Gates of Hades

CHAPTER ONE

Williford Watkins liked Americans. Were it not for Americans, he would have to live solely on what he got for working in the tower at the island’s airport, a salary that never would have paid for the used twenty-eight-foot sport fisherman in which he took American tourists diving, snorkeling, and fishing for as much as a thousand dollars a day. His job, the one in the tower, consisted of eight tedious hours five days a week, doing little more than making sure the runway was clear of aircraft and telling the Air France or Lufthansa pilots, “Cleared to land.”

The boring nature of his job was why he let his curiosity take hold when that particular Gulfstream IV landed. According to the routing slip Williford picked up from the rack, the plane was Swiss, but the numbers painted on the tail were unlike any Swiss registration he had ever seen.

Since his shift was over, or near enough by island standards, he walked downstairs and over to the customs and immigration section of the terminal. He had a charter at the dock at Marigot, over on the French side of the island, but the fish weren’t going anywhere and the anglers could wait. This was, after all, the Caribbean, where time was approximate at best.

The two pilots from the Gulfstream were filing their general declarations, the papers every country of entry required that listed passengers, cargo, and point of departure. His curiosity stirred once again when he noted there was only one passenger, a swarthy man with angry eyes. The dark man glared at Williford’s dreadlocks and Bob Marley T-shirt. Williford smiled at him, just the way the tourism bureau said to do to all white folks. The dark man turned away.

That was unusual, too. Most mon come to St. Maarten, they be happy, not angry. The charter could wait a little longer.

Williford went outside into the brilliant sunshine of another day in paradise. His sunglasses, cooled by the aggressive air-conditioning inside, fogged over in the humid heat. The parking lot where he had left the Samurai he had bought with the money from his American charter customers was to his right. He turned left toward the flight operations building.

After exchanging some good-natured insults with the men in the single room, he found a copy of World Aircraft Registrations, thumbed through the country-by-country directory, and turned to Switzerland. He had been right: the Gulfstream’s registration was not listed. Putting the heavy volume on a table, he tried the directory by registration letters. Fortunately, the United States was the only nation that had so many aircraft it used numbers instead of letters.

It took him only a few minutes to find out that the Gulf-stream, or at least its numbers, were Syrian.

Williford checked his watch. His charter customers weren’t going to be happy, but he couldn’t quit now. Crossing the room, he picked up a telephone connected to the small air-traffic control center located in the base of the tower he had just left.

“Freddy,” he said when a familiar voice came on the line, “th’ Gulfstream you mons worked a few minutes ago; where it come from?”

What he heard made his curiosity sit up and take notice. The plane had been handed off from San Juan Center, the air-traffic control facility for high-altitude traffic in this part of the Caribbean, but it had not been handed off in sequence from London to Greenland to New York to Miami centers, the normal sequence for flights from Europe. Instead, it had commenced the transatlantic part of its journey with Tenerife Center in the Canary Islands. Williford wasn’t sure what part of the Caribbean those islands occupied, but he did know something was crazy as a marlin with its bill stuck in a boat hull.

There was something he had read in the men’s room while he was taking a break a few weeks ago, something about the Americans wanting to know about suspicious flights. He supposed they wanted to further their endless (and, in Williford’s opinion, hopeless) effort against the drugs that journeyed northbound in volumes unequaled by tropical fruit. Maybe if he called the Americans, they could somehow send him charter business six months from now, in the summer, when things got slack.

He dialed the number of Miami Center.

The next morning, Williford figured the Americans had sent at least one charter, lack of summer notwithstanding. Except the four men who knocked on his door at sunup were already sweating in suits and ties.

“Can’t go now, mon,” Williford said. “Can’t go till afta work.”

One of the men gave him a smile with no humor in it. “We’ll only be a minute, Mr. Watkins. You’ll be on your way in no time. We need your help.”

From the looks of them, four large men whose wilting suits did little to conceal muscle, they didn’t need help from anyone. They also didn’t look like the kind who would go away just to make sure a man got to work on time.

Williford really hadn’t intended for them to come into his two-room cottage, not till his wife, Caroline, could get the place cleaned up a little, but they pushed right past him into the half of the house that served as a living room.

One of the men was carrying a book of photos. He sat in Williford’s easy chair, the only upholstered one in the house, and opened the book. “We’d like you to take a look….”

Caroline emerged from behind the sheet that divided off the bedroom and gave Williford a look that could have burned a hole in the linen before she left without a word on her way to her job at Mullet Bay, one of the resorts along the beach. She didn’t like to have company in the house before she was dressed.

The four men in suits seemed not to notice as the one with the book continued. “See if any of these men are the passenger on that Gulfstream.”

And he was. An unmistakable likeness was on the second page. Williford pointed, and all four of his visitors nodded as though sharing a secret.

“Who he be?” Williford naturally wanted to know.

“A man we got business with,” the man with the book said, and gave another smile, one that reminded Williford of a shark approaching a wounded fish.

CHAPTER TWO

In the opinion of Sam Hoffman, senior senator from Georgia, the president’s plan was irrational, ill-considered, and utter rubbish. Worse, it would be seen for what it was: an effort to appease the opposition. Still worse, it could cost the party support from its most generous constituency.

It wasn’t all the president’s fault his poll numbers were now pushing Nixon’s. The people screaming the loudest about gasoline prices were largely the same ones who had stridently opposed the building of new refineries, expanded drilling in Alaska, or nuclear power. Those demanding “affordable housing” howled when he permitted limited cutting in national forests to increase the supply of wood, the backbone of the home-building industry.

The list was nearly endless.

Actually, the president was well intentioned. A Vietnam veteran who had never even been mentioned in the same breath as any scandal, he had served his state and his country for over thirty years in every capacity, from state school superintendent to governor, from Congress to the White House. Married for over forty years, church elder. The all-American Mr. Clean who was just now learning that, even as president, he really couldn’t please everybody, a fact that disappointed him no end.

