Shark River

4

F BI Special Agent Waldman took one of the kitchen chairs, turned it, straddled it, then folded his arms over the backrest, his face very close to mine. He said, “Okay. It’s just you and me now, Ford. Private, no one else listening. Your very last chance. So tell me what the hell happened out there today. At least give me some interesting version of the truth. Just a little something I can work with.”

I shook my head. “Waldman, this is really starting to get tiresome. I collect fish for a living. I operate a tiny, one-man business. I’ve got a three-page catalog. I can send it to you. Want a hundred horseshoe crabs? Or a whelk egg case in preservative? I can collect it and sell it to you. Or brittle stars or octopi or unborn sharks with their veins already injected. That’s what I do. That’s what I’m good at. Not dealing with kidnappers or rescuing women.”

“That’s the way you want to leave it?”

“The truth’s the truth.”

He sighed, looking at me with careful appraisal. “You need to understand that, when you leave this island, whoever you screwed over out there on the water this afternoon may come looking for you. The girls say you knocked the hell out of the one guy. Said they heard a loud popping sound, like you maybe even broke his back. Depending on who it was, how bad he’s hurt, who he’s related to, they’re not going to let something like that slide.

“With the drug cartels, it’s business. A matter of pride. You hurt a member of their family, they’re going to double the hurt on you. With people like the Shining Path, they’re zealots, lunatics. What they enjoy is hacking someone up with a machete as a political statement. Not that you’d be a top priority. If they do check back and ID you, though, you’d be a very easy guy to find. Depends on whether or not you make it under their radar. Personally, I don’t think you ought to risk it.”

With the two of us alone now, Waldman’s manner was less official, his tone more reasonable. There was a time when the FBI hired only CPAs and attorneys, and he had the bookish, librarian look of a man who enjoyed the clarity of numbers, but who also got out and played golf or tennis on weekends. His hands and fingers told me he’d been married to the same woman for many years, didn’t smoke, didn’t do manual labor, was left-handed, and possibly dipped snuff judging from the orange stain on his thumb and middle finger.

Probably a good, dependable man. We might have become friends under different circumstances.

Even so, I wasn’t going to accept his help. Also, I thought it was extremely unlikely that cartel people or an organization like Sendero would waste time and money on an insignificant marine biologist who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. But I also had to admit to myself that Waldman might be right about one thing. Revenge is a compelling motivator. There was a lot of adrenaline and mass combined when I put my shoulder into the shooter’s spine. If he was badly injured, if he did have the right connections, he or his family might send someone after me to even the score.

It was a possibility.

The more information I had, the better chance I had of anticipating any move against me, so I decided to ask Waldman a few questions of my own, just in case. I said, “Off the record, you mind telling me why you think they targeted the girl?”

“We don’t even know who ‘they’ are yet, Doctor Ford.”

My expression was one of pain and tolerance. “Come on now, Agent Waldman. Wait a minute… know what? After nearly two hours together, we should be on a first-name basis, don’t you think? Call me Doc or call me Ford. Okay?”

He nodded, and waited for a moment before he said, “Sure. You’re Ford and I’m Doug. Just two guys talking, so talk away.”

“Doug, what I don’t understand is, you dropped the shields there for a little bit. Now, the first time I ask you a question, you raise the shields right back again. It’s pretty obvious you’ve been in your business awhile. What’s your title? Special liaison to the U.S. State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism? You must have an opinion. Like you said, it’s just you and me in here. So why not tell me what you think?”

“Are you offering me information in exchange?”

I said, “I think I told you everything, but I might be able to remember a few more details. I’ll try. I really will.”

“Okay. Why not?” His was a careful, formal smile. “I’ll risk it. Lindsey Harrington’s father is one of those behind-the-scenes diplomats, the kind you never hear about but who apparently has a lot to do with steering U.S. policy. He’s got some very powerful connections. I say ‘apparently’ because the moment the Agency got word Harrington’s daughter was almost taken down, the director ordered.. .” He paused, rethinking it. “Let’s just say that certain people in the director’s office made it very clear that this case is a priority. We’ve got people on the island doing the crime scene, standing guard over the girl, all of us reporting back with updates every hour.”

I said, “They wanted her for political reasons? I’m not asking for the official position. Just your personal opinion.”

“Why they tried to kidnap her? Political, sure, without a doubt. But is it drug cartel politics or political ideology? That’s what I don’t know. But we’ll find out. We’ve got people working on the stolen boats, the rental van, the motel they stayed in at Englewood. They wanted the girl, but they really wanted to leverage Harrington.”

