Hunter's moon

1

On a misty, tropic Halloween Eve, an hour before midnight, I stopped paddling when coconut palms poked through the fog ceiling, blue fronds crystalline in the moonlight.

An island lay ahead. Maybe the right island. Hard to be certain, because the fog had thickened as it stratified, and my sense of direction has never been great.

If it was the wrong island, I was lost. If it was the right island, there was a chance I’d soon be detained, arrested, or shot, maybe killed.

I’m human. I was hoping it was the wrong island.

I checked the time as I reached into the pack at my feet and opened a pocket GPS. The navigational display was phosphorous green, like numerals on my watch. It was 11:17 p.m., I discovered, and I wasn’t lost. I’d arrived at my destination, Ligarto Island.

As I drifted, the tree canopy floated closer. Slow-motion fog cordoned off water and palms became brontosaurus silhouettes grazing in moonlight.

Fitting. Ligarto is Spanish for “lizard.”

I’ve spent years on Florida’s Gulf coast, exploring above and below the water. It’s what self-employed marine biologists do and I am a marine biologist. Usually. In all those years, I’d never had reason to set foot on Ligarto. Until tonight. I was here because a powerful man had demanded a favor. Doctors had told him he was in the final weeks of remission, with a month at most before leukemia immobilized him. Would I help him escape?

“Escape to where?” I’d asked. We were in my lab, standing amid the aerator hum of saltwater tanks, the smell of formalin and chemicals. He’d surprised me, tapping on my screen door after midnight.

The man had nodded his approval. “Perceptive. Most would’ve asked, ‘Escape from what?’ Which is romantic nonsense.”

His confidence was misplaced because I didn’t understand the reference. Death? Afterlife? Nonexistence?

“No sentimental baloney, Dr. Ford. You nailed it. The question is, where? I have about four weeks to live, really live, before they hook me up to the tubes and monitors. I want to spend part of that time traveling-but freely. Incognito.”

“Travel anonymously in this country? You? ”

“Yes, this country… and others.”

His wording seemed intentionally vague.

“No specific destination?”

“When I left the Navy, I traveled everywhere. Followed my instincts. What was I, twenty-five? Hitchhiked, worked on a freighter, even hopped a train. That’s the way I want it to be.”

An evasion. He didn’t bother to conceal it so I didn’t pretend to be convinced.

“Relive your youth. Put on jeans, a T-shirt, and blend in. Is that the idea?”

“You’re saying I’ll be recognized. I don’t think so. People expect to see me on television, not the street.”

“Take it from a guy who’s never owned a TV. People know who you are… specially after”-I caught myself-“after the recent controversy.”

Annoyed, he said, “I don’t have time for diplomacy. Are you talking about my wife’s death? Or the million-dollar bounty on my head?”

I knew that his wife had been killed in a plane mishap. I’d also read that he’d infuriated religious fundamentalists, Muslim and Christian, but I was unaware that a reward had been offered. I remained diplomatic.

“Both.”

“That was five months ago-eternity, to the American public. Please stop second-guessing. You’re like the so-called media experts who gave me a ration of crap for being a concept guy, called me a dope when it came to details. Believe me, I’m no dope, and this has nothing to do with revisiting my youth. I’d love to stick it up their butts one last time.”

The media, or the fundamentalists? Either way, his bitterness was unexpected.

I’d been hunched over a microscope studying a sea urchin embryo-it was liquid green, round, and clouded like a miniature planet.

I stood. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Sharing personal information? Because you’ve proven you can be trusted. You know the incident I’m talking about. You refused to discuss it.”

He was referring to something that happened eleven years earlier, in Cartagena, Colombia.

I replied, “You’re giving me credit for something I didn’t do.”

“Wrong. I’m giving you credit for keeping your mouth shut. Remember who you’re talking to, Dr. Ford. I trust you with my secret because I know your secrets. Or should I say, I know enough. Surprised?”

No, I wasn’t surprised.

“Do the feds still call that ‘coercion’?”

“Not in the executive branch. It’s called ‘doing business.’ Something else that may interest you is information I have about a friend of yours. Mr. Tomlinson. Things I doubt even you are aware of.”

Tomlinson is my neighbor at Dinkin’s Bay Marina, Sanibel Island, Florida. He’s part sailor, part saint, part goat. Picture a satyr, with salty dreadlocks, bony legs, wearing a sarong. Tomlinson and I are friends despite a convoluted history, and despite the fact that, as polar opposites, we sometimes clash. We’d clashed recently. I hadn’t seen the man in two weeks.

