Buzzard Bay (31 page)

Henekie had been following Mindy for two days now. He’d found out she had no phone, that she had a boyfriend who had stayed over one night, and where she worked. Not much to go on, he thought, as he followed her down the street. At first he thought she was going for dinner and was surprised to see she didn’t go in the restaurant but continued on past the entrance and sat down on the parking lot retaining wall beside the phone booth. This is it; he instantly knew what she was up to. Still, he’d have to play his cards carefully. She doesn’t have her own phone, maybe it’s just her boyfriend.

Henekie looked at his watch; almost six o’clock; if he was to make a move, the time was now. He left the cover of the restaurant and walked toward the phone booth. Just as he was about to enter it, he heard, “Excuse me!” He stopped and looked at the girl sitting there.

“I’m very sorry, but I’m expecting a very important phone call at six,” she told him.

“This is a public phone, man,” he told her.

“Well, okay. I just ask you to please make your call short.”

He hesitated, “Guess my call can wait a few minutes,” he smiled. “It must be very important to you.”

“Yes,” she said, “It’s my dad. I haven’t seen him for a long time. It means a lot to me.”

Henekie sat down and began talking to her when the phone rang. “Right on time,” Henekie said to Mindy. “Your father’s very prompt.”

Mindy didn’t answer as she turned and ran to the phone. She closed the door behind her but Henekie could still hear what she said.

He waited until he heard, “Hello, Dad,” and decided to make his move.

July comes out of the bathroom toweling her hair. She smiles as she hears Bob say, “Hi, Mindy, how’s things?” Then she sees Bob’s face suddenly freeze.

“Who is this?” his voice becomes panicky.

“I’ve been waiting to talk to you for some time, Mr. Green.”

Bob and July weren’t the only people who were panicking right now. Ansly monitored anything and everything that went on in his ship. The agent monitoring Bob’s call immediately buzzes Ansly’s room.

“What’s up?” Ansly answers sleepily.

“Green’s on the phone to his daughter. Someone got hold of her. He’s questioning Green right now.”

Ansly is fully awake now. He flips a switch opening a panel in Bob and July’s room. Several TV screens came on, showing Ansly the control room and Bob and July’s room.

“They’ve been watching,” July thinks, embarrassed, as she watches the screens. A speaker came on so she could hear what was said on the other end.

“It doesn’t matter who I am, Mr. Green,” the voice says. “We almost met up in Canada, but you kept avoiding me, now we must rectify that.”

Bob immediately understands where this is coming from. “Yes,” Bob answers evenly, “I’m looking forward to meeting you as we have a score to settle!”

“Yes, we do,” Henekie answers, his arm securely around Mindy, “however, the meeting will be on my terms seeing as I have an ace in the hole.”

“Guess that makes you the dealer,” Bob tells him, sounding calm. “Name the place, I’ll come to you.”

July is amazed at the way Bob is handling the situation, and so is Ansly. “This guy can keep his cool in a tight spot,” he thinks to himself wondering if he could do as well if it was his own daughter’s life on the line. Ansly also knew something Bob didn’t. He had asked the FBI to watch Mindy, he was sure they would soon be making their move. What the outcome would be probably didn’t look very good.

Henekie wasn’t the only guy to be suspicious about the phone booth. Two weeks in a row, the FBI had watched Mindy answer a call from the same phone booth. Now they were sitting in a van across the street listening to every word. Both agents were bored.

“I hear they got Green, so why are we bothering with this,” one agent said.

“You know how slow they are,” the other agent replied. “It takes time for orders to come down through the system. Maybe they even forgot about us,” he chuckled. “Besides, this is easy work. We’ll be able to catch some sleep tonight.”

They are relaxed when Mindy answers her call; the hair stands up on their arms when they hear the strange voice on the line. One agent crawls up to the front of the van and looks out the window. He can make out two people in the phone booth. He crawls back to his partner.

“We’ll go out the back door, up the alley, and come in from the back side of the parking lot,” he says.

“Where are you now?” July hears the voice over the speaker.

Bob knows by the sound of the ship to shore phone crackle, it is not a normal call. He figures the guy holding Mindy knows it too. “I’m on a cruise ship heading for the Bahamas,” Bob tells him.

