“I don’t really trust myself with this sort of thing,” Stone said. “Do you know who I trust with it?”
“Who would that be?”
“You,” Stone said, pushing the disabled bomb across the table.
Lance looked at it for a moment, checked the wiring again, then slipped it into a jacket pocket. “There,” he said. “All secure.”
“And if it turns out not to be,” Stone said, “I expect we’ll hear about it.”
49
They finished their breakfast. “Lance?” Stone said.
Lance dabbed at his chin with the linen napkin. “Yes?”
“Do you think we could lose the Coast Guard cutter?”
“It’s very good protection,” Lance said, “and they went to a good deal of trouble to get in here.”
“No more trouble than we went to,” Stone pointed out. “Also, it’s as though the cutter were waving a big banner reading very important person aboard the adjacent yacht. Part of the trouble we went to getting here was remaining unnoticed.”
Lance sighed. “The cutter was in the neighborhood,” he said.
“Funny, our crew didn’t spot it until we found it present on our arrival.”
Lance made a phone call. “Captain? Lance Cabot. We are feeling secure, now, and no longer require your assistance. Yes, and thank you so much!” He hung up. “There,” he said.
Immediately the noise of the cutter’s anchor coming up was heard, and shortly it passed out of the lagoon and away from the fort.
“Where’s it going?” Stone asked.
“Wherever it likes,” Lance replied. “It’s a big ocean.”
“I sort of liked having it here,” Viv said. “It was comforting, somehow.”
“I thought we all agreed that it would attract too much attention,” Stone said.
“Well, yes, but...”
“It’s gone, Viv,” Stone said. “Get over it.”
“I’ll try.”
“What’ll we do until lunch?” Dino asked.
“Board games, yesterday’s Times, or jumping into the water and flapping your arms to attract sharks,” Stone suggested.
“Can we hit some golf balls?” Dino asked.
“Not unless we want to cover the lagoon bottom with old golf balls, many of them with my name stamped on them.”
“You don’t mind that at golf courses,” Dino pointed out.
“There they have men with Aqua-Lungs who swim around the bottom, retrieving them and selling them back to me.”
“How about shooting skeet?”
“Too noisy.”
“How about shooting Dino?” Viv asked. “Only the first round will be noisy.”
“Dino,” Stone said, “boredom is a self-inflicted wound. Heal thyself.”
Dino got up, went below, and returned in a swimsuit. He vaulted over the rail and made a big splash.
“Great,” Viv said, “now all I need is a speargun.”
She went below, changed, and came back looking very good in a small bikini. She jumped in with Dino.
Stone began to miss Vanessa all over again.
Stone finished the crossword and lay back on the afterdeck cushions for a nap. After what seemed only a moment, he heard distant thunder. He jerked awake and sat up, looking around.
“It’s only the tourist seaplane from Key West to Fort Jefferson,” Lance said. “Relax.”
Stone got out his iPhone and turned on some Oscar Peterson.
“That beats an aircraft engine every time,” Lance said.
Stone, who was unaccustomed to hearing Lance express such an opinion, sat up and looked around. “It stopped,” he said.
“It’s at the dock, disgorging passengers for a thirty-minute walk around the fort.” Lance put down the book he had been reading. “I think I’ll return to Key West with them.”
“As you wish,” Stone said, buzzing the skipper and asking for a dinghy and crew for the short ride in. Stone napped again, then a few minutes later, he awoke to the sound of the seaplane lifting off and flying away.
Lance was gone. The plastique bomb was lying on the coffee table.
50
Stone slept badly and awoke breathing heavily, sweating, and hearing distant thunder. He sat up and shook his head, yawned, sang a few bars of “Daisy Bell,” moved all his fingers and toes, sure that he had had a stroke. His vision tilted about thirty degrees. He wondered why everything on deck didn’t slide into the sea. He blinked furiously. After nearly a minute of this, he heard a woman’s voice: “Good morning, Stone.”
Then everything snapped back into place. Vanessa was sitting across from him at the table in a comfortable chair, almost dressed in a bikini.
“Not you,” Stone managed to say.
“Aren’t you glad to see me?” she asked.
He fell back onto the sofa, unconscious.
Someone was shaking him, then harder.
“Stone? Wake up!” It was Dino’s voice.
He opened an eye. Viv was patting his face with a towel. “What’s wrong, Stone?” she asked. “You’re soaking wet!”
He sat up and looked around. “Where is she?”
“Who?” Dino asked.
“Vanessa. She was just here.”
“Listen, pal. You snap out of it, or I’m going to have to throw you overboard to wake you up!”
“You were making terrible noises,” Viv said.
“Did you hear the thunder?” he asked.
Dino picked up an icy drink on the coffee table and threw the contents into Stone’s face.
“What was that?” Stone asked.
“A gin and tonic. I made it for you earlier.”
“What was in it?”
“Well, let’s see,” Dino said, scratching his head, “there was gin, and there was tonic.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass! What else was in it?”
“Oh, I remember,” Dino said, “a wedge of lime.”
“Where is it?”
Dino looked around and picked up something from the sofa, next to Stone. “Look, a wedge of lime.” He made to suck it, but Stone grabbed his wrist. “No. I want it analyzed.”
“Well,” Dino said, “I don’t have my lime juice analysis kit on me, so we’ll just have to wait until we get back to New York.” He popped the lime wedge into his shirt pocket.
“Don’t lose it. It’s important. Where’s Vanessa?”
“Still on a slab in the New York City morgue, I expect,” Dino said.
“No, she’s aboard.”
“Where?” Dino asked, looking around.
Viv was just peering into Stone’s face, without speaking.
“I think maybe you should lie back down for a while,” Dino said.
“I don’t want to. I want to see Vanessa. She has some explaining to do.”
“I don’t know what she could possibly tell us,” Dino said. “Are you looking for a message from the other side?”
“The other side of the coffee table,” Stone said, pointing at the empty chair. “She was sitting right there, in a bikini, almost.”
“Almost what?” Dino asked.
“I know what he means,” Viv said. “He’s not crazy, and he hasn’t had a stroke.” She reached into Dino’s shirt pocket and extracted the lime. She squeezed it slightly, then put it to her nose. “Amyl nitrate,” she said. “Or that’s my best guess, anyway. It’s been a long time.”
Dino smelled the lime. “Jesus, I think you’re right,” he said.
“You slipped me a mickey,” Stone said.
“No, somebody slipped me the mickey, and I unknowingly passed it on.”
“What were you drinking?” Stone asked.
“Scotch on the rocks,” they both said.
“No lime?”
“On Scotch? Are you kidding me?”
“It’s gone,” Stone said, pointing at the coffee table.