CHAPTER 4

There were bigger, fancier, more powerful boats moored at the Buttermilk Sound marina but as far as Henry was concerned, none of them was as classy as the Ella Mae.

Made in 1959, she was one of the smallest vessels at the marina, but her hull was polished wood. In Henry’s opinion, this put her several levels above the fiberglass bath toys anchored here, no matter how big or fancy or expensive they were. Her wood hull meant she was higher maintenance, too, but in Henry’s experience, that was true of anything worth having.

Henry steered Ella Mae over to the dock with the fuel pumps and filled the tank. When he was finished, he straightened his Phillies cap and headed for the booth in front of the marina office. To his surprise, there was someone new on duty today, a pleasant, smiling woman, dark-haired, pink-cheeked, and heart-wrenchingly young, wearing a Buttermilk Sound polo shirt. She removed her earbuds as he approached.

“Good morning!” she said in a cheerful, sincere voice that made Henry think she actually believed that.

“Hey,” Henry replied. “What happened to Jerry?”

“Retired.” She beamed. “He couldn’t take any more of this bustling place. I’m Danny.”

“Henry.” He wasn’t sure he’d ever been this young, even when he’d been this young. “I owe you $23.46.”

“So what are you fishing for?” Her eyes widened as he handed her a hundred dollar bill.

“Peace and quiet. And mackerel.”

She kept smiling as she made change. “So I guess you’ll be heading to Beecher’s Point?”

Jerry had never been so nosy. Maybe she thought getting acquainted was part of good customer service. “Is that what you’d recommend?” he asked, a bit archly.

“Seems like a nice enough day for it,” she said.

Before Henry could respond, a bee flew past him. Reflexively, he took off his hat and snapped it sharply, catching the bee in mid-buzz. It fell to the deck.

“Wow,” Danny said as she got up to peer over the counter at the dead insect. “Not much of a live-and-letlive guy, I take it?”

“I’m deathly allergic to bees,” Henry told her. “So, are you a student? Or just a fish-whisperer?” He jerked his chin at the textbook on the counter; the cover photo was one of those arty shots that made jellyfish look ethereally beautiful.

“Working my way through grad school,” she said. “Marine biology.”

“UGA, Darien?” he asked.

She made a small fist-pump. “Go Dogs.”

“Well, be careful,” Henry chuckled. “There are some dogs on these docks, too.”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” she assured him, her voice brisk, as she put her earbuds back in. Henry loped back to the Ella Mae, feeling like a prize fool. There are some dogs on these docks, too—what the hell was that? If he was going to go around giving fatherly advice to young women, he should get some felt slippers, a cardigan with leather elbow patches, and a goddam pipe. Maybe he’d better run back and tell her to look both ways before crossing the street on her way home. She might need the reminder, being so young and all.

He glanced at his watch. Nope, there wasn’t any more time for making a fool of himself; he had somewhere to be.

* * *

An hour or so of solitude listening to Thelonious Monk while the Ella Mae swayed on the calm water smoothed out Henry’s disposition considerably. Out here there was no age or retirement, no missed shots or saying dumb-ass shit to pretty young women at the marina office. Just the hard-salt cool air, the ever-so-gentle rocking motion of the boat, and the unique sound of Monk at the piano. The way Monk played, you didn’t just hear the music, you felt it. The man attacked the keys, producing something that was more than music—music-plus. Only Monk could do it.

Out here, Henry was able to relax in a way he never could on land. He didn’t care to be in the water at all, not one little bit. Being on the water, however—that was a whole ’nother story; Henry thought it had to be as close to heaven as a living person could get. He pulled his Phillies cap down low and let himself fall into a light doze—or what he thought was a light doze. When he heard the sound of engines approaching and sat up, he saw the sun had climbed a little higher in the sky.

The engine noise grew louder, a deep, full sound; something big was in the vicinity. Henry leaned over the starboard side of the Ella Mae and splashed his face with seawater to wake himself up. As he turned to reach for a small towel on the passenger seat, he saw the yacht coming toward him on the port side.

Henry recognized the make if not the exact model of the craft. It was favored by millionaires who were blessed with a sense of style as well as money. The small, canopied upper deck where the helm was located was just large enough to accommodate the pilot and a companion. Some pilots, however, preferred to have the helm all to themselves, like the man Henry could see up there now, throttling down the engines. He maneuvered the vessel alongside the Ella Mae, making it bob around like a cork on an incoming tide.

The man cut the engines and smiled down at Henry. Henry recognized him even though he hadn’t seen him in over two decades and grinned back at him.

