Miracle Man (42 page)

70

T
he sunlight streamed through the windows of the Prides Crossing guest house and illuminated the bedroom as brightly as if it were being lit for a photo shoot. It was a radiant Saturday morning in late June and
Christina and Bobby sipped from their coffee mugs as they lay in bed. She was reading the
Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society
and he was reading,
The Astrophysical Journal
. “Hon, I think we should take a little vacation. Are you up for it?” Bobby asked.

Christina put down her magazine and cozied up against him. “Up for it—I’d love it. Are you kidding me?”

“Let’s get dressed I want to show you something.”

They drove south in the direction of Boston, but veered east to North Quincy. Navigating the narrow streets, they drove through a wide entranceway in a chain link fence and pulled up to a one-story building covered in white aluminum siding.

Christina hadn’t taken note of any signs. “What are we doing here?”

“Come with me. You’ll see.” Entering, Bobby stepped up to the reception counter. “I’m here to see Mike Allen. He’s expecting me— Bob Austin.”

Two minutes later, Mike Allen, a portly man with a short beard, bounded into the room, hand outstretched. “Mr. Austin. Finally, we meet—after all the phone calls.” He shook hands with Bobby and Christina and then led them out of the building on what seemed like an endless walk through the huge outdoor facility.

As they approached the water, Christina gazed out at the biggest marina she had ever seen. Pointing directly in front of him, Allen said, “There she is. Isn’t she beautiful?”

It had been over twenty years since Bobby had laid eyes on
Dreamweaver
. He almost gasped.

Christina asked, “What’s that?” Bobby ignored her question as Allen led them on to the vessel. The mahogany deck was gleaming, as were the nickel fixtures. It was as if time had stood still.

“Mike, you guys did a beautiful job. She looks perfect.”

“Sails perfect, too. We took her out for a few trips to get the kinks out. Made some adjustments. She’s fantastic. You’d never know she was in storage for two decades. We had her wrapped up like a baby. The way we had her, she could have lasted a thousand years.” Bobby made his way to the steering wheel. He ran his hands over it admiringly.

“You did great. Just fabulous.”

“Bobby—what’s this all about?” asked Christina.

“This is my boat.
Dreamweaver
.”

“You never told me you had a boat. When did you get it?”

“Joe Manzini left it to me in his will. His estate paid for the storage and upkeep all these years.”

Christina walked along the deck and looked up at the huge masts. “It’s gorgeous. It looks classic.”

“It is classic. Just like you,” said Bobby as he kissed her.

“He must have been a
wealthy guy.”

Bobby laughed. “He was. He left everything else to charity. I think he was afraid I’d become one of the idle rich if he left me a bundle.”

“So how come you’ve had this gorgeous thing in mothballs for all these years?”

“I wasn’t ready to use it. And I had no one to use it with. I needed a first-mate.”

“So when do we take it out for a spin?”

“Real soon. This is going to be our vacation.”

When Bobby told Susan that he and Christina would be sailing off for a few weeks, her face reddened. “Bobby—I don’t think that’s safe. Someone out there wants you dead. They tried once, and there’s no reason to think you’ve gotten more popular since then. You know what Perrone said.”

Bobby waved Susan off. “No one even knows that
Dreamweaver
exists. Christina and I will just disappear for awhile.”

Susan’s face paled. “I have to tell Perrone.”

Bobby glared at her. “I’m sick of living in a bubble.”

“I’m sorry, Bobby, but it is what it is. You can’t make it different just by wishing it.”

As Bobby left Susan’s office, he turned at the door. “I’m going. It’s that simple. Tell Perrone what you want, but I’m going and I don’t want to see some aircraft carrier trailing me.”

Over the next two weeks, Christina stocked
Dreamweaver
with all of the provisions needed for the trip. She’d never seen Bobby this excited. When she asked him where they were going, he told her it didn’t really matter because sailing was a destination in itself.

“If we can’t take care of number one, we mean nothing. We shouldn’t even exist.” This entry on a RASI blog attracted Perrone’s attention. The CIA analysts agreed that it was a mandate for Bobby’s assassination. Internet chatter had grown progressively more vehement after the TB vaccine, but the arteriosclerosis and atherosclerosis cures had escalated the outrage of the fringe groups to another level.

Having requested a meeting, Perrone sat in front of Varneys’ imposing desk and said, “I think we need to get Austin out of town for awhile. There are too many outfits that hate this guy. And some of them have the wherewithal to do something about it.”

“And where would you have him go?” Varneys asked as he looked up from the papers he had been reading.

Perrone pulled on his chin. “Maybe a military base.”

Varneys laughed. “He’ll never do it. I hear he’s already working on his next project. He won’t leave his lab. It just won’t happen.”

Perrone said, “He’s been at that location too long. It’s given the crazies time to find him.”

