Reluctant Witness (64 page)

“Let’s have breakfast at seven tomorrow. I
have to leave for the airport by eight.”

“Sure.” I kissed him, hesitant to let him go.
“I’ll take whatever I can get.”

“That’s my girl. Don’t worry, Chris. It will
all work out in the end.”

“That’s what you keep telling me.”

“And I’ll go on saying it because it’s true,”
he insisted, planting a final kiss on my lips before he slipped
away.

Chapter Fifty
Six

A short time later, I
settled myself in bed, my little dog at my side. Reaching out, I
picked up the copy of
Dangerous
Deception
on the table beside me, ready to
read on.

The chapter started with Fin being summoned
to Lisbon by a former SEAL buddy who was in serious trouble:

I stood looking down at the bloated corpse
bobbing in the water fifty feet off the bow of the “Lady of the
Seas”. With my right hand in the pocket of my trench coat, I felt
for the cold metal handle of my Glock and grasped it, ready to pull
it out, safety off. The waterfront was quiet at this time of night,
almost deserted. All the more reason to be cautious, I reminded
myself, especially with the dead body rocking back and forth in the
dark water below me.

Domino had called me for help forty eight
hours ago from Monaco. My old SEAL buddy, now head of security for
Mardi Gras Cruise Line, told me he was in a jam. There had been a
lot of intercepted terrorist chatter lately about tourist targets
by intelligence services. Worried that Islamic jihadists had
recruited “Lady of the Seas” crew members for a terror attack, he
had sailed aboard the ship to do a security audit. Now, in a crew
comprised of over a thousand people, three members were unaccounted
for and he was worried it might be an effort to substitute bad guys
for the missing people.

“Why not just call your bosses and ask for
help?” I wanted to know. That seemed the prudent thing to do under
the circumstances.

“It’s more complicated than that, Fin. You
see, I developed some sources on the ship and two of them are among
the missing.”

“All the more reason to turn it over to the
big guns, Domino. You’re not a SEAL any more. You don’t have a
special ops team at your beck and call. I’m just one guy.”

“I can’t do that, Fin, at least not yet. I
need a little more time to line up my ducks.”

“I don’t personally think it’s worth the
risk. You’re talking about a possible terror attack on a cruise
ship carrying, what...three thousand passengers?”

“Four actually. Meet me at Doca de Alcantara
on Saturday night. I need you to do me a big favor.”

“I’m supposed to be in London on Saturday, a
business thing for Riparian Marine. They want me to sail their new
catamaran to San Sebastián.”

“Can’t you delay it for twenty four hours?
I’ll make it worth your while. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t
important, Fin. I’ll pay you your normal fee.”

“Fine, you owe me a six-pack of Sagres,” I
replied sardonically, knowing I would never expect a penny from an
old shipmate. I heard him laugh bitterly on the other end of the
phone line.

“Believe me, amigo. I’m going to owe you a
lot more than beer before this is over.”

He turned out to be right about that. I had
no idea just how deep the water was, but he was definitely in over
his head.

It was all because of a woman; not just any
woman either. Maria Beleza de Lourdes, the tall, willowy lounge
singer, who had signed onto the current Mediterranean tour of the
“Lady of the Seas” for Mardi Gras after she met Domino at the Hot
Clube de Portugal.

Footsteps echoed on the hard pavement,
coming my way. I knew immediately they belonged to a fairly heavy
man in leather-soled shoes, probably not a professional. He made no
effort to conceal his movements, nor did he seem to be in a hurry.
I kept my finger on the trigger, just in case I was wrong. I made a
point of turning my face toward the lights, knowing that whoever it
was would probably focus on me, rather than the ghastly sight below
me. I was right.

“Pardon me, sir. Do you know where I can
find Rua Mirante?” the elderly man asked in pigeon Portuguese.

“English?” I inquired. Relief flooded his
face.

“I am.”

“Cross the road to the train station and
follow Rua Caminhos de Ferro to the first left. It’s one of the
connecting roads in that vicinity.”

“Thank you,” he nodded, walking on.

