Interesting creatures, jellyfish. These were tiny animals-the size of a quarter. Uncomplicated. No brain, no heart, no hearing. Simplex nervous systems that responded to light and odor. Pursue. Attack. Feed. Reproduce.
Tentacles trolled beneath them, lures to fish or zooplankton. Passive but not benign. Each was coated with an arsenal of microscopic projectiles. Hair triggers, cnidocils. They fired darts attached to coiled thread. Harpoon cannon, a human equivalent, were slow in comparison and not as deadly.
After penetration, each nematocyst injected its ordnance of poison. Feeding became a leisurely process.
In Australia, these tiny jellies and their basketball-sized relative, box jellyfish, had killed dozens of people. They were feared, like crocodiles. Yet their corporeal form was an illusion. Their bodies were ninety-eight percent saltwater, two percent living cells.
That morning, I’d written in my lab journaclass="underline"
Jellyfish are as close as evolution has come to producing intelligence unconstrained by tissue.
Predatory drifters… delicate as flower blossoms. Jellyfish were killers without conscience.
I was raising Carukia as an experiment in bioterrorism. If I could raise lethal sea jellies in a Florida lab, terrorists could, too. Difference was, I wasn’t going to sneak them into vacation ecosystems at South Beach, Key West, Fort Lauderdale, and Sarasota. They spawned by the millions.
Poisonous shrimp-another project. They were housed in a plastic drum attached to hoses, filters, and pumps. The drum was kept locked. A viewing window had been installed.
Inside were several hundred shrimp, feet fanning water for steerage. They were the same variety served in restaurants, but these had been raised on toxic feed. I made the stuff from fish that contained a poisonous dinoflagellate, ciguatera.
Ciguatera is commonly found in reef fish, and in the predators that eat them. That’s why you don’t see barracuda on a restaurant menu.
Shrimp were unfazed by the toxin, but their flesh absorbed it like sponges. Half a dozen, eaten even after being shelled, boiled, or fried, would paralyze a healthy man. Maybe kill him.
Shrimp served in chain restaurants are commonly raised in Central American ponds. Ciguatera poisoning is associated with eating fish, never shrimp. If the Red Lobster crowd started dropping in the streets, there would be panic and economic calamity before the Centers for Disease Control figured it out.
Margaret Holderness and her underlings had been impressed.
Anticipate tactics-that was my task. An enemy loses more than a battle if he finds you waiting at his ambush spot.
It’s something I’m good at.
Before signing the new contract, I’d operated on the dark side of the fence, a phrase used by State Department types. Marine biology was a cover, not an assignment. Now, ironically, it was my research that was classified.
At first, I welcomed the change. I no longer had to switch passports after border crossings. Didn’t have to ship weaponry to prearranged destinations. Didn’t have to blend in, studying local sea life while also tracking assigned targets.
Sometimes, people just disappear.
I was good at that, too.
I was working regular hours, staying home instead of jetting off on fictional research trips. I ate, slept, and socialized like a normal American professional. And… the lifestyle was suffocating me.
I had been unmasked by the truth, and I was growing impatient with the lie I’d been living.
I turned from the aquarium and dialed Beryl’s number again. No answer.
This time, I left a message. “There’s a health spa on the island we discussed that might have something to do with your problem. The Hooded Orchid. I may book a room. Your family’s in the spa business-find out what you can about the place, and give me a call.”
Beryl didn’t call that night. The next morning, I left a similar message before leaving to catch my plane.
13
Shortly after landing at a private airstrip on Saint Lucia, two hundred miles off the South American coast, I rented a boat and made the short water crossing to Saint Arc.
Now I was working my way down a rain-forest mountainside toward the rental house where Shay and her bridesmaids had stayed. Occasionally, I got a glimpse of the place through trees alive with orchids and canoe-sized leaves.
Shay had picked it as the ideal spot for a women’s getaway. As I got closer, I understood the appeal.
It was a Tahitian-style house on stilts, built of tropical wood so rich with natural oils it glowed amber in the lavender afternoon light. The house sat among coconut palms, overlooking a lagoon on its own little cusp of beach. A wicked beach for topless sunbathing, Shay had described it.
There were people on the beach now. Four stretched out on towels. Women, probably, but I was too far away to be sure.
Palms and a rock ridge screened the house from a longer beach and a resort hotel a quarter mile away-a busy place with umbrellas and Jet Skis. Here, though, the house and lagoon were quiet, a private island on a larger island. It looked idyllic, safe. An inviting rental-also an alluring trap for blackmail.
I spent another five minutes descending the hillside, the forest floor spongy underfoot as parrots and macaws quarreled in a tree canopy that filtered sunlight, so it was a little like being underwater-darker, cooler, until I stepped into a clearing a hundred yards above the beach.
Yes… women. All topless; two of them nude. Seen from above, their bodies mimicked the curvature of wind sculptures; skin dark against white sand that edged the lagoon. I’d studied the nautical charts. The lagoon formed the upper basin of a canyon that descended to the sea bottom several hundred feet below. Water was Jell-O blue in the shallows, then dropped vertically in black shafts of light.
I stood for a moment, feeling uneasy and ridiculous-a reluctant voyeur unaccustomed to imposing on the privacy of women. I hadn’t known the house was occupied.
I ducked into the forest, moving quietly downward. Soon, I was close enough to see the swimming pool behind the house. The pool was kidney-shaped with an adjoining Jacuzzi built into a stone deck. There was patio furniture, a grill, and a bar. The area was unscreened, but hedged by bougainvilleas in pale yellow bloom. Hedges gave the illusion of privacy, but they were trimmed low, so my view was unobstructed.
It had to be close-the place where a cameraman had set up equipment and filmed Shay, Beryl, Liz, and Corey with the islanders. If the girls were random victims, there wouldn’t be much to find. But if the rental house was designed for blackmail, there would be a fixed place for filming.
I found it. The camera blind was so well-camouflaged with netting and branches that I nearly passed it. The netting covered a structure built of bamboo and lumber, open on all sides, and roofed with palm thatching. Like a hunter’s blind.
The entrance was a slit in the netting. I found a stick, broke it, then used it as a probe to check for booby traps. I tossed the stick away, then stepped through the opening.
It was a cozy little place: two folding chairs; an Igloo cooler beneath a table where there was an ashtray, and a plastic box-the kind you burp to seal. Inside were a couple of French magazines, a crumpled blue pack of Gauloise cigarettes, and several minicassettes, unopened. Panasonic DVM-60s-like the one used to film the girls.
I picked up a magazine. Paris Match, logo in red.
On the cover was an attractive middle-aged woman, looking good in a two-piece swimsuit, hands combing her hair back as she exited the water-a candid shot.
I don’t speak French, but I understand a little. The headlines were easily translated; the woman’s name was familiar to anyone who follows world events via shortwave radio. I do.