“I meant afterwards,” Kathleen pressed. She was serious. “You’re taking the teaching job at New College. We’re selling the house in Chevy Chase and moving down here. Permanently. Right?”
The roadway parted in the middle and the two leaves began to rise.
McGarvey pointed the bow of the Island Packet to the middle of the channel and gave the diesel a little throttle. The tide was running with them through the narrow pass into Sarasota Bay, giving them an extra three or four knots.
“Right?” Kathleen repeated.
McGarvey glanced at her and smiled. “That’s the plan, sweetheart.”
She shook her head and smiled ruefully. “God, you’re handsome when you lie,” she said. She came aft to the wheel, gave her husband a kiss on the cheek, then started pulling the dock lines and fenders from a locker.
She was wearing a bikini with a deep blue and yellow sarong tied around her middle; her feet were bare. McGarvey was dressed only in swim trunks, a baseball cap, and sunglasses. Except for the couple of nights they’d dressed for dinner ashore, they’d worn nothing else for most of the fourteen days since they’d slipped their lines at Marina Jack and headed out to the Gulf of Mexico.
They’d gunk-holed down Florida’s west coast, slowly heading for Key West; anchoring early in small coves, drinks in the cockpit at dusk, power up the barbecue grill for dinner. Awake with the dawn, the water flat calm for a swim before breakfast, then pull up the anchor, and sail farther south. Sometimes they’d stop especially early so they could snorkel along the reefs just offshore, or walk the beaches, or fish, or just lie in the cockpit in the shade of the bimini to read a book.
For two weeks they never turned on the radio, saw a television set, or read a newspaper or newsmagazine. And the trip had done wonders for both of them, after the hell they’d gone through because of McGarvey’s last assignment in which he’d resigned from the CIA in order to track down an al-Quaida killer. Kathleen, who’d been pregnant as a surrogate mother for their daughter Elizabeth, had very nearly lost her life in the ordeal. But Mac had saved her and the baby, who’d been born six months ago.
This trip had been exactly what the doctor had ordered. Or at least it had been until the incidents at Faro Blanco and yesterday in the Intracoastal Waterway with the helicopter. Like so many times before in his connection with the U.S. intelligence establishment he had to tell himself that the business was not finished for him. Perhaps it would never be over until he was dead, because there were a lot of people still very interested in what he knew, and any number of others who wanted to pay him back for what he’d done.
They made the broad turn south around Quick Point and the one-design sailing squadron toward the new John Ringling High Bridge. Sarasota’s downtown with its glass-faced office buildings, sixteen-story condos, and the Ritz-Carlton intermingling with palms, bougainvillea, and flowering trees, looked subtropical, laid-back, even peaceful.
Kathleen was rigging the dock lines on the bow cleats. McGarvey locked the wheel, and went below for a moment to get his pistol. He stuffed it in the waistband of his trunks, then pulled on a T-shirt, and went back up to the cockpit.
Kathleen turned around as he got back behind the wheel and gave him the resigned look of hers that she knew he was carrying. She didn’t like it, but she never complained now like she had in the early days, when their marriage had gone on the rocks. His abilities combined with his instincts had saved their lives more than once. She’d come to understand that when he armed himself it was almost always for a good reason.
They passed under the John Ringling High Bridge, and less than one hundred yards south, picked up the channel markers into Marina Jack where they’d chartered the boat. More than two hundred sail- and powerboats were docked on either side of the modern glass and steel restaurant that was located in its own quiet cove right on Tamiami Trail, which was much like the Quai d’Anglais along Nice’s chic waterfront.
McGarvey picked up the microphone and called the dockmaster on VHF channel 16. “Marina Jack, this is Sunday Morning.”
“Sunday Morning, switch and answer seven-one.”
McGarvey switched to the working channel. “Marina Jack, Sunday Morning. We’ve just passed marker eight A. Where do you want us?”
“Tie up at the fuel dock,” the dockmaster radioed. “Welcome back. Have a good trip?”
“We’re sorry to be back.”
“I hear you,” the dockmaster said. “You’ve got someone to see you. He’s been here most of the morning.”
A tall figure with frizzy red hair came out onto the dock. “Yeah, I know,” McGarvey said. Even from one hundred yards out he could recognize Otto Rencke. “Sunday Morning out.” He returned to channel 16.
“It’s Otto,” Katy called from the bow. She was relieved for the moment. She waved, and Rencke waved back.
A couple of dock boys came out as McGarvey throttled back and eased the sloop starboard side too at the fuel pumps, their speed bleeding to nothing. Kathleen tossed one of the boys the forward line, and McGarvey tossed the other a stern line.
“Hi, Otto,” Kathleen said.
Rencke, dressed in tattered blue jeans and a raggedy old CIA sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, leaned against the building, in the shade of the second-floor overhang. “Hi, Mrs. M,” he said. He didn’t look happy.
Lavender, McGarvey guessed, or something close to it.
They didn’t have to return the boat until tomorrow morning. They’d planned on spending the afternoon packing and cleaning up. This evening they would have dinner, and tomorrow they would fly back to Washington for the closing on their Chevy Chase house on Tuesday. Later in the week they would drive back here to get their new house on Casey Key up and running.
Shutting down the engine, McGarvey had a feeling that there might be a change of plans. Or at least that Otto had come down here to make an offer.
Katy came aft. “You didn’t know it would be Otto, did you?”
“No.”
“He’s got the look, darling. You’re going to turn him down, right?”
“You need your holding tank pumped out, Mr. McGarvey?” one of the dock boys asked.
“Please, and when you’ve filled the diesel run her over to the slip for us, would you?”
“Sure thing, sir.”
“Right?” Kathleen asked.
“He’s a friend, I’m going to listen to him, Katy,” McGarvey said. He went below, put his pistol away, and slipped into a pair of Topsiders.
Kathleen joined him. “What about me?” she asked.
“Otto and I are going for a walk. Why don’t you get dressed and meet us at the bar? We’ll have some lunch.”
“I meant us, goddammit,” Katy said, keeping her voice low.
“I don’t know,” McGarvey said. He tried to kiss her cheek, but she pulled away.
“We’ll just be a few minutes,” he promised. “It’ll be okay.”
“I don’t think so.”
McGarvey went topside, opened the lifeline gate, and stepped up onto the dock. Rencke came across to him and they shook hands.
“Oh wow, Mac, Mrs. M didn’t look very happy to see me,” Rencke said. “Is she okay?”
“Depends on why you’re here,” McGarvey said. “Was it you looking over our shoulders the past few days?”
“Yeah.”
“You could have called.”
“Your cell phone was out of service, and I didn’t want to use the radio.”
McGarvey nodded. “Let’s take a walk.”
They headed around the restaurant to the parking lot and the sidewalk that followed Tamiami Trail over to City Park a couple of blocks away. There were a lot of people out and about, walking, roller-blading, biking, working on their boats, having picnics, flying kites, fishing. White noise. He and Otto were anonymous here and now.