Cries of the Lost (2 page)

I looked around for security guards and found two near the front door, one on either side. They were smiling and chatting with each other in Jamaican patois. Their service weapons were in modern, quick-draw mesh holsters. I didn’t look for cameras. No point in delivering a full facial when we knew they were all around, and now likely trained on where we stood at the teller’s counter.

Mr. Etherton gestured for us to follow him into a cubicle office off the lobby. We sat in the two chairs facing his desk and presented him with our ID and paperwork. His scowl stayed in place as he read through the material, turning occasionally to his computer, typing in some command, then comparing what he saw on the screen with the paper in his hand.

“There have been significant withdrawals from the asset portion of this account.”

I’d kept a small amount at the bank to keep the account intact. Just as a precaution.

“Temporary,” I said. “We expect to refresh the account in the near future.”

Mr. Etherton finally had something he could feel mildly pleased about. He nodded and left with all our stuff, closing the door behind him. Knowing he needed the original account manager to sign off on the IDs didn’t make me feel any less vulnerable.

An excruciating half hour later, a young woman popped her head in the cubicle and asked us to follow her. We walked down a wide hall and came out into a large area with rows of desks filled with Caymanians working the phones. Mr. Etherton waved to us from the other side of a stainless steel gate at the back of the room. When we arrived, he swung open the gate and gestured for us to follow him down a passageway toward the open vault at the back of the bank. A Japanese man was waiting for us. His hands, folded in front, dropped as we approached. He bowed. We stopped and returned the gesture.

“Welcome to First Australia. I am Mr. Sato,” he said to both of us, as if that explained everything. Then he said something in Japanese to Natsumi. She pointed to her throat and croaked out a response. She sounded like a Japanese guy with a bad cold. The man bowed again sympathetically, adding a few more words that Natsumi answered with a curt nod.

Without shedding his severity, Mr. Etherton used a key to open a tall gate made of the same stainless steel piping as the little gate. He directed us to go first, and then followed, Mr. Sato taking up the rear.

We stopped at a desk from which Mr. Etherton pulled out a five-by-eight-inch piece of printed card stock covered with disclaimers and provisos. At the bottom was a line for me to write Kirk Tazman’s signature. I signed and handed the card to him. He compared it to another card drawn, with some flourish, from the inside of his suit jacket.

He nodded at Mr. Sato, who nodded back, and we passed through the final gate and moved into the vault. It was lined floor-to-ceiling with safe-deposit boxes, technically long drawers with a single handle operated by yet another key. Mr. Etherton glanced at the card he’d taken from his pocket, then located our box. Before extracting it from the wall, he asked that we make ourselves comfortable at the table and chairs in the center of the room, a utilitarian arrangement with comfort the least of its attractions.

Mr. Sato stood by and watched Mr. Etherton withdraw the box and place it on the table. The box was secured by a lid you opened with a simple latch. Before doing so, Mr. Etherton placed his card in front of us and pointed to a section labeled
CONTENTS
. It was a large space filled in with only two words:
COMPUTER DEVICE
.

Mr. Etherton and Mr. Sato seemed to expect a reaction, and when they didn’t get one, Mr. Etherton opened the lid.

Inside the box was a small manila envelope addressed to the bank. Inside the envelope was a flash drive taped to a tattered postcard promoting a hotel on Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, a peninsula on the Côte d’Azur in the South of France.

I put the drive and postcard in my pocket and said, “I’m taking it. Where do I sign?”

Mr. Etherton, having stood at a respectful distance, leaned into the table and stabbed a thick finger at the bottom of his card where a British version of “The authorized holder of the account number has agreed to the full transfer of liability for the possession of, etc., etc.” was printed. I signed with Mr. Etherton’s pen and stood up.

“Thank you,” I said. “Shall we go?”

Natsumi led the way back through the series of gates. Mr. Sato walked behind me. I could hear him making little huh-huh sounds as he walked. Mr. Etherton locked up the gates as we went.

No one looked up from their work areas as we passed through the bank lobby. All seemed normally, industrially engaged. Messrs. Etherton and Sato dropped off partway through the walk. I turned back and thanked them. Mr. Etherton thanked me back; Sato had already disappeared.

