Hunter's moon

14

Twenty minutes after midnight, under sail aboard No Mas, President Wilson dropped his headphones on the galley table and pushed the telegraph key away. “Damn. He’s either not receiving or he’s afraid to send.”

“Your contact on the mainland?”

“It’s Vue. I can tell you that now. He has a similar setup on Ligarto Island.” Meaning, the shortwave transmitter.

The reason the president could tell us was that we’d pulled anchor and were under way. Five hours ahead of schedule. Presumably, we’d be together for the next three days, on our way to Mexico. No risk of security breaches.

Tomlinson was at the wheel. As we talked, the sailboat’s engine cavitated, the hull shuddered. No Mas rolled, cookware rattling, then resumed her beam-sea rhythm. He was steering south toward the sea channel, the darkness of the Atlantic Ocean beyond.

“I knew the Secret Service would figure out I was gone. But I was hoping to have at least a couple of days head start.” Wilson had said variations of the same over the last hour.

I was wondering about the man’s timing. Would being discovered endanger whatever it was he had planned? I decided the subject was taboo for now. Instead, I asked, “What will the Secret Service do to Vue?”

“Hopefully, he saw it coming and got off the island. He works for me, not the Secret Service. But he’s good at anticipating what the agents are thinking.

“I left a letter in my cabin, handwritten, exonerating him. I said I was leaving because I wanted time alone. That Vue didn’t know I’d left until it was too late to stop me.”

“If he didn’t see it coming?”

“Taken by surprise? They’d put Vue in a room and question him for a long, long time-pointless, because he won’t tell them anything.”

Even so, Wilson was troubled by the prospect of his friend being detained. His hands disseminated, boxing the transmitter, coiling the antenna. My guess: He had been counting on Vue’s help throughout the trip.

Wilson straightened for a moment, alert to a change in the sea. He’d taken off the goatee but not the synthetic scar. I watched him cross the cabin and press his face to the porthole. “We’re passing Fort Taylor, the old Key West sub base. Wray and I spent a few nights at the Truman Summer White House; his personal quarters-another perk of being president. You’d be amazed at how simple the furnishings are. Politicians weren’t treated like royalty in those days.”

He returned to the table, something on his mind. I waited, not surprised when he said, “I’m more worried about Tomlinson’s friend, sitting in a room right now being questioned. Tim. He’s a nice man, different… but he has no reason to protect me. The FBI’s good at asking the right questions.”

“Tim has no idea who you are.”

“But what if Danson or Shana Waters recognized me?”

“They didn’t.”

I wasn’t as confident as I tried to sound.

Wilson said, “I wish I’d have gotten a better read. Any new impressions come to mind?”

He’d asked variations of that question as well. I said, “Like Tomlinson said, the timing was more like fate. I’m still puzzled by Danson. One minute, he’s nearly unconscious; next, he’s a functioning drunk. Was it because he figured out the woman was trying to entrap him? Or because his radar sensed a big story?”

Wilson said, “You obviously haven’t spent much time with the White House press corps. The answer’s both. Wait… that’s unfair. Not to the press corps but to people like Danson who make it to the top.

“The ones who excel tend to be either decent professionals or they’re ruthless thugs. Both types appear nonthreatening; both are shrewd, but they are types. Tonight, you met one of the worst.”

“Danson,” I said.

“No. The woman, Shana Waters. She was an intern at CBS our last year in office. My wife was at the first press conference Shana attended. The two never exchanged words, but Wray took me aside afterward and told me to never let her get me alone.

“Danson is a borderline thug. He’s heavy-handed, biased as hell. But the man can cry on cue, and he looks like everyone’s favorite uncle. Shana, though, is a jackal. She’s after the anchor job and he knows it. So maybe he was trying to trap her by pretending to be drunker than he really was. The man’s not stupid. None of the top dogs are.”

“Your wife had good instincts.”

“Yes, but she had more than just instincts. She knew things about people. Wray sometimes saw events before they happened. In that way, Tomlinson’s like her.” Wilson smiled as he removed the telegraph key from the box. “Extrasensory perception. You don’t believe in that sort of thing, do you, Dr. Ford?”

“Mystic visions, no.”

“You seem uneasy.”

“I am. I’m surprised you do believe. It worries me-there’s a lot on the line.”

“More than you know-as I’ve said.” He was reattaching wires to the telegraph key for some reason. He began to tap the key, not sending, playing. “What if I called it ‘telepathy’ instead? The physics are similar to the telegraph. Our brains are chemical-electric transmitters. So is this key when it’s connected to a battery.” He drummed out a series of letters. No… it was the same letter over and over, I realized.

Dot-dash-dash. Dot-dash-dash.

W… W… W.

“Wray spent her life in the kind of silence you and I will never know. But she could hear music through the bones of her face. If she laid her head on a piano or touched her teeth to the wood. That’s how she learned to play. It’s also how she learned Morse code.