But the president’s plan was far too transparent to jack a feather off the floor, let alone the president’s abysmal polls.

Senator Sam, as he liked to be called by his constituents, was always awed by the White House. Scant places in America contained more history — history that few in Washington understood, much less read. In this town, history was what had been said last night by the talking heads on CNN. The president was a prime example. Seated behind the desk on which Lincoln had supposedly signed the Emancipation Proclamation, the man could give you the current poll numbers to two decimal points, but his knowledge of the past was a blank slate. Appeasing opposite interests didn’t work.

Never had, never would.

Like all politicians, he was much more interested in the future.

Specifically, his future.

“I need your help on this, Sam,” the president said. “As chairman of the Environmental Study Committee, your endorsement of the plan is essential if we’re going to get bipartisan support.”

Sam chose to ignore the we, which was either the royal plural or included him in a plan he viewed as both deceptive and useless. Neither was a pleasant possibility.

“What you propose doesn’t need congressional approval, Mr. President,” Sam said noncommittally.

The president smiled that million-vote grin. “I know, Sam, but your approval would generate support. After all, you’re a very influential man.”

Sam ignored the flattery. God, but would this, his last term, ever end? Another year and he could retire to his farm in the Appalachian foothills, where a man was as good as his last promise and bullshit was fertilizer, not an art form.

The president took his silence as acquiescence and plowed ahead. “Having various environmental groups here in Washington next year to discuss a single plan to mitigate global warming, create pure air and water, conserve of the earth’s resources and all that should please the Sierra Clubbers and all the bunny huggers. Ten and a half million votes, I understand. Sam, we’ll even offer to grant amnesty to those radicals who’ve committed crimes in the name of the environment, agree to a halt to drilling in the ANWR in exchange for no more bombing of oil platforms in the Gulf, no more destruction of property. We’ll steal the opposition’s whole Green vote.”

Appease the advocates of the Key Largo cotton mouse and southern snail darter? Stop development and a slow but steady increase in the job market on behalf of the Virginia wild plum vine? Make peace with fruitcakes who had blown up mining equipment, sabotaged power grids, even killed people in the process?

“You sure you want to pardon criminals, Mr. President? Most conservationists may be liberals, but they’re law-abiding citizens. I’m not sure the radicals compose that big a bloc of votes.”

And certainly an even smaller group of contributors.

The president’s face became serious, that almost-frown he used to stare into the TV cameras when urging his fellow Americans to accept something. “That’s why I need you aboard, Sam. If you endorse the plan, the more conservative members of your committee will go for it. Tell you what.” He looked around the room as though to make sure the two were alone before lowering his voice to a conspiratorial level. “You come out for my conference, you help me, and I think I can get the Defense Department to double that sub base on the Georgia coast. Over a thousand new jobs, Sam; think about it.”

Sam did think about it, and it made his head hurt. The president wanted the same thing every first-term president wanted: a second term.

The trouble with appeasement of radicals was that it was like pissing down your leg to keep it warm: it worked only as long as you kept it up.

Sam glanced around the room, half expecting to see a picture of Neville Chamberlain beside those of Eisenhower and Reagan. Nixon was conspicuously absent. But then, this president had probably never heard of “peace in our time.”

On the other hand, even if the conference generated only empty promises, the international publicity of hosting those who believed in global warming — that something could be done about it and the world could agree what that was — would generate hours of airtime, which translated into votes in next year’s election, votes from people who, like the president, had no concept of history.

By the time the conference was fading newsprint and the election safely in the win column, the rich would return to seek wealth wherever it could be found, and the poor would continue to complain about it rather than helping themselves. That was what maintained class status quo.

Ah, well, Sam would be plain Citizen Sam by then, far from the poisonous political vapors of the Potomac.

“I’ll give it some thought, Mr. President.”

The president vaulted to his feet. Sam almost expected him to jump over the desk to shake hands, like the champion tennis player he had been in college. “I knew I could count on you, Sam.”

Sam left the room with the pleasant thought that his imminent retirement enabled him to be a statesman thinking of the next generation instead of a politician thinking of the next election.

And being a statesman didn’t include showcase conferences and amnesty solely for the purpose of vote pandering, not with misguided if intellectually honest conservationists, nor with their criminal fellow travelers.

CHAPTER THREE

Jason Peters navigated the Zodiac across Gustavia Harbor to the public dock at the south end. Tying the small inflatable up to a cleat already crowded with several other hawsers, he climbed up and merged with the winter crowd of visitors shopping along the Rue du Bore de Mere. His white T-shirt and shorts might have led an observer to conclude he was just one more hired crew buying supplies for one of the dozen or so yachts that annually brought the rich, beautiful, and famous to the island’s eight square miles of beaches, Parisian shops, and French cuisine. Ninety-nine meter ships, the largest the tiny inner harbor could accommodate, contained more living space than most people’s homes. And more expensive art and furnishings.

Like an elite private club, St. Bart’s was desirable more for who was excluded than included. With no chain hotels, high-rises, or mass-market resorts, the island was the playground of the wealthy. With hotel rooms or private villas at well over a thousand dollars a night during season, the average family was likely to look elsewhere for a vacation site. Even the airport catered to the select few. The narrow fifteen-hundred-foot strip required a special logbook endorsement from the French government after demonstration of specific skills. The laws of gravity required only small aircraft with STOL (short takeoff and landing) capabilities. Anything larger would either wind up very wet or part of the permanent scenery among the island’s hills.

Instead of entering the chandler’s shop or the grocery store, Jason paused in front of the Hermès window display of handbags bearing the price tags of small automobiles. He shifted position once, twice, until the reflections in the glass satisfied him he was not being followed.

A block farther he stopped again, this time to admire a young woman, one of those who came from France for a year or two’s work to support their time on beaches where swimwear was optional and tans uniform. On St. Bart’s, as the island was known, clothes were a fashion statement, not a requirement of modesty. Undergarments were virtually unknown.

