The Skorpion Directive (21 page)

At UV, students didn’t “graduate,” they “took a degree.”

“No. Transferred to Georgetown. I was only there a year.”

“Me neither. Went into criminal justice and finished up at Glynco. Still back the Cavaliers, though. For my sins. Anyway, you were saying . . . ?”

Nikki, feeling like a rat, gave her the cover story as it had been laid out in the notes Cather had included on the flash drive: a general history of the Cold War and various covert operations connected with it, a possible book on the subject, being prepared by a poli-sci professor at UV.

Captain Cannon listened with every appearance of belief, her broad, open face showing nothing but polite interest. Nikki finished the story with the name of the person she was in town to interview, an ex-SAS officer named Raymond Paget Fyke.

Cannon listened to the name, shook her head slowly.

“Okay, first off—and I mean no disrespect, miss—that story sounds like a load of utter horse poop. There is no doubt in my mind that you work for some three-letter government agency—IRS, FBI, maybe the PTA—and you are very sweetly twisting my tail. But, then, there’s no law against shining on a beat cop. I got no right to a straight answer, and we do live in strange days. Concerning your Mr. Fyke, I don’t know the fella. You’d think, if he’s ex-SAS, in my town I’d of heard of a guy like that. Although, God knows, this coast is packed with ex-military of every patch and stripe. This the guy who’s supposed to be staying at the Bali Hai . . . ?”

“That’s my information.”

“What’s his description?”

“Six-three. Two hundred pounds. Very muscular. Has a salt-and-pepper beard, shaved close. Green eyes. He may have a drinking problem. Speaks with a slight Irish accent. I’m also told he likes to fight, and his nose has been broken several times so it’s sort of . . . squashed.”

Cannon was looking straight across at Nikki, her face settling into a look of pure, even carnivorous, delight.

“As I live and breathe. The things you tell me, my dear. And this gentleman lives at the Bali Hai? Pray tell, is he
expecting
you?”

“That was his last fixed address, ma’am. And, no, he isn’t. He also may not be going by that name. He has apparently irritated some people on the International Criminal Court.”

“Good for him! Buncha dipshit, left-wing busybodies.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Actually, Miss Gandolfo, the man you’re describing sounds a lot like a guy I know. Works freelance at the Bali Hai, as a bouncer. But he doesn’t
live
there. This maybe could be your guy?”

“Could be, ma’am.”

Cannon gave her a broad, affectionate grin.

“
Ma’am
again. If you’re not in the
gummint
, young lady, I’m Hillary Rodham Clinton,” she said, opening her door and climbing out. Nikki, who was beginning to think her covert skills were deeply inadequate, thought—hoped—that Cannon was leaving. She was wrong. Cannon leaned back inside, raised her eyebrows.

“You coming along, Beatrice?”

“Me? With you? Where?”

“We’re taking my ride. You just lock yours up right here. My guys will see to it.”

Nikki didn’t like the sound of that at all.

“Where are we going?”

Cannon gave her another one of those carnivorous grins.

“You just come along with me, my dear. Trust in the Good Lord, and all will be revealed.”

 

 

 

WHAT
the Good Lord had to reveal was a sharp left turn off Front Beach Road and into a narrow alley called Robin Lane that led north, away from the ocean, into the flatlands and marshes of the inland waters. Robin Lane ran between two high wooden fences: beyond the fences Nikki could make out the floodlit grounds of what looked like a very expensive gated community.

Captain Cannon had kept up a lighthearted banter all the way from Dirty Dick’s, staying off the topic of Nikki’s trip down to Panama City Beach and, although Nikki tried to open it up once, neatly avoiding saying anything more informative about their destination and what it had to do with Raymond Paget Fyke.

Halfway up the long curving lane, Cannon killed the headlights. A minute later, she brought the cruiser to a rolling stop beside a large wooden sign showing rolling waves crashing into a barrier mound covered in sea grass and announcing WINDWARD SHORES ESTATE HOMES.