* * *

The lower deck of the Scratched Eight was downright elegant; wide, cushioned seating ran along the polished wood walls on either side, drawing Henry’s eyes to the wet bar, which was also polished wood. The bar seemed to preside over everything; next to it on the starboard side, a set of stairs spiraled down below deck. Henry thought it looked like a mansion that had been converted into an ocean-going home-away-from-home. For all he knew, it could be—it was the sort of thing Jack Willis would do.

Jack looked every bit the lord of the floating manor in an open white shirt, floral board shorts, and boat shoes. While the years hadn’t been as unkind to him as they’d been to others Henry knew, Jack had definitely aged. He was still as quick to smile as he’d been back in the day but the lines around his eyes were from worry, not laughter. His jawline had softened and he was thicker through the middle but he hadn’t lost all his muscle; he moved with the unconscious, easy physicality of a man who hadn’t spent most of his life sitting down.

Henry felt a surge of awkward self-consciousness and wasn’t sure why. Jack had the same green spade on his wrist, so it wasn’t like either of them had to pretend with each other. Maybe it was knowing Jack would also be taking note of how he’d changed over the years.

He had been astonished when he’d answered the phone the night before and heard Jack’s voice on the other end. He had disappeared from Henry’s radar when he had decided to go into business in the private sector. Jack had wanted him to come along but Henry had declined. Every now and then, Jack would send him a postcard, usually of some gorgeous beach resort with a short message scrawled on the back: Wish you were here—don’t you? Sure you won’t reconsider?

After a while the postcards stopped coming and Henry figured Jack had finally decided to take no for an answer. The last thing he had expected was a phone call with a request to meet. Not that he’d been unhappy about it—as soon as Jack had given him the coordinates he had been looking forward to seeing him again. And now all of a sudden he was like some clueless boot who didn’t know what to do with his hands or where to look.

“I guess I don’t have to ask how business is,” Henry said with a laugh as he looked around.

“It could have been yours. I only asked you ten times.” Jack’s laugh was a bit sheepish and Henry realized he was on edge as well. “Good to see you, Henry.”

“Yeah, you, too,” Henry replied, meaning it.

They hugged, and that was an awkward moment for both of them. But after what they’d been through together, a little awkwardness was no big deal.

“What are you doing now? Feelin’ sexy?” Henry nodded at the open shirt.

Jack laughed again as they moved into the cabin. “Thanks for coming so quickly.”

“Still married?” Henry asked.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “My wife’s on a shopping trip in Paris and my son is in a Swiss boarding school. You?”

Henry shook his head. “No wife. No son. No Paris.”

Jack went behind a polished wooden bar and took a couple of beers from a small fridge. He opened them, handed one to Henry, and they raised their bottles in a familiar toast.

“Here’s to the next war,” Jack said. “Which is no war.”

“No war,” Henry agreed. They clinked bottles and drank. It had been over twenty years since the last time they had done this. Henry wished he could take more time to savor the moment but neither of them had come out here just to have a few beers and catch up on each other’s domestic status. “Okay, so what have you got?”

Jack laughed. “Still not one for smelling the roses, are you?”

Henry dipped his head to one side noncommittally. “I’m trying, brother. But you did say it was urgent.”

Jack nodded and led him out to the stern, grabbing a laptop from a built-in shelf on the way. They sat down with their backs to the cabin and Jack opened the laptop. The screen came to life immediately. “Recognize him?” he asked.

Henry did; he had seen the photo only yesterday, when he had set fire to it and left the ashes in a fishbowl. He was careful to keep his expression neutral as he turned from the screen to Jack. “Who’s asking?”

“Your old friend who’s afraid you’re in trouble.” Jack’s weathered face wore the kind of serious expression Henry hadn’t seen for many years, and had hoped he would never have to see again. “So, do you? Recognize him?”

“Yeah. I AMF’ed him in Liège a few days ago.”

“Did they tell you who he was?”

Henry frowned. Of course they had—the agency always told you who the target was. Jack knew that. “Valery Dormov, terrorist.”

Jack’s expression was pained. “No, Valery Dormov, molecular biologist,” he said, his voice heavy. “Who worked here in the States for over thirty years.” He tapped the touchpad with one finger; the image shrank and became the photo on Dormov’s driver’s license, issued in Georgia and not yet expired.

“But I read his file,” Henry said. He felt as if he had a large, icy lump in his stomach. “It said he was a bioterrorist.”

“The file was spiked,” Jack told him. “I don’t know by whom.”

The yacht was barely moving in the calm waters of Buttermilk Sound but Henry felt as if the world were tilting sideways. He half-expected to see the horizon was now on a slant but everything looked normal. Except it wasn’t, not if Del Patterson had lied to him.

