Assumed Identity

12

It wasn’t difficult getting a wet suit. There were plenty of dive shops in Key West. The water was warm enough that Buchanan normally wouldn’t have needed to rent the insulating suit, but the stitches in his side made this an abnormal situation. He needed to protect the healing knife wound. He wanted to minimize the amount of blood that would dissolve from the scabs around the stitches and disperse through the water. As in Cancun, when he’d escaped the police by swimming across the channel from the island to the mainland, he worried about sharks and barracuda. Back then, of course, it had been blood from a bullet wound that had worried him, but the difference was the same. At least this time he’d been able to prepare, although another element from the Cancun swim continued to trouble him-his headache.

His skull wouldn’t stop throbbing. He felt as if his nerves were leather cords being stretched to the snapping point. But he couldn’t let the pain distract him. He had to keep going, swimming through the 3:00 A.M. water, his black wet suit blending with the night. He kept his arms loose at his sides, moving his feet gently, stroking with his fins, trying anxiously not to make noise or create whitecaps in the water. He kept his face down as much as possible, even though he had blackened it before leaving shore so that it wouldn’t contrast with the dark water. The stars glistened. A quarter moon was beginning to rise. That would be enough light for him as he eased closer to the yacht.

Then he touched the anchor chain. Peering up, he heard no footsteps or voices. Although the wet suit made the water feel even warmer than it was, he shivered involuntarily, his testicles receding toward his groin. He squinted back toward the lights of Key West, thought of Holly waiting for him, mustered his resolve, took off his mask and flippers, tied them to the chain, and began to climb. The effort strained his shoulder and his side. But he had to keep moving. Slowly, soundlessly, he pulled himself up the chain until he reached where it went into the hull. The hole was too small for him to enter, but it and the bulky chain gave him places to wedge his mesh rubber slippers while he fought for balance, reached up, and grasped the edge of the bow. Drawing himself up, he peered over the edge, saw no one, looked for intrusion detectors, saw no evidence of them either, and squirmed over the railing onto the softly lit deck.

As he scurried for cover beneath an exterior stairway, he knew he’d left a trail of water, but that couldn’t be avoided. Fortunately, most of the water had drained from his wet suit while he’d climbed. Soon the remainder would stop trickling out. Until then, he had to take advantage of the time he had.

A few windows were lit on the decks that loomed above him. The stairways, corridors, and walkways had lights as well. But they glowed, separate enough and weakly enough that there were abundant shadows into which Buchanan could creep. The mesh rubber slippers that he’d worn beneath his fins had ridges along the soles that gave them traction. He left almost no water as he made his way softly along a walkway, into a corridor, and up a stairwell.

He followed Holly’s instructions. Her description of the yacht’s layout had been detailed. So had her assessment of the crew, who evidently were unmotivated when the master wasn’t there to intimidate them. Buchanan listened intently, heard no one, emerged from the stairwell, and crept along a corridor on the middle deck, passing doors on each side. Only one door attracted him-at the end on the right. Holly had said that was the one area the crew hadn’t shown her.

“Off limits,” they’d told her.

“Why?” she had asked.

“We don’t know. It’s always locked,” had been the answer.

The door was situated between the door to Drummond’s sleeping quarters on the right and the door to the yacht’s reception area, a large, luxuriously appointed room that occupied a third of this level and had windows that looked down on the sun deck at the stern.

“Well, you must have some idea what’s in there,” Holly had said to the crew members.

“None. We were told we’d lose our jobs if we ever tried to get in.”

The door had two double-bolt locks. Buchanan removed two short metal prongs from a pocket of the wet suit. He’d finished picking the first lock when he heard footsteps on the stairway at the opposite end of the corridor. Fighting to keep his hands steady, he worked the pins in the second lock.

The footsteps came lower, closer.

Buchanan didn’t dare look in that direction. He had to keep concentrating on the lock, manipulating the metal prongs.

The footsteps were almost to the bottom.