The gates stood wide open. In the dim glow from the streetlights Nikki could see what looked like a very large black-water lagoon surrounded by expensive homes and bound on one side by a tennis court and a golfing range. At the far end of the massive lagoon, a crowd of people were gathered on a wide, lantern-lit dock, and the sound of reggae and happy, youthful chatter drifted across the water. The cop shut the car down, looked across at Nikki.

“What sorta shoes you got there, Bea? I can call you Bea?”

“Please. They’re sandals.”

“Gotta do. Now, you stay behind me, you folla? Come along, now, and mind you close the door real soft, okay?”

Nikki did as she was told, following in the wake of the cop, who was surprisingly light-footed for a woman of her size, down the sandy lane and onto the grassy verge of the lagoon. The water smelled of mud and salt and rotting weeds. Captain Cannon went a few yards into the darkness, stopped, held up a hand to keep Nikki behind her.

“Fitch,” she said in a carrying whisper. “You out there?”

A low voice came out of the darkness, a man’s voice, in a whisper, hoarse, deep, wary.

“Marcy? That you, Marcy?”

“It is. Safe to come up?”

“If you stay away from the water. She’s
close
. I can hear her.”

Cannon paused a moment, pulled out her Glock, turned around to Nikki. “You stay here a moment, would you, dear? And maybe you should step back from the water a little.”

“Captain Cannon, what the heck is going on?”

“Aside from bouncing nimrods out of the Bali Hai, Fitch runs a water park up off Hutchinson, a tourist thing. Gators and sharks and such. He lost a cow gator a few days back. Name of Cloris Leachman. He’s been looking for her ever since. We all figure she’s in this lagoon.”

“An
alligator
? How
big
an alligator?”

“Eight feet. Nine hundred pounds. Big enough to eat a German shepherd last week. ’Long with any number of cats and small dogs, all in this area. Fitch has the lagoon sealed off. And here he sits, every evening, waiting for her to come up for air. Stay here, and don’t move around a lot, okay?”

Nikki, her head a little spinny, stepped back into the light from the laneway, thinking that the trip from Seven Oaks, Maryland, to Panama City Beach, Florida, involved much more than mileage.

Cannon, moving quietly, faded into the gloom along the edge of the water, leaving Nikki alone in the downlight, nervously listening to the roar and boom of the college crowds a few blocks south and to the delicate lap and ripple of wavelets on the grassy bank of the lagoon. The party at the far end of the inland lake rolled on, oblivious. And somewhere up on her bank, a lady cop and someone named Fitch were trying to catch an alligator. If she’d been in her own vehicle, she’d be six blocks away and accelerating.

Five long minutes passed, and then she heard a swirling of water, a loud splash, and two muffled reports, deep and low, rather like someone slamming a car door. Another minute, and she heard muted voices, getting closer, and the whisper of shoes in wet grass and a slithery sound, something large coming through the saw grass. Nikki was inside the cruiser by the time two figures appeared in the light from the lane: Captain Cannon, and, just behind her, barefoot and wearing faded jeans and a black T-shirt—no clever sayings, just a black tee—a large, slope-shouldered man with long black hair shoved behind his ears and a close-cut salt-and-pepper beard.

He had a big bolt-action rifle slung over his shoulder and was dragging a very unhappy alligator, trussed up like a Christmas parcel and hissing like the air brakes on a Freightliner. The light was dim, but Nikki was pretty certain the man was Ray Fyke.

Cannon came forward as Nikki got back out of the cruiser. Cannon’s face was a little flushed. Something was humming in the air between the pair, and Nikki realized that Captain Cannon and this hard-looking man had more in common than alligator hunting.

“We got her,” said Cannon a little redundantly, wiping her hands on the butt of her uniform slacks, her eyes a little wild.

“You shot her?” asked Nikki, staying well clear of the reptile, which was now twisting herself around inside a network of ropes and showing every sign of ripping her way clear.

“No, miss,” said Fyke, coming forward into the light, his eyes squinting against the glare, his seamed and weather-beaten face cracking into a broad smile. “We just calmed her down with a tranq and hogged her up. We’ll call a couple of my boyos with a pickup truck and take her back to the water park.”

There was an uneasy pause as what was not being said became painfully obvious, so Marcy Cannon said it.