“The girl’s father, he’s that important?”

“I’ve never heard his name before tonight. In the three years I’ve been attached to Counterterrorism, I’ve never heard the name Harrington mentioned. His official title is Consulting Ambassador, Latin America-a small-time political appointment. He works out of the U.S. Embassy in San Jose and he’s got some kind of villa or condo outside Cartagena. In international politics, it’s hard to tell who really does what. But Harrington, he’s so far behind the scenes that we had trouble coming up with a fast, full dossier on him.”

I told him, “Here’s something I may have left out. One of the guys on the dock, he was yelling in Spanish. He had a Colombian accent. They speak a very clean dialect, particularly in and around the cities. Bogota, maybe, but I’m just guessing.”

“Finally, you offer me a little scrap of useful information.” He chuckled, but it was a timing device, not laughter. “Colombian accent, huh? To pick out accents, you must be fluent. Spent some time down there in South America, have you Ford?”

“Several years. Traveled all over.” Interpreting the expression on the agent’s face, I added, “It had nothing to do with the drug trade, trust me. I was studying bull sharks. I’ve been researching them for years. The work took me all over South and Central America. All over the world, really.”

“Really? Who funded it? Who paid for all that travel and research?”

“I got some grants. But mostly private corporations that have a financial interest and see a potential for profit in certain sea products.”

“Fascinating.” His inflection said: Bullshit.

“You know anything about bull sharks?” I waited for him to respond, but he didn’t. He sat there leafing through his notebook. Finally, I continued, “A bull shark will swim hundreds of miles up freshwater rivers for reasons that we still don’t understand. It may have something to do with ferromagnetic crystals in their nervous system. Directional devices built right in, or perhaps it has something to do with the way their tissues deal with salt. Whatever the reason, they’re a very unusual animal. The Zambezi River shark? The freshwater sharks of Lake Nicaragua? Carcharhinus leucas. The same, aggressive animal. Because of that shark, I spent a lot of time working in the jungle.”

“That part of the story, I don’t doubt,” he said.

I wondered what he meant by that, the suggestive tone, but said nothing.

He said, “Okay, so you picked up on the Colombian accent. About six months ago, Lindsey Harrington’s father-Hal Harrington, that’s his name-attended a summit in Cartagena, along with representatives from several other Latin American countries. The U.S. has given them in excess of a billion dollars a year for the drug war-what they call a war, anyway-and the summit was to outline operational methods and long-term goals. That much is in the dossier. Maybe Harrington did something to piss them off. Maybe he bucked the Colombian establishment-it’s one of the most corrupt countries on earth. Whatever he did, he made someone mad enough to go after his daughter.”

“That’s it? It’s really all you know?”

“Yep. Pretty thin so far, but it’s early. You haven’t exactly been a fountain of information yourself. What I should tell you is… here, let me point out something that you may not realize, Ford. Something you haven’t thought much about. Right now, you’re safe. So’s Lindsey Harrington. For the next twenty-four hours, two different federal agencies are going to keep this island secured while we finish collecting evidence. We have lots of video to shoot, lots of photos to take. Where you are right now is one of the safest places in the world. But you can’t stay on Guava Key forever. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to get into your boat and go home. So what are you going to do if those punks come calling again? You really feeling that lucky? That’s why I’d like you to cooperate. If they put you on their personal shit list, it’d be nice to grab them when they come to grab you.”

“Stake me out like a goat, huh?” I shook my head. “Sorry, the timing’s bad. I’m too busy. I’ve got several research projects going on right now.”

He parroted my words with a flat sarcasm. “Research projects. Like what that’s so damn important?”

“I’m working on sturgeon, too. Not just bull sharks. I’ve got current projects, old projects-but sturgeon are what I’m doing right now. I’m working with some biologists from a lab not far from here, Mote Marine.” All true. When Waldman didn’t respond, I proceeded to tell more than he wanted to know about our sturgeon project, aware that a good way to deal with interrogation is to bore your interrogator. I informed him there’d once been a booming sturgeon fishery on Florida’s Gulf Coast, all because of the profitable caviar market. I described the fish to him, with its scale cover of primitive bony plates and rows of bony scutes on its body. Told him that the sturgeon is a freshwater species that migrates into saltwater, and is very easily netted-which is why the sturgeon was so quickly decimated north and south of Tampa. I added, “Now you mention sturgeon to a coastal fisherman and he’ll look at you like you’re nuts. No one even remembers that they were here. So we’re working on raising them in captivity, then releasing them into the wild. Problem is, they grow so damn slow.”