His interest was more than returned. A number of these nymphlike creatures turned for a second look at Jason. He was obviously someone who had spent more than ten days or two weeks out-of-doors. His skin was an even copper color, not the red that resulted from an effort to get a tan in a limited time. His hair was sun-streaked and brushed back over the tops of his ears. Muscles stretched the sleeves of his shirt, and his stomach was flat, unlike those swollen by the rich fare for which the island’s restaurants were famous. He was not only a handsome American, but, more important, he might be a rich one.

At the end of the street, he paused for a moment, watching the crowd in the open yard of La Select, a restaurant noted more as a meeting place for the young than for haute cuisine. The establishment basked in the story that its version of American junk food had inspired Jimmy Buffett’s “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” In fact, the musician’s voice and the twang of the Coral Reefer Band could be heard on the sound system, but just barely over the jagged shouts of conversation of those occupying the plastic tables and those waiting for room to do so.

He doglegged left, then right onto Rue da la Républic. There was hardly room for him to squeeze between the slow parade of cars jammed into every available parking space along the street. He stopped in front of Le Comptoir du Cigare, a store that not only sold cigars but liquor, smoking accessories, and Panama hats almost as expensive as the Hermès bags.

Inside, a woman in her early twenties was seated outside the humidor, listlessly turning the pages of a magazine while her companion, an overweight man in his late forties or early fifties, inspected a Dunhill lighter and haggled with the proprietor in Parisian-accented French.

Jason made eye contact with a leggy girl whose physical attributes were hardly concealed by her ankle-length cotton dress. Her height was emphasized by the remarkably ugly four-inch rubber platform sandals that had inexplicably become fashionable that season. She followed him into the humidor, a twelve-by-twelve-foot room enclosed in glass. Besides keeping a large stock of Cuban tobacco moist, the glass was soundproof.

Reaching into one of the open boxes on a shelf, Jason ran a thick Hoyo de Monterrey under his nose and sniffed his satisfaction.

“May I help you?” she asked in heavily accented English.

Jason replaced the cigar and grinned as he nodded toward the couple outside. “Touching that a man would bring his daughter to St. Bart’s.”

She lengthened her face and gave him the shrug that was the unmistakable Gallic display of urbanity. “Cinq à sept.”

Five to seven, the hours between work and home, the time a Parisian had for his mistress. Disdainful French idiom for such a relationship.

“You joke,” she continued. “And I think you did not come to chose a cigar.”

“You’re right. I still have most of the box of Epicure Number Two’s I bought from you yesterday. Besides, that Double Corona is too large to look good in my delicate hands, don’t you think?”

“Always the joke, Jason. Soon someone else will want to look at the cigars and we cannot talk.”

His smile vanished. “You’re right. What did you find out?”

“He is on the Fortune. It has the Cayman flag.”

Most of the superyachts in the harbor flew Cayman colors. Such conspicuous wealth would draw the unwanted attention of the tax man in other countries. The Caymans allowed anonymity by registering vessels to untraceable corporations.

“Unimaginative name.” He turned and pretended to read the brightly colored brand names on a stack of cigar boxes. “The ship is the size of your average Holiday Inn. Where is the master stateroom?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “The sternmost stateroom on the second level. Almost directly under the salon. Go…” She picked up a cigar as the man with the girlfriend came into the humidor. “I believe you will find this one has the taste you describe.”

The Frenchman surveyed the stock carefully before selecting a box of Partagas. He left to inquire as to price and argue with the store’s proprietor again. Jason assumed the owner had properly inflated the cost. It was anathema to the French to pay the first price asked.

“Could you draw me a diagram?” Jason asked.

Turning to the wall so those outside could not see, the girl reached into the front of her dress, stepped back, and brushed against Jason. He felt a thick wad of paper slipped into his hand.

“It is the best I could do.”

Jason stuffed the paper into a pocket of his shorts and grinned salaciously. “The best you could do when you were doing something else?”

She looked as though she might have eaten a bad snail. “Do not overwork your, er, imagination. I delivered a box of cigars the ship’s captain ordered for the crew the day before. Nothing more. Now go.”

A few doors down the street, an art gallery was late removing the sunscreens in its windows after the afternoon quietus observed by most of the island’s shops. Jason stopped so abruptly the couple behind him had to dodge into the street to avoid a collision on the narrow sidewalk. Jason stood in front of the store, all but oblivious to his surroundings. His attention was on an acrylic painting, a photorealistic depiction of a hummingbird feeding from a hibiscus blossom. The colors were vibrant, almost as though lit from within. Without being conscious of it, he grasped a small gold ring that hung on a chain around his neck.

What was the painting doing here? It had been sold to a wealthy developer in the Bahamas over five years ago. What were the odds of it being for sale again here in St. Bart’s?

According to the date above the signature, it had been completed weeks before the artist’s life had turned upside down.

Jason knew.

His name was on the canvas.

He shook his head as though to dispel the thoughts, the recollections. He would never be free of the memories; nor would he want to be. He reminded himself that he was here to get a job done, not reflect on the cruelties and uncertainties of life. He turned and walked back the way he had come. He forced himself to think of what had to be done, to exclude what had been.

On his way back to the Zodiac, Jason joined five or six people gathered around the stern of one of the yachts. Through the thick glass doors of the salon an American movie star whose name Jason could not recall could be seen having tea. Jason melted into the group, but his attention was directed toward the vessel moored to port, the Fortune.

Two large men stood at the head of the extended gangplank. Had their arms not been crossed, they might have been at attention. Their faces were impassive behind the shield of reflective sunglasses. In spite of the eighty-plus temperature, each wore a loose-fitting nylon jacket bearing the logo of a National League baseball team. Neither seemed bothered by the heat, not a drop of sweat between them.

