Tampa Burn

SEVENTEEN

Even though I seemed to be moving in slow motion, the satellite phone was still ringing when I got the car door open.

The phone was made by Motorola, cased in black plastic, the size and shape of a standard cell phone, but it had an oversized antenna and a flat face with no keypad. There was an On-Off button, a menu key, and a couple of other buttons. Stupidly, I hadn’t bothered to familiarize myself with the thing.

It rang once more, green face plate flashing, as I held it beneath the car’s dome light, trying to figure out how to answer.

Damn it, how’s this work?

Finally, I pressed the largest button and slammed the phone to my ear. “Hello. Hello?”

There was silence on the other end. Silence… but it was an inhabited silence. Someone was listening.

After a few seconds, I realized that the silence may have been catalyzed by surprise-because the caller was expecting Pilar to answer. Quickly I said in Spanish, “My name’s Ford. I’m the boy’s father. Laken’s father. I’m all alone, no police. The mother’s… indisposed right now.”

More silence.

“Hello! Talk to me. Let me talk to my son.”

Then I heard click.

I kept talking until I was certain they’d disconnected. Then I hit the Off key.

Shit.

I was aware that Janet was watching me from the house. Because I didn’t want to have to explain, I waved goodbye, got in the car, and drove slowly back toward the beach, the satellite phone in my lap.

Call back, give me another chance. Ring, damn you, ring.

The phone still wasn’t taking my telepathic commands.

It was nearly one A.M., but I was so hyped-up, I knew there was no chance of sleep. Besides, there were still a few proactive steps to take, I decided.

The reasonable thing to do now, and what we should do, was check Pilar’s e-mail to see if the kidnappers had supplemented their call with another written message. Trouble was, Pilar-and her password-were in Miami.

I was justified in asking her for it. No question about that. She and Tomlinson had to be in the room by this late hour, so I grabbed the cell phone, dialed the Radisson.

No answer.

I was furious.

I redialed the hotel immediately and asked the clerk, “Are you sure they haven’t checked out?”

He used a practiced, polite and frosty tone that showed disdain, but from a safe distance. “Oh yes, sir, I’m positive, sir.”

“Then make sure they get my message the instant they get in.”

“Yes sir!”

As I drove, I rehearsed some of the bitter, cutting things I would say to my old pal and to the mother of the boy who, for all we knew, was fighting for his life at this very instant. I indulged in that ugly rehearsal for several miles before I recognized the kind of emotional spiral I was in. Negative cycling is as irrational as Pollyanna optimism.

I stopped and made myself review. Tomlinson is a flake and a womanizer, but he is also brilliant, decent, and one of the kindest people I know. Pilar and I had issues, but I had no reason to doubt her devotion as a parent. Quite the opposite. Neither of them would put their own pleasure ahead of our son’s well-being. If they weren’t in their hotel room, or weren’t answering the phone, there was almost certain to be a good reason.

Now… what the hell that reason was, I couldn’t imagine. But I decided that I should, at the very least, give them a chance to explain before I passed judgment.

So back off, Ford. Settle down.

I was hyped, all right. Juiced on a day of adrenal overload. It was O.K. to stay aggressive, but I also needed to stay constructive.

I took it easy through the curves south of ’Tween Waters, then slowed to a crawl at Blind Pass Bridge.

To my right, the moon was enormous over the Gulf of Mexico. It was a gaseous sphere, meteor scars showing, sitting on a rim of atmosphere that buffered Captiva Island from the emptiness of outer space. Beyond the bridge, white surf rolled out of a far horizon that touched Yucatan and the jungles of Central America.

I stared, eyes soft-focused, thinking that only water separated me from a shore where someone held my son prisoner. Islands may be isolated by water, but they also seem more intimately linked to a wider world because of the uninterrupted plane. Lake seemed close. Just over there. Just beyond the moon.

I’m coming. I’ll find you.

I touched my foot to the accelerator.

As I drove, I concentrated on how to take the next necessary step: check Pilar’s e-mail. Lake’s well-being was too important to let it wait until morning. The kidnappers might want us in Miami the next afternoon, and we wouldn’t know about it until too late. But how could I get the woman’s password at one A.M. without talking to her?

I knew a way. Maybe.

