Revenger

1

As the first rays of the morning sun sparkled on the water, the Lady Rosalie made her graceful way between the massive concrete pillars of the Hubert C. Bonner Bridge, left the peace of Currituck Sound and poked her nose out into the dancing whitecaps of the North Atlantic. There was a fresh south-easterly breeze blowing, and as the forty-two-foot sloop left the last shelter of land and felt the full force of the wind, her sails filled, her hull heeled over and she raced away across the water like a racehorse bursting from the starting gate. The four high-powered rigid inflatable boats, crewed by armed men who were keeping watch ahead, behind and on either side of the Lady Rosalie, had to accelerate hard to keep up, as did the US Coastguard cutter keeping station a few hundred yards away and the Marines helicopter overhead.

It was a perfect fall morning, with a cloudless sky and the promise of highs in the mid-seventies, but at eight in the morning there was still a sharp, invigorating chill in the wind that hinted at the colder days of winter to come. The man at the helm was grinning with the sheer joy of being alive on such a day, in such a boat. His name was Lincoln Roberts. He was African — American, well over six feet tall, strongly built, with a hint of silver in the hair beneath his dark-blue baseball cap. He had recently celebrated his sixty-first birthday, yet his vigour was undiminished and his presence and charisma still dominated any room he ever entered.

Roberts gave himself a few minutes to savour the pleasure of playing the yacht that was his most treasured possession against the constantly shifting forces of wind and water. Then he turned to the man standing next to him and shouted over the breeze, ‘Damn, this feels good! Worth dragging your ass out of bed for, right? You want a turn at the wheel?’

Samuel Carver grinned back. ‘Yes, sir!’

‘You don’t have to call me “sir”, Sam. This is the weekend. And I’m not your president.’

‘True… but as long as this is your boat, you are my skipper.’

Roberts laughed and gave Carver a friendly pat on the back as they exchanged places. ‘I should’ve said this last night, but it’s good to see you again,’ he said. ‘It’s been too long. I feel bad about that.’

‘Don’t. You’ve had much more important things to worry about.’

‘You saved my life. That’s pretty damn important.’

‘I was just doing my job. Anyway, you send me those personally signed and dedicated Christmas cards every year. You should see people’s faces when they see one of those babies on the mantelpiece.’

‘Yeah, that presidential magic works a treat, doesn’t it? I mean, take a look at this jacket…’ Roberts pointed at the embroidered presidential seal decorating the right chest of his windbreaker. ‘Five years I’ve been in this job, and I still get a thrill putting it on.’

‘I heard the presidential jellybeans are pretty special, too,’ said Carver.

‘You know that’s true, they are. I’ll get someone to send you a jar.’

The two men stood in companionable silence for a while, feeling the sun and spray on their faces as they savoured the pleasure of being out on the water. Then the President drew a little closer to Carver and, in a lower voice, bereft of humour or bonhomie, said, ‘You happen to know what happened to all that money Malachi Zorn stole? It’s been more than two years, north of fifty billion’s still missing and I’ve got a whole posse of very angry people — and I’m talking rich, powerful, influential people who could make my life real difficult come election time — wanting to know what happened to their investment.’

‘I’ll bet they’re angry,’ said Carver. ‘They got taken in by the greatest con-man in history. So did two British prime ministers and at least one member of the royal family, come to that. He promised them the earth if they invested in him, then he took the lot. But I don’t know what happened to it all.’

‘Really? I heard you had a lot to do with taking Zorn down. Word is, you were right by him when he died.’

‘He was killed at a reception where there were more than five hundred guests. A lot of people were right by him.’

Roberts put an arm round Carver’s shoulders. It looked like an amicable gesture, but as Roberts clenched his fingers until they were digging into Carver’s skin there was an icy edge to his voice. ‘Don’t bullshit me, Sam. We both know Malachi Zorn didn’t die at that reception.’

Carver looked out towards the horizon, gathering his thoughts for a moment before he replied. ‘I didn’t kill Zorn, you have my word on that. But I was with him just before he died. I even asked him what he’d done with the money — and forget fifty billion: he said it was over a hundred. Zorn wasn’t telling. If you want my opinion, he really didn’t care about having the money himself. He just wanted the people he’d taken it from not to have it. He wanted to hurt them and he knew, with rich bastards like that, nothing hurts more than losing money.’

Roberts caught the note of contempt in Carver’s voice. ‘Sounds like you agree with him.’

‘Not enough to do the things Zorn did.’

Roberts relaxed his grip on Carver’s shoulder, apparently satisfied that he wasn’t holding any information back.

‘You know what? I know this sounds nuts but I worry about you, Sam. You must’ve made a heap of enemies along the way. Sooner or later one of ’em’s gonna come back to bite you.’

‘Hasn’t happened yet.’

‘So? You think that’ll stop it happening some other time? You’ve hurt a lot of people and you know things that could hurt a lot more. That’s a dangerous combination… I guess what I’m saying is, “Watch yourself.”’

‘I will, Mr President. You can count on it. So… you want the wheel back now, or what?’