Holliday had taken the time to find a book about Sable Island at a bookstore near their hotel in Toronto and he'd read it on board the train to Halifax. The book was called A Dune Adrift and chronicled the life and times of the deadly sandbar from its glacial origins to the present.
It was a fascinating story, but it certainly wasn't a pleasant one. The shifting crescent of sand, once a hundred miles long, was located at the center of every dangerous current and wind system in the Atlantic, perched on the edge of the continental shelf, its hidden shallows directly in the path of burgeoning hurricanes and perfect storms blowing in off the Grand Banks and Bermuda, a lurking trap for all sorts of shipping since man first crossed the Atlantic Ocean. A lot of lives and dreams had ended on Sable Island.
The place sounded decidedly unpleasant, and the more Holliday read the less he wanted to go there. If their quest for the True Ark hadn't stirred up such a deadly maelstrom of interest ensnaring him, Holliday would have opted out of the chase long ago. Now it was too late; he'd gone too far and was in too deep to give up. He still wasn't sure he believed in the existence of the ark, but other people-powerful ones-sure as hell did.
"Keith's IPA, my love, and a bucket of thangs." A man in his late forties or early fifties plopped himself down on the bar stool next to Holliday. He looked like a scaled-down version of a defensive tackle: all shoulders and chest. He had dark curly hair, graying at the temples, a bull neck, big hands and a bushy mustache that was almost a joke. He wore bright red half-glass bifocals and his black eyes twinkled as though he'd just told a particularly dirty joke. His Keith's arrived in a stubby bottle without an accompanying glass and he took a long draw. He put down the bottle with a contented sigh and sucked the foam out of his mustache with his lower lip. He glanced at Holliday.
"You'd be Buddy's Doc," he said, peering over the funny little glasses.
"How'd you know that?" Holliday smiled.
"The Pirates of the Caribbean eye patch is a dead giveaway," said the man. He took another swig of Keith's. A red plastic basket lined with wax paper and filled with glistening, sauce-covered chicken wings was set down before him. He stripped the meat off one with practiced ease, wiped his mouth with a napkin and washed the chicken wing down with some more beer. He tossed the stripped bones back in the basket. "You want to rent me and my boat for some illicit purpose, as I understand it," he said. The strange twanging accent wasn't far off from Stompin' Tom and "Bud the Spud."
"Who said anything about illicit?" answered Holliday.
Arnie laughed. By the sound of it he was at least a pack a day man.
"You want a lesson in how not to catch the lobsters that are no longer there and that no one can afford these days, is that it?" Gallant picked up another wing, sucked off the meat and took another slug of beer.
"Maybe we want to go sightseeing," Holliday said and shrugged. He took a small sip of the single malt. It was good, with a strange butterscotch aftertaste. "Bud the Spud" came to an end, but Stompin' Tom went on; something that rhymed "glory" and "dory."
"Look. I'm not a cop, you're not a cop, so why don't we cut the bull and get down to business?" Gallant went through his wing routine again.
Holliday stared at Gallant for a moment. The squat little man looked like something out of a Grimm brothers fairy tale. He had to be the real thing.
"We want you to take us to Sable Island."
"That's against the law," said Gallant, eyes twinkling merrily. He ate another wing. As far as Holliday could tell the glory-dory song was a fisherman's version of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."
"Like you said, illicit."
"Illicit's expensive," said Gallant.
"I can pay."
"Why do you want to go to Sable?"
"Is that any of your business?"
"My boat, my business," Gallant said with a shrug. "My price."
"We're looking for something," broke in Meg. "Something lost on Sable Island."
"Buried treasure on Sable Island? Now, that's original. Any particular boat you're looking for? There's about five hundred of them." He ate another wing. "They even had one in the 1920s where a ship struck a submerged wreck and was wrecked itself." He tossed the bones in the basket and took another hit of the honey-colored beer. "You're crazy. The whole island moves, nothing stays in one place-that's why it's so dangerous."
"We know where to look," said Meg.
Holliday glanced at her curiously; this was the first he'd heard of a location. Now what was going on?
"What is it that you're looking for?" Gallant asked.
"A religious relic. Not a treasure really."
"Not gold doubloons or Blackbeard's pearls or the like, then," said Gallant, grinning.
"No," said Meg, her voice serious.
Gallant ate another chicken wing and then another, thinking, staring at the rows and tiers of bottles behind the bar. Finally he turned to Holliday.
"There's nothing like that on Sable Island," he said. "There's a hell of a lot of sand and a few ponies left over from God knows when, but there's no religious relics there. If there had been they'd have been found long ago. There's nothing even faintly religious about Sable. You're talking fairy tales." He paused. "But that's your business, not mine. You're playing some sort of game or fulfilling some fantasy or following some treasure map some idgit sold you off the Internet-well, that's fine too, but know this, whoever you are, Sable Island is no joke and it's no fantasy either. It's a serious, dangerous place surrounded by serious, dangerous waters. Go there and you go there at your peril."
"When can we leave?" Meg said.
25
Joseph Patchin sat at the elegant table in the Domingo Room at the Cafe Milano in Georgetown, happily working his way through his grilled lobster and heart of palm salad, knowing that it was Kate Sinclair's treat, since she was the one who'd called the meeting. He and Kate were the only ones in the secluded room off the main restaurant, discretion guaranteed by a row of descending wooden shutters that ensured their privacy. He took a sip of his very expensive glass of Gaja Alteni di Brassica Sauvignon Blanc and patted herbed butter off his lips with his starched linen napkin.
"We've been here for the better part of an hour, Kate. That's enough time for every CNN reporter and Washington Post writer inside the Beltway to know that the director of operations for the Central Intelligence Agency is having dinner with the last best hope of the Republican Party and to wonder loudly about it. Why don't we get down to business."
The brittle, hatchet-faced woman ignored the sumptuous-looking veal cutlet on the plate in front of her and reached into the Lana Marks one- of-a-kind clutch purse on her lap. She took out a plain gold Van Cleef amp; Arpels cigarette case that had belonged to her mother and the matching lighter. She removed a cigarette and lit it.
"I thought that was illegal in Washington restaurants," said Patchin.
"For the price I'm paying for this meal and this room, Franco can eat the fine," said Sinclair sharply. She took a healthy drag on the cigarette and sat back in her chair. "Tell me about this fiasco of yours in Canada," she said.
"My fiasco? We didn't have anything to do with it," answered Patchin, genuinely surprised.
"You're trying to tell me that Quince wasn't a Company man?"
"The operative word is 'was,' " responded Patchin. "As in twenty years ago. He went out when Clinton came in; part of George Tenet's new broom. He's been private ever since."
"If Quince wasn't yours, who was he?"
"I have no idea. You know as well as I do that we've adopted a wait-and-see attitude about this matter." It was the CIA man's standard comeback and the senator's mother wasn't buying it.
"Don't play games with me, Joseph, you'll lose every time. If my son doesn't become senior adelphoi of Rex Deus he won't have the clout to get the nomination next year. That in turn means he won't become president and you'll lose your shot as secretary of state. It's like playing dominoes, Joseph-if one falls so do all the rest."