Buchanan turned the knob, slipped into the murky room, and closed the door. He held his breath, pressed an ear against the bulkhead, and listened. After thirty seconds, still not having heard any sound from the corridor, he found a light switch, flicked it, and blinked from the sudden illumination.

What he saw made him frown. In this narrow room, which was connected by a locked door to Alistair Drummond’s sleeping quarters, there were several rows of television monitors and videotape recorders.

Buchanan turned down the sound controls, then activated the monitors. In a moment, the glowing screens revealed numerous rooms and sections of decks. On one screen, he watched two crewmen in the control room. On another screen, he saw two other crew members watching television. On a third screen, he saw a half-dozen crew members sleeping on bunks. On a fourth, he saw a man-presumably the captain-sleeping in a room that he had to himself. On other screens, Buchanan saw numerous empty bedrooms. Those dark rooms and the others in which people slept appeared in a green tint, an indication that a night-vision lens was being used on the hidden cameras that monitored those areas. The monitors that showed exterior sections of the yacht were also tinted green. Presumably, the cameras would automatically convert to a normal lens when the indoor lights were on or during daylight.

So Alistair Drummond likes to eavesdrop on his guests, Buchanan thought. The old man goes into his bedroom, locks his door, unlocks the door to this adjacent room, and comes in here to see what his crew is doing when he isn’t around- more important, to see what his guests are up to: undressing, relieving themselves, fucking, doing drugs, whatever. And all of it can be recorded for repeated viewing enjoyment.

Buchanan directed his attention to a locked metal cabinet. After picking its lock, he opened the cabinet and found row upon row of labeled videotapes. August 5, 1988. October 10, 1989. February 18, 1990. Buchanan glanced quickly over them, noting that they were arranged sequentially. At least a hundred. Alistair Drummond’s greatest hits.

The cruise Buchanan wanted to know about had occurred during February. He found a tape for that month, put it into a player, and pressed the ON button, making sure that the sound was off. The video quality was remarkably clear, even when the images had a greenish tint. The cruise had been well attended. Various shots of numerous locations showed guests in their most intimate, revealing, compromising positions. Oral sex and sodomy were especially popular. Buchanan eventually counted thirteen men and twelve women. The men-in middle age- had an overbearing manner, as if addicted to wielding power. The women were attractive, well dressed, and treated as if they were hookers. All the men and women were Hispanic.

Buchanan noticed an earplug and inserted it into the television monitor. After adjusting the sound, he was able to hear what was on the tape. As he concentrated to translate the Spanish voices, he realized from comments they made that the women were indeed hookers and that the men were high-ranking members of the Mexican government. At once he realized something else. These tapes weren’t intended merely for Drummond’s voyeuristic pleasure.

Blackmail crossed Buchanan’s mind at the same time he reacted with shock to the sight of Maria Tomez on the screen. At least, he believed it was Maria Tomez. Thinking about doubles, he couldn’t be sure. He needed to study the image carefully before he was convinced that it was definitely Maria Tomez and not Juana impersonating her. The night-vision lens tinted the image green. It showed what appeared to be the sun deck at the rear of the yacht. The angle was from above, downward, as if the camera had been hidden in an upper wall or beneath an elevated walkway. A digital display indicated that the time the tape had been made was 1:37 A.M. The sound track was somewhat crackly. Nonetheless, Buchanan was able to hear distant party music, a woman laughing faintly.

Maria Tomez, wearing an elegant low-cut evening gown, leaned against the stern’s railing, her back to the camera, apparently watching the wake of the ship. A man spoke to her in Spanish, and she turned. A tall, slender, thin-faced, hawk-nosed Hispanic male wearing a dinner jacket stepped into view. He spoke again. This time, Maria Tomez answered. The quality of the sound became better, presumably because Drummond had used a remote control to adjust the directional microphone hidden on the sun deck. “No, I’m not cold,” Maria Tomez said in Spanish.

The camera zoomed in as the man approached her.