The fame or notoriety of many of the occupants of the yachts necessitated posting a crew member or two to keep uninvited guests off the ship. Jason wondered if any other than those on the Fortune were armed.

Back in the Zodiac, Jason followed the contours of the harbor, gaping appropriately at the ships docked there. He was careful to spend no more time observing the Fortune than looking at vessels of similar size. The tinted glass of the bridge concealed the men Jason was certain were keeping watch on the forward part of the ship. He could see lights mounted halfway up the superstructure. No doubt they would illuminate the foredeck as bright as day should hidden electric beams be broken. Or perhaps they were wired to weight sensors. In any event, entry to the Fortune wasn’t likely to be gained by climbing over the bow. Besides, the deck was, what, ten or fifteen feet above his head? One small noise, one bump against the ship’s hull from the wake of a passing craft… Jason discarded the idea.

As the Zodiac continued its slow circuit, Jason noticed the twin anchors hanging from hatches that opened just above the waterline. The hatches were designed to close once the anchors were retrieved so that a streamlined surface would be presented to the sea when the vessel was under way. One end of the anchor chains disappeared into the water, the other into a port in the hull. Would it be possible…?

Jason lazily turned to retrace his course and pass the line of yachts again. This time he stopped under the bow of the Fortune, the one place he could not be observed by anyone on board. He surveyed the anchor hatch carefully, mentally measuring the openings through which the anchor lines passed into the ship. He shook his head. Tight but unguarded.

He turned the Zodiac’s bow toward the harbor’s mouth and sped toward the roads.

Minutes later he pulled abeam of a small sloop that bobbed gently at its anchor buoy. A United States flag hung limply from the rigging of the single mast, along with shirts, swimsuits, and other drying laundry. Canvas was draped over the mainsail’s boom to shelter the cockpit from the afternoon sun. Salsa music, probably radio from Puerto Rico, filled the air. Its appearance was similar to the number of small craft gently rolling in the swells nearby, one more indistinguishable small American boat making a stop at St. Bart’s in view of the town surrounded by verdant hills.

Carefully balancing against the motion of the Zodiac, he stood and rapped loudly on the fiberglass hull. “Paco, Paco, wake up!”

The reaction was immediate.

Joyous barking was followed by the scratch of paws on the deck. A shaggy canine head was followed by a thick brown body that vibrated with a furiously wagging tail. Deep brown eyes regarded Jason with what in a woman could have been described as lust.

The dog’s appearance finally pushed the melancholy of the painting from Jason’s mind like a breeze clearing away clouds. He couldn’t have suppressed a smile had he wanted to. “Miss me, did you, Pangloss? Go get Paco.”

The dog turned in a complete circle.

“Paco, wake Paco. There’s a hamburger in it for you,” Jason coaxed.

The dog disappeared. Seconds later there was an explosion of Spanish invective as the boat rocked from shifting weight. A man came into view, bare to the waist. Jason could see the network of pink scars across his chest, souvenirs of torture during captivity by Colombia’s ruthless and brutal rebels, FARC. Rumor said every man who had so much as nicked Paco took days to die once he got free and turned on his captors. Large, with hair tousled from sleep, he was wiping a hand the size of a bear’s paw across his dark face.

“Fookin’ dog! He lick my face, mon. I hate bein’ licked in th’ face!”

“Lucky he didn’t piss on you to get you awake.” Jason tossed the Zodiac’s painter aboard the sloop. “How ’bout tying me off?”

Still grumbling, Paco made his way to the stern to secure the rubber craft, and Jason scrambled aboard.

“Don’ know why you hadda bring th’ fookin’ dog.” Paco was still griping as he made his way forward.

“Consider Pangloss cover.” Jason was scratching between the animal’s pointed ears. “Who would think a boat with a dog on board was on anything but a pleasure cruise?”

Pangloss combined the ears of a German shepherd with the long hair of a collie and the size of both. Jason was fairly certain there were other breeds in the animal’s uncertain ancestry. Jason began to scratch underneath the pointed jaw. Pangloss was in ecstacy.

“Coulda brought a fookin’ cat instead.” Paco was headed below. “Cats don’ lick your face.”

Jason followed, Pangloss on his heels. “Whoever heard of a loyal cat? You think a cat would guard the ship while we’re gone?”

“Cat wouldn’t shit on the deck. Fookin’ cats are clean, man.”

Paco opened the small refrigerator in the tiny galley, popped open a bottle of Caribe beer, and offered it to Jason. “You want cover, we shoulda brought a couple of fookin’ womens. They could guard the ship and not shit on the deck. An’ we could get laid.”

Jason sipped on the beer as Paco opened another and folded down the hinged galley table. “We finish here, you’ll have all the time you need for women. And money.”

Paco became serious. “You get what we need?”

Jason turned off the radio and slipped a CD into the stereo. Brisk but melodic strands of Vivaldi’s violins replaced the Latin beat.

Paco shook his massive head. “Man, that moosic sound like a somebody put two cats in th’ same sack.”

Ignoring the complaint, Jason squeezed past the larger man to reach into the refrigerator and pull out a bit of ground beef. He had Pangloss’s undivided attention. The dog sat, salivating.

Jason held out the treat. “Okay!”

The meat disappeared to the accompaniment of a satisfied gulp.

Jason took the paper from his pocket. “I think we have it. She drew a diagram showing the location of the master stateroom. As you know, we’re doing a ‘rendition,’ capturing the guy here and then rendezvousing with the ship at sea to turn him over.”

“Then what?”

“Not our business. Once the U.S. Navy has him safely out of somebody’s territorial waters, I’d guess there’ll be some fairly serious interrogation, something the Geneva Convention doesn’t exactly cover.”

Rendition was a CIA term for kidnapping someone from a sovereign nation and spiriting them away to where there were no bounds on interrogation methods. Having the actual capture performed by someone unconnected to the government gave at least technical truth to the constant denial of the practice.