Ansly had been holding his breath on that one. Now he can lead Bob. He listens as the man asks Bob where he could reach him in the Bahamas. Ansly quickly jots down some words on a chalkboard and holds it up to the TV screen.

July taps Bob on the shoulder and points to the screen, “I’m staying at the Crystal Palace under the name of Savard,” Bob answers, reading off the screen.

uddenly, they all hear what sounds like a shot and a loud clatter like the phone had been dropped.

“Freeze, right where you are,” Henekie hears a voice behind him. He turns and fires a shot through the booth glass. Two men stand facing him at the edge of the parking lot, twenty feet away. His shot hits one of them, sending him backward, firing as he fell. The shots go high into the glass filling Henekie’s eyes with shredding fragments. He feels the girl slip away. He grabs for her blindly, but the door comes open, and she is gone.

He blinks away the glass from his eyes. Luck stays with him; the girl runs right at the other man blocking his line of fire. Henekie takes off running toward the restaurant. People are coming out of the entrance. They stand there unable to move as they watch a man run toward them with a gun pointed in their direction. He runs through the people and around the side of the restaurant out of the agents’ view.

The agent runs after him cursing because with the people around, he can’t get a clear shot. “FBI, get down!” he shouts, stopping at the corner of the restaurant and carefully peering around. He sees the assailant run through a hedge on the other side of the parking lot. He runs across the parking lot just in time to see a car screech away. The agent holsters his gun and runs back to the restaurant. He sees many people gathered around the crying girl. His partner is sitting up.

“Are you okay, Al?” he says to his partner.

“Yeah,” he responds, “just hurts like hell, thank God for bulletproof jackets.”

The agent sees that the girl is all right. “The bastard got away,” he tells Al as he is walking over to the phone booth. The receiver is hanging down, and he picks it up. “Hello,” he says.

“What the hell’s happening there?” a voice asks.

“Well I’ll be damned, I’d recognise that voice anywhere, what the hell are you up to now Ansly?”

“What the hell Smith, are you working for the FBI now?

“Since you ran me off, I just put in time working for whoever needs me,” Smith answers with sarcasm in his voice.

Ansly had no time for formalities. “What the fuck’s happening there?” he asks.

“The girl’s all right. My partner was hit, but his bulletproof jacket saved him. The assailant got away; there were too many people around to get a good shot,” the agent tells him.

I drop into a chair; July grabs me and pulls me close. I hug her tightly for a moment, and then I look up, first at July, then at Ansly’s face on the screen.

“I’m ready to take these guys on,” I tell him. “They’ve got me pissed off now.”

Henekie was fully clothed under the jogging suit he was wearing. He took it off and threw it in a garbage can in a dark alley along with the gun. He decided the best thing to do was get out of town as quickly as he could. He wasn’t worried; he had all the ID he needed to get through a roadblock. No one was real sure what he looked like except the girl, and it would take time for the cops to get a composite drawing from her. The best thing he could do was to get away as far he could.

“I screwed up,” he cursed to himself. Those agents must have been listening to that phone too. I should have seen them, now I’ve got nothing that will make Green come to me, so I’ll have to go to him, Henekie thought, I’ll phone Grundman in the morning to see what he knows.

July and I talk with Ansly well into the morning. When it was time for July to leave, we get to spend a few moments together.

“I’m going to be helping the agents,” she tells me, “I can identify people and voices for them, so I’ll be able to follow what you’re up to,” July smiles. “It will be like I’m with you all the time. I’ll probably be in Miami. They’re bringing Rikker there too. I’ll be in touch, love you.” With that, her shuttle boat pulls away, parting us again.

They let me sleep till noon, by then the Canary Islands were long out of sight. Ansly took me on a tour of the boat.

“She’s fast,” he tells me, “there’s a crew of ten on board, not including us. We are all agents and trained in the navy.” He shows me a large room filled with panels and screens. “This is the nerve center of the ship. It even has sensors warning us if divers are near. It’s more sophisticated than many of the warships we were tied up in port with.”

As he shows me around, I can see that the ship is completely done up. “A floating palace,” I tell Ansly.

“That’s why they call it a yacht,” he answers.

They also show me a canon and several mounted machine guns all cleverly disguised behind portable curtains and removable covers.