For two and a half decades, Henry had put his life in Patterson’s hands without a second thought, never less than a hundred percent certain that he could trust him, that the information Patterson gave him was solid, that he and Patterson and everyone else on the team were all doing the same job for the same side.

If he had heard this from anyone other than Jack Willis, Henry wouldn’t have even considered the possibility. But Jack was his brother; he wouldn’t have come to Henry after so many years to drop this on him unless he was more than solid on the facts.

“Why?” Henry managed after a bit.

Jack shrugged, looking apologetic. “Don’t know that either, I’m afraid. But a lot of alarms went off when Dormov switched teams.”

Henry’s thoughts were racing now. What if Patterson hadn’t lied? Maybe he had been deceived by someone higher up. Was Patterson a cunning traitor or a clueless dupe? Neither option fit the man Henry knew.

“Who told you all this?” he asked.

Jack hesitated, like he had to choose his words carefully. “A friend from the other side.”

A ‘friend.’ Henry had a pretty good idea of who that might be and unfortunately, it wasn’t someone he had ever been in direct contact with. He was going to have to rectify that in order to get to the bottom of this mess. Also, to rule out the possibility that Jack had been lied to. That didn’t seem at all likely—Jack had always been able to spot a liar a mile away even in bad weather—but the only way Henry could be absolutely sure was to meet Jack’s source face-to-face. Jack would understand; if their situations had been reversed, Jack would have felt the same.

“I want to talk to this friend,” he said.

Jack choked on a sip of beer. “Oh, sure, no problem! What do you prefer, Skype or FaceTime?”

Henry kept his expression neutral. “I want to talk to him. I have to.”

He could practically see Jack’s mind shift into overdrive, coming up with all the reasons why such a thing was completely impossible and balancing them against the knowledge that Henry would never let it go.

“What the hell—the guy owes me,” Jack said. He put his beer in the cup holder on his left and typed rapidly on the laptop keyboard. Then he turned the screen toward Henry, showing him large black letters on a white background:

YURI KOVAC
BUDAPEST

Henry was about to thank him when he heard something behind him. He turned to see an extraordinarily beautiful woman had come up the stairs from below deck. As she came out of the cabin, Henry saw that she had a headful of miraculously thick, honey-colored hair and an equally miraculous body not even slightly obscured by the filmy wrap she wore over a bikini that seemed to have been made for her.

She paused for a moment and peered at Jack over the top of her sunglasses with an expression that somehow managed to be both coolly reserved and possessive. Then she turned away and floated gracefully up the ladder to the next deck, a feat Henry wouldn’t have thought possible. He turned to look at Jack; whatever her story was, it had to be fascinating.

Jack grinned and gave a small shrug. “Kitty. To make up for all the things I didn’t do in my DIA years.”

“You think you didn’t do that in your DIA years?” Henry laughed. He considered pointing out that when he and Jack had started working together, this vision of loveliness would have been learning how to color inside the lines with her first set of crayons, but decided against it. It wasn’t like he’d be telling Jack anything he didn’t already know.

* * *

Jack showed him around his floating mansion, which was nicer than a few land mansions Henry had been in. The beautiful Kitty didn’t reappear and join them for a drink. As far as Henry could tell, she had vanished without a trace, which was something beautiful ladies often did. It seemed to be their super-power. Jack didn’t mention her again so Henry didn’t, either. When you had shed blood together, you didn’t make an issue out of anyone’s coping strategies, even if it had been two and a half decades since the bleeding had stopped.

They went back to the stern to have another beer together, looking out at the water and enjoying the fact that there was no one and nothing else around them for as far as the eye could see; Henry certainly enjoyed it, anyway. He looked up at the smooth blue bowl of the sky.

Except it wasn’t perfectly smooth. Henry saw a small spark, sunlight on metal. It was like a metal splinter ruining the otherwise flawless blue and for some reason, it gave him a bad feeling. But after what Jack had told him, he thought, there wasn’t much to feel good about.

“You took a big risk contacting me,” Henry said, turning away from the glint far above them. “I wish you hadn’t.”

“I know but what else was I supposed to do? I love you, brother.” Jack’s voice broke on the last four words.

“Love you, too, man,” Henry replied, now thoroughly disconcerted. Sometimes when you were in the field together, your emotions could blindside you. But Jack had always been one of the steadier guys, good at keeping a lid on his feelings and staying focused on the immediate situation.

But then, this wasn’t the field. Or rather, it wasn’t supposed to be. That glint in the sky, however, suggested otherwise.

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