I had a friend I could call. A man by the name of Bernie Yeager. He could help-if he was home, and if he was agreeable. An elite and distinguished member of the U.S. electronic warfare and intelligence community, Bernie didn’t qualify as law enforcement. Not by my definition, anyway.

Under my agreement with Pilar, contacting Bernie was permissible.

On the way back to Dinkin’s Bay, there was someone else I decided to telephone: my cousin, Ransom Gatrell.

Under any other circumstances, I wouldn’t have bothered her so late. But Ransom’s a night owl-she’s always up at odd hours-plus, my sensitivity to the power of blood linkage had been heightened.

Her second cousin, Lake, had been kidnapped. Aside from my son, she is my only living relative, and so I dialed her number.

Ransom was born and raised on Cat Island, one of the remote cays in the Bahamas. She works on Sanibel now, lives just across the bay from me, but her Bahamian accent remains just as strong as her Cat Island attitude.

When I told her what had happened, I heard her say with great emotion, “Aw, me brudder, I knowed I wuz piddlin’ ’bout diz hour far a reezin, mon. I comin’ to yer hose jus’ as fas’ daht li’l boot kin kirry me sweeet broon awss. ’N I breengin’ a jar o ’soop, mon. Daht ain’ no beeg dill.”

What she’d told me was, she was going to get in her boat and meet me at my house, and that she was bringing along a jar of soup that she’d made.

I was smiling mildly when I punched off, but then I stopped smiling.

The satellite phone was warbling again.

This time, when I answered, there was a voice that I recognized on the other end. It was Masked Man, the voice from the video. It was Praxcedes Lourdes, my son’s abductor. It was the one Pilar called “monster,” the man who burned men.

In Spanish, Lourdes said, “We don’t want to kill this beautiful brat of yours, but our people in Florida tell us you’re not cooperating. Why aren’t you cooperating?”

I started to say, “We are cooperating. The car following us today wasn’t police. They were-”

But Lourdes interrupted, screaming, “Shut up! You’re giving me a fucking migraine!” followed by a string of ranting profanities spoken in such a tone of agony that it sounded as if he really might have been in pain.

I thought to myself, The man’s insane.

After a short, gathering pause, when he’d regained some control, he continued, “Cooperating? What are you, some kind of moron? The woman’s supposed to answer our e-mails immediately. We sent one three hours ago and still haven’t heard back. The bitch is supposed to be alone. ”

I said, “I’m the boy’s father. I’m Laken’s father. We’ve got the money. All we want is the boy-”

“Shut your fuckin’ mouth and listen!” His voice had that anguished quality again. “We want more than cash, now. We’re fighting a war. We need medical supplies. Some of the new breakthrough drugs not easy to get. One that’s experimental-for our wounded. The brat tells me you’re some kind of big-shot scientist. He says you know all about medicine, and can do just about any fucking thing. So that’s your new job, finding the drugs and delivering them with the money.”

Lourdes had been told I was a scientist? It was the first indication that Lake might still be alive. I wanted more than just an indicator, though. I wanted to find a way to apply at least some light leverage; was hesitant to risk it, but knew I had to try.

Medical supplies. Something about the way he said it suggested that he had a personal interest. They seemed important to him. Maybe that’s why Lake had told him “scientist.” He’d hedged intentionally. Made me sound more important than I was-a finesse on Lake’s part that gave me a fine surge of optimism. My son was working the guy instinctively, helping to set him up for me. Why Lourdes believed I had connections in the medical field didn’t matter. As long as he thought I could be useful, it gave me a tiny opening.

I began, “I’m not a physician. I’ve got access to medicines; prescription stuff. Experimental drugs, though, could take some time. You need to understand that. You don’t just go to the store and place an order.”

“You have until Sunday. No later.”

“I have to know what you need, and the quantities. First, though, let me talk to the boy. That’s not negotiable. I’m giving your people drugs and cash? Let me hear his voice. After that, I’ll do what you say-but I want daily e-mails so we know you’re keeping him alive.”

“ You want? Why the fuck should we care what you want? Maybe we’ll just kill him now, big shot.”

I had to force the words out of my mouth: “Because then you wouldn’t have any leverage. Personally-well, the kid and I aren’t that close. He’s costing me a lot of money. Now you want drugs, experimental medicine, which, frankly, I can’t get legally. Even trying to get experimental drugs could put my career in jeopardy. I want to be sure I’m getting something in return.”

