House on Fire

74

Sukie bought a pair of simple white sandals, Christian Louboutins; I told her she looked nice in them, and we got back into the hotel’s Suburban. But instead of returning to the hotel and packing up to fly out, she told me she wanted to have lunch at a place she’d found previously on the far eastern end of the island.

I made a private deal with the hotel driver, dropped him off at the hotel, and drove the car myself. It took a half hour to get there, and when we did, I was surprised at how modest it was — a beach shack, right on the beach and not in one of the resorts. We were early for lunch and got a table by the water.

It should have been relaxing — it felt like a tropical island cliché, nearly like a film set, the sand and the water and the beach umbrella — but I was feeling the immense press of time. I wanted to get back to Boston and prepare for the Kimball family meeting. I didn’t want to be sitting there having lunch. I sneaked a glance at my watch. If I didn’t somehow end up with the Tallinn file, none of my plans stood a chance of working.

“I found this place when I was here a couple years ago,” Sukie said. “I know it doesn’t look promising, but they have the best conch fritters. And johnny cakes.”

I ordered a Jamaican beer, a Red Stripe, and she asked for a frozen margarita. We were the only customers there.

“The real reason I wanted to get out of the resort,” she said, “was so we can talk openly. Knowing my father, and Fritz, our suite might be bugged.”

I nodded. Anything was possible.

“I saw you talking to that guy in the store,” she said. “You know him?”

“I know the type,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“A local guy, a retired mercenary, I bet. From South Africa, I’m guessing. The kind who takes the occasional freelance job. Local talent.”

“But hired by who?”

“That’s the question.”

“Fritz?”

“Not likely. He’d use his own company employees.”

She began absently, straightening the sugar packets in the holder on the table. “Then who?”

I shook my head. Shrugged. “What do you know about the meeting on Saturday?” I asked.

“Just that we have to take a vote on ‘the future of the company.’ So it’s a big deal.”

“Any guess what that means?”

She shook her head. “Like I said, maybe he wants to file for bankruptcy.”

“He sounded very gung-ho at the sales conference.”

“He was defending his legacy, his honor. Of course he was. But if he does file for bankruptcy, I lose. That Tallinn study will do me no good anymore. Basically I need to have it, like, yesterday.”

“If Kimball files for bankruptcy, what really happens to all the lawsuits against them?”

“They all get frozen. That means the company gets to escape its reckoning. Instead of paying damages to families it destroyed, it gets away scot-free. If Kimball goes bankrupt, all these people around the country who are suing them will get pennies.”

“Why would your father need a family meeting to declare bankruptcy?”

“Because we each sit on the board of the Kimball Family Trust, which in turn owns Kimball Pharma.” The sugar packets were now perfectly aligned.

“You each get an equal vote?”

“Hell no. Dad gets fifty-one percent, and the rest of us get a total of forty-nine percent. But a vote to declare bankruptcy requires a supermajority. Which means he needs two of us to go along with his plan. And I’ll bet Megan won’t agree to it. Or Paul. And obviously I won’t.”

“That still leaves two, Hayden and Cameron.”

“Wild cards,” she said. “You’re not going to get that Tallinn file in time, are you?”

“Unlikely,” I admitted. “But now I have a recording of Conrad and Fritz talking about it and whether it leaked. They also talk about ‘getting rid of’ a scientist in Estonia. But tell me something: What if I do get the file? What will you do with it?”

“You’ve asked me that before.”

“Humor me.”

“I trigger an inquest and criminal investigation, and families of victims will get compensated. And, yes, justice is done.”

“Okay.”

“I just know,” she said, “that if we don’t dig up a copy of the Tallinn study, my father will be unstoppable.”

“We still have two days. Anything can happen.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” She paused, looked at me. “Why do I get the feeling there’s stuff you’re not telling me?”

“I’m not?”

“Like what you’re up to. What you’re doing. What’s going on.”

“That’s not part of the deal,” I said.

“But I hired you.”

“And fired me and hired me again. But you asked me to get you a particular file. Not to tell you how I was going to do it.”

“Do you not trust me?”

“Of course I do. I’m protecting you. There are things I don’t want you to know because it’s better for you if you don’t. Let’s just leave it at that.”

Our drinks arrived. She took a sip of her margarita and then said, “I’m not — how do I say this? — I’m not great about trusting other people, as you’ve probably surmised. I’m starting to feel close to you, and warning sirens are going off in my head, Danger, danger. Because I don’t want to get burned. Again. So if you’re going to betray me, let me know now.”

