Cloak, page 35
“Unlikely,” Vaughn said. “We’ve been in contact with all the ships along the Oregon, Washington, and northern California coasts. With only three exceptions, every ship was in view of at least two others during the critical hour, and all of them had people on deck.”
“You’re checking the exceptions?”
“Search parties are already aboard.” Vaughn paused. “The other possibility is that they don’t need to get the planes out of the country because they plan to use them right here. Them, and maybe the nuke.”
Logan swore softly. “Someone out there must really be mad at us this time.”
“So it would seem,” Cohn said grimly. “Let’s get busy and figure out who the hell he is.”
~
Angie had had a good meal the night before: one of A.J.’s extensive collection of specialty steaks, microwave defrosted and cooked on the built-in kitchen grill. A session with Sarah’s collection of vanity supplies had followed, at the end of which time her long black hair had become a tightly coiled bun of light brown. She’d experimented some with makeup, too, deciding what would work best to camouflage her face. Then, with fatigue dragging at her eyelids, she had fallen into bed.
She’d intended to sleep in as late as she could, hoping to catch up on her rest now that she finally had a safe place to stay. Instead, she’d awakened at six sharp with her heart pounding and a terrifying sense of imminent danger.
All nerves and delayed reaction, of course. As she’d watched the bedroom shades slowly brighten with the approaching dawn she’d tried to persuade herself of that.
But the pep talk hadn’t helped. All through her quick shower and quicker breakfast the feeling had persisted that this house, which she’d counted on so heavily to be her fortress while she thought things through, was no longer safe. Perhaps it had never been safe.
As the electric cuckoo clock in the kitchen had chirped its brainlessly cheerful announcement of the seven o’clock hour, she’d slipped through the back door and out into another bleak California morning.
She’d spent the morning browsing the waterfront shops with the rest of the off-season visitors and the scattering of locals who hadn’t already grown bored with the scenery. Along the way she bought tinted fashion sunglasses, a scarf to help conceal the length of her newly colored hair, and a new coat to replace the one Ross had given her.
Lunchtime came and went, with her stomach too tense to eat. Her theory was that no one would expect a fugitive to be wandering the streets acting like a tourist, and so far it seemed to be working. Still, with every cruising police car that went by, or every friend of her parents who strolled past without a second glance, she seemed to die a few more inches.
At four o’clock she finally called it quits. She hadn’t been discovered, at least as far as she knew, but at the same time she hadn’t gotten anywhere, either. There were still killers on the loose who had murdered her husband, and from the lack of news she was able to glean from radio and newspapers, it looked as if the police weren’t making any headway.
It was time for her to have a go at it.
The waterfront bars and restaurants were only sparsely populated at this hour of the afternoon, but a little hunting turned up a corner tavern named Peg Leg’s near the Breakwater Cove Marina that had managed to attract more than its share of business. The interior was divided into a central bar plus two long wings running parallel to the streets outside. One of the side areas was equipped with tables, the other with booths. Selecting a booth near the back of the latter area beside one of the smoked-glass windows, she ordered a glass of white wine and pulled out her cell phone. The battery was almost dead, but the conversation should be short. Mentally crossing her fingers, she punched in the Tarnhelm group’s phone number.
It was answered on the third ring. “Lab D-327,” Esteban’s familiar voice said.
Angie took a deep breath. “Ramon, this is Angie Chandler,” she said, keeping her voice low.
“Angie!” he all but gasped. “What in—are you all right? We’ve been worried sick about you.”
“I’m all right for now,” she assured him. “But someone’s trying to kill me.”
“I know,” Esteban said grimly. “The police are going nuts trying to find you. That private eye who’s been hanging around you? Watch out—he’s a fake.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Ross is long gone,” Angie said. “But I’m just getting in deeper, and I don’t know what to do.”
“Call the police,” he told her firmly. “They’re the only ones who can help.”
“Are you sure they can be trusted?”
