“You ready?” he asked.
She was traveling light, told by McElroy that all necessary wardrobe needs would be waiting for her in St. Cajetan. Cooper and the new guy, Warlock, had flown to the island the night before to secure a room as close to Frederic Favreau’s as possible and begin preliminary surveillance. Favreau had reportedly landed first thing that morning and had gone straight to the hotel.
“I’m not sure,” she said, in answer to Deuce’s question. “I’m still trying to get a handle on who Alexandra Barnes is supposed to be. How do I play this?”
“Think of yourself as the travel industry’s answer to Lois Lane.”
“So what does make you? Jimmy Olsen?”
Deuce winced and said, “Let’s just get on the plane.”
They flew to the island on a De Havilland Otter DHC-3 floatplane. Alex and Deuce were two of eight passengers strapped into narrow seats, all with clear views of the cockpit.
Looking around, Alex guessed there was enough jewelry in the cabin to fund a small war, which wasn’t surprising given that St. Cajetan was known for its luxurious accommodations. GOLD KEY CHARTERS, on the other hand, favored function over luxury. While the plane appeared perfectly maintained, it had a vintage, pre-sixties vibe to it that clashed with the haute couture of its passengers.
Deuce spent most of the hour-long flight dozing as Alex pulled out her computer tablet and once again fired up the wedding video. Each time she watched it, one thing became clearer and clearer: Her mother was not your typical blushing bride. The look in her eyes suggested she didn’t even want to be there.
Alex ran it through again, and this time, something new caught her eye. She had been concentrating so much on her mother and the man beside her that she hadn’t noticed it before. As the camera panned past the bride and groom for a brief shot of the attendees, she was surprised to discover that one of the men in the crowd looked familiar.
More than familiar.
She froze the video and stared at the fuzzy image of a man with curly blond hair who seemed out of place in the sea of Iranian faces. A foreigner. An American.
An American she knew.
She found she had to reach into the memory banks to place him, but it didn’t take long. He had been to their house when she was a child. And not just one time, but many.
Uncle Eric.
Not a real uncle, but one of her father’s oldest and closest friends. He called her Allie Cat, and had dubbed her brother Dan the Man, a name that had always provoked laughter from Danny. And there had been magic tricks, too, a new one every time he came to visit.
Alex hadn’t thought much about him since her mother died, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him.
Could this really be him?
And if so, what the hell was he doing at her mother’s Iranian wedding?
“Who’s the guy with the bad seventies haircut?” Deuce asked. He was awake now, sitting across the aisle from her, his eyes on the computer tablet. “I don’t remember him from the briefing.”
“He’s not,” she said. She put the tablet to sleep before he could get a good look, and tucked it into her backpack.
“So, who is he?”
“Somebody I knew when I was a little kid. Friend of my parents. I’m trying to remember his last name.”
“Why?”
“I’m thinking of sending him a postcard. ‘Wish you were here.’”
“Then you’ll need more than a last name,” Deuce said. “An address might help, too. Who is he really?”
Alex usually told Deuce everything, but wanted to keep the events of the last couple days private for a while. Until she could figure it all out.
“He’s got nothing to do with us,” she told him. “I promise.”
“In other words, mind your own business, Deuce.”
She smiled. “You catch on fast, don’t you?”
From the air, the island of St. Cajetan looked like a deformed pear.
The floatplane approached from the Southeast, giving them a view of the uninhabited side of the island and its jungle of coconut palms and casuarina trees growing out of a thick, vibrant green undergrowth that would take a finely sharpened machete to hack through.
The plane banked left and began to circle toward the far side of the island, and as they approached civilization, Alex was struck by the notion that it looked very much like the photographs she’d seen of 1950s, pre-Castro Havana.
But as the plane continued to descend, she could see that this initial impression wasn’t quite true. The Hotel St. Cajetan and the buildings and city surrounding it seemed to be part of a faux, manufactured replica of a bygone era, like an Art Deco Disneyland, or a massive outdoor movie set at Warner Brothers studios — every speck of dirt, every luxurious pool, every sweaty cantina likely the product of a Hollywood production designer.
Now she understood why this plane hadn’t been modernized. It wasn’t out of place. It was just another part of the image and illusion of St. Cajetan.
Alex knew from the Stonewell briefing that at eighty miles long and thirty miles wide, St. Cajetan was one of the larger of the seven hundred islands that made up the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, and had been sold to a private developer in the early eighties for a rumored five hundred million American dollars. It was now a sovereign state with its own government and paramilitary police force and economy. Over the last three decades, the developer, an egocentric billionaire named Leonard “Leo” Latham, had built the place into the exclusive tourist mecca it was today, and had reportedly tripled his investment and then some.
Over the intercom, the pilot welcomed them all to “paradise.” The floatplane made its descent and landed smoothly on the glassy surface of the water in Latham’s Cove — yes, the developer had named it after himself — and cruised toward a large wooden dock. Several hundred yards beyond a wide stretch of sand, the Hotel St. Cajetan greeted them in all its Habana-wannabe glory, while dockside, a cadre of smartly uniformed bellboys waited with their suitcase carts as the plane came to a stop and cut its engine.
“Welcome to paradise” was repeated several times as Alex, Deuce, and their jewelry-jangling fellow passengers unstrapped their seat belts and stepped onto the dock.
Alex knew she was supposed to have her game face on, but she was distracted by lingering thoughts of Uncle Eric and his presence in the wedding video. It bothered her that she couldn’t remember his last name. She knew it was sitting somewhere at the periphery of her mind, but until it came forward, she wouldn’t be able to run a check on the guy. She had considered using Stonewell’s facial recognition software, but knew the video was too old and fuzzy for reliable results.
Setting it aside for the time being, she reminded herself she was now Alexandra Barnes, travel correspondent extraordinaire, and waited as Deuce supervised the loading of his equipment onto one of the bellboy’s carts. She then followed them up the dock toward the hotel lobby.
Let the games begin.
CHAPTER 10
Cooper greeted them with a big smile. “Alexandra…Sticks… Glad to see you finally made it.”
The hotel lobby was about half the size of an airport hangar, impeccably decorated with French leather club sofas and chairs, flanked by what looked like authentic Edgar Brandt side tables and lamps. The textured tile floor was polished to such a high shine that Alex almost felt guilty walking across it.
As Cooper told the bellboy there were more bags in the hotel’s storage room, Alex said quietly to Deuce, “Sticks?”
“McElroy’s contribution to my cover,” he told her. “Apparently a lot of camera guys get saddled with the name because of the tripod.”