A shadow moved in the darkness to my left.
Out stepped Domino. His grave expression told me he had already
discovered the dead man.

I paused on the page, lost in thought. Jeff
was so good at figuring out how to make me not only disappear, but
also how to make me reappear -- almost too good.

What if he knew all those tricks because he
was running some sort of covert security network? Tom, Terry,
Nancy, Jojo, even Lincoln...they all had one thing in common; they
were FBI employees, retired or current. Rocky and Vince -- they had
been cops. That was a lot of well-trained manpower to keep on the
payroll for a TV production company. Was Jeff using the fortune he
amassed to protect people like me, those of us who fall through the
cracks when things go wrong?

Maybe I didn’t need to know the whole story,
especially if it was classified. Could fictional characters tell me
what I needed to know about their creator? I picked up where I left
off, with Domino talking to Fin.

“Let’s walk,” he said. We moved forward, out
under the street lights. “So, you saw?”

“I saw.”

“That was one of my sources, Fin. I still
don’t know where the other man is.”

“That leaves you one crew member short. Are
we talking about a woman?”

“Maria got off the ship last night when we
arrived in port because she was planning to see her family. At
least that was her cover story. What she was really supposed to do
was deliver a package for me to my contact at the American Embassy.
She never made it. I need you to find her, Fin. I need to know
whether she’s a victim or part of the terror plot.”

“But....”

“No buts. I can hold this ship in port until
tomorrow at noon, under the guise that we have a mechanical
problem.”

“What am I supposed to do, conjure up the
missing woman out of the ether?”

“If she’s working with the terrorists, Fin,
I know where you’ll find her.”

“Tell the CIA station chief.”

“I can’t. He was attacked last night in a
bar. It might be related.”

“Man, you do have a problem.”

“I have to know whether Maria is involved.
I’m the one who approved her for the job.”

“As a lounge singer?”

“As an undercover operative on my security
team. Fin, she’s got all the information on the ship’s operations
to enable a successful terror attack, including our security
protocols.”

“I take it back, Domino. It’s going to cost
you a case of Sagres.”

As thrillers went, it was a tense,
hard-driving tale. I could see the problem for Domino, especially
if Maria was actually part of a terror cell. But what if she
wasn’t? What if she was in danger?

A part of me wanted to believe that Fin
really was just a fictional character inspired by Jeff’s research,
but there was something nagging at me. The tale read like a genuine
counterterrorism exploit, even if the details were changed here and
there to obscure the truth.

I glanced at the bedside clock and saw it was
just after one. Torn between sleeping and finishing the book, I
chose the latter. The love of my life would be leaving in the
morning, but before he did, we were scheduled to have breakfast
together. I wanted to know as much as I could about the real
Jefferson Cornwall by then. I’d have plenty of time to catch up on
my beauty sleep after he left.

What fate awaited Maria, Domino, and Fin? If
I could understand how Fin handled these situations, would I better
understand Jeff? With Cooper snuggled up beside me, I fell back
into the story:

“I started with the puzzle of the two men
who disappeared. They seemed to be the most important factor in the
equation. One was dead. Wahlid was an older man from Indonesia who
regularly sent home his savings to the family he left in Jakarta.
He had nearly fifteen years of stellar employment with Mardi Gras
Cruise Lines, working the Mediterranean route in the summer and the
Western Caribbean route in the winter. His body, when it was
finally pulled out of the water, showed signs of torture.

“Get an imam here to take care of the du’a
for the dead,” I advised Domino.

“Are you crazy? I have a possible terror
attack underway on my ship and you want me to invite an imam on
board?”

“Sure. Then you pay attention to those
Muslims who don’t show up, because they’re likely to be the
masterminds. After all, if they killed your man as part of the
security for their organization, they probably aren’t going to want
mercy for his soul.”

“Ah, thanks. I wasn’t thinking like
that.”

I insisted on seeing the crew’s quarters,
where the two slept, and their assigned work areas. I wanted to
believe that they somehow left clues behind that I could use.
Unfortunately, I came up empty. From everything I examined, I was
forced to admit there wasn’t enough evidence to draw a reasonable
conclusion as to what occurred.

