Gideon looked at her oddly. An idea just struck him. “This isn’t the first time you’ve done this.”
“No, it’s not.”
“So who are you, really? And what line of work are you normally in?”
“Those details would only confuse you. Just stick with the cover story and forget who I really am.”
He looked at her left hand. “Are you really married, or is that ring a fake like mine?”
She held it up. “All right. You get one more detail. It’s a fake, like yours. I’m not married, never have been.”
Gideon shook his head, poured himself another glass of wine. “Are you sure you don’t want a glass? It’s opening up — a wonderful wine.”
She shook her head. “No thanks.”
Gideon momentarily wondered whether Glinn had told her about his terminal condition. Probably not. He also wondered if Amy didn’t have some medical condition of her own to motivate her. It would be just like Glinn to find someone he could exploit like that.
She shut her notebook. “Any questions?”
“Yeah. Where are the guns?”
She pointed behind him. A pair of mahogany doors opened to a metal cabinet. It was unlocked. He pulled the doors open to reveal a small arsenal of weaponry: assault rifles, handguns, spearguns, a Heckler & Koch PSG 1 sniper rifle with a five-round detachable magazine. There was even an RPG and a rack of handheld incendiary and fragmentation grenades. Gideon whistled, reached in and removed a Colt .45 1911, ejected the magazine. Fully loaded. The piece had been customized, fully rounded for tactical use, fitted front and rear with combat sights with tritium inserts. A beautiful, expensive custom gun.
“You know how to use these?” Gideon asked, putting it back.
“That’s my 1911 you were toying with. So yes.”
“We could start a war with these weapons.”
“Hopefully we’ll never need to even open this case.”
Gideon turned and looked steadily at Amy. She returned the gaze, her face neutral, thoughts inscrutable. “I wonder just where Glinn found you,” he said.
Another rare smile. “You’ll never know.”
18
Gideon awoke to the sounds of thumping and grunting coming from Amy’s stateroom. She was doing calisthenics. He glanced at the portholes — not even light yet. The clock said five thirty AM.
Rolling out of bed, he pulled on a bathrobe and stumbled into the galley. He was delighted to find a small but expensive Italian espresso machine and grinder tucked into one corner. A few cupboards down he found the beans. He ground them and prepared the machine, wondering if his teetotaling “wife” would be a prohibitionist in the caffeine department as well. He was damn glad he wasn’t married to her for real.
As he filled a tiny cup with hot espresso, a ristretto—the way he liked it — he appreciated even more Garza’s attention to detail.
A moment later the galley door opened and Amy came in, dressed for the day in a work shirt and white pants. “I’ll take a double, black, no sugar,” she said, passing through. “Bring it to me at the helm, please; I’d like to get under way.”
Gideon sipped his own coffee while grinding the beans for hers. He made the double and brought it up to her as the twin engines of the yacht rumbled to life. She took it without comment while poring over a book of charts open on the dashboard next to the helm. He could hear an electronic-sounding voice on the VHF reading out the weather report, winds, and wave heights.
The boat backed away from the berth with a growl, and a minute later they were heading out of the marina and into open water. It was a calm day, fluffy clouds floating above and a rising sun sparkling off the water. As they cleared the port, she accelerated, the speedometer needle creeping up to twenty-five knots. Aruba dwindled on the horizon, the mainland of Venezuela dropping away on their left. Soon they were cruising in open water.
“Los Monjes is about fifty-five nautical miles away,” Amy said. “We’ll be there in two hours.”
Gideon nodded. “Anything you want me to do, Captain?”
She glanced at him. “Another espresso.”
“Coming right up.”
He made another espresso. While he didn’t particularly enjoy taking orders, he had to admit this was a cushy mission. It was also nice in a way, having somebody else making the decisions for a change. He brought up the espresso and she shot it down as quickly as the first.
The boat thundered across the water, sending back a long, creamy wake. For the first hour of travel, the sea was dotted with other yachts, mostly sailboats, but as they went on, the vessels became less frequent until there was nothing but blue sea. So far he’d felt no symptoms of seasickness — thank God.
Gideon did the rounds as he was instructed by Amy: cleaned the head, downloaded email, called up the weather on the Doppler radar, checked the sat-phone printer for messages from EES. Amy, while not exactly warm and friendly, was courteous and professional. And she was clearly very, very smart. Gideon liked that.
On schedule, a distant hump appeared on the horizon, followed by another, farther away and to the north. They approached the more southerly island, a whitened, barren rock about a quarter mile long, with a ruined lighthouse on top, surrounded by cliffs and pounded by the sea. As they came around the end of the island, the Black Bottle appeared: a sea stack of basalt, standing about fifty yards off the tip of the island, roiled by white surf. Amy called up the tiny drawing of clue six from the Phorkys Map on her navigational computer. As the boat circled the island, the sea stack moved into position, the black rock standing out against the white rock of the island.
Suddenly she reversed throttle and the boat rumbled to a stop.
“Incredible,” said Gideon. He could hardly believe how perfectly they matched.
“Get the camera, please, and take some pictures.” Amy seemed almost more surprised than he was.
While Amy held the boat steady in the swell, Gideon snapped a number of photographs with a digital Nikon camera that EES had provided and took a short video.
“I’ll download everything and send it to Glinn,” he said. “Along with a report.”
“Good. And fill in the log the way I showed you, indicating position, engine hours, fuel, water, weather conditions, and a narrative entry. And then you might make us breakfast. Bacon and eggs, please.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
Gideon went below. At the workstation in the galley, he emailed the photos and report to Glinn over the satellite uplink. He could feel the movement of the water becoming rougher, the boat pitching and yawing as it rode the waves. To his great dismay, he began to feel queasy.
He stood up, put on a frying pan, and began cooking bacon. The smell filled the galley despite the fan and — rather than sharpen his appetite — made him feel worse. He cracked a couple of eggs, scrambled them, added some cheese and fresh chives from the well-stocked refrigerator. When it was done, he set a place for one at the kitchen table, put on the food, and went above.
“Breakfast is ready.”
“Good. You take the helm.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Use the wheel, not the joystick. The joystick is for maneuvering in the harbor. Keep the heading at two hundred and seventy degrees — the electronic compass is right here — and keep an eye out for floating debris. That’s the one thing you really need to worry about out here. We’re in deep water, no reefs, no other boat traffic. As we approach the mainland, you may note a change in the color of the water. I should be back before that.”
With great trepidation, Gideon took the wheel while Amy went below. The boat rumbled along. The flow of air through the open windows was refreshing and began to drive away his incipient nausea. The chartplotter showed the location of the boat, and overlaid on that was radar data. The sonar indicated a depth under the keel of several hundred feet. The speed was fifteen knots, the heading two hundred seventy degrees. The vessel seemed to be riding well, at least to his inexperienced feel.