I had heard his coughing, bully’s laughter on the video. I heard it again now. “Hooh, a tough guy, huh! O.K… O.K. Go ahead and talk to your brat, tough guy. But I want those fucking drugs!”

A few moments later, I heard my son say, “Doc? Dad? ” and then add in a rush, “Doc, you need to do what he says. His friends will hurt Mother. They have someone watching her all the time. Please do what he says.”

Lake sounded hoarse, frail. I found it heartbreaking that he was more concerned for Pilar than for himself. Because I knew I had only seconds to talk to him, and because I suspected Lourdes or someone else was listening in, I replied, “I’ll follow their orders, you do the same. They’re going to let you send me e-mails. Don’t be tricky. Write about the usual stuff: baseball, birds, plants. Just so I know it’s you. Things just the two of us know about. Science. Understand?”

On one level, I meant exactly what I said. On a more subtle, second level, I was trying to tell him there might be a way for us to pass information secretly.

Science is its own language. We’d written that back and forth often enough.

Did he understand?

He didn’t seem to. Didn’t even seem to hear me, because after a beat or two of silence, he replied, “Mother needs to be protected-”

He didn’t finish. Lourdes’ loud voice cut him off, saying, “Happy, asshole? Check your e-mail tonight. You better get what I want.”

There was a click, and they were gone.

My cousin, Ransom, was already in the galley of my little house, heating a pot of soup on the propane stove when I walked in.

“Brother, my brother,” she said, holding her arms out to me, “I be worried about you so much.”

I hugged her tight, lifting her so that her toes pointed to the wooden floor, letting her know how much I appreciated her boating over to keep me company.

“He’s alive!” I told her, delighted, and then explained why I was certain.

“We got to find my nephew,” she said when I’d finished. Her tone was solemn. “What those fools down there in the jungle don’t be suspectin’ is, you got yourself a sister who knows the words. Who’s got the power. I can throw a spell on them Latino trash that’ll ruin ’em from here. Fact, that’s jes what I’m gonna do, my brother. Throw me a spell on them bad boys.”

I smiled, stood away, then kissed her on the forehead. “Thanks, sis. You do that.”

As Tucker Gatrell’s daughter, Ransom’s not my real sister, of course. But because she has introduced herself that way ever since arriving on Sanibel-“How you doin’, mon, I’m Doc’s sistah!”-many have come to accept it as fact, and so I no longer correct them, or her.

If people believe that I am the brother of a lanky, buxom, coconut-brown woman who casts spells, wears voodoo beads braided into her hair, and who makes blood offerings at midnight, that’s O.K. with me. It’s flattering. Flattering because I’ve come to care for Ransom like she really is my sister. She is smart and perceptive, with a bawdy sense of comedy. She’s also as tough as they come, and a raging independent.

“I know you don’t believe in my power, man. But it’s real. You tell me about the men who took our boy, I’ll make it happen.”

When the woman talks, it’s more like she’s singing, so I heard: Ah-no-ya doan ba-leeve en me-paawh-er, mon!

I kissed her a second time, then told her, “You make your magic, and I’ll make mine. Yeah, the bastards will regret it before we’re done.”

I took my address book from the little teak secretary next to the reading chair, found the number I needed. As I dialed, I watched Ransom moving gracefully around the kitchen. She was wearing pink satiny shorts and a black tank top that showed her breast implants, of which she is so proud.

Tucker Gatrell had been a tropical bum and a Caribbean junkie. It was illustrative of Tucker’s life that Ransom, one of the few good things produced by his wanderings, had been accidental. She’d grown up poor, fatherless, and carried her poverty into adulthood, along with a severe weight problem.

Sometimes good things come out of tragedy, and for Ransom, it was her decision to fight back against what seemed inevitable. She decided to change; to prepare her body and outlook for what she calls her “Womanly Life.” The implants, she says, were symbolic.

As I dialed, she looked at me severely and said, “Man, who you callin’ this late at night?”

I told her it wasn’t nearly so late in Scottsdale, Arizona, where a certain friend lived. I did not mention that I’d dialed a Virginia area code to reach my friend’s Arizona desert adobe, nor that the friend was intelligence wizard Bernie Yeager.

