The Heist (30 page)

“I am,” he said.

“What makes you so sure it’s ‘Sikander’ or ‘Sikandergul’?”

“Because Daniel Dravot was a character in Rudyard Kipling’s
The Man Who Would Be King
. And because of the quote from the book that Griffin put above all those water buffalo horns in front of his house.”

“I didn’t know you were such an avid reader,” Kate said.

“I haven’t read the book, but I loved the movie,” Nick said. “Sean Connery and Michael Caine star as two nineteenth-century con men and soldiers of fortune, Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnehan. They hatch a plot to become kings by teaching modern warfare techniques to one of the uncivilized mountain tribes of Afghanistan. Then the plan is to lead them to victory over their adversaries. Once the tribe is dominant, the two men intend to betray the king, take his throne, and lord over the dynasty they created.”

“I don’t understand,” Willie said. “What does that have to do with Derek Griffin?”

“In one of the early battles, Dravot is hit in the chest with an
arrow but doesn’t bleed. That’s because he has a bandolier hidden under his shirt that stops the arrow from hitting his flesh. So now the tribe thinks Dravot is a god and they basically make him their king. They give him a collection of gold and jewels that Alexander the Great, who they call Sikander, left with them centuries before in a sacred city they call Sikandergul. The problem is, Dravot begins to believe his own hype. His buddy Peachy wants to sneak out of there right away with the treasure, but Dravot wants to stick around, enjoy being a god for a while, and take one of the chieftain’s beautiful daughters as his lover. But when Dravot goes to bed the girl, she freaks out and bites his lip, drawing blood, revealing to everyone that he’s not a god.”

“Not god, not devil, but man,” Kate said, repeating the quote inscribed above Griffin’s door.

“That’s bad news for Dravot,” Nick said. “Everybody in the tribe feels suckered, so they force Dravot out onto the middle of a rope bridge across a deep gorge and then cut it down. Dravot falls to his death and they beat the crap out of Peachy, who crawls back to civilization with Dravot’s decapitated head in a burlap sack.”

“You could learn a lot from that story,” Kate said.

“I have,” Nick said. “Griffin’s password.”

“I’m lost,” Willie said.

“Griffin thinks his own life is tragically mirroring Dravot’s,” Kate said, “that he’s a king with a vast fortune who is stuck in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of uncivilized natives.”

“Aha!” Willie said. “And like Dravot, a big part of his undoing is his desire to nail a woman. I almost feel sorry for the guy.”

“You shouldn’t,” Kate said. “He’s a crook, and he’s sleeping in his own bed while we’re sitting in a cave full of corpses.”

“A short-term situation,” Nick said. “Twenty-four hours from
now, we’ll be on our way to the Indian Ocean in a seaplane with Derek Griffin and his money. We just have to figure out how to escape.”

Kate thought that should be easy for a man who managed to talk his way out of prison by convincing the deputy director of the FBI not only to let him go but let him continue to commit massive frauds and help him do it. Compared to that, how hard could it be to escape from an island overrun with pirates in the middle of Indonesia?

“No problemo,” she said. “Pass me the caviar.”

Part of Kate’s training as a Navy SEAL involved learning to adapt to adversity, to be able to rest and recharge in virtually any environment, no matter how extreme or unpleasant it might be, whether she was on an ice floe or lying on gravel in the open desert. So she figured she could manage to spend the night in a humid cave.

Willie was on her Really Big Adventure and up for anything. She’d just spent six weeks in jail, so she looked like she was going to be fine. She’d gone on a grave-robbing spree, snatching scraps of material off altars to the dead to make a pillow.

Kate suspected it would be different for Nick Fox. He appreciated his comfort and rarely settled for anything less than the finest accommodations. To her surprise, Nick stretched out on a slab of rock, put his hands behind his head, and went to sleep. He might as well have been reclining on a chaise in their villa in Bali. Damn,
Kate thought, you have to give credit where credit is due. The man can adapt.

Unlike Willie and Nick, Kate wasn’t ready to go to sleep. She wanted to explore a little and size up the guards at the mouth of the cave. She retraced her steps to the cave opening and looked out. The two Javanese men were standing on the ledge, their guns slung over their shoulders and their backs to the cave opening. They were looking out at the view and smoking kreteks, Indonesian clove cigarettes that made a crackling sound when the guards inhaled.

“Yoo-hoo,” Kate called. “Can I bum a smoke?”

The men jerked to attention as if they’d been electrocuted. The guard nearest her swore in Indonesian and shoved her back into the cave, wagging his finger at her.

“Do not go here,” he said. “This is very bad behavior.”

Kate smiled to herself. They were lazy and untrained. They thought their guns and knives were all they needed to keep their prisoners in line. This was a good thing for her and unfortunate for them.

In the morning, Kate and Willie were taken down to the house, where they sat on the scrub grass outside and were served rice pancakes and fruit for breakfast by the exhausted-looking chef and his wife. Bob emerged from the house wearing some of Griffin’s clothes and sporting a panama hat. He was obviously ridiculing Griffin, who sat frowning on the veranda. The pirates gathered around, amused by the caricature, none more so than Bob himself, who couldn’t stop smiling.

“You’ve got quite a setup here,” Bob said to Griffin. “But there’s
one thing missing that would truly make it paradise. You know what that is?”

“Your absence?” Griffin said.

“Women! Surely you didn’t come here to build yourself a monastery. Or are you just waiting for the right one to miraculously drift ashore?” He ambled over to Kate. “Is she the one?”

“Leave her alone,” Griffin said.