Waldman stared at me, bored, not letting the details register. “You’re not going to tell me a damn thing, are you?”

I said, “Nope, Doug, I’m not. I don’t want any trouble. I really don’t. I live a quiet, private life, and that’s the way I want it to keep it.”

He stood, hunted around in his jacket pocket for a moment and pulled out a tin of Copenhagen snuff. He flapped the can with his thumb, opened it, and pushed a big pinch of tobacco between cheek and gum. “I kinda figured you’d be a tough one to budge. That call I just took-when my cell phone rang a few minutes ago?”

“What about it?”

Waldman walked to the kitchen sink, spit, and flushed it with water. “Our people in D.C. and Virginia have now had”-he checked his watch-“they’ve now had slightly more than four hours to come up with a dossier on you. Know what they found? And I’m talking about the best-equipped, most computer-savvy security agency in the world. Nothing,” he said. “They found nothing interesting at all about you. Zip, zilch. Know what, Ford? From the information we got back, it’s almost like you really don’t exist.”

I began to feel uneasy, but made it a point to take a deep breath, relaxing in my chair. “You’re saying there’s something wrong with not being in some crime computer somewhere?”

“You’re in no computers anywhere. Nothing but the barest stuff, anyway. Harrington was tough to get information on. You’re even worse. Any idea why that is?”

I told him no, hoping he’d drop it, but he didn’t.

He leafed through a couple of sheets of paper and said, “Here’s what we’ve got on you. You’ve got a six-cylinder Chevy more than twenty years old. I’ve got the block number and the registration number right here. Another thing? When you were still in high school, you took the battery of Armed Services Vocational Aptitude tests. Damn near aced them all. Not the highest scores ever recorded, but way, way up there. Then you vanished for seven years. Not a trace. No military record, no nothing. Next thing that shows up is that you’re in California, graduating with a B.S. from San Diego State and then you get a master’s a year later from Stanford. No record of where you lived, no record of credit cards, no student loans or a checking account. Nothing at all that indicates you were actually at those places and attended classes. But the degrees are legitimate. I made our people check. Your doctorate from the University of Florida? Same thing.”

“That’s weird,” I said. “They don’t give degrees unless you attend classes. Maybe it’s because I’ve always been kind of a loner. That, and I’ve always tried to pay with cash. Saves on bookkeeping.”

His smile told me that he knew that I was lying. “I’ve done background checks on grade-school teachers that turned up more data. Oh, by the way-our people did dig out one little interesting tidbit of information hidden away. Came from an old file in Pitkin County, Colorado. Aspen, that’s a town you might know there.”

It seemed to please him that I didn’t react. “Seems that more than a decade ago, a guy by the name of Marion W. Ford was a prime suspect in the abduction and probable murder of a political radical who lived in the mountains out there. A guy who specialized in bombing military installations. The cops detained you-this guy Ford, I’m talking about-but nothing ever came of it. Once again, you just vanished. Marion W. Ford vanished, I mean.”

I stood, not comfortable with the direction the conversation was leading. I said, “I think the computers have me confused with someone else, Doug. That was a long time ago, but I’d certainly remember something like that.”

“I’d think you would, too. Know what the really sad thing is, Ford? Okay, here’s what I think. The sad thing is that you should be given an award for what you did today. Or a bounty. Instead, maybe because you’re nervous about certain things you did or didn’t do in your past, you feel like you have to lie about it. Or maybe you just don’t want to be put into the bureaucratic machine, deal with all the bullshit details.”

I said nothing, waiting.

“There’s something else that pisses me off, too. Something not directly related to you or what went on today, but there’s bound to be a connection. Sooner or later.”

I raised my eyebrows-what?

“It’s those punks you chased off. Bigshot drug people when they have weapons, or political freaks like the ones who came looking for Lindsey Harrington. Sooner or later, if we don’t take them down, respond with lethal force whenever we get the chance, the day will come when they score big. I mean really, really big. They’re going to murder a bunch of us. They’re going to make a great big pile of bodies. Just watch. When it happens, the so-called peace-loving members of this society are going to be outraged all to hell. They don’t like it when their government plays rough. They won’t vote or allocate the money for us to maintain a serious defense, but they’ll sure as hell demand some answers. Why didn’t we stop it from happening?”

I put my chin on my fist, listening.

“Want to hear a very likely scenario?”

“Sure. Friends keep telling me I should pay more attention to what’s going on in the outside world.”