“Sure,” he said. “I mean, I suppose so. Why shouldn’t they be?”
“I don’t know,” Angie said, trying to sound as woebegone as she could. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
“Look, why don’t you give Lieutenant Delgado a call,” Esteban urged. “I’ve got his card right here . . . yeah, here it is.”
He read off the phone number. “I think you can trust him,” he added. “I do.”
“I don’t know,” Angie said. “I’m still scared. And starving, I haven’t eaten since yesterday. Maybe it’ll be easier to think when I’ve got some food in me.”
“Sure,” Esteban said. “Where are you?”
It was the question she’d been waiting for. “Monterey,” she said, gazing out the window at one of the seafood restaurants halfway down the block and across the street. “A seafood place called the Windjammer. I just ordered dinner.”
“Okay, but make it fast,” Esteban warned. “You shouldn’t be out in the open like that.”
“I’ll be careful,” she promised. “Thanks, Ramon. Maybe I’ll call this Lieutenant Delgado after I eat.”
“Okay,” Esteban said. “If you need anything else, just call.”
“Thanks,” Angie said. “’Bye.”
She clicked off and closed the phone as, with perfect timing, her order arrived. If Esteban was innocent, then she was simply going to have a quiet glass of wine by herself. If he was the man who had murdered her husband, in league with the men who were trying to murder her, there should be some interesting activity down the block soon.
Taking a sip of wine, she settled back to watch.
The minutes ticked by. A number of people moved in and out of her view, most of them tourist looking, none of them showing the sort of urgency she would expect from hunters who’d suddenly gotten wind of their prey. Eight minutes after her call a middle-aged couple wandered into the Windjammer, but again in a leisurely fashion. A foursome came out of the restaurant a few minutes after that, stood for a while on the sidewalk apparently discussing their next move, then headed off together toward the marina.
Across the bar the bell attached to the door tinkled its announcement that another late-afternoon drinker had arrived. Angie glanced over—
And felt her throat freeze.
It was Ross.
23
With a final click of her mouse, the last picture dissolved from Swenson’s screen, joining the rest of the photos in its proper place in the sequence she’d spent the afternoon digging out and lining up. A long and tiring process, but worth it. Well worth it. Now all she needed to do was corral McPherson or Cohn or one of the other higher-ups—
“Finished?”
She spun around, nearly sliding off her chair in her surprise. McPherson was sitting right behind her, not three feet away, his feet propped up on a vacant desk and a coffee cup in his hand. “You startled me, sir,” she said reproachfully. “What are you doing back there?”
His eyebrows lifted slightly. “Waiting for you to finish this analysis that’s going to knock my socks off,” he said mildly. “As you asked me to do when I last passed by half an hour ago.”
Swenson felt heat flow into her cheeks. “I didn’t.”
“You did,” he assured her. “You don’t remember, do you?”
“Not a bit,” she confessed, thoroughly embarrassed. It was one thing to go blank on someone like Talbot. In fact, Talbot usually deserved it. It was something else entirely to do it to the head of the whole Bureau. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, waving the apology away as if swatting at a fly hovering in front of his nose. “It’s been a madhouse the past few hours, and it’s been kind of relaxing to just sit here and do nothing.”
“Yes, but I’ve kept you from other work,” Swenson said, dimly aware that he was letting her off the hook and that she was perversely arguing the point. “More important things.”
“All that’s coming in right now is negative information,” he said. “No one needs me sitting there for that.” He gestured at her screen. “Besides, you sounded excited, and an excited Jigsaw Girl is always worth listening to. You said something about sleight of hand?”
“Yes, sir,” Swenson said, turning back to her keyboard and punching for the first photo in her lineup. She didn’t remember saying that, either, but it was an apt description. “You remember our problem—well, one of them, anyway—is figuring out just what happened at the end aboard the Rabah Jamila.”
