“Yes, I am. What kind of trouble?”
He straddled a kitchen chair and told her the story. “That’s the secret, girl. Now, I’ve called a meeting of our people in the great room, and will announce to that our good buddy Kyle Swanson has a broken neck and is in a coma. At that point, you break down crying as if your soul had been torn out. Everyone already knows the stress and grief you’ve suffered because of Mickey, and now it’s being compounded by the horrible fate that has befallen Kyle. You gotta sell this, Coastie. Make them believe. Can you do that?”
Beth Ledford knew she could do it. The very thought of losing Kyle or Double-Oh or any member of the old Task Force Trident was enough to bring on the tears. “Yeah. Then what? We just stay here among the maple trees? With Kyle hurting?”
“Of course not. Pack your bag. We’ll leave for London immediately.”
30
Susannah Lai lied. Gibson would repay her for that someday, and he had murder in his heart as he leaned over the starboard railing of the Russian trawler Dalny Atlantica, puking into the Sea of Okhotsk. The Chinese operative in Hong Kong had promised to get him to Canada, but hadn’t said how she would accomplish that.
The day after their meeting at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club, Lai gave him a packet containing a new identity, including a well-used American passport that had been doctored after being stolen by a hotel bellboy. She hadn’t arranged a first-class airline ticket. Luke Gibson was, for the time being, a marine biologist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on contract with the Maritime Stewardship Council. She included a book on commercial fishing that he could read during the trip to get some useful details and terminology. His new name was Daniel Cabot McCabe, which carried a hint of New England aristocracy.
An Air China flight got him far north into Russia, where he had been cleared in advance, and then a frightening series of puddle jumpers got him over to the oil boomtown of Sakhalin Island, which bustled with foreigners doing business. Late that night, Daniel Cabot McCabe boarded a 330-foot trawler. The calendar turned to May, and the snow was falling hard as the trawler shoved off. Three days later, it was still snowing as he wretched up his bowl of food.
“Daniel, you should be over this sea sickness by now,” observed Pyotr Koshemyako, the burly first mate, offering a bottle of vodka. “We expect the weather to worsen. Some ice floes are on the radar.”
Gibson gripped the ice-covered rail with thermal gloves and still felt the cold. “Oh, fuck me, Pyotr. I hate this.” He smelled like fish. The whole boat smelled like fish. Gibson swore that he would never eat another fish.
“Drink, anyway, before I do this thing to you,” said the mate. “I don’t understand it, but I will obey.”
“No booze. Go ahead.” Gibson turned toward his new friend, who immediately popped him the in the face with a fist. Every night, the same ritual.
The weather did worsen, and the quick beatings continued, even after he changed to a larger factory ship. When it finally broke to clearer skies and seas, the wide, welcome mouth of the Columbia River loomed off the port bow. America had never looked so good to him.
The bureaucratic folderol required to get a foreign vessel into an American port had reverted to pre-9/11 practices. There was just too much traffic for the border-protection officers to handle on a detail-oriented task. The captain of the ship prepared the manifest and the necessary personnel papers, but the customs agents had no desire to spend all day pawing through holds carrying tons of pollock.
The ship had dropped anchor to allow the inspection team aboard before docking in Astoria to unload. A tight knot of sullen sailors stood near the gangway, as if to block the aft deck.
Suddenly, a man burst out of a forward hatchway and ran to the U.S. customs officer, grabbing him by the arm as the sailors began to move about with unexpected anger. “I’m an American, and I need to get off of this fuckin’ tub before they kill me,” the man shouted to the federal agent. “My named is Daniel Cabot McCabe, and I’m a scientist out of Woods Hole. The captain has all my paperwork.”
“You’re a mess, man,” the officer exclaimed. The face was badly bruised, black and blue. A broken nose was covered with plastic splint taped crossways. His bottom lip was split, and crude stitches closed a gash above his scabbed eyebrow. His clothes were filthy, and he reeked of fish. “What the hell happened to you?”
“I was sent out as a representative of the Maritime Stewardship Council, which has had a lot of complaints about this old bucket. The crew didn’t like my findings, so almost every night they made certain that I stepped on a bar of soap or fell down a ladder or got in a fight. The captain didn’t do anything to stop it. Look, Officer, I’m supposed to stay out here for two more weeks. I can’t take it. They will kill me. Can I get a ride back with you guys?”
The sailors remained nearby, muttering Russian curses. The American stared back. “Not my fault their fishing fleet is obsolete and falling apart and they won’t fix it. They’re taking dangerous shortcuts to keep their catch numbers up. That’s going to be in my report.”
One of the sailors pointed and yelled, “Is not true! He lies!”
“Get down the ladder and into our boat, Mr. McCabe,” the officer said. He didn’t know why, but something about the name Cabot rang a bell. Something about history that commanded respect. “You guys back off.”
Gibson scrambled from the deck into the customs officers’ patrol boat, turned, and shot a middle-finger salute to the milling Russians, then winked.
Willa Kent and Tom Hughes had a couple of problems arranging the transatlantic flight to Germany. The CIA travel office, generally very efficient, had hit a couple of snags, blaming weather on the other end, computer glitches, and housing. Finally, things came together three days after their meeting with Marty Atkins, the director of intelligence. Neither considered it a big deal, since the patient was still in a coma.
The personable regional agent in charge, Marguerite del Coda, met their plane at Ramstein Air Base and took them to a nice hotel to rest up after the long flight. They graciously accepted the offer, then she took them out to dinner.
The following morning, they went to see the patient and knew the trip had been wasted. Kyle Swanson lay in a chilly private room, unconscious beneath light-blue cotton sheets. His head, neck, and upper body were encased in a halo vest — a metal ring that encircled the head and was held in place by screws into the skull. His skin was sallow and slack.
“My God,” whispered Kent upon entering the room. Del Coda introduced an older man and woman, the parents of the patient, and the CIA agents offered their heartfelt sympathies. An Englishman in a tailored suit, eyeglasses dangling from his neck, was at the bedside, checking Swanson’s pulse. His name was Sir Patrick Whyte, and he was now Kyle Swanson’s private physician of record.
Del Coda took Sir Jeff and Lady Pat over to the cafeteria for some food and to give the professionals some time alone with the doctor and his patient.
“Can he hear us?” asked Hughes.
“Very doubtful. He’s been heavily sedated for almost a week.”
“What’s your diagnosis, Dr. Whyte?” Kent moved around the bed and felt Swanson’s cold hand. This guy is dying.
Whyte slapped a couple of X-rays on the light board. Hughes moved close to study it as the British surgeon walked them through the injury. Things were worse than originally thought, he told them. He pointed to the crushed skull at the neck, and the angled bends of the upper vertebrae.