“You and a couple hundred million others. I wish to hell everyone in the country would get the pacifiers out of their mouths, grow up a little, and take a look down the road at what’s waiting for us out there. We presented the whole scenario to the Senate a few years ago, and the media didn’t even blink. Hardly a word went out. Okay, here’s the way it goes: A terrorist with the Shining Path or Hezbollah, or Islamic Jihad or Hamas tapes a standard one-hundred-watt lightbulb to the track of a New York City subway station. Minutes later, a passing train crushes the bulb. Contained in the bulb are spores of anthrax, one of the deadliest toxins known to humanity.”

“Very simple,” I said. “Very plausible.”

He answered, “Plausible? It’s inevitable. Or some equally nasty variation-sarin gas, for instance. Within hours, subway ventilation fans circulate the poison throughout the entire system. Then commuters begin dying. By the thousands they start dying, a hundred thousand or more for starters, and horrible deaths at that.

“It would cripple the nation. Bring everything to a stop. You can’t bury anthrax victims. You have to burn their bodies. There would be funeral pyres throughout the city.

“There are millions of fine, patriotic, law-abiding Muslims and politically active Latins in this country, but there are also a handful of very well-financed zealots on the loose who really do believe that we are the Great Satan. They will do absolutely anything to destroy us. People who kill in the name of God or political ideology are, by definition, without conscience. To get those boats from the Mercury Test Center? They threatened to shoot the seventy-five-year-old security guard and his grandson, who just happened to be there, hanging out. Threatened an old man and a kid, and I think they would have done it. You think they’re going to hesitate if they get another chance at you?”

I stood at the door and opened it. “I hope you’re wrong.”

Waldman surprised me by reaching to shake my hand. “Me, too, Ford. Judging from all the computer files that don’t exist on you, I suspect you’ve had an interesting life. I wouldn’t mind hearing about it some day.”

As he turned to go, I hesitated before I said, “Hey, Doug? There’s one other thing.”

“Yeah?”

“The two women, Lindsey Harrington and-”

“The bodyguard’s name is Gale Storm. Honest. After some old Hollywood actress. They both want to stop and thank you, by the way. Tonight, if you don’t mind.”

I looked at my watch and shrugged. It was nearly eleven. “It’s probably already obvious to you, but I want to make sure. Someone had to be charting those women. Their habits. Someone here on the island. Their routine wasn’t hard to nail down because they never varied it. Still, someone had to be on island, watching.”

“We’ve already checked. There was a Colombian maid who didn’t show up for work yesterday or today. She lived in a trailer park on Pine Island, and her trailer’s been cleaned out, too.”

“Same with the Mercury Test Center,” I said. “They stole the two Scarabs right after it closed. Isn’t that what you said?”

“Yeah. They used duct tape. Tied up and gagged the guard and the kid. Jumped the fences, climbed in the boats and off they went. Everyone just figured they were doing some special testing.”

“I think they had to have someone on the inside to have two high-performance boats all fueled and ready. Or maybe they bribed an employee for the testing schedules. It’d probably be pretty easy to do. Claim to be from the competition-Yamaha or OMC-and buy off one of the staff people.”

Waldman was listening, thinking about it. “The false flag gambit, yeah. But why? Those yellow boats don’t run every day?”

“You’d have to live here on the islands to know it’s unusual. Not two Scarabs out at the same time. I’ve seen them running in tandem before, but rarely. Nothing someone could count on. I think they probably had to pay some money to make sure it happened.”

He opened his notebook and scribbled a few words. “That’s useful. We’d have checked it out sooner or later, but now I’ll push it toward the top of the list. Anything else?”

“Nope, just that I’m glad I don’t have your job. The kidnappers, whoever they are, whatever their cause, you have to give them credit. They seemed to think of everything.”

That brought a wry, ironic smile to his face. “Well, not exactly everything.”

I said, “Oh? What’d they miss?”

There was a knock from outside as he said, “They missed you, Ford, that’s what they missed. They didn’t anticipate someone like you being here,” as he turned and opened the door.

Standing on the porch were the two uniformed officers with the dark Bahamian woman in the middle, her red-beaded cornrows swinging, clacking like miniature dominoes. Tomlinson was in the background, pacing-not reassuring because he’s not the type to pace.

I felt my stomach muscles tense when Deputy Walker said, “Sorry to interrupt, but I thought it might save you some time. This woman says she saw the whole thing. Found us and volunteered herself. Says she was standing right out there at the edge of the mangroves, close enough to see and hear it all. Her name’s… Ransom Ebanks? Is that correct, miss? That’s an unusual name, particularly considering the circumstances.”

