Polar Quest

35

Kilkenny guided the Zodiac on a south-southwest course toward Grand Cayman. To his left, the lights of Seven Mile Beach illuminated the shoreline southward to George Town. He was thankful for the calm night, which made the transit easy and gave him a chance to mull over everything that had happened.

Tao reclined in the bow of the Zodiac, partly for comfort and partly to balance their weight. After they’d abandoned the other boat, she sensed that Kilkenny wasn’t in the mood for talking and let him be. She watched him in the dim moonlight, his eyes fixed on the horizon but his mind furiously laboring somewhere else. Glancing over the side, she saw the lights onshore.

‘Where are we going, back to Harley’s house?’ she asked.

‘No, I couldn’t find it from the beach during the day, much less now. I’m heading to George Town. If any evidence of the stock trades still exists, it’ll be at Harley’s bank’

‘What are you thinking about?’

‘The man Harley introduced as his client.’

‘I noticed we didn’t get a name.’

‘Sumner Duroc.’

Tao looked at him, surprised, but Kilkenny didn’t notice. His eyes remained on the lights dotting the shore. ‘What makes you think that man is Duroc?’

‘Because he’s the one who led the attack on LV Station. I knew it as soon as I saw him.’

‘But what would Duroc be doing here with Harley?’

‘I don’t know, it just doesn’t fit. If Agabashian put him onto us, then we had to have been followed from Rio. I haven’t picked up any sign of a tail.’

Tao thought back on the moments after the ambush at Harley’s house. ‘While you were unconscious, he spoke to me. He asked why we were here. I told him nothing. Then he said he’d checked and he knew we weren’t with the SEC.’

‘Only Harley saw those IDs.’

‘Until you said this man was Duroc, I thought he was just Harley’s client.’

‘If he is the client, then how did he know UGene’s stock was going to crash?’

Using Harley’s keys, Duroc entered the offices of the Sterling Private Bank. From the canvas bag, he pulled out a two-liter plastic soft drink bottle filled with gasoline, a package of model rocket engines, a roll of electrical tape, a battery, and a digital timer. He inserted an igniter into the base of the rocket engine, connected wires to both igniter leads, then wedged the cylindrical engine into the throat of the soft drink bottle. Once the bomb was assembled, Duroc placed it on the floor beside Harley’s computer tower and started the timer.

Kilkenny cut the engine and rowed the final quarter-mile into George Town Harbor. Lights and the sounds of revelry emanated from a handful of the vessels moored at the docks; the rest were quiet. Kilkenny silently guided the Zodiac into an empty slip between two darkened sail-boats. He leapt up onto the dock, tied a line off on a cleat, and helped Tao out of the boat.

As they walked into town, they felt a bit self-conscious about their appearance — both were wet and disheveled and the bandages around Kilkenny’s ankles were soaked through with blood. Fortunately, most of the island’s nightlife was north of the town along Seven Mile Beach. They worked their way up the narrow streets while trying to avoid other passersby.

‘The bank’s just up ahead,’ Kilkenny said as they turned a corner.

The street instantly filled with an intense flash of light when Duroc’s bomb exploded, and glass from the bank’s second-story windows rained down in fractured bits. Hugh Harley’s one-man private bank was totally engulfed in flames.