls, international entrepreneurs, American political icons used it as a retreat—another popular local rumor.

Tonight it wasn't rumor.

When the celebrated man surprised me in the lab, tapping on the screen door, I'd said to him, “When you say ‘escape,' you mean from your security team. You're serious when you say you want to travel alone.”

“Yes . . . at times, on my own.”

Another evasion.

“A security detail is with me around the clock, three shifts a day, seven days a week. It's been that way for more than thirteen years, and it got tighter when the bounty was offered.”

I'd glanced beyond an aquarium alive with sea urchins toward the dark porch where ninety feet of boardwalk connects my stilt house with shore. A question.

“Relax, Dr. Ford, no one can hear. You met my bodyguard. He's watching from a safe distance.”

It was difficult to be alone with this man and relax. He was referring to the United States Secret Service.

“Why don't you tell your agents the truth: You want time to yourself. You're . . . ill. They should understand.”

“The issue isn't illness,” he snapped. “I have a
measured
amount of time to live. Surely you understand the difference.”

I appreciated his insistence on precise language and nodded.

“Besides, they don't know the latest prognosis. Even if they did, it's not that simple. They're federal employees, with standing orders. I won't compromise them as professionals by asking their permission.”

“The same agents have been with you a long time?”

“Several. I also have my staff to think about—secretaries, schedulers, travel assistants. More than a dozen. When my wife was killed, some of them wept like children. Wray had that effect on people. Her decency, her humor, her . . . her”—the man's voice caught, he swallowed—“Wray's intellect, and sense of grace. Which means they can never know. They're like family. When I say escape, I mean
disappear
.”

I don't follow politics, but even I was aware that he and his wife had been childhood friends, partners for life. Wray Wilson had been an inspiration to many. Born deaf, she'd earned a master's degree before most kids her age—her future husband included—had graduated from high school.

She'd been on a chartered flight, a humanitarian mission carrying medical supplies to Nicaragua. The plane had caught fire during an emergency landing near a volcano. Wray Wilson and six other people were killed.

Distraught, the great man had demanded an international investigation. Later, he made headlines by hinting that his wife's death wasn't accidental.

Grief is part of a complicated survival process, but it can also debilitate. I wondered if grief had unhinged the man. He was too young and vigorous to be senile. But mental illness might explain his behavior. What he was proposing was impractical, maybe irrational.

I became agreeable in the way people do when they are dealing with the impaired. “I can empathize, sir. If a doctor told me I had a month to live, I'd want to . . . well, escape. So I understand, and I'm honored, but—”

He interrupted. “Why makes you so damn certain you don't have a month to live? Or two weeks?”

“Well . . . I don't know. You're right, of course, but we all assume—”

“No, Dr. Ford, we don't all assume. Your time may be more limited than you realize—that's not
necessarily
a threat. It's true of everyone, everywhere. And please don't use that patronizing tone with me again. Do you read me,
mister
?”

Only Academy graduates and ex-fighter jocks can make the word “mister” ring like a slap in the face. He was both.

The man might be nuts but he wasn't feeble.

I started over. “Look, I do empathize, but”—I gestured, indicating the room: wood ceiling, towels for curtains, rows of chemicals and specimen jars, books stacked on tables, fish magnified through aquarium glass—“but I'm a biologist. I don't see how I can help.”

“I've done the research and I can't think of anyone more qualified.”

“It's possible, sir, that you have the wrong man—”

“No. Don't waste my time pretending . . . or maybe denial is a conditioned response in people like you. I
know
Hal Harrington. He's your handler, isn't he?”

Harrington was a high-level U.S. State Department official and covert intelligence guru. I'd known him for many years.

I replied, “Harrington? With an
H
?” I pretended to think about it. “I'm not familiar with the name.”

“Maybe if I remind you of a few details. Would that convince you?”

“I really don't know what you're—”

He held up a hand. “When I was in office, they said I had access to every classified document in the system. Baloney. After what happened in Cartagena, I asked for a dossier on you. Know what I got? Nothing. Or next to nothing. Later, I ran across other globe-trotting Ph.D.s with backgrounds just as murky as yours. Scientists, journalists, a couple of attorneys, even one or two politicians. That's when I began to suspect.

“I started digging. Insomniacs crave hobbies. I won't tell you how but I discovered documents that hinted at the existence of a secret organization. An
illegal
organization, funded by a previous administration. Something called the ‘Negotiating and Systems Analysis Group.' Only thirteen plank members; very select. ‘The Negotiators.' Sound familiar?”

I'd replaced the slide containing the sea urchin embryo with another—a blank slide, I realized, but I pretended to concentrate.

“It was deep-cover intelligence. Members were deployed worldwide as something called ‘zero signature specialists.' An unusual phrase, don't you agree? Zero signature. It suggests they were more than a special operations team. Just the opposite. It suggests that each man worked alone.”

They weren't killers in the military sense, he said. They had a specialty.

“Their targets disappeared.”

The celebrated man studied me as if to confirm I wouldn't react.

I didn't.

 

 

 

TO PADDLE A STRAIGHT COURSE, I FOCUSED ON THE canopy of palms that punctured the mist. Their trunks were curved. Fronds drooped like sodden parrot feathers.

The breeze was southwesterly, warm on my face and left arm—another directional indicator—but the mist was autumnal. I should have been shivering. My clothes were soaked, but I was too focused to be cold.

I was dressed for a dinner party, not a canoe trip: dark slacks, dress shirt, a black silk sports jacket tailored years ago in Southeast Asia. I'd dressed for the role I would have to play if the Secret Service intercepted me. It could happen.

To get on and off the island undetected, I had to know how the Secret Service operated so I did my homework. I spent time at Sanibel's library and on the Internet. More valuable was a discussion I had with an old friend, Tony Stoverthson, who'd worked for the agency prior to passing the Florida bar.

I knew the island would be protected by a dozen or so agents working in three shifts. They would've created an on-site command post that would include liaison people from the local sheriff's department and the Coast Guard. The command post would maintain direct contact with the agency's intelligence division in Washington and also their main headquarters in Beltsville, Maryland. Unique code names would be assigned to the island, the protectee, members of the protectee's family (if any), even the protectee's boat.

Tony told me, “The agency's dealt with all types of celebrities and they're all assigned a name. Prince Charles was ‘Unicorn.' Ted Kennedy,‘Sunburn.'Amy Carter was ‘Dynamo'; Frank Sinatra, ‘Napoleon.' A protectee's limo might be called ‘Stagecoach.' An island might be called ‘The Rock' or ‘Fort Apache'—a name that's immediately understood but still maintains security.”