Varneys continued to read his papers as if Perrone weren’t there. After a few minutes he looked up and seemed surprised Perrone hadn’t left. “Agent Perrone —you haven’t told me anything I don’t know. We have to deal with reality. Just protect the man.”

Standing in the living room of his palatial suite at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington D.C., McAlister looked out the window across to the Capital building.
This used to be my town. I could call the shots. That fucking SOB has ruined everything.
The people he wanted to meet told him they preferred a location other than their offices. So one by one, the star performers in McAlister’s video collection came to the hotel to placate and plead with the man who had the power to ruin them. They all said the same thing. “We tried, but we can’t help you. We want to –but we can’t. The momentum is too huge. Austin is unstoppable. You can destroy us but that won’t accomplish anything. It’s not our fault.”

71

B
obby’s skills were rusty, but within two days on the open water, he felt he had them back. As
Dreamweaver
cut its way through the choppy surf, so many wonderful memories flooded through him. He concentrated on those, rather than on the last trip when Joe had told him of his illness.

Just the two of them, with no work or pressures, amid the solitary beauty of the ocean and the luxury of
Dreamweaver
, was exactly what Christina and Bobby needed. Their days were languorous, and in the evening Bobby pointed out every celestial site as they lay on deck staring at the canopy of stars, drinking wine and listening to Gato Barbieri. They made love whenever the feeling came over them, which was frequent— often out in the open, basking in the radiant sunshine as the sea breeze cooled them and the salt spray misted their skin, or under the night sky, bundled in blankets, the sea’s movement augmenting their own rhythm. Never before were they so focused on each other.

The weather got progressively warmer as the days passed and Christina noticed
that the compass showed they were traveling due south.

“OK mystery man. So where are we headed?”

“I thought we’d cruise down toward Florida.”

“Any particular place?”

“The Keys. I’ve never been there. Have you?” Bobby asked.

“No. But Hemingway liked them,” she said, laughing, her arms wrapped around his chest as she stood behind Bobby while he manned the wheel.

Their first stop was Key West. They anchored off shore and checked into the Reach Resort under Christina’s name. During the day, they did nothing but eat, drink rum punch, snorkel, jet ski and luxuriate in the pristine surf. At night, they went bar hopping in Old Town, joining in the non-stop party that Key West is famous for and staying up to watch the dawn. After
three days, Bobby said, “This is amazing, but I’m burning out. Time to slow the roll.”

Back
on the boat, they sailed for two days. As they entered a pristine crescent shaped harbor, Bobby began to lower the sails and drop anchor.

“Where are we now?” asked Christina. “This is gorgeous.”

“Islamorada,” replied Bobby.

The next morning, Bobby was up early. While Christina was still sleeping, he brewed a pot of strong coffee in the boat’s galley, filled a mug halfway and then topped it up with Jameson’s and heavy sweet cream. Leaning against the railing, he looked out at the diamond refractions of the sun on the
surface of the harbor’s protected waters. He squinted his eyes into narrow slits, not because the sun was too bright, but because it exaggerated the shimmering of the light on the water and he loved that. After taking a long slug of the liquor drenched coffee, his gaze became focused on the big brass bell that Joe used to ring to announce that it was meal time. “Doesn’t
Dreamweaver
look great Joe? After all these years—we sail again! You and me and that amazing lady of mine. What do you think of her —isn’t she incredible?” Two decades of cold storage had done nothing to chill the warmth of Joe’s presence on the boat. Bobby could feel him all around.

One hundred ten nautical miles away from
Dreamweaver
, a forty foot long mahogany speed boat cut its engines almost to a halt as it got within two hundred feet of
My Time
, Colum McAlister’s immaculate white motor yacht that was anchored in international waters off Palm Beach, Florida. Even as it crawled toward
My Time
to minimize its wake, the speed boat’s engines growled loudly with their
power. One of
My Time’s
crew lowered a ladder and a
short wiry man dressed in a white linen suit left the passenger seat of the speed boat and climbed aboard. He was escorted to the back of the yacht where McAlister sat on a large blue and white striped sofa under a peak-roofed awning.

“You’re looking well, Gunther. Prosperity continues to agree with you I see,” said McAlister.

The man’s military nod was his hello. “I can’t complain. Business is too good to retire. The world only gets more complicated.”

Gunther Ramirez was now in his mid sixties. But neither age nor wealth had softened his demeanor. He still looked more dangerous than most men half his age and twice his weight. A transplant to Panama from Buenos Aires when he was a teenager, Ramirez had risen through the ranks of Miguel Noriega’s private guard to become his right-hand man and confidante, instrumental in the planning and implementation of Noriega’s narcotics and money-laundering rackets. After the fall of that regime, Ramirez took his small fortune and his best men and launched an elite service for hire, specializing in what he referred to as “matters of sensitivity.” As the years went by and word of his prowess spread, he attracted a substantial international clientele which included McAlister.