That afternoon, the water becomes choppy and I get sick. The second day, I am even sicker, but they make me read some material on my new background. They also start the disguise process, in this case, plastic surgery. It takes a few days for the swelling to go down then I begin my orientation of becoming Mark Betrand… My days are filled with briefings and meetings with the crew so that I could get to know them better. Carol is the only girl on board.

“Don’t let that pretty little face of hers fool you, she’s a tough little cookie. Her job is to be your secretary and if need be, your roommate.” Ansly tells me. “If you need her to sleep with someone to get information, that’s her job. In other words, she’s yours to do with as you need.”

Carol has different ideas about that and quickly tells me so, “You can go fuck yourself, if you think I’m going to sleep with you.” I’ll do what I have to do but on my own terms.”

“Damn it,” I smile, “I was really looking forward to it too.”

he smiles back, “Just because you can satisfy that big blond doesn’t mean you can look after a redhead.” She blows me a kiss and wiggles her ass at me as she walks away; we’d do just fine.

We are so busy that time flew. We stop for a few days in Trinidad to refuel and bring on supplies then one morning, I came on deck to see the checkerboard colors of Nassau in full view.

“They’ll send a pilot out to take us into the harbor,” Ansly tells me. “By tonight, you’ll be a busy man.”

We are docked near some other yachts. I realize just how impressive our boat is, as I look down on the others scattered about the harbor. I think with a ship this size that we will be staying on board.

“You’re going ashore to eat tonight,” Ansly tells me. “It will be a trial run to see how well you handle your new job. You’ll be staying at the Atlantis tonight,” he goes on. “In case you didn’t know, you’ve booked out the penthouse suite for two weeks. Carol will be your escort for dining. What happens after that is up to you. Night dining in Nassau’s finest restaurants is ‘black tie’ or ‘tux only’ affairs.”

One thing I had learned about Bertrand was that he never wore a tie or tux. He considered them bourgeois and wore only polo shirts under an expensive blazer.

The European look, they call it, suits me just fine. I hadn’t worn a tie in a long time and found them very constricting. As for being accepted in this attire, I feel it won’t be a problem. Money, I know, looks after all the doors in this world. Acceptance is only dollars away. Besides, maybe I will start a new trend.

The face I see in the mirror is not mine anymore. Jet-black hair combed straight back, wire-rimmed glasses (still uncomfortable on my nose), a scar on my cheekbone, and capped teeth. Mark Bertrand, that’s who I am now. I have to forget Bob Green, my life depends on it.

For a while now, I had taken acting lessons, learning Bertrand’s quirks, likes, and dislikes. But with all this, I realize that it is up to me to pull this off, and I am determined to do it.

My people, as I now called the agents, had let it be known that I was coming to town. Word had spread fast. There are quite a few people at the dock as we come in, curious to see the man who owns this beautiful yacht. Among the first to come aboard is the harbor captain.

He looks very nervous in all this elegance. I meet him at the head of the gangplank, shake his hand, and introduce him to Mr. Ansly, my captain, who will answer any questions he may have. Our plan is to be as mysterious as possible, showing myself only when necessary. After all, my disguise will be open to scrutiny and in order to create interest, one has to remain aloof.

The rest of the day, I practice my accent. “Don’t overdo it,” the agent tells me, “just enough so it comes natural and they don’t recognize your voice.” I am dressed and ready to go ashore when I hear a knock on my door. It opens and in walks Carol.

“Hi,” she says, “I’m your escort for the night.”

I hardly recognize her in a dress, having only seen her in blue jeans until now. I let out a low whistle. Her dress is very short, the top consisting of two straps of cloth running from the belly button to just covering her breasts and tied behind her neck.

“I thought we were going to a nightclub, not the beach,” I tell her.

“Everyone knows you like your women hot, Mark.” She spins around, “Am I hot enough?”

“You’re making me sweat,” I tell her, which isn’t far from the truth.

“Okay, let’s go. First, we’re off to a tourist floorshow, where we’ll have diner. Later, we’ll hit some clubs.”

I have seen the local tourist show before, but the meal is good. After the show, we get back into the limousine. “Where now?” I ask the driver and my so-called bodyguard who is in the front seat.