She swung her head away, irked at my secrecy, and the Obeah beads braided into her hair added a clattering rebuke. She also wore strings of beads around her neck, I noticed: strands of red and white beads, as well as strands of white and yellow.

Ransom is a believer and a practitioner.

Obeah is a complex religious stew of voodoo, Catholicism, and old African lore. It uses complicated symbols referencing many gods. The red and white beads she wore honored the god of destiny.

I’d often seen men wear them in Cuba and the Bahamas.

But only women wore white and yellow beads. They celebrated Ochun, the goddess of rivers and love and female sensuality. I found that combination-river, love, sensuality-charming, and I never looked at Ransom without thinking of that word.

Ochun.

I looked at her now as the phone began to ring. Watched her turn to me and pantomime eating with a spoon: Did I want my soup now?

I shook my head quickly and touched finger to lips because Bernie Yeager had just answered.

In any phone conversation with Bernie, you have to first go through the ceremonies of security, and then through the social pleasantries.

I had to wait for him to return my call from his office-could picture him in a space crowded with computers, satellite dishes, electronic maps-then we chatted for a time while he recorded then matched my voiceprint to confirm I was who I said I was.

“Marion,” he said apologetically, “in a world so crazy as this? Even with an old friend like you, Bernie doesn’t take chances.”

I would have been shocked if he had.

Bernie is a legend among the world’s elite intelligence community-the few members familiar with the man’s work, anyway. It was Bernie who’d consistently intercepted radio and Internet communications between the Taliban in Afghanistan and terrorist cells during the Iraqi war. It was Bernie who’d invaded and compromised computer communications between Managua and Havana during the Sandinista wars in Nicaragua.

A year or so ago, I read that he was given a lifetime achievement award by an esoteric organization called the Association of Old Crows. The AOC has thousands of members, all engaged in the science and practice of electronic warfare information operations. Because his accomplishments could not be listed, Bernie’s introduction was short, but the ovation was long.

Years ago, I did the man a favor. He’s repaid me many times over. Yet now, after inquiring about my health, and then about a couple of mutual friends, Bernie said to me, “When you call such an old man as me, and at an hour such as this, I know it’s serious. I know it’s because you need something special. With you, Marion, the answer is yes. It is always yes. If it’s an arm you need, a leg you need-God forbid. The answer is still yes.”

I said, “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important,” and then told him what I wanted.

When I’d finished, Bernie allowed a space of silence to communicate to me that he was taken aback, before he deadpanned, “A password. A simple password. You are asking me, Bernie Yeager, for a lady’s password. The kind that gets her into a civilian Internet server so she can trade stock tips and recipes and gossip with old sorority pals. Marion”-he scolded me-“that’s like asking a concert pianist for ‘Chop-sticks. ’”

I said, “It may be more than that. But there’s not a lot else I can tell you.”

“It’s something you can’t tell me? Your friend who has every level of government security clearance outside maybe a certain Oval Office in a certain building that I’ll let you guess the color of, thanks very much. It’s personal, that’s what you’re saying.”

“That’s right. It’s personal.”

“Marion…” He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “Marion, I shouldn’t even ask someone like you such an offensive question. But in such a business-” He shrugged his shoulders with vocal inflection. “Offending people is part of the job. I want you to tell me that you don’t want this lady’s password because you think she’s cheating. Because you think she’s writing love letters to another man.

“All around the world,” he said, “people are trying to steal the passwords of their unfaithful lovers. So sad. This may sound strange coming from someone who does what I do, but I still believe that a man and woman’s privacy is sacred.”

I said softly, “If I told you, departmental statutes would require that you pass the information along to other offices. It has to do with my family, Bernie. If I don’t get the password soon, someone might die.”

He said slowly, “But the only family you have is the son down in. .. Masagua… oh my God, Marion!” He said the last horrified and heartbroken. “Oh, my dear friend! Jiffa, that’s what I am. Such a putz. I make jokes while you’re dying inside. Of course you can’t give me the details. But what you can do, right this instant, is go get on your antique computer and send me the e-mail addresses you want hacked. Everything you have. Do it now.

“So I stay up past midnight. I turn into a pumpkin, what’s the worst that can happen?” He’d shrugged his shoulders again with a sharp upswing in pitch. “Such terrible things go on in this crazy world of ours. I’ll call you the moment I have anything.”