“When we were in the White House. I’m sure you heard all the cynical jokes. Always holding hands, like we were pretending. We weren’t.

“In all the years we were in politics, no one ever figured out the truth. When we held hands, Wray could tap out signals to me with her finger. Morse code. Warning me. Coaching me. Reminding me of a name; sometimes telling me to shut the hell up when I was midway through some idiotic remark.”

The president laughed as he continued to send and resend the same letter. Dot-dash-dash. I sat, fascinated, sensing the weight of the sea through the sailboat’s skin, and also the weight of Kal Wilson’s despair. He had lost his partner.

“You tell me,” he said. “How did Tomlinson know the importance of the two songs? ‘Moonlight Sonata’ and ‘Clair de Lune.’ ”

“Maybe he heard you mention them in an interview.”

The man was shaking his head. “No one knew. Morse code had been our secret language since we were children. Let me show you something.” He slid the telegraph key to the middle of the galley table. “In the first movement of ‘Moonlight Sonata,’ the left hand plays three notes over and over. The notes are C-sharp, E, and G-sharp. Do you perceive the significance?”

He’d asked the same question about Wray Wilson’s plane catching fire in a rain forest.

“I’m not a musician, sir.”

“You don’t need to be. You know the piece. Try humming those three notes.”

I felt ridiculous but I made an attempt. “Bumm bum-bum. Bumm bum-bum. Bumm bum-bum.”

He was nodding, conducting with his right hand while his left hand moved to the telegraph key. He resumed drumming out Dot dash-dash.. . Dot dash-dash… Dot dash-dash as I hummed.

I finally figured it out.

“In Morse code,” I said, “the sonata plays the letter W over and over.”

“That’s right. W, as in Wilson. When we were children, the sonata was our distress signal. The way the little deaf girl summoned the kid who’d become her protector. Me, the jock hero and Boy Scout.

“As we got older, it meant more. Beethoven was deaf when he wrote the piece. He was also in love with a women he knew he could never have. Because of her handicaps, Wray had felt the same was true of a guy like me. Unattainable. WW stood for Wray Wilson-her name once we were married.”

I nodded, not sure how to respond, so I asked, “And ‘Clair de Lune’?”

Wilson chuckled. “I’ll do us both a favor by not asking you to hum it but listen.” The telegraph key clattered with a series of dots and dashes too fast for me to read, but the rhythm was similar to the beginning of the Debussy classic.

“In Morse code, the first few bars of ‘Clair de Lune’ spell out I-L-U. Several times. Think about the melody.” He began tapping the key. “Hear it?”

I said, “Yes. But you lost me. What does I-L-U stand for?”

The president shook his head, a wry expression. “No one will ever accuse you of being a romantic, Dr. Ford. I’ll let you figure it out. But how did Mr. Tomlinson know? That’s what I’m asking you.”

I thought about it for a moment. “He has uncanny intuition, I’ll admit. He observes details, I think, that most of us miss, and his subconscious processes the data in a way that may seem mystical. But it’s not.”

“I think you’re wrong. He had nothing to observe regarding those two pieces of music. Yet he knew. My wife was the same way. You didn’t want him to come on this trip, did you?”

“No. I’m afraid he’ll get in the way-for what you have in mind.”

“Once again, I think you’re wrong. He knows things. That’s why I chose him.”

“But you never met Tomlinson before. And the only time we met-”

“Cartagena, Colombia,” the president interrupted. “My motorcade was coming from the airport, on the road by the sea. Secret Service had done its usual superb job. We had Blackhawk helicopters, more than a hundred agents working the streets. But the only one who noticed something odd about that little gray fishing boat was you, a vacationing tourist-or so I believed at the time.”

The gray boat was made for pulling crab traps yet the men aboard were fishing. They were also holding their rods upside down. I’d been in a fourteen-foot Boston Whaler watching the motorcade. I’d rammed the boat just as they fired the rocket. A SAM.

The president continued, “You both know things. But in different ways. That’s why I chose you. One of the reasons, anyway.”

“There are other reasons?”

“Yes. That’s something else I’m going to let you figure out for yourself. It’ll come to you. The significance.”

That word again.

I started to get up from the galley table, but the president held up an index finger: Wait a minute.

He was removing wires from the telegraph key, boxing it again. “Before you go topside, there’s one more thing I want to show you. I said the top TV people were either decent professionals or thugs? The same’s true of politicians.”

When I started to speak, he held up the finger again. “I’m making a point.”

He reached into his pocket and placed a palm-sized digital recorder on the table. It was silver.

“Look familiar?”

“It’s Shana Waters’s. Danson said he gave it to her as a present.”

“That’s right. I dumped her purse intentionally. She stuck the recorder in there when she helped us get Danson on the bed.” The president removed his glasses and looked at me with his farmer’s eyes, telling me something. “My wife was the good and decent half of our presidency. I was the other half. I have a lot more in common with that shark that was cruising the drop-off. I want you to know that.”