“Betray you?”

“Everyone has an agenda.”

“And what do you imagine mine is?”

After a moment, she shook her head. She didn’t know, and she didn’t answer.

The sun was bright on the beach, and the interior of the shack, a hundred feet away, was shadowed. I was able to see a hulking figure enter the shack and talk to the bartender.

“I need to know I can trust you,” she said. “It’s so hard for me.” She hesitated. “You’re not like anyone else I’ve known.”

“Let me ask you something. Sort of difficult. Paul talked about something that happened between you and your father, when you were in your teens.”

“I can’t... I can’t... I need to be strong. I need to do what I need to do. I can’t go there.” Tears were flooding her eyes.

I had to ask her. “Did your father—”

She closed her eyes and replied in something close to a monotone. “Maybe he was drunk. Maybe he was, I don’t know, drunk with success. He’d just turned down a huge offer from Pfizer, and... He felt like he could have anything and anybody.”

“And he did something.”

She nodded mutely, tears in her eyes. “I still can’t talk about it,” she said very quietly.

I took her hand. “A guy I knew in the Forces once told me we all get wounded,” I said, “and we all take our scars with us. And if we don’t accept our scars, we haven’t really healed.”

We sat in silence for a minute or so, waiting for our food, neither of us hungry. They were taking their time. I asked the waiter for a second Red Stripe, and then I happened to notice the Audi I’d seen earlier, parked on the side of the road not far from where I’d parked the Suburban. “Stay here,” I said.

“Where are you—?”

“I’ll be right back.”

I went into the shack, which was a large kitchen next to a bar and a few small tables — most people sat on the beach — and when my eyes got adjusted to the dark interior, I didn’t see the South African there anymore. A young male bartender at the blender, and two sweaty-looking workers in a small, hot kitchen.

When I exited the shack onto the road, I saw the red-faced, chubby retired mercenary standing near his Audi, smoking a cigarette. The guy from the shoe store. He was wearing a white ball cap and sunglasses and talking to another guy. Younger, slimmer, tougher-looking.

I went up to them. “Thought I’d make it easy for you,” I said. “You want to follow me, here I am.”

“Jy was deur jou ma se gat gebore want haar poes was te besig!” the chubby mercenary said.

I had no idea what he was saying, but I could tell it was some sort of obscenity. “I thought I made myself clear,” I said, and suddenly I kneed him in the balls. I heard the air leave his lungs — oof — and he crumpled, toppled, onto the sand, clutching himself. “Cuiter!” he gasped. “Fok!”

“They should have given you more information on who you’re following,” I said.

I first saw something glinting in the sun and then saw that the second guy had pulled out a nasty-looking knife with a serious blade. I was, of course, unarmed. Weren’t they always saying Anguilla was extremely safe?

Disarming a guy bearing a knife is always a problem, no matter what you see on YouTube videos. Quickly, I looked around for some kind of weapon of opportunity but saw nothing. Asphalt, sand, the concrete walls of the beach shack, a couple of parked cars. Maybe a rock I could use as a bludgeon. But I didn’t see anything else.

I stuck my left arm out toward the guy to goad him into taking a slash at me. Because when he did, he’d move in close enough for me to do something to him. If I was really lucky, I’d be able to snatch his hand away right as he lunged and not get cut.

But sometimes you have to make a sacrifice. That’s called sutemi, a Japanese word in the martial arts meaning to sacrifice something in order to gain a tactical advantage. Or so I remember from training.

He whipped out his right hand, the knife slashing at me. I managed to grab his hand, but not before he sliced the back of mine.

The pain was intense, but the adrenaline was pumping and I was hyper-focused. I saw the serrating on the blade. The talon in the knife’s logo. The hair on the back of his knuckles. I pivoted to my left and slammed the edge of my right hand down onto his arm in a knife-hand strike. I could hear the bone snap, and his knife clattered to the ground as he roared in pain. I was pretty sure I’d broken his ulna. That’s the thinner long bone in the forearm. I know people who have broken half-inch boards with a knife-hand blow. I wasn’t that good, but I was clearly good enough to inflict pain on the guy. And a broken arm.

Both men were writhing on the ground now, howling. I glanced at my right hand, saw that the cut was deep and bleeding copiously. Sukie raced up to me, gasped when she saw the wound. “Get in the car!” I shouted.

I swooped down and grabbed the guy’s knife, but then I realized that I wasn’t done here. The first guy, the chunky mercenary, had gotten to his feet and was now pointing a gun at me.