I returned to the microscope and toyed with the focus. “Tomlinson has secrets worth knowing? I’m shocked.”

He wasn’t misled by my careful indifference. “You may be. When you learn the truth.”

I looked up involuntarily.

The man’s smile broadened.

“Yes. I can see you’re interested.”

Fog isn’t mentioned in guidebooks about sunny Florida because tourists are seldom on the water at midnight, when a Caribbean low mingles with cool Gulf air.

The cloud now settling was as dense as any I’d seen. Gray whirlpools of vapor descended, condensed, then re-formed as moonlit veils. Water droplets created curtains of pearls, so visibility fluctuated. Each drifting cloud added to the illusion that the island was moving, not me, not the fog. Ligarto appeared to be a galleon adrift, floating on a random course and gaining speed. I had to start paddling soon if I hoped to keep up.

I did.

Took long, cautious strokes. Paddled so quietly I could hear water dripping from foliage, drops heavy as Gulf Stream rain. The reason I didn’t want to make noise was because I knew a security team was guarding the island. Pros, the best in the world.

They would be carrying rocket launchers, exotic weapons systems, electronic gizmos designed to debilitate or kill, no telling what else. Probably five or six men and women, all bored-a little pissed-off, too-forced to work on a favorite adult party night: Halloween.

A dangerous combination for any misguided dimwit foolish enough to attempt to breach island security.

Dangerous for me, the occasional misguided dimwit.

Every few strokes, I paused. In fog, there’s the illusion that sound is muffled. In fact, fog conducts sound more efficiently than air. If there was a boat patrolling the area, I would’ve heard it. Instead, I heard only an outboard motor far away-someone run aground, judging from the seesaw whine. I could also hear the turbo whistle of a jetliner settling into its landing approach, as invisible from sea level as I was invisible to passengers above.

Maybe the patrol boat was at anchor… or maybe a few yards away, hidden by mist.

If so, there was nothing I could do. I was alone, in a canoe, miles from my Sanibel home, in a chain of bays that links cities along the Gulf Coast. Tampa was somewhere out there in the gloom, a hundred miles north. Naples, Marco, and Key West were south. Maps in airline magazines show bays but not the smaller islands between beaches and mainland, islands the size of Ligarto.

There are hundreds. Most are deserted mangrove swamp, bird rookeries of guano and muck. A few are privately owned, havens for wealthy recluses. From a jetliner, on a clear day, passengers may spot cottages among groves of citrus and bananas. They may covet the isolation, the quiet swimming pools, the docks-compound-sized islands rimmed by water.

They won’t find them mentioned in tourist brochures. Admission is by invitation. Wealth is requisite, power implicit.

Ligarto Island is private. An industrialist tycoon bought the place during Prohibition and built an elegant fishing retreat. The industrialist’s heirs still own the compound.

That was the rumor, anyway, and rumor is all locals ever heard about Ligarto.

Visitors came and went without interacting with neighboring islands-Gasparilla, Siesta Key, Useppa, Palm Island, Captiva. Silence is not always passive. The silence associated with Ligarto Island was hostile. It discouraged contact.

Ligarto was a place where the powerful enjoyed anonymity. Software moguls, international entrepreneurs, American political icons used it as a retreat-another popular local rumor.

Tonight it wasn’t rumor.

When the celebrated man surprised me in the lab, tapping on the screen door, I’d said to him, “When you say ‘escape,’ you mean from your security team. You’re serious when you say you want to travel alone.”

“Yes… at times, on my own.”

Another evasion.

“A security detail is with me around the clock, three shifts a day, seven days a week. It’s been that way for more than thirteen years, and it got tighter when the bounty was offered.”

I’d glanced beyond an aquarium alive with sea urchins toward the dark porch where ninety feet of boardwalk connects my stilt house with shore. A question.

“Relax, Dr. Ford, no one can hear. You met my bodyguard. He’s watching from a safe distance.”

It was difficult to be alone with this man and relax. He was referring to the United States Secret Service.

“Why don’t you tell your agents the truth: You want time to yourself. You’re… ill. They should understand.”

“The issue isn’t illness,” he snapped. “I have a measured amount of time to live. Surely you understand the difference.”

I appreciated his insistence on precise language and nodded.

“Besides, they don’t know the latest prognosis. Even if they did, it’s not that simple. They’re federal employees, with standing orders. I won’t compromise them as professionals by asking their permission.”