Bob ignored him and grinned at Kate. “What if your father doesn’t come up with your ransom? Would you stay here in paradise if this fool paid for you?” He looked over his shoulder at Griffin. “What do you say? Would you like to buy her from me?”

“I’m not for sale,” Kate said.

“Of course you are,” Bob said. “You won’t marry a man unless he’s rich, unless he can give you the things you want, and Daniel here is loaded. Well, not quite as much as he was before I came along.”

“That’s enough, Bob,” Griffin said.

Bob glanced at Griffin. “Who are you to tell me what to do?”

“The man who has the fifty-year lease on this island. I’m not some rich tourist passing through. Her father pays and she’s gone. But after I pay, you’ll still have to deal with me.”

“Not if I kill you,” Bob said.

“And risk enraging the Indonesian authorities who’ll be deprived of their generous bribes? And what about them?” Griffin gestured to the Torajan villagers who stood in front of their huts, watching the show unfold. “Their tribe was dying before I came along. Who do you think pays for the condos in Sulawesi where their families live now? If you kill me, they’ve all got to come back here to this rock. They won’t be too happy with you about that.”

“You think that scares me?”

“It should,” Griffin said.

There was a reason Griffin was so successful in his business, Kate thought. He could be tough. And he wasn’t stupid.

The Torajans mined the salt from the sea, using a system as old as the tribe. The process was simple. Water was lugged from the sea in buckets and poured onto swaths of sand that baked in the sun. Later, the thin layer of dried sand that was saturated with salt was shoveled into baskets. Torajan women carried the baskets on their heads to a bamboo hut, where they were emptied into a crude wooden sieve lined with mesh. Seawater was poured on the sand, dissolving the salt and carrying it out through the mesh into wooden channels leading to outdoor troughs. The water eventually evaporated, and the salt that remained was gathered up with carved coconut shells and put into new baskets.

The tribe kept a small amount of the salt for their own use but sold the bulk of it to wholesalers. It didn’t bring in much money, but it was reliable income apart from whatever they were paid by Griffin. More important, it was a tradition and a ritual, one they weren’t willing to give up just to sweep Griffin’s floors.

“I wouldn’t want you to attempt an escape out of boredom,” Bob said to Griffin, Willie, and Kate, “so I’m going to let you work on the salt flat.”

For the rest of the day, Griffin lugged seawater to his designated patch of sand, and Kate and Willie scooped up layers of dry, salty sand into baskets, carried the baskets into the hut, and poured the sand into the sieves. Kate played the spoiled heiress, complaining and periodically abandoning her job to stagger off in search of shade. In truth, she was keeping a head count of the pirates, trying
to get a sense of how many men were on the island and how well armed they were. Her estimate was about a dozen, not counting how many were on Bob’s mother ship that was anchored on the other side of the island. No way to get a count of them. All of the men had automatic weapons and knives. None of the men looked especially smart.

Late in the afternoon, Griffin, Willie, and Kate were given a dinner of rice, dried fish, and fruit, which they ate outside in silence. After dinner, Kate and Willie were led back to the cave and Griffin remained at the house.

Nick was waiting in the large chamber beyond the boulder. He had whisky and fresh fruit set out on a flat rock, lit by candlelight. “Welcome home,” he said.

Kate poured out a shot of whisky. “The pirates are searching the island for you.”

“They’re not searching very hard, and I can’t blame them. There are only two ways off the island, either on the boat they are using to go back and forth to their Bugis schooner, or on the seaplane they think none of us knows how to fly. So while you two were relaxing on the beach today, I scouted the island.”

“How many men are guarding the dock?”

“None. And I only saw two men out on the schooner. I’ve counted a dozen men on the island.”

“Me, too.”

“I have a plan,” Nick said.

Kate sipped the whisky. “Mine’s better.”

“You haven’t heard mine yet.”

“I don’t have to. You are a con man. I’m a trained soldier. The escape is a military op, that’s
my
bailiwick. We should make our move at two
A.M.
by overpowering the two guards. Willie will
head for the seaplane and get it ready for flight while I get Griffin and you steal the laptop. Unless it’s too risky to get the laptop. The laptop is a bonus, not a necessity. We’ll have Griffin and his passwords, and if we can’t figure out which bank he’s stashed the money in, then Diego de Boriga can squeeze the name out of Burnside. All we have to do is get Griffin to the seaplane.” Kate turned to Willie. “Can you fly it?”

“Sure,” Willie said. “A plane is a plane.”

“This one takes off and lands on water.”

Willie shrugged. “I’ll pretend it’s a runway.”

“That doesn’t fill me with confidence,” Kate said.

They all knocked back another whisky.

“Okay,” Kate said. “I’m feeling more confident now.”

“Your plan is actually the same plan as mine, with one key difference,” Nick said. “I’ll get Griffin while you make the run for the laptop. The con isn’t over. You have to look at the long game. If we want Griffin to come with us willingly, we need to stay true to the characters we’re playing. Eunice Huffnagle wouldn’t be leading an escape, but the guy her father hired to protect her might.”

“Good point,” Kate said. “Okay, we’ll switch jobs.”

“We’re also going to need a distraction to keep the pirates occupied while we make our escape.”

“I’ve got that covered,” she said.

Nick smiled. “Then we’re good to go.”

The first thing Nick and Willie saw when Kate nudged them awake at 2
A.M.
were two unconscious pirates stripped to their underwear and lying side by side on the ground, bound and gagged with garments pilfered from the dead. Kate stood over the men, one AK-47 slung over her shoulder, the other one propped up beside her.