Thick as Thieves

48

Inhale, exhale, not too fast, Carr tells himself, and he shifts carefully in the long grass.

November is early summer down here, but to Carr the predawn sky looks like winter, and the ocean-dead calm-looks frozen. The beach below is like a field of ice, and the sun-still a waxy splinter on the horizon-looks coated with frost. Carr knows the forecast calls for another warm day, but there’s nothing warm about the ground he’s lying on, and nothing soft about the grass. It feels like winter ground to him.

Carr moves the binoculars slowly along the coastline, but there is little to see. Some fishing boats to the north; to the south something larger, and farther out at sea. A tanker maybe, or a cargo ship. The beach is empty but for a stray dog worrying a carcass-a gull’s perhaps-a quarter mile away. He can hear a jet far off, but can’t see the lights. The only other noise is the wind. Of the ten armed men ranged along the hilltop with him, he sees and hears nothing. Even the man beside him is practically invisible, which is a considerable achievement given his size.

“Watch the flare off the lenses,” Mr. Boyce whispers. Carr nods and scans the binoculars down, to the house at the bottom of the hill, at the edge of the sand.

It’s a modest house by local standards, a cottage really, without the cantilevered decks, sweeping windows, or vast infinity pools common to its newer neighbors. But still, a nice house. Thick, whitewashed walls, red tile roof, fences and patios of rough local stone, a vegetable garden in back. Carr studied the site survey at the records hall, in town, and knows it sits on nearly a dozen acres-from beachfront to the top of this hill. Nice, and not cheap.

A yellow light appears in a window-a kitchen window, Carr knows. Boyce sees it too. “He a morning person?” Boyce asks.

“I don’t know what he is,” Carr says.

Nearly three months of tracking him-tracking both of them-following money and rumors and bodies across half the world, and Carr still doesn’t know. He knows they were damn smart, though-that he knows without a doubt. The web of wire transfers that emanated from the initial one-the one that relieved Curtis Prager of one hundred million dollars-was intricate and broad, similar in concept to what Carr had planned, but more complicated.

Prager’s money was quickly split into fifty separate transfers of two million each, and sent to fifty different banks around the world, into accounts owned by fifty shell corporations. Within hours of the theft, while Prager was still struggling to get Isla Privada’s systems working again and to notify his correspondent banks that something was amiss, those accounts had themselves been emptied by still other transfers. The layering and structuring of electronic payments continued for days, until the money came to temporary rest in banks in Luxembourg and Switzerland, in accounts owned by yet another set of shell companies.

Then came the cash withdrawals. There were nearly forty of those, over the course of five days, in Zurich, Basel, and Luxembourg-in amounts ranging from one million to three million euro. They made for heavy briefcases, but nothing a healthy courier couldn’t handle. Once in cash, the money became nearly impossible to trace. Carr suspects it didn’t travel far-to banks down the street from the banks it came out of, most likely, and into another set of accounts.

It was elaborate, and it must’ve taken at least a year, and a fair amount of money, just to set up the shell companies and open the bank accounts. A lot of planning, and more discipline than Carr would’ve expected from him, but maybe that was her influence. There’s motion on the beach, and Carr shifts the binoculars. The dog is in the water now, snapping at sea foam, his jaws closing on nothing. Carr knows how he feels.

Three months of staring at account numbers, wire transfer logs, bank statements, flight manifests, and security camera footage have left him feeling alternately like an accountant and a cop, and both of them empty-handed. But dead ends, bleary eyes, overcaffeination, and exhaustion notwithstanding, he hasn’t minded the work, or even Boyce’s microscopic scrutiny of him while he does it. In fact, he’s welcomed it-welcomed anything that occupied his brain, and left room for nothing else. Not for thoughts of how blind he was, how foolish, or how wrong. Not for guilt or hungry rage.

Mostly, the job has fit that bill, but even amid the columns of numbers, the megabytes of data, and the stacks of paper, there’s been downtime. The flights are the worst, and commercial or private makes no difference. Something about the long sleepless stretches, or the darkened cabins, or the dead, cold air, or the unceasing grind of the engines, or maybe all of those things together-something summons them. Memories of Bobby and Dennis in the workhouse, in Boca-the flies and the smell-of Ray-Ray in the morgue, in Mendoza, his blackened bones and clawing fingers; of Howard Bessemer, white and bloated and spinning through the waves; of Amy Chun’s hands-

“Kitchen window,” Mr. Boyce whispers.

Carr shifts his binoculars and sees a silhouette moving in the yellow square. “Can you tell who?” he asks.

“No,” Boyce says. He touches the mic on his neck and whispers something. They watch in silence, and after a while the shadow disappears from the window. After another while, Boyce sighs and lowers his binoculars.

“You called your father last night?” he asks Carr.

“You know I did.”

Boyce nods imperceptibly. “How is he doing?”

“He’s okay. I’m sure you know that too.”

“I don’t eavesdrop.”

“Your distinctions are too subtle for me.”

Boyce smiles. “How’s he getting along with Margie?”

“As well as he does with anyone. Which is not well.”

“She was an army nurse for twenty years-I think she can handle it. Margie can stay on with him, you know. She likes it up there.”

Carr shakes his head. “After this, I go back. That was the deal-that, and the money. Nothing’s changed.”

“I just want you to know you have options.”

Carr points down the hill. A door has opened near the kitchen window, and a rectangle of yellow light falls on the patio stones. A shadow-the elongated shape of a man-fills the rectangle. The shadow is still, and Carr finds that he’s holding his breath. The door closes again and Carr sighs.

Boyce chuckles softly. “He’s like a dog, sniffing the air. His hackles are up, but he doesn’t know why.”

Carr looks at his watch and looks at the sky. Three months, and the end is a hillside away. He feels his heart rate rise, and a tightness spread through his shoulders and down his arms. “He’ll know soon enough.”

Boyce turns to look at him. “You’re sure about going in alone?”

“I’m sure. You’ll be cleaning up with sponges otherwise.”

“And you don’t want to bring anything?”

“The wire is enough,” Carr says. “There’ll be more than enough guns in there.” Three months.

Mr. Boyce reads his thoughts. “It’s been a long time,” he says in a quiet rumble. “A long time chasing. A lot of time to think. To brood. I know a little something about disloyalty, but now’s not the moment to get impatient or sloppy or… emotional.”

Carr’s laugh is quiet and rueful. “I thought I was just tired.”

“You are. Anger is tiring.”

Carr rubs a hand across the stubble on his jaw. “The light’s coming up,” he says.

Boyce checks his watch and whispers something into his mic. He waits for an answer, and then looks at Carr. “It’s time then.”

Inhale, exhale, not too fast.