“The same agents have been with you a long time?”

“Several. I also have my staff to think about-secretaries, schedulers, travel assistants. More than a dozen. When my wife was killed, some of them wept like children. Wray had that effect on people. Her decency, her humor, her… her”-the man’s voice caught, he swallowed-“Wray’s intellect, and sense of grace. Which means they can never know. They’re like family. When I say escape, I mean disappear.”

I don’t follow politics, but even I was aware that he and his wife had been childhood friends, partners for life. Wray Wilson had been an inspiration to many. Born deaf, she’d earned a master’s degree before most kids her age-her future husband included-had graduated from high school.

She’d been on a chartered flight, a humanitarian mission carrying medical supplies to Nicaragua. The plane had caught fire during an emergency landing near a volcano. Wray Wilson and six other people were killed.

Distraught, the great man had demanded an international investigation. Later, he made headlines by hinting that his wife’s death wasn’t accidental.

Grief is part of a complicated survival process, but it can also debilitate. I wondered if grief had unhinged the man. He was too young and vigorous to be senile. But mental illness might explain his behavior. What he was proposing was impractical, maybe irrational.

I became agreeable in the way people do when they are dealing with the impaired. “I can empathize, sir. If a doctor told me I had a month to live, I’d want to… well, escape. So I understand, and I’m honored, but-”

He interrupted. “Why makes you so damn certain you don’t have a month to live? Or two weeks?”

“Well… I don’t know. You’re right, of course, but we all assume-”

“No, Dr. Ford, we don’t all assume. Your time may be more limited than you realize-that’s not necessarily a threat. It’s true of everyone, everywhere. And please don’t use that patronizing tone with me again. Do you read me, mister?”

Only Academy graduates and ex-fighter jocks can make the word “mister” ring like a slap in the face. He was both.

The man might be nuts but he wasn’t feeble.

I started over. “Look, I do empathize, but”-I gestured, indicating the room: wood ceiling, towels for curtains, rows of chemicals and specimen jars, books stacked on tables, fish magnified through aquarium glass-“but I’m a biologist. I don’t see how I can help.”

“I’ve done the research and I can’t think of anyone more qualified.”

“It’s possible, sir, that you have the wrong man-”

“No. Don’t waste my time pretending… or maybe denial is a conditioned response in people like you. I know Hal Harrington. He’s your handler, isn’t he?”

Harrington was a high-level U.S. State Department official and covert intelligence guru. I’d known him for many years.

I replied, “Harrington? With an H?” I pretended to think about it. “I’m not familiar with the name.”

“Maybe if I remind you of a few details. Would that convince you?”

“I really don’t know what you’re-”

He held up a hand. “When I was in office, they said I had access to every classified document in the system. Baloney. After what happened in Cartagena, I asked for a dossier on you. Know what I got? Nothing. Or next to nothing. Later, I ran across other globe-trotting Ph. D. s with backgrounds just as murky as yours. Scientists, journalists, a couple of attorneys, even one or two politicians. That’s when I began to suspect.

“I started digging. Insomniacs crave hobbies. I won’t tell you how but I discovered documents that hinted at the existence of a secret organization. An illegal organization, funded by a previous administration. Something called the ‘Negotiating and Systems Analysis Group.’ Only thirteen plank members; very select. ‘The Negotiators.’ Sound familiar?”

I’d replaced the slide containing the sea urchin embryo with another-a blank slide, I realized, but I pretended to concentrate.

“It was deep-cover intelligence. Members were deployed worldwide as something called ‘zero signature specialists.’ An unusual phrase, don’t you agree? Zero signature. It suggests they were more than a special operations team. Just the opposite. It suggests that each man worked alone.”

They weren’t killers in the military sense, he said. They had a specialty.

“Their targets disappeared.”

The celebrated man studied me as if to confirm I wouldn’t react.

I didn’t.

To paddle a straight course, I focused on the canopy of palms that punctured the mist. Their trunks were curved. Fronds drooped like sodden parrot feathers.

The breeze was southwesterly, warm on my face and left arm-another directional indicator-but the mist was autumnal. I should have been shivering. My clothes were soaked, but I was too focused to be cold.

I was dressed for a dinner party, not a canoe trip: dark slacks, dress shirt, a black silk sports jacket tailored years ago in Southeast Asia. I’d dressed for the role I would have to play if the Secret Service intercepted me. It could happen.

