Bonefish was passing the entrance buoy at the start of the long channel leading into the harbor off the capital city when a big Bertram sportfishing boat with gleaming stainless steel rails and the name Fish n’ Chicks in gold letters on her transom cruised past at twenty knots throwing a monstrous wake. She’d wondered at first if it had been the same boat she’d seen anchored that morning, but the Yank fish boats all looked pretty much the same. The man on the bridge deck had long hair under a baseball cap pulled low on his head. She figured him for a mechanic taking the owner’s boat out for a sea trial. Another weird character with a white Afro and dressed all in white stood on the side deck holding tight to a railing, looking like a seasick ghost.
Riley gripped the steering wheel as their wake rocked her little boat, but the ghost didn’t even turn to look at them.
She wondered if Bob was still in the head getting rolled right off the toilet.
The sun was angling in under the Bimini top that shaded her cockpit. She slid her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose, trying to make out the channel ahead. Between the binoculars, the GPS, and the paper chart spread out on the cockpit seat, she was still having a time making out the ship channel markers.
She was glad she had moved the dive knife on her last trip below. And she’d slid her rigging knife into her pocket. He seemed harmless enough, but she was not about to drop her guard.
During the last few hours, he had tried several times to start a conversation. Each time, she’d answered him with curt, one-word replies, hoping he’d get the message. Eventually, he’d given up on conversation and walked to the bow where he stretched out on top of the cabin and seemed to fall asleep.
Until fifteen minutes ago when he’d sat up, moved aft, looked all around with her binoculars, and then asked to go below. She wished she knew what his story was. Was he on the lam or was he some kind of freak down there trying on her underwear?
Riley glanced away from her chart and tried to focus on the dimly lit cabin. It was too strange having another person on the boat, again. She’d left DC in October with her best friend, Hazel, as crew. They had a fine trip going down the Chesapeake to Norfolk and through the Intracoastal Waterway to Beaufort, North Carolina. Though the two of them could not be more different, both were State Department brats, and Hazel was the closest thing to a sister Riley had.
So, on the trip south, she’d talked to Hazel about Lima. About her affair at the embassy with the man who was so right, yet so wrong for her in so many ways, and then about the bomb. She told her about how she’d seen Mr. Wrong for the last time on the day of the bombing, and he had just walked away into the smoke. About how later, through the endless interviews and debriefings, she waited to hear from him. Total silence. Compared to that pain, the burns were nothing.
Afterwards, she left the Corps, using her father’s illness as an excuse, and swore off men for good.
It felt good to talk about it after years of holding it inside. But looking back now, it bothered her that it had been so easy to leave out parts of what happened. Was she lying to her best friend by not telling her everything? But then, not even Riley knew the whole truth. She hoped to find that out here in Guadeloupe, tomorrow.
In Beaufort, Hazel said her tearful good-bye, and Riley took off for a straight shot to Puerto Rico. Ten days later, she’d pulled into Boqueron, pleased with her first solo ocean passage, and she’d been alone ever since. She liked solo sailing, she told herself, so why, when Mr. Wrong emailed her out of the blue, as though years of silence were nothing, had she agreed to meet him in Pointe-à-Pitre?
She was thinking about Lima and leaning over the side, out from under her Bimini, to look up at the bridge of a passing freighter when a loud voice spoke right next to her ear.
“Nice boat you’ve got here, Maggie Magee!”
Her body jerked. She banged her head on the stainless tubes of the Bimini frame, and she nearly knocked Bob off his feet.
She rubbed her hand on the back of her head. “Stop calling me that.”
“Little jumpy, aren’t we?”
She didn’t say anything, and she hoped he didn’t notice her discomfort. Her other hand had brushed against the sarong she’d given him, and she was trying very hard not to think about what she’d felt beneath it.
“Pretty comfortable down below — for a sailboat.”
She continued to ignore him which was difficult since he’d picked up her binoculars – again – and trained them on the Bertram. She squinted at the boat in the distance wondering what his interest in it was all about.
He lowered the glasses and looked up at her. “I see you’re reading one of those books.”
Okay, it seemed like a safe topic. She’d bite. “What books?”
“All that about the Knights Templar and the Illuminati?” He sighed. “You don’t believe that stuff, do you?”
“It’s fiction. Just a fun read.”
“Dead right. They’re not the ones we’ve got to worry about. But the Bilderburgers, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations? You know, the whole Skull and Bones crew?”
She flicked a quick glance at him. “I’ve heard of them.” So he was one of those, she thought. Conspiracy nut jobs generally weren’t dangerous.
“They’re the ones really in charge now,” he continued. “They’re running the shadow government. They’ve completely screwed up our country, spying on us with satellites, tapping phones, stealing elections, false flag attacks, getting us into this friggin’ war and torturing people. These billionaires and their banking buddies have made ass wipe out of the Constitution, and they intend to keep it that way. But the closer we get to this election, the more frantic they get. That’s what those guys should be writing about.”
She looked at his face to see if he was kidding. He had a strong chin and the muscles of his jaw were set. “And I suppose you believe in the second gunman on the grassy knoll and that MI-6 killed Diana?”
His green eyes looked at her without blinking and one eyebrow lifted just a fraction. “Don’t you?”
She turned her head aside and rolled her eyes. “I’ll believe in conspiracy theories when you can show me more than two people who can keep a secret.”
“What about Project MK-Ultra?”
She sighed and turned back to look at him. “And what was that?”
He smiled and pointed his index finger an inch from her nose. “My point, exactly,” he said.
She somehow managed to stop herself from reaching over and breaking his finger.
“Okay,” he said. “In the fifties and sixties, the CIA was doing mind control research by giving all kinds of drugs — including LSD — to unwitting citizens. It didn’t come out until the mid-seventies.”
She’d heard about that, but she didn’t know enough to venture an opinion. What was she doing arguing with this nut case anyway? “Okay, so there may be stuff that goes on behind closed doors in government, but there’s not a whole lot we can do about it besides voting.”
“Yeah, right,” he said. “On an electronic voting machine made by a subsidiary of Haliburton?”
She rubbed the sweat from her eyes. “But you and I aren’t going to change that.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong, Magee. If we don’t do it, who will?”
She had once said nearly identical words when she enlisted in the Marine Corps. She’d been so angry after her brother’s death, and she wanted to reveal all the secrets, right all the wrongs in the world. When had she grown so cynical?
Riley knew the answer to that one. After Lima.
She ventured a quick glance at him. His eyes reminded her of the ocean — of that glowing shade of grayish green when the first sunlight breaks through after a thunderstorm. He looked up and caught her staring. She turned her head away, as though she had heard something behind them.
She knew better than to argue with a conspiracy nut. When she faced forward again, she said, “Listen, Bob, we’re about to enter the anchorage, so I’d appreciate it if you’d sit still and keep quiet until the anchor’s down.”