Paco turned on a swivel-necked lamp, and both men stared at the paper before Paco said, “You fookin’ better hope she know what she doin’, man. Won’t be but one chance.”

Jason nodded. “One chance, if that.”

“Who is this guy, anyway?” Paco wanted to know.

“Aziz Saud Alazar,” Jason said. “ ’Nother of those Saudi princes who speaks Islam and acts Western. Bad dude, a graduate of Christ College, Oxford, as well as a number of schools for terrorists the Russkies operated in the seventies. Got into the arms-smuggling business just before the Evil Empire fell. Word on the street is he can broker the sale of anything from a slightly used F-14 fighter to a small Pakistani nuclear device. Sells to al-Qaeda, Hamas, Russian separatists, African dictators, anybody in the market for death and destruction. I’d guess someone wants his customer list.”

Paco drained his beer and reached for the fridge to replace it. “So, what’s one o’ them camel fookers doin’ here? No mosque widdin a hunnert miles or more.”

“Get me one too, will you? Alazar’s not like your basic fanatical fundamentalist, more like another Royal House of Saud playboy. His religion apparently doesn’t stand in the way of his receiving a nice hunk of change for his efforts. He spends lavishly on the Riviera, the casino in Monte Carlo, or on the slopes at St. Moritz. He was there only until recognized. Then he disappeared minutes ahead of the French security people. Probably returned to safe haven in Syria.”

Paco popped the tops and handed one of the frosty bottles to Jason. “Shudda known it’d be somebody causin’ shit. You don’ do much other ’n spoil somebody else’s party, go after the guys dealin’ in killin’ folks. Almost like you got somethin’ personal against ordinary international crooks.”

The statement was more astute than Jason would have expected from Paco. He took the beer and put it to his lips before answering. “I just do my job and collect my pay.”

It was obvious Paco didn’t accept this observation, but he didn’t choose to challenge it, either. “Ho-kay. I unnerstan’ we bring this one back alive to question.”

Jason was on more certain ground. “Like I said, I’d guess our soon-to-be pal Alazar sold some really bad shit to the wrong people. Our customer would like to know what and who. We bring him back alive, turn him over to the spooks. They turn him over to someone who thinks the Geneva Convention is a meeting of watchmakers and chocolate manufacturers. They can make him talk. Some set of bad guys find out their secret isn’t so secret anymore.”

Paco had already emptied his bottle. He tossed it into the garbage with a wistful look at the refrigerator. “I get it: no more stink like the ’merican press made a few years back about puttin’ panties on some fookers’ heads, havin’ dogs bark at ’em, in that prison in Iraq, Abu Ghraib.”

Jason shrugged, a signal of indifference. “Suit me fine to punch his ticket right here, but orders are orders. Besides, taking him prisoner we got a real talking point, things don’t go so well aboard that boat.”

Paco was digging around in the little refrigerator for something to eat. Over his shoulder he asked, “How’d we know th’ fooker was here, anyway?”

Jason shook his head. “Don’t ask me; I just work here, same as you. I do know the boat flies the Cayman flag.”

Under the table, where Paco thought it wouldn’t be seen, his hand was rubbing Pangloss’s long snout. Paco’s dislike of the dog was a charade that gave the burly Hispanic something to grouse about. “So does ever’ big yacht in the Caribbean. No tellin’ where it really came from.”

“This one came from over there.” He pointed to where the hills of St. Martin were clearly visible less than twenty miles away. “At least, that’s where Alazar boarded her.”

“Island’s half French, half Dutch,” Paco said, as though that explained its role as a point of origin.

“Yep,” Jason agreed as he slid out a computer keyboard concealed underneath the table. He typed in a brief message. When he hit enter, the electronics would automatically encode and compress the words into an unintelligible beep of less than a second’s time. A satellite overhead would relay what sounded like mere static to equipment that would decode and print the words. The signal would be untraceable and indecipherable.

He finished and pushed the keyboard back in, then lifted the tabletop. He stretched and yawned. “May as well nap. We aren’t going to get a lot of sleep tonight.”

Though neither would admit it to the other, both men knew there was no chance the adrenaline pumping through their systems would permit sleep.

By midnight the dark water of the harbor reflected lights from the adjacent bars and restaurants like jewels on black velvet. Music from Escalier, a gathering place for the younger visitors to the island, reverberated across the harbor with enough volume to cover the sounds of the small craft that scooted between entertainment establishments like water spiders. It was because of the activity of the island’s nightlife that Jason and Paco had decided to move now, rather than wait for the silence of early morning, when the sound of an outboard might draw attention.

Jason maneuvered the Zodiac into the space between the Fortune and the ship to her port, where both hulls created a shadow on the water as black and viscous as used motor oil. For a full five minutes they listened to the tide sucking at the ship, the anchor chain’s metallic groan, the sound of revelry across the harbor. Hair on the back of Jason’s neck prickled like tiny antennae anticipating danger signals. It was a familiar experience.

The Zodiac’s arrival had not been noted. Jason tied the painter to the anchor chain.

There was a metallic click as Jason checked the nine-millimeter SIG Sauer P228 automatic. Thirteen rounds in the magazine, another in the chamber. Two spare clips in quick-release holders on his belt. A good compromise between weight and firepower, the Swiss pistol still was hardly a match for the weaponry Alazar was likely to have on board. Jason’s plan required a quick in and out, something the weight of heavier equipment would only impede. If Jason and Paco needed superior armament, they would already be in serious trouble. Replacing the pistol in the holster slung over his Kevlar vest, Jason inspected the rest of his gear as best he could in the poor light.

“Ready?”

Paco’s silhouette glanced up the anchor chain and shook its head slowly. “A fookin’ rat couldn’ get though there, man,” he whispered.