To get on and off the island undetected, I had to know how the Secret Service operated so I did my homework. I spent time at Sanibel’s library and on the Internet. More valuable was a discussion I had with an old friend, Tony Stoverthson, who’d worked for the agency prior to passing the Florida bar.

I knew the island would be protected by a dozen or so agents working in three shifts. They would’ve created an on-site command post that would include liaison people from the local sheriff’s department and the Coast Guard. The command post would maintain direct contact with the agency’s intelligence division in Washington and also their main headquarters in Beltsville, Maryland. Unique code names would be assigned to the island, the protectee, members of the protectee’s family (if any), even the protectee’s boat.

Tony told me, “The agency’s dealt with all types of celebrities and they’re all assigned a name. Prince Charles was ‘Unicorn.’ Ted Kennedy,‘Sunburn.’Amy Carter was ‘Dynamo’; Frank Sinatra, ‘Napoleon.’ A protectee’s limo might be called ‘Stagecoach.’ An island might be called ‘The Rock’ or ‘Fort Apache’-a name that’s immediately understood but still maintains security.”

The more I learned, the more I came to think of Ligarto Island as The Rock.

The agents would be armed with MP5 submachine guns and semiautomatic SIG-Sauer pistols, although some older members might still carry Smith amp; Wesson Model 19s. Other tools, such as night-vision goggles, Remington street-sweeper shotguns, and antiaircraft ordnance, would be included in their arsenal.

Security might include sharpshooters from the uniformed division of the agency’s countersniper team. The team would establish a shooting post on one of the island’s highest points-a tree, maybe, or water tower. In agency slang, the sniper would be armed with a JAR (Just Another Rifle), which, in fact, was a high-tech weapon custom-designed for the Secret Service. The sniper team would be in radio contact with Beltsville, which would provide the shooter with sight adjustments, depending on the island’s temperature and humidity.

I’d also learned there would be at least two boats. One would be smaller, capable of running onto the beach if necessary. The other would be a fast patrol boat.

Daunting. So I planned on being intercepted. Because I didn’t want to be arrested or shot, I also planned on lying my ass off. A believable lie, I hoped.

I would tell agents I was on my way to the annual Halloween party at the friendliest of nearby islands: Cabbage Key, a popular bar and restaurant, accessible only by water. I’d have to do some acting. Pretend to be appropriately sloshed, tell agents I’d gotten lost in the fog.

If they contacted Cabbage Key’s superb dining room, they would find my name on the guest list: Marion D. Ford, Dinkin’s Bay Marina. Reservation for one, admission paid in advance.

Establishing plausible deniability is not a subject taught in college. The famous man was right: My past includes training in subjects other than marine biology.

Nearby, I heard a heron’s reptilian growl. I was passing an oyster bar where wading birds had gathered-unusual for this time of night. Maybe they were grounded by fog. Was that possible? Or maybe feeding in the light of this full moon.

I touched my paddle to the bottom. Felt shells crunch as the canoe pivoted with the current. Once again, I listened for the patrol boat. Nothing. Could still hear the distant outboard… could hear the river-rush of tide flushing seaward… then I was surprised to hear voices. Men’s voices whispering: a few staccato fragments, words indecipherable.

Garbled by distance?

No. They were close.

I waited, using the paddle as a stake, my canoe pointing downtide like a weather vane.

Water drizzled from leaves… yowl of raccoons… creak of trees… then another muffled exchange: two men, maybe three.

The island was to my right. The voices came from my left. The men had to be in a boat. Or wading. The syllabic patterns were exotic, not English, not Spanish. That’s why it registered as garble. I didn’t hear enough to guess at the language.

Fog is romantic in a cozy sort of way, but, in primitive lobes of our brain, it also keys primitive alarms. The alarms remind us that tribal enemies use fog as cover.

During thunderstorms, people retreat in clusters, voices hushed. The same is true of the slow, silent storm that is fog. Men were out there in the gloom. Foreigners in a Florida backwater. Why?

There were plausible explanations.

I didn’t like any of them.

A million-dollar bounty had been offered for the celebrated man’s head. My guess: They were here to collect it.

The night the celebrated man appeared at my door, I’d said to him, “If you travel outside the country, no security, what happens if the bad guys take you hostage, or worse? It could get some of our people killed, maybe even start a war. To be blunt, you’d be putting the nation at risk. Is that worth a couple weeks of personal freedom?”