The security guards ignored us as we walked through the middle of their friendly, indecipherable banter, and out the front door into the hot wind of the easterly trades. We walked at a brisk pace across the parking lot, Natsumi staying close to my bad leg in a gesture of ready support.

I started the Suzuki and drove out of the parking lot with the same barely contained urgency. Natsumi slumped down in her seat and let out a breath with a “whoof” attached to it. I concentrated on moving through the busy, but casual Caribbean traffic, dealing with the strange sensation of right-hand drive, the standard practice on islands under the protection of the Queen.

We were staying at a resort hotel on Seven Mile Beach, not far from the center of George Town. We’d checked in as husband and wife, so as we made the transition from the denser parts of the city, Natsumi was busy freeing her long black hair from the boy wig and stripping off the tie and voluminous sport coat. She wriggled out of her black pants, revealing a pair of yellow short-shorts, thus completing the transition.

All I had to do was rip off the wig and moustache and pinch off the extra meat around my nose. Natsumi helped me rub off the remaining flecks of adhesive.

“Feeling better now?” she asked.

Before I had a chance to answer, an SUV rammed into the back of the Suzuki. The little car leaped forward and twisted to the right. I fought to regain control. Then the truck hit us again, with greater force. The Suzuki slid nearly sideways and I threw the wheel away from the spin, forcing us into a barely controlled left turn into the parking lot of a hotel. The SUV shot by and slammed on its brakes. I couldn’t see it as I raced through the lot looking for an exit, but I could hear the SUV screaming back in reverse. Natsumi gripped a safety handle overhead and wedged herself into her seat. I was almost to the hotel entry before I saw a way out—a narrow cut in a tall hedge, good enough for the tiny Suzuki, though way too narrow for a full-size American SUV. A group of potbellied businessmen had barely made it across the lane when I roared by, clipping a rolling suitcase, which in turn spun its startled owner onto his ample ass.

At the exit, the only real option was the main road. I made the turn, then slipped into another parking lot, this one serving a restaurant and a low row of tidy shops. I slowed to a slightly less homicidal speed and looked in the rearview mirror in time to see the SUV pass behind me on the main road. I gunned it again and got back to the main road, heading in the opposite direction.

I pushed my way as hard as I could through the loping traffic, with a greater eye in the rearview than the road ahead of me. With good reason, as I saw the SUV reappear, many cars back, but gaining rapidly.

“Shit, shit,” I said.

“You never say shit,” said Natsumi.

“Have to start sometime. I wish this car was a little faster.”

“I think we wanted good gas mileage,” said Natsumi, through clenched teeth. “I’m getting seasick.”

In what felt like a few milliseconds, the SUV was back behind our Suzuki, bearing down like an enraged colossus. Soon the only thing in my rearview was a chrome grill flanked by giant headlights. I tried to push the accelerator through the floorboards, with little increase in speed.

We bent around a gentle corner and came up behind a dusty pickup with an open bed bearing bundles tied down with straining bungee cords. I whipped around to his left, managing to put the pickup between me and the SUV. Horns blared as the SUV tried to follow me along the curb, the now incensed pickup driver doing his best to block the maneuver.

I downshifted and pushed the Suzuki’s engine to its outer limits. The road in my rearview opened up, so I refocused my attention on the road ahead, swerving around cars and trucks, doing everything I could to put air between me and the SUV.

About a mile from our hotel, I thought I could let down, relax my tense shoulders and plan the next few moves, when there it was again, coming on impossibly fast. The gigantic chrome grill, the blacked-out windows, the relentless pursuit of hell’s own sport-utility vehicle.

I can’t outrun, I thought to myself, but maybe I can out-stop. There was a narrow shoulder to my left. I let off the gas and let the SUV come within a few feet of my bumper, then I jerked the wheel onto the shoulder and slammed on the brakes.

Natsumi yelped as the SUV shot by, trying to restrain all that ballistic energy. The result was a loud squeal from the tires, a lot of smoke, and a symphony of angry horns from the startled drivers caught in the moment.