“A fat rat, you mean.” Jason tugged on a pair of work gloves, pulled himself out of the Zodiac by the anchor chain, and began to climb. “You’ll have to suck in your gut.”

When Jason was halfway up the chain, Paco began his climb. Both men moved slowly, aware that a slip, a mistake, could set the chain into motion, clanging against the steel skin of the ship like an alarm bell.

At the top of the chain Jason stood on the lip of the anchor hatch, holding on to the chain for balance. Darkness prevented him from seeing Paco, but the larger man’s grunts marked his progress. When Paco stood panting alongside Jason, Jason took a small flashlight from his pocket and played its narrow beam on the opening where the chain disappeared into the hull.

“No fookin’ way, man,” Paco whispered. “No way I can squeeze through there.”

He was right.

“You’ll have to take off your vest,” Jason said. “And lay off the beer and chips before the next time.”

Headfirst, Jason crawled through the hole into stygian darkness. The flashlight revealed a triangular room of no more than fifty square feet containing coils of rope, a toolbox bolted to the wall, and a motor for the electric winches overhead. The apex of the triangle was the ship’s bow; the bulkhead that was its base contained a small door.

Jason tried the door. It refused to yield.

“Fook! I’m stuck!” Paco’s head and shoulders filled the opening.

Jason suppressed a grin before he realized his face was in darkness. “Wriggle a little more. You look like somebody’s hunting trophy mounted on a wall.”

“Real funny, man.”

Jason switched off the light and returned his attention to the door, squatting to peer along the edges. There was no watertight seal above the coaming, as there would have been on a military vessel. Through the space between the door and its frame he could make out dim light. He removed a diver’s knife from its sheath on his ankle.

A thud beside him announced that Paco had worked his way loose.

Jason ran the knife blade upward along the side of the door until he felt resistance. He increased pressure until there was a click, the sound of a simple bolt sliding from its catch. As he had guessed, there had been no complex locking mechanism. There was no reason to worry about the contents of the anchor locker. He pushed and the door swung an inch or so.

He turned to Paco. “You got that syringe ready?”

Paco held up a SIG Sauer like Jason’s. “Yeah, but I’m cocked an’ locked.”

The two men crept up a dimly lit companionway to the middle level of the vessel. At the top of the stairs a door led to a passageway that resembled the hall of a plush apartment building more than anything nautical. Thick carpet covered floors bounded by highly polished teak walls.

“Last door on the left,” Jason whispered.

Paco, weapon ready, watched Jason make his way to the end. Jason stood outside the door covering Paco until he, too, stood outside it. Jason held up one finger, then a second. On the third, he opened the door and entered while Paco stood ready to supply covering fire if needed.

The only light in the stateroom seeped through half-curtained portholes from the late-night bars along the dock. Paco slipped inside and softly closed the door. A muffled click announced that he had locked it. Both men flattened themselves against the bulkhead while their eyes became accustomed to what illumination there was. The sound of light snoring came from a bed that was a dark blob to their right. Jason was beside it in two steps, his gun ready when Paco flipped the light switch.

Both occupants of the bed came immediately awake.

Jason jammed the stubby barrel of his gun into the man’s gaping mouth. “One sound and your brains’ll be all over those silk sheets,” he whispered.

Jason saw that the other body was that of a woman, no doubt an advance on Alazar’s ration of heavenly virgins. She emitted a squeak of terror as Paco placed his weapon next to her head and made a quiet shushing sound. Her eyes darted from the gun to the syringe he held in his other hand and back again.

Jason gave a quick nod, and Paco pulled the woman from the protection of the bedclothes. She was nude. He roughly shoved her toward the adjacent bath.

“You shut up,” Paco cautioned. “I hear anythin’ from you, and you dead.”

From the expression on her face before Paco closed the door, she believed him.

Jason was counting on the fact that, unlike many of his cllients, Alazar had no desire to meet Allah up close and personal just yet.

Alazar lay perfectly still, only a twitch of his eyes betraying his fear. Jason followed the direction in which the arms dealer had glanced. Without removing the gun from the man’s mouth, Jason reached under a pillow and held up a .38 Beretta. He jammed it into the waist of his pants.

“Don’t even think about it,” he said as he held out a hand toward Paco.

Paco slapped the syringe into his palm.

Alazar began to squirm, a series of unintelligible protests leaking around the gun’s muzzle.

Jason held the needle up, squeezing a few drops from the end to make sure there were no air bubbles.

“Hold still,” he hissed. “If I were going to kill you, you’d be dead. You’re going for a ride, and we want to make sure you don’t become a party pooper on us.”

He stuck the syringe into an arm.

Jason had not emptied the needle before Alazar’s back arched. Teeth ground against the gun’s barrel as the man’s face contorted and spasmed. His arms flailed widely; then he moaned and was still. Dropping the syringe, Jason felt the neck for a pulse at the carotid artery. There was none. Blank eyes stared into eternity. As if he needed confirmation of the obvious, there was the smell of the result a recently relaxed sphincter muscle.

“Shit!” Jason spit. “There goes our security blanket. Some asshole overcooked the tranquilizer.” He flung the syringe across the room. “Stupid bastards!”

Paco was puzzled. “Now what?”

Jason glanced around the stateroom. “Go through the bureau there; see if you can find papers, anything of interest.”

As he spoke, Jason snatched a laptop computer from the table beside the bed. “With any luck at all, the recently departed used this for something other than games and porn.”

Paco quickly completed his search of the bureau’s drawers. “Nothin’, man, nothin’ other ’n some ’spensive silk shirts.” He held up what looked like the bottom to a woman’s bright red bikini. “An’ these.”

Jason put the computer under his left arm. “We can discuss Alazar’s taste in underwear later. Right now, we’re history. Make sure the woman isn’t getting out in the next few minutes. You can tie the door….”

There was a soft knock at the door to the passageway and muffled words Jason didn’t understand.

