“I have sympathetic friends. What’s this business with Root? You don’t believe the lawyer?”
“I’ve got no reason not to. The timing just seems odd. Two days ago Root was distraught; he could barely function. Today he’s flying halfway across the globe.”
“I admit, it’s a little strange, but hell, everybody’s strange.”
McBride shoved his hands into his pockets, wandered to the windows and looked out. On the sidewalk below a groundskeeper was planting marigolds. Joe watched the man’s hands work the soil, digging holes for each plant, setting the ball into the hole …
Back to gardening, he thought. What the hell was going on?
The groundskeeper stood up and brushed the dirt from his hands.
Hands … Dirty hands.
Unbidden, McBride found himself back at the shack on the Susquehanna. In his mind’s eye, he watched Selmani shuffle onto the porch with Amelia Root held before him, his arm wrapped around her waist, her hand dangling by her side, fingers clenching and unclenching—. Fingers …
“She tended her own goddamned garden,” he muttered.
“What’s that?” Oliver said.
McBride turned. “Root told me his wife insisted on tending her own garden — zucchini, tomatoes, broccoli — all that. She was a practical woman, a homebody. They weren’t socialites. Hell, the day of the kidnapping she’d been out until dusk staking up the tomato plants. He said she came inside, they watched a little TV, then went to bed.”
“So?”
“So why did Selmani’s hostage have painted and manicured fingernails?”
24
Tanner drew abreast of the Sorgia’s beam and stopped swimming. The swells were rolling heavily, and he could feel the current swirling beneath him. At the Sorgia’s accommodation ladder a crewman tied off Susanna’s runabout, helped her over, then the two of them climbed the ladder and disappeared on deck.
Tanner ducked underwater and swam hard until he felt his hands touch the runabout’s hull. He surfaced, peeked over the gunwale to make sure the way was clear, then eased around to the platform and crawled up. He paused, listened. On deck, a man’s voice laughed. A hatch banged shut, then silence.
Eyes fixed on the railing above, Tanner pressed himself against the hull and crept up the ladder. A few steps below the deck he paused and poked his head up. The deck was empty. On the bridge a man passed before the windows, then out of view.
Tanner crab-walked the last few steps onto the deck. Fully exposed now, he sprinted aft on cat feet, heading for the nearest stack of crates. He was ten feet from them when a spotlight washed over him. He dropped to his belly.
“Sie sind zurückgekehrt!” a voice called from above and behind him. They’re back!
Tanner crawled a few feet to his left and scrambled behind the crates.
Off the port beam he heard the grumbling of an outboard engine. It rose in pitch until a speedboat materialized out of the fog and drew alongside the accommodation platform. Four men were aboard: one at the wheel, and three seated around a coffin-sized crate on the deck. The light was too faint for Tanner to make out facial features, but one man stood out from the rest. Standing nearly six and a half feet tall, he had white-blond hair and sickly pale skin. Karl Litzman.
Tanner watched him, unable to tear his eyes away. He imagined his hands on Susanna and—Stop, he commanded himself. Now wasn’t the time. He had to concentrate on staying clear of Litzman and his men. If caught, he had no doubt about his fate: a bullet in the back of the head and a burial at sea.
Litzman cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted. A moment later two of the crew came trotting down the ladder. Tanner caught a glimpse of a white cast on the second man’s hand — one of their attackers from the Black Boar. The gang’s all here.
On the platform there was a few moments of hand shaking and back slapping. Litzman barked an order. The men stooped down, lifted the crate off the deck, and slid it onto the platform. Judging from their grunts, Tanner guessed the contents weighed several hundred pounds.
“Beeilen Sie sich!” Litzman growled. Hurry yourselves!
With two men at each end of the crate, the group climbed the ladder, maneuvered around the railing, then through the hatch in the superstructure. Litzman crouched beside the boats, cut each one free, waited until they began drifting away, then tossed an object into each. There was a muffled double crump. Each boat began settling into the water. Thirty seconds later they slid beneath the waves.
Litzman turned and climbed up the ladder.
After a few minutes of searching the afterdeck, Tanner found a stack of crates that formed a small alcove. Once certain he hadn’t missed any telltale gaps, he crawled inside and tried to get comfortable. He was cold and wet and starting to shiver. He wrapped his arms around his calves and curled into a ball.
From the forecastle he heard the whine of a generator starting up, followed by a rumbling as the anchor came up. A voice shouted from the forecastle: “Alles ist bereit!” The deck trembled and then settled into a throbbing rhythm.
Underway, Tanner thought.
But to where? And what was in the crate?
His alcove blocked much of the wind, but as the Sorgia moved first into the Bay of Biscay then into the Atlantic, tendrils of cold air slipped through the crannies and set him shivering again. He tried to concentrate on warm images: a roaring campfire, a steaming cup of coffee … Whether the exercise did anything for his body temperature he wasn’t sure, but it occupied his mind.
Some time later — three A.M. by his watch — he heard the clomp of footsteps outside his cave. They paused for a moment, then continued on and faded away, only to return a few minutes later. Tanner lay still, waiting. A voice began whistling; the tune was rough, but recognizable: the theme from I Dream of Jeannie.The signal had been Susanna’s choice; as a child, the show had been one of her favorites.
Tanner smiled, then whistled back. A hand appeared through one of the gaps. Tanner gave it a squeeze. “You okay?” he whispered. “Any problems?”
“No, I’m fine. Everyone but the bridge crew is asleep. I brought you something.” Her hand withdrew and the corner of a woolen blanket appeared. “There’s a cap in there, too.”
Tanner pulled the blanket through, wrapped himself in the blanket and slipped the knit cap on his head. Almost immediately he felt a flood of warmth course through him. “Thanks, Susanna.”
“I’ll try to find you some food, too.”
“Any idea where we’re headed?”
“South. I got a look at the chart. Unless I read it wrong, we’re headed for the Straights of Gibraltar. I didn’t notice anything beyond that.”
Into the Mediterranean, Tanner thought. “Where are we now?”
“Somewhere off La Baule.”
Tanner tried to visualize France’s coastline. They’d traveled roughly fifty miles in four hours, which made the Sorgia’s cruising speed about twelve knots. “Litzman brought a crate aboard.”
“I saw it. They’ve got it locked in the forward hold; he’s got the only keys.”
“I need to get a look at it. What kind of door to the hold?”
“Most of them are steel, I think,” she replied. “No, that’s not right; they’re too thin. Aluminum, maybe?”
“Guards?”
“I’ll try to find out.”