He seemed to think that would reassure me.

I touched the recorder. Digital. Expensive. “What’s she going to think when she finds it missing?”

“That Danson took it, of course. Those two are in a kind of occupational death dance. You didn’t pick up on that? They despise each other, but they also get some kind of perverse satisfaction out of their secret battle. Who can outdo the other. He gives her a fancy recorder, she uses it to blackmail him, he steals it back. Like chess.”

“You could ruin Danson with what’s on here.”

The president nodded. “But I won’t. I may use it, but not to ruin him.” In reply to my expression, he explained, “My life’s evolved to a point where I trust old enemies more than new friends. At least I know what they want. You’d have to spend four years in the White House to understand what I mean.” He paused, suddenly alert. “Do you feel that?”

He meant the way No Mas was taking the sea. The wind was off our port side now.

I said, “We’ve tacked. Tomlinson’s turned west toward Mexico.”

Wilson stood, lost his balance, then steadied himself. His face was pale in the cabin’s light, his skin looked as fragile as paper. He found the chart, saying, “That man needs to establish a priority list. I told him to steer south until he heard from me. Here’s where I want to go.” He rapped his finger on an island that was only a few miles up the road from Key West. Big Torch Key.

It made no sense. Why would he want to remain in Florida when the feds were looking for him? I said, “Are you sure?

“Very sure.” With a pencil, he circled a smaller island off Kemp Channel. “This is our destination. There’s a private estate, with a good anchorage.”

“Is someone expecting us?”

Wilson said, “Let’s hope not,” handing me the chart.

Above deck, I slid in next to Tomlinson, put the chart in his lap, and said, “He believes you’re psychic. Even though you’re a hundred eighty degrees off course. He says you need a priority list.”

Tomlinson flicked on a little red lamp as I pointed to the island Wilson had circled. “I tried making a priority list once but it came out more like triage.”

He checked the compass, then the horizon: fragmented moon in the west, navigational markers flashing in the early morning darkness. “I’m not off course. My route’s just twenty-five thousand miles longer.” He touched the chart. “You’re serious?”

“That’s what he wants. Turn us around.”

“Why?”

“Go below and ask him.”

Tomlinson shook his head. “No, thanks. Let the man have his space.”

It had been the same way on the sail from Cayo Costa to Key West. Kal Wilson was not an individual who invited familiarity, so Tomlinson and I spent most of the time topside while he slept or read below. If the president wanted conversation, we waited until he engaged us. But even idle talk with the man consumed an inordinate amount of energy. I wasn’t sure why, nor was Tomlinson. Wilson had a presence that was tangible, like heat or cold, and required total attention. So we kept our distance-not easily done on a thirty-five-foot sailboat.

Another factor: The man was ill. It was apparent only when he didn’t know we were watching.

Tomlinson asked, “You ready to come about?”

“Let ’er go.” I slid beneath the boom as No Mas pointed into the wind, stalled, then fell toward the lights of Key West. When Tomlinson gave me the word, I cranked the mainsheet trim, feeling the starboard side lift beneath me. The sailboat began to accelerate southeast as canvas leveraged wind.

“You still pissed off at me?”

“That’s a hard one to answer. I’ve got so many reasons.”

He reached into the cooler he keeps on deck and opened a Corona for me, saying, “I’m talking about Marlissa.”

As if surprised, I said, “Oh… her. I’m not mad.”

“Which means, you’re majorly pissed-off.”

“Damn right. We’ve always had a gentlemen’s agreement that we don’t date the same women at the same time and we don’t discuss details if it happens later.”

“I didn’t break the agreement, man. It was her. Marlissa’s no gentleman. Like that TV woman, Shana what’s her name. Very hot. But poison.”

“You’re serious?”

“Two of a kind. But I’m like a kid at Christmas when it comes to women. I can’t wait to unwrap them, even if I don’t like what’s inside. At the marina, Joann, Rhonda, and the other woman said I should warn you. In a way, I guess, maybe I did.”

“Don’t expect me to thank you.”

Tomlinson said, “I won’t. But you’re welcome,” as he hunched over the chart. I watched him put a thumb between our position and the nearest obstruction. Then I watched him hold his arm out, sighting over three fingers held parallel. They were old sailor’s tricks for measuring distance.

After a while, he asked, “When we were in Key West, did you call Marlissa?”

“Never crossed my mind,” I lied. “Why would I bother?”

“To find out the truth. She would’ve denied it.”

“Think so?”

“Yep. Hell, Doc, I wanted to call her-I don’t have your willpower. Know why I didn’t? Because I couldn’t remember her damn number. I had it on speed dial so I never memorized it. Pathetic, huh?”

I smiled. “Yeah. Pathetic.” Then we both sat back, drinking beer and laughing… after I’d told him the truth.