“Right,” McPherson said, hitching his chair up to her side. “I remember that photo.”
“I think we’re all familiar with it by now,” she agreed ruefully, gazing at their best satellite shot of the yacht tied up alongside the Rabah Jamila, a photo that had been scanned and studied and analyzed and enhanced half to death. “This shot was taken at four-thirty-seven Friday afternoon, local time, shortly after the crew was locked below, but before Captain Syed was taken to his private cell.”
“Allegedly taken there, anyway,” McPherson said. “The lab’s still running his latest voiceprint sample against the transmission.”
“It’s going to come up negative,” Swenson told him. “I think we’ll find it happened just the way he said. The only reason they locked him up separately was to make us think he might be an inside man.”
“Okay, but if Syed didn’t send the Mayday you’re going to have to explain how the hijackers vanished into thin air during their forty-six-minute window,” McPherson warned. “I trust you’re not going to suggest the yacht was a James Bond special that converts to a submarine.”
“Actually, you’re not that far off,” Swenson told him. “I got to thinking about what the crew said about hearing the yacht’s hull bouncing against the starboard side of the ship until seven o’clock. Usually you avoid metal-to-metal contact between ships—you use rubber fenders or hang old tires there instead. But that doesn’t make as much noise as metal-on-metal would. The yacht was tied up on their starboard side, and the crew was locked into a hold on the starboard side, and right beside the accommodation ladder. Coincidence?”
There was the creak of chair springs as McPherson straightened up. “You’re saying they wanted them to hear the yacht?”
“No, they wanted them to think they were hearing the yacht.” Swenson punched up the next photo. “This is the Rabah Jamila at about five-forty, or at least what you can see of it through the clouds and with the sun almost gone. This is our last even partially clear photo before it takes off and heads north at high speed, which according to the crew’s testimony will happen in about twenty minutes. You can see—sort of—that the yacht is still there, and that the crane is poised either coming or going over it.”
“Finishing the nuke transfer,” McPherson said. “Right. And?”
“Something interesting.” Swenson touched the yacht with the eraser end of her pencil. “You’ll notice the yacht has drifted back a bit since the previous shot. Not more than a few feet, and not past the ladder. As if a line tying it to the freighter has been loosened a little, either preparatory to casting off or to facilitate the crane’s operation. On the assumption they are about to leave, I ran over it with a fine-tooth comb—”
“Wait a minute,” McPherson said. “That they are about to leave? Both of them?”
“Sorry, I meant just the yacht and one of them,” she corrected. “The other one will stay aboard another hour to let the yacht put some distance between it and the freighter.”
“With a random slab of metal bobbing alongside so that the crew would think the yacht was still there?” McPherson suggested. “Interesting theory. It still leaves us two major problems, though.”
“Where the yacht went, and how the second hijacker got away,” Swenson said, nodding. “I think I can answer both of them. Second hijacker first. As I was saying, I went over this photo with a fine-tooth comb. Against the Rabah Jamila’s hull, just clear of the yacht now that it’s shifted, I spotted this.”
She tapped for the next photo, and there was another creaking of springs as McPherson hitched his chair a little closer. “Clear as mud,” he commented.
“I know,” Swenson apologized. “As I said, the sun’s almost gone, and the light’s coming from the wrong side of the ship anyway. Leaves this side pretty much in shadow. I enhanced it as much as I could.”
“Probably why they tied the yacht on that side in the first place,” McPherson grunted. “Looks like a bunch of cylinders inside a framework. What is it, some kind of cluster bomb?”
“I don’t think so,” Swenson said. “What it is—at least what I think it is—is an array of scuba tanks.”
There was a moment of silence. “You’re joking.”
“Not at all,” Swenson assured him. “I know it sounds crazy—”
“Not sounds, Swenson,” McPherson corrected her. “Is. In case you hadn’t noticed, that ship is over a hundred fifty miles from anything that qualifies as dry land. What did he do, swim all the way to Shanghai?”