A quick look around affirmed what he already knew: that door was the only exit from the stateroom. He pointed toward the bath, then the door. Paco understood. As Jason pressed himself against the bulkhead, Paco pulled the woman from the bathroom. Keeping her body and himself concealed behind the door, he opened it, pushing her head around the edge. His weapon rested along the back of her neck.

There was a murmured conversation.

Through the crack between the door and its frame, Jason could see a young man in a white jacket carrying what appeared to be a bottle of champagne like the two on the floor beside the bed. Alazar, it seemed, did not include bubbly in the prophet’s injunction against alcohol.

In a single fluid movement, Jason stepped from behind the door, shoved the woman aside, and grabbed the astonished wine server’s jacket with one hand while jamming the SIG Sauer between his eyes. The man offered no resistance as Jason snatched him into the room and gently closed the door. The only casualty of the maneuver was the champagne, which toppled from its tray. It had not been opened. Paco stooped.

“Leave it,” Jason said. “Off vintage, anyway, I’ll bet. The sort of crap the French would sell Arabs.”

Paco picked the bottle up and stuffed it neck-first into his pants. “Mebbe off vintage, but th’ fookin’ price’s ho-kay. Whatcha gonna do with ’em?”

The woman’s fear-widened eyes were trying to avoid the body sprawled across the bed. The man could not tear his stare away.

“Rip the sheets into strips and tie and gag both of them. Let’s hope nobody is scheduled to bring the caviar.”

While both captives cowered under Jason’s automatic, Paco tore strips from the bedsheets. Minutes later the man and woman were trussed like bucks slung over the hood of a pickup truck. Jason rummaged around the top of a bedside table until he found a set of keys, one of which he used to lock the stateroom once he and Paco were outside in the passageway.

They listened.

Silence is an absence of sound. But to someone whose adrenaline is pumping, someone whose life depends on his hearing at the moment, silence becomes a sound of its own, the sound of the heart thumping, of breaths taken deeply, and, loudest of all, the sound of emptiness and space that create a pressure upon the ears.

Jason’s employer was going to be less than happy with a dead rather than captive arms salesman, but Jason and Paco hadn’t formulated the contents of the deadly syringe. Maybe someone had planned for Alazar to die, lying to Jason for fear he would refuse to administer a fatal dose. If so, no one should have been concerned. Ridding the world of its Alazars was what Jason had sworn to do — kill all of them.

He would never be even for what they had done.

Alert to the possibility of being discovered, they began to move, to return the way they had come.

They had almost reached the anchor locker when they heard shouts and the sound of heavy and hurried feet. Jason and Paco traded stealth for haste.

Splinters, as deadly as bullets, flew from the ceiling over his head. He ducked reflexively as he and Paco stepped over the coaming and slammed the door.

In the cramped darkness of the tiny room they could see the harbor’s water through the anchor port.

Jason motioned with his pistol. “You first. I’ll cover.”

“No, man. Take me too long to get through th’ fookin’ hole. You go.”

The door trembled in its frame as jagged holes admitted light from the passageway outside. Wood fragments buzzed through the air like angry bees. No sound of gunshots. Silencers, Jason thought. They weren’t using the arsenal of automatic weapons Alazar usually carried because rapid fire quickly burned out sound suppressors.

Jason fired two rounds through the shattered door. The SIG Sauer might as well have been a cannon in the confines of the small room. He didn’t expect to hit anything, but the noise should back Alazar’s men off for a moment or two, since their reluctance to use automatic weapons indicated that they wanted to avoid attracting the attention of anyone on shore, particularly the local cops.

His ears ringing, Jason stuck the gun into its holster, made sure the computer was securely inside the back of his belt, and grabbed the anchor chain with both hands as he swung his feet through the hawsehole. He squeezed through the aperture until only his head was still inside.

“C’mon, Paco!”

In the dim light reflected through the opening, he saw Paco grab the chain.

Jason was halfway down the anchor chain when Paco grunted. “I’m stuck! I can’t get through! The fookin’ bottle…”

Jason’s feet were feeling for the Zodiac. “Dump the goddamn champagne bottle!”

Above his head Jason saw Paco’s legs wrapped around the chain hawser. They struggled and went limp. Arms dragged Paco back inside.

A face appeared at the opening.

It was not Paco’s.

Jason grabbed the pistol and squeezed off a shot, the report merging with the clang of the bullet ricocheting from the steel hull.

The face disappeared.

His weapon pointed at the anchor port, Jason used his other hand to snatch the inflatable’s line from the anchor chain and shoved the craft clear. He was tugging at the outboard’s lanyard when a spitting sound was followed by the hiss of escaping air.

Shit, somebody had hit the Zodiac.

The motor caught on the third pull. Lying flat against the coolness of the thin rubber, Jason opened the throttle and streaked for the middle of the harbor. Something whined overhead and hit the water with a crack.

When he was certain he was out of range, Jason cut the motor and considered his options. He wasn’t concerned about the Zodiac. Its inflatable hull was compartmentalized; one puncture wouldn’t sink it.

Paco.

Dead or wounded. A prisoner.

Jason tried not to imagine what would happen to his comrade if he were alive.

Orders were clear: If something went wrong, the mission was nothing more than an effort by individuals to revenge one of the many vistims of Alazar’s business. Neither Jason nor Paco were employed by any government. The United States disavowed any connection with such a violation of France’s sovereignty by mercenaries, even if one was a U.S. national. Any survivor was to vacate the area as quickly and quietly as possible, leaving his comrade to whatever fate he might suffer.

Rules of the game.

Fuck orders.

Had the syringe contained the nonlethal dose as advertised, a sedated Alazar could have been dragged with them, used as a shield or hostage. Because of someone’s incompetence or dishonesty, a good man would likely die a very unpleasant death. Jason was not going to leave a comrade to the tender mercies of people whose stock in trade was death.