I slid back on the main road, and at the first opportunity swung right and shot down another side street, heading east away from the beach. Two blocks later, I was on the Esterley Tibbetts Highway that paralleled the crowded Seven Mile Beach area, where I could open up the Suzuki as much as I dared.

I craved a run to a safe place, but what was safe? We knew no one, had no legitimacy, even to the American diplomatic corps, since America had me officially categorized as a dead man. Having been in a coma for several months after surviving the attack that killed Florencia, it was relatively easy for my sister, a doctor, to declare me dead, after which I sneaked off the grid and lost myself in a crowd of fake identities.

Technically, Natsumi was merely missing. I frantically tried to invent a reason why. Eventually, an all-out car chase in broad daylight would attract the attention of the vigilant and well-equipped Royal Cayman Islands Police Service. Even if they saved us from the SUV, bad things would surely follow.

I tossed Natsumi my iPhone.

“Find the U.S. consular agent. I’m taking you there.”

“What about you?”

“You have to figure out a reason why you disappeared in Connecticut and ended up here. I’m too busy right now to come up with anything.”

“What about you?” she said again.

“I’ll come get you. Then we’ll pick up where we left off.”

“Just like that?” she asked.

“I’ll figure it out.”

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”

Natsumi found the address of the consulate, which was in George Town as I’d hoped, having headed back that way. It was little more than an office buried inside a complex of restaurants and jewelry stores, but it was all we had.

“We shouldn’t have gone to that bank,” she said.

“Too early for postmortems. When we get to the consulate, I’m going to stop and you’re going to run in the door.”

“I’m not happy about this.”

“Please trust me.”

“I trust you, Arthur. I’d rather not leave you.”

I kept up my speed, working hard to avoid killing pedestrians or colliding with the unhurried islanders, some in top-heavy panel trucks, others in gleaming European status symbols. If I were pulled over, I theorized, I could toss Natsumi to the cops and then make a getaway in the confusion. A very poor theory, but deliberation time was at a minimum.

For whatever reason, I managed to fly the Suzuki tight against the curb through the narrow streets of George Town unapprehended, following the iPhone’s GPS directly to the front door of the U.S. consulate to the Cayman Islands. I pulled up to the curb.

“Leave your identification and cell phone. Try to avoid getting photographed or fingerprinted. They can probably make you, but stall for time.”

“This is not what I want.”

“Me neither. But it’s our only way. Go.”

She turned away, opened the car door and jumped out. She was halfway to the consulate door when two large men tackled her at a full run. She disappeared beneath a rolling mound of dark skin, white shirts with epaulets and blue slacks with a wide red stripe down the leg. Another man appeared at the passenger side window. He stuck a gun into the Suzuki and yelled something I didn’t understand. I yelled back, words I don’t remember. Over all the noise I could hear Natsumi screaming invectives in Japanese.

I stomped on the gas and raised the passenger side window as the car accelerated. The man with the gun ran alongside, holding his position, only to find himself suddenly clipped to a speeding car. He fired off a few rounds, but his aim was compromised by the angle of his captured arm.

Before the guy could lose his footing, I jammed my foot on the brake pedal, rolled down the window, and opened the passenger side door with the help of a sharp kick. The guy disappeared, leaving his gun on the passenger seat. I floored it again, causing the door to slam shut, and the little Japanese car—in sole possession of all my well-laid, thwarted plans—sprang aimless into the sultry, imperturbable streets of Grand Cayman Island.

C
HAPTER
2

T
he first time I met Natsumi, she dealt me a bad hand. She was a blackjack dealer at one of the giant casinos in Connecticut. Blackjack was a good game for me before i’d been shot. I was born with a knack for numbers, so card counting came naturally. The math part of my brain had been smashed into sauce by a bullet, so it should have eliminated all complex calculating ability. And yet I was still pretty good at blackjack.

A neuroscientist could maybe figure this out, if I ever stopped running long enough to have the necessary brain scans and evaluations.

So as my luck at Natsumi’s table quickly turned to the good, and even better, so did my luck with Natsumi. Her luck you could question, since knowing me put her in mortal danger, resulting in a spontaneous partnership that turned into love and a more devoted connection, and led to the current catastrophe in the cayman Islands.