“As a matter of fact, he didn’t even have to lift a flipper,” Swenson said. “Remember what’s about to happen: the Rabah Jamila, steaming for all it’s worth toward North Korea, is going to send a pair of transmissions that stir up a hornets’ nest in both the U.S. and China. Where is all that attention going to be focused?”
“On the Rabah Jamila,” McPherson said, scratching his chin as he gazed at the screen. “And the hijacker knows that. So he just . . . jumps overboard?”
“He just jumps overboard,” Swenson confirmed. “Maybe lowers himself down on a rope after untying his oxygen cluster from the deck rail so that he won’t make a splash. He’s in a full dry suit, undoubtedly heated and probably with a full-head helmet so he’s got access to food and water. The cluster will be rigged with buoyancy gear, of course. He sinks down twenty feet or whatever he figures will keep him safe from passing ships, and just drifts with the current.”
McPherson shook his head. “It’s so damn simple. By the time the Navy P-3 gets to the scene, the freighter’s already fifteen miles away from him. Not a chance in the world they would spot him.”
“And with him just floating quietly, there’s nothing for the P-3’s sonar buoys to pick up, either,” Swenson pointed out.
“Sure isn’t,” McPherson said, sounding thoroughly disgusted now. “And, of course, by the time the Vincennes and Anqing arrive, everyone’s a hundred miles away from what they’re really looking for. You know, that’s a good enough reason right there for them to have fired off that Chinese code.”
“What do you mean?”
“That got our attention focused solidly on the Rabah Jamila,” McPherson explained. “Which in turn effectively defined our search area. I assume you’ve followed up on this.”
“Yes, sir, I did,” Swenson said. “The mayday was sent about seven p.m., local time. I had some Navy people calculate the currents for me, then tracked along that path.” She tapped a key, calling up the next photo in her file. “This is seven fifteen the next morning, a little over twelve hours later.”
“Well, well,” McPherson said sourly. “A nondescript fishing boat out for some early-morning angling. What a surprise.”
“Note especially right here,” Swenson said, pointing to a spot southwest of the fishing boat. “Watch as I flip between this shot and the next one.”
The flicker of light was small, but for Swenson it had been clear enough. Apparently it was for McPherson, too. “A strobe light,” he identified it. “Sitting on—what’s that, a small buoy?”
“Yes,” she said. “Along with the strobe light support, the shadows indicate another, thinner object that could be a short-range transmission antenna. I’m guessing that at an agreed-upon time our hijacker let the buoy float up to the surface, where it took a GPS fix and transmitted his coordinates to the recovery boat.”
“With the strobe light there to guide them in,” McPherson said. “Do we see them pick him up?”
“Unfortunately, no,” Swenson said, running quickly through the next series of shots. “We do have the boat sitting beside the buoy for over an hour, though.”
“Waiting for him to go through decompression,” McPherson murmured. “I wonder what the schedule is for twelve hours submerged. Depends on how deep he was, I suppose.”
“I don’t remember the tables,” Swenson pulled up the last of the series. “And finally, we have this one, where the boat’s turned around and is heading for home.”
“And the buoy’s gone,” McPherson said. “Any chance of tracking the boat?”
Swenson shook her head. “It was headed into Nagasaki when I lost it in the clouds. No idea where it docked; and that was over forty-eight hours ago. They’ll be long gone by now.”
“Damn.” McPherson hissed out a breath. “I wish to hell you’d been here Saturday, Swenson. Maybe you’d have caught this fast enough for us to have nailed them.”
“Yes,” Swenson murmured, a pang of guilt twisting through her gut. She could have been here then. Would have been here if Talbot hadn’t conned her into staying in San Francisco those extra sixteen hours.
If he hadn’t conned her, and if she hadn’t willingly gone along with it. She knew the kind of stunts Talbot pulled. She could have figured out the scam a lot earlier than she had.