Water slopped over the deflated compartment of the Zodiac as Jason made for the harbor’s mouth. Once he rounded the quay, he was out of sight from the Fortune. He beached the Zodiac on a rocky shore just beyond the lights of Chez Maya, a restaurant where waiters were stacking chairs on tables for the night. The place had a view of the roads as well as a small cemetery. Entirely appropriate in view of the evening’s activities, Jason thought grimly.

Only when he beached the Zodiac did he remember Paco had the small cork attached to the keys to the sailboat, keys that not only allowed the single hatch and door to the cabin to be locked, but the ignition key to the small engine. At the moment, keys were the least of his worries.

It took nearly twenty minutes to make his way back to the harbor on foot along the narrow street. Keeping in the shadows was not difficult with the distance between the few streetlights and the occasional vehicular traffic. He was trying to formulate a plan when he rounded a curve and faced the straight stretch of pavement that bordered the harbor.

Half a mile ahead, the water, ships, and buildings were painted with flashing blue and red lights. The bleating of sirens bounced from the surrounding hills. Jason stopped. Dread grew in his chest like an undigested meal in his stomach — a dread that reached icy tentacles down his arms and legs.

Forcing himself to walk at a normal pace, he approached a small crowd of police, medics, and the curious at the edge of the dock. All he could see at first was a puddle of water with a pinkish tint he assumed was a reflection from a nearby ambulance. Closer inspection revealed something at the center of the group, something large, wet, and oozing red. A fish that some nocturnal fisherman had dragged ashore?

He knew better.

“What is it?” an anonymous dark form with an American accent asked another.

“A body,” an earlier arrival answered. “Boat was headed out of the harbor and saw it. Thought somebody had fallen overboard.”

Fighting back the acid bile that was rising in his throat, Jason slipped between several gawking spectators. A nude body of a man lay on the concrete, a stream of seawater and blood dripping from the jagged stump of a neck from which the head was missing. In the pulsating lights of emergency vehicles the network of scars across the chest was quite visible.

“Boy, I bet this causes an uproar,” the first spectator observed as casually as though commenting on the nightly news. “A murder isn’t going to do the island any good. Particularly one this grisly.” He sounded as if he were enjoying the show.

“Murder?” the second man asked sarcastically. “What murder? It was a boating accident.”

Jason turned his back on the following snicker. Where had these people become so emotionally calloused that they could view a decapitation with such equanimity? Violence had been part of his life for a long time, and he would never become accustomed to sights like that on the dock. Did American television and movies put that much bloodshed in the lives of normal people?

He looked for a place to throw up unobserved.

Almost unobserved.

One man in the crowd watched closely. Jason was too busy losing the afternoon’s beers to note the small digital camera with its enhanced light lens.

CHAPTER FOUR

It was unlikely anyone would have come upon the building. It was so well concealed in the rain forest that at first sight it seemed like a jungle cat pouncing from the green curtain of growth.

Otherwise, it was remarkable only in that it had a veneer of concrete rather than the cement block from which most native homes were built. What could not be observed in the remote chance of a passerby was that the structure was not a house at all. It concealed the entrance to an underground network. The massive ficus tree whose branches seemed to embrace the modest edifice concealed a dozen or so high-tech antennae. The strangler fig vines, thick as a man’s wrist, that draped from the tree like ropes anchoring a balloon were actually electrical wires that ran to a generator far enough away that its gentle hum could not be heard here.

Not that sound mattered. The nearest settlement, a native village, was miles away, and the increasing number of tourists visiting the Costa Rican rain forest were content to remain in their vehicles on what served as a road on the opposite side of the mountain.

The government, always in pursuit of U.S. dollars, had happily allowed the construction of a nature laboratory to study and preserve the local flora and fauna. No one in San José had questioned the necessity of using nonlocal labor to build the facility, workers who melted away like mountain mist in the morning sun as soon as the job was complete. As long as certain officials received their monthly “consulting fee,” no one questioned what was going on in the rain forest.

Only ten feet below the surface of volcanic rock, a room of roughly a thousand square feet was as brightly lit as an operating room. Two men sat in front of a computer screen.

Both were dressed in guayabera, the loose-fitting, four-pocket shirt the Latin America peasant wore outside rough white canvas pants rolled almost to the knees, with thong flip-flops. Notwithstanding the native attire, neither man would have been mistaken for a Costa Rican. Both were bulky, with the bodies of athletes from some sport where hurting someone was part of the game. The light from the computer reflected a bluish glow from two shaved scalps.

“You’re sure that’s him?” one asked the other.

“You can see the harbor of St. Bart’s in the background,” the other responded.

The first man shifted his position for a better view. “What do we know about him?”

The other touched a key on the board in front of him and read from the screen. “Very little so far. He was at one time employed by the army — we hacked into the military’s files — but not much since he left in 2001.”

“Echelon?”

The man referred to the supereavesdropping program that, from its place in England, monitored every e-mail and most telephone calls worldwide. The information gleaned was shared only by England, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The satellites and the system they made work had been in operation long before the American public learned that their communications could be intercepted. The sheer volume of transmissions made it highly unlikely that anyone would be listened to without already being of interest to one of the governments involved.

“Our person there has secretly tagged Peters’s name, although that’s more difficult than watching for a specific phone number or e-mail address. He may use an encryption device. In any case, we’re tracing what we took from his companion. Is he a threat?”

“He or his employer has Alazar’s computer.”

The other man, perhaps a year or so younger than the first, reached into a bowl containing the small, sweet bananas grown nearby. He began to peel. “Surely he wasn’t so careless as to…”

The older man snorted. “Alazar was not part of our cause. He was only in it for the money.”

The other finished the banana in two bites. “We’ve found the location of his secret; we no longer need him. Perhaps his death was providential.”

“Perhaps. But keep our people looking for Peters. We can’t risk what might be on that computer. The secret he sold us is our greatest weapon against the despoilers of the earth.”