I’d expected indignation. Instead, he became philosophical, which is an effective cloaking technique. “History’s fickle. Small events have started wars. I suppose some minor event could also prevent war-who can predict? The only time I depend on men and nations to behave like they have any brains is when there’s no other choice. I’m speaking theoretically, of course.”

Was he?

“Who knows what I might stir up. The risks depend on where I go. And who you consider to be bad guys. It’s far more likely someone will take a shot at me in the States instead of in a country I’m not scheduled to visit.

“That’s another reason I’m eager to get on the road, Dr. Ford. Someone’s going to take that shot -soon, I think. My enemies view me as unfinished business. What they don’t suspect is, I have some unfinished business of my own.”

He used his fighter pilot’s voice-a combat vet on a mission.

“It sounds like you have a target in mind.”

“Maybe.”

“Something to do with your wife’s death?” I knew the accident was still under investigation. It had only been a few months.

“Possibly. Her plane caught fire after it landed. Seven people killed, no survivors. Do you find that suggestive?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know the details.”

“I think you know more than you realize.” The man was looking at me strangely.

“Are you suggesting something? Or am I missing something?”

“Maybe both.” I watched his jaw muscles knot. “But I think I’ll reserve the details until we come to an agreement. For now, let’s just say there are several stops I’d like to make. I’ve lived a big life. I’ve called liars liars, frauds frauds, and I’ve stood toe-to-toe with every variety of despot and egotistical ass. When enemies visit my grave, it won’t be to plant flowers.”

“You have old scores to settle.”

“You disapprove; it’s in your tone. Good. Getting even is for amateurs. I want revenge.” After a moment, he chuckled. “I’m joking. My plans aren’t that dramatic.”

It was disturbing. Witness a wounded beast stumble and most of us wince. I winced inwardly at his stumbling paranoia, his outdated bravado; his weak attempt to cover malice with humor. I was thinking Yes, he’s mentally ill.

According to my pal Tomlinson, who turns into a newspaper junkie the instant his Birkenstocks touch soil, the man dropped from public view shortly after his wife’s death. He retreated to a Franciscan monastery, then spent time with a famous Buddhist scholar on Long Island.

When he reappeared, he had changed. The man had always been dignified, under control, even when speaking his mind. In the last few months, though, his behavior had bordered on the outrageous.

“He’s doing what no one in his position has ever done,” Tomlinson told me. “If he’s asked a question, he tells the truth-his version, anyway. He’s managed to offend just about every political and religious organization in the world.”

The million-dollar bounty was an example, Tomlinson explained. It started when the man called America’s news media “cowards and fiducial incompetents” because they sidestepped reprinting an editorial cartoon from a Danish newspaper that sparked worldwide riots. The caricature depicted the prophet Muhammad with a lighted bomb fuse in his turban-mild by Western standards.

The man remained outspoken even when Islamic clerics issued an international fatwa, or religious decree, demanding his head. Literally. The reward was posted soon afterward.

“The media used to despise him,” Tomlinson told me. “Then, for a while, he was their darling. But that’s changing because he refuses to back down on the cartoon issue. ‘When did the New York Times and Wall Street Journal start deferring decisions about free speech to religious fundamentalists?’ That’s the sort of thing he’s been saying and he won’t shut up.

“Ultimately, they’ll crucify him. He knows it. He seems to be inviting it.”

Standing in my lab that night, the man sounded in full control of his facilities, even while sharing a plan I dismissed as irrational.

“The group I mentioned, the Negotiators. They operated without oversight. Their victims were seldom found so there’s very little proof they were licensed to kill. But there is proof. I have it. Ethically, I couldn’t ask a law-abiding citizen to help me… That’s why I’m asking you.”

With an edge, I replied, “Very flattering.”

“It’s not meant to be. I’m explaining why I’m here. The illegalities my trip requires won’t be a problem for someone with your expertise.”

“You’re asking me to break laws, too.”

“None you haven’t broken before.”

His inflection conveyed subtext. Was he telling me he wanted someone killed?

I said, “You don’t need me. You need a magician. The Secret Service will realize you’re missing before you make it to an airport.”

“Not the way I’ve set it up. We’ll have enough time.”

My expression read We?

“That’s the deal. You’re coming. Spring me loose, keep me alive, and get me back. Help me disappear and I’ll make your past disappear.”

He interpreted my unresponsiveness as mistrust.

“I’m not the first to offer, I know. But I’m the first who has the power to make it happen.”