“My whole fucking life is destroyed because of bad timing?”
“I’m sorry about that. But it’s got nothing to do with me. I retired prior to 9/11, remember? Frankly? I never approved of rendition in the first place. Enhanced interrogation. Abu Ghraib. All those ‘black funds’ you had at your disposal. Not the way we played the game, son. Not in my day.”
“Look. I asked you to help me. I’ve yet to get a response, Cam. So now I’m here. In person. To ask you again. Right now. Will you help me? They ruined my life! I lost everything. My job, my shitty little farm in Aix-en-Provence. My wife took the children and disappeared. Now there’s an international warrant for my arrest by the French government and my own country won’t step in, Cam. All my savings gone to lawyers on appeal. I’m broke, Cam. I’m finished. Look at me. I’m falling out the window.”
“Jesus Christ, Spider. What do you want? Money?”
“I want help.”
“Fuck you.”
“Really?”
“You screwed up, mister. Big-time. You jumped the shark, pal. You’re not my problem.”
“Really? You don’t think I’m your problem, Cam? Are you sure about that?”
Spider stood up and took a step closer to the helm. Cam turned his cold blue eyes on him, eyes that had cowed far tougher men than this one by a factor of ten.
“Are you threatening me, son? I see it in your eyes. You think I may be getting a little long in the tooth, don’t you, pal, but I’ll rip your beating heart out, believe me.”
“That’s your response, then. You want me to beg? I come to you on bended knee, humbly, to beseech you for help. And you say you’ll rip my heart out?”
The man was weeping.
“Listen, Spider. You’re obviously upset. You need help, yes. But not from me. You need to see someone. A specialist. I can help you do that. I’ll even pay for it. Look here. I’m going to flip her around now and head back to the dock. I’ll see that you get proper care. Uncleat that mainsheet, will you, and prepare to come about. It’s really blowing out here now, so pay attention to what you’re doing.”
They locked eyes for what seemed an eternity.
“Do what I said,” Cam told him.
Cam realized too late what Spider was going to do.
In one fluid motion the rogue agent freed the mainsail sheet to allow the boom to swing free, grabbed the helm, put her hard over to leeward and gybed. The gybe is the single most violent action you can take on board a big sailboat in a blow. You put yourself in mortal danger when you turn your bow away from the wind instead of up into it. You stick your tail up into the face of the wind and she kicks your ass. Hard and fast.
The standing rigging and sails shrieked like wounded banshees as the huge mainsail and the heavy wooden boom caught the wind from behind and came whipping across the cockpit at blinding speed.
Spider knew the boom was coming, of course, and ducked in the nick of time. Cam was not so lucky.
The boom slammed into the side of the old man’s head, pulverizing the skull, spilling his brains into the sea, and carrying him out of the cockpit and up onto the deck. Only the lifelines saved him from rolling overboard.
Spider stared down at his old mentor with mixed emotions. At one point he’d worshipped this man. But rage is a powerful thing. He’d been ruined by Cam and others like him at the highest levels of the Agency. He knew he himself was going down soon, but he was determined not to go down alone. Revenge is another powerful thing.
He knelt down beside the dead man, trying to sort out his feelings. A lock of white hair had fallen across Cam’s eyes and he gently lifted it away. He tried for remorse but couldn’t find it inside himself anymore.
It looked like someone had dropped a cantaloupe on the deck from up at the masthead. A dark red stain flowed outward from Hooker’s crushed and splintered head, soaking into the teak. What more was there to say? An unfortunate accident but it happens all the time? Tough luck, Cam, he thought to himself with a thin smile.
Another victim of bad timing.
Spider grabbed the helm, sheeted in the main, and headed up dead into the wind. When the boat’s forward motion stalled, he grabbed the binoculars hanging from the mizzen and raised them to his eyes. He did a 360-degree sweep of the horizon. Nothing, no other vessels in sight, nobody on the shore. He was about a mile and a half from the shoreline. The trees encroaching down to the rocky shorebreak would provide good cover.
He looked at his watch and went below to don his wet suit for the short swim to shore. The old ketch would drift with the currents. Once back on terra firma, he could disappear into the woods, bury the wet suit, and walk to town in his bathing suit, flip-flops, and T-shirt. Just another hippie tourist day-tripper, come to celebrate America’s independence with the Yankee Pilgrims and Puritans.
The next ferry to the mainland was at noon.
He’d checked off yet another name on his list.
Maybe it was true. That the old Spider was indeed a man without a future.
But he still had plenty of time to kill.
CHAPTER 3
Teakettle cottage, on the south shore of Bermuda, is no ordinary house. For starters, it is the home of the sixth richest man in England, though you’d never guess that from the looks of the place. A small, modest house, it has survived a couple of centuries and at least a dozen hurricanes. And it also happens to be, the sanctum santorum of a very private man. Few people have ever even seen it. To do that, first you’d have to find it.
Anyone searching the Coast Road along the southern shore will find the modest limestone house hidden from view. The seaward property, roughly five acres, consists of a dense grove of banana trees. Also, ancient lignum vitae, kapok, and fragrant cedar trees. Only a narrow and rutted sandy lane gives one a clue as to Teakettle’s existence. A drive resembling a green tunnel finally arrives at the house, but only after winding through the densely planted groves.
Upon first glimpse, you realize the cottage actually does look like a teakettle. The main portion is a rounded dome, formerly a limestone mill works. A crooked white-bricked watchtower on the far, seaward side of the house forms the teakettle’s “spout.” The whole unassuming affair stands out on a rocky promontory with waves crashing against the coral reefs some fifty feet below.
Inside the dome is an oval whitewashed living room. The floors are highly polished, well-worn Spanish red tile. Wrought iron chandeliers and sconces provide the light. The owner has furnished the main room with old planters chairs and an assortment of cast-offs and gifts donated by various residents seeking their own dream of solitude at the cottage over the last century or so.
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., one of the cinema’s first icons, had donated the massive carved monkey-wood bar after a long, liquid stay when his first wife, Joan Crawford, had thrown him out. Teakettle was a good a place to hide as any. The battered mahogany canasta table where most of the indoor meals were taken was a gift of Errol Flynn. The swashbuckling Flynn took refuge here during his stormy divorce from Lily Damita. Hemingway had left his Underwood typewriter on the guest room desk where he’d completed work on Islands in the Stream. It stands there in his honor to this day. The shortwave radio set on the bar had been used by Admiral Sir Donald Gunn during World War II to monitor the comings and goings of Nazi U-boats just offshore from the cottage.
A lot of less celebrated visitors had left behind the detritus of decades, much of which had been severely edited by the new owner. He wasn’t a fussy man, but he’d pulled down all the pictures of snakes some prior inhabitant had hung in his small bedroom. He didn’t mind disorder as long as it was his disorder.