The black woman nodded. “May be unusual to you but it ain’t to me. Ransom R. Ebanks, that always been my name.”

“Ms. Ebanks says she came here to do some sightseeing, just over from the islands, and walked right into the middle of the kidnapping. She eyeballed at least three of the perps, saw this guy, too. But that’s all she’d tell us until Doctor Ford was present.”

Ebanks, why was that name familiar? I remembered Tomlinson telling me someone by that name had contacted the office and left a message for me. But why? I’d never met her before in my life, and now here she was. I tried to keep my expression bland and amused as Waldman looked from me to the woman, then back to me. “Is that true, Ms. Ebanks? You witnessed the kidnapping attempt?”

Her soft, articulate accent seemed to add credulity. “Oh, that’s the natural truth alright. I saw the big man there, watched what he did, runnin’ from those men in the masks while they shot their guns.”

Waldman pointed his finger at me. “This is the man you saw?”

She nodded.

“Why wouldn’t you tell Deputy Walker what you saw unless Doctor Ford was present?”

She didn’t answer right away. Instead, Ransom Ebanks locked her eyes into mine, trying to communicate something, but what she was communicating, I wasn’t immediately certain. I expected her eyes to be dark but, in the porch light, they were a glittering, lucent blue. Quite a surprise looking into her African face, seeing those blue eyes. Their focus seemed intense, meaningful.

Was she waiting for me to say something first? Perhaps. Or maybe that’s what I wanted to believe. Even so, I spoke quickly. “Probably because she wanted to make certain I was the guy she saw cut his arm when I fell through the railing and took the two women with me.”

“Hey! That’s enough.” Walker took a step toward me, showing her no-bullshit cop expression. “He’s leading her, telling her what to say.”

The Bahamian woman’s tone was suddenly just as tough. “He ain’t leading nobody, lady. You quiet your mouth for a second, I tell you what happened.”

Waldman said soothingly, “Now, now, let’s stay calm, do this in an orderly fashion. It’s getting late, we’re all a little tired. Ms. Ebanks? Take your time. You say you saw Doctor Ford running while the men shot at him?”

I listened to her say, “Isn’t that what I just tell you? Yes, the big man, the man standing right there with the bandage on his arm. What happened was, he so scared, he went and run away. First, he fall into the water, him and the two pretty girls. When that railing break? Then he jumped into that go-fast boat and man, he gone.”

Waldman didn’t seem convinced. “Really? You say the men were shooting at him while this man… you actually saw this man get away in the boat.”

“That’s right. I saw ’im.”

“Why didn’t you run away, Ms. Ebanks? A man his size was frightened; why weren’t you afraid?”

“’Cause the men with the guns, they didn’t see me. I back in the trees watching.”

Waldman was still suspicious. “In the trees, okay. You just stood there watching while they shot. How many shots were fired? Any idea?”

“Four, maybe five. I don’t know. I was watching with my eyes, not countin’ with my ears.”

“Not counting with your ears. Very amusing. Okay, they began to shoot at him. Then-take us through it step by step-after they started shooting, what happened?”

She was still staring into my eyes, trying to read something from me. Finally, she said, “He bang into the two pretty girls, like I tol’ you, and he so big the railing break and they go splashing in the water. That how he cut his arm. Musta hit the dock or somethin’, I’m guessing.”

Deputy Walker said, “That’s what he just told her to say. He was leading her, like I said.”

Waldman gave her a warning look. Then to Ransom Ebanks: “You saw him cut his arm on the dock? No offense, miss, but how can you be so sure one of the bullets didn’t hit him when the men were shooting? You say you did see them fire shots.”

She was nodding, suddenly very self assured. “ ’Cause I saw just the way it happened, that’s why I’m so sure. He went kinda trippin’ and stumblin’, holding them two women, and they all went crashing through the railing. That’s where I saw him catch that arm on a nail or something-I can’t be sure what it was, but the blood was flying. Then I watched them women run away into the trees while he go flyin’ off in the boat.”

“Was he alone in the boat?”

“That somethin’ I don’t know. But tell me this, Mr. Police-man. This gentleman”-she used her hand to indicate me-“does he look so dumb to you that he just stand around while men’s shooting at him?”

Then she laughed, showing pearl-white teeth, but her eyes were still focused on mine.

It suddenly became clear to me, the meaning of the direct eye contact and her intense expression. While she lied to the cops, she was also speaking nonverbally, looking through the lenses of my eyes, saying, You owe me.