Maria’s room yielded real results. She was a
messy woman; it was impossible to ignore the pantyhose and sexy
lingerie she left lying around. But it was her Internet activities
on one of the computers in the library of the ship that gave her
away. In a desk drawer in her cabin, I had found the data card she
purchased for the trip. She had written her screen name and
password on the hard plastic rectangle. Logging in under her alias,
I was able to access the sites she used. It was an eye-opening
experience.

Once Domino and I went over all the
information Maria had gathered in the last several weeks, we
realized she had to come back to the ship in order to carry out the
planned attack. And when she did, we would be ready for her.

I found myself fascinated by all the things
Fin did to uncover the truth, and when he knew what the plan was,
he turned it over to the CIA to handle, making sure that Domino had
the chance to redeem himself. The planned terror attack was
thwarted by a very simple deception. Knowing that Maria was working
in concert with her fellow terrorists, the CIA arranged for a
disruption of the ship’s schedule. The two substitutes were waylaid
on their journey to infiltrate the ship’s crew and were replaced by
CIA operatives, who substituted fake explosives for the real
thing.

Maria had an unfortunate accident involving a
Vespa and the driver insisted on taking her to the hospital, so she
got back to the ship with only enough time to board, missing a
meeting with her handler to get her last minute instructions. The
moment she signed into her email account in the ship’s library, she
opened the fake email the CIA sent her, with the photos of their
operatives; it confirmed she was to proceed with the attack, which
resulted in a resounding failure.

The two CIA substitutes convinced Maria that
the detonators were faulty and urged her to contact her real boss
for further instructions. By the time the ship landed in the next
port, the CIA knew all about the man for whom Maria was working. It
was time to send her packing, but they had to do it in a way that
allowed them to penetrate the terror network. Maria was caught
passing a package of pure heroin to one of the other entertainers
on the cruise, a man with a known drug habit. Since Mardi Gras
Cruise Lines had a zero tolerance drug policy, the two were
immediately fired and escorted from the ship. Suddenly jobless, she
was distraught, until a man passing by on the dock took pity on the
pretty lady and introduced her to his friend on a competing cruise
line. Domino had arranged it all, and the CIA was able to keep an
eye on the femme fatale as she entertained passengers on the
Empress of the Seven Seas.

Just before three, I began the final chapter.
Fin and Domino sat at a Lisbon street cafe, clinking bottles of
Sagres and toasting each other and another mission
accomplished.

“Ah, the first beer is always the tastiest,”
Fin declared.

“Indeed. And the last is never as
satisfying. Why is that?” asked his companion, putting his lips to
the mouth of the bottle and drawing a long, determined sip.

“Because we work so hard for it,” laughed
the first man. “We go through hell and back to earn it. We come
home from our missions with our feet scorched and our throats
parched.”

“We do.” Domino removed a corner of the
paper label from the glass bottle with his thumbnail, scratching at
it until it loosened. Fin recognized it as a nervous habit his
teammate developed in the Philippines, right after the Abu Sayyaf
landed on Jolo Island with Western hostages. The SEAL team had been
assigned reconnaissance duties in anticipation of an international
rescue mission.

With his Hispanic good looks and fluency in
Spanish, Domino could mingle more easily among the Filipino
population on the nearby island of Basilan than the others; it was
his job to get as close to the Abu Sayyaf watchdog, Anwar Salih, as
possible.

No one had expected what came next. It was
supposed to be a simple job of tailing the suspected terrorist to
his lair in Isabela City, but it became a nightmare Domino would
never forget. Three young women, just barely out of puberty, were
walking down the dusty street, chattering away, when they caught
the attention of the watchdog. Domino recognized the danger signs
in Salih, saw the man’s interest rise as the girls drew nearer. In
that split second, the Navy SEAL had to decide whether to err on
the side of caution and hold back, or move forward to prevent
another kidnapping. Knowing the fate of the Jolo hostages were in
his hands, he waited and watched.