“Brendan,” she said in the kind of warning tone all wise and attentive males learn to fear, “I’d like you to meet a
Miss Gandolfo
. She’s flown all the way from Virginia just to meet
you
. Isn’t that special? Beatrice, may I present the bottom-feeding slug known—to
me
anyway—as Brendan Fitch.”

After a momentary hesitation, and a very wary glance at Marcy’s face, Fyke stuck out a hand, took Nikki’s hand in a gentle, dry-skinned grasp, held it for a moment as he smiled down on her with a less-than-fatherly look in his eyes, taking her in from hair to sandals and back again, pausing appreciatively at various points of interest along the way.

“Beatrice Gandolfo, is it?” he asked with a wry smile. “Well, you have a twin in the living world, Miss Gandolfo, although I know her only by her photograph. Do you by any chance know a young lady named Nicole Turrin at all?”

“I do,” said Nikki. “And would you by any chance know a man named Raymond Paget Fyke? At all?”

Fyke smiled broadly, said nothing for a beat or two, while the alligator hissed and a wind off the Gulf stirred the sea grass.

Then, turning to Marcy and putting a hand on her left shoulder, Fyke said, “Marcy, I believe I have some explaining to do. I propose that the three of us go for a drink.”

“Or three,” said Marcy Cannon, shrugging his hand away.

 

 

 

SINCE
Cannon had to get her shift covered and Fyke had to get Cloris Leachman back to her tank, the drinks turned into a late-night dinner at an oceanside restaurant called The Sands, still busy at this hour but mercifully free of Spring Breakers. The restaurant ran for almost a half block along the barrier dunes, a rambling wooden structure made mostly of glass and square-cut timber, with accents of polished brass, hardwood floors, green glass lights hovering above the booths, and a panoramic view of what looked to Nikki like the edge of the universe, a perfect inky blackness that started just beyond the walkway lights and stretched all the way to infinity. White-curling waves unfolded along the shoreline, and far out to sea a tanker, yellow in the haze and glimmering like witch fire in a limitless void, crawled slowly into the east toward a distant oil rig, a grid of floodlit spires far out there on the edge of the night. The windows were wide open, and a cool breeze laden with salt and seaweed moved the candle flames and stirred the gold curtains. They sat in a semicircle around the comfortable booth, ordered up a bottle of pinot grigio for Marcy and Nikki. Fyke called for a double Jameson’s, neat with a beer chaser. But Marcy, who knew her man—or, until tonight, thought she did—changed that to a glass of Chianti. A small one. Fyke, a wise man, let it stand.

Their drinks came, the willowy waiter wafted away on a shell-pink cloud, and a sudden and uneasy silence came down, taking a place at the table like an unwelcome guest.

Nikki broke it.

“Captain Cannon—”

“Marcy. Please.”

“My name is not Beatrice Gandolfo. I apologize for the lie.”

Marcy nodded, a little chill since she had seen Fyke admiring her fine points, but ready to be won back.

“Got good paperwork, I have to say,” she said, trying for a smile. “I look at phony ID all the time, and your license is as real as mine. Which says that you’re with the government. And I’d like to know which part, if you don’t mind.”

“My name is Nicole Turrin. My employer is the National Security Agency. I work in Fort Meade, Maryland. But I’m not here in any official capacity. I’ve been asked by a mutual friend to come down here and speak with Mr. Fyke about a matter that has to remain confidential.”

Cannon grunted, sipped at her wine, set it down.

“Okay. I’ll let that slide for now. How about, just as a courtesy between us girls, you tell me who the
hell
I’ve been sleeping next to for the last five months or so.”

Fyke started to speak, but Marcy silenced him with a hand, never taking her eyes off Nikki’s face, her fingers around the stem of her wineglass, her face flushed, real pain in her thin strained smile and flickering around the edges of her eyes. Nikki, who had just been blindsided by a man she thought she knew, understood Cannon perfectly and decided to tell her as much of the truth as she could manage. The woman deserved that much.

“This man’s real name is Raymond Paget Fyke. He was a member of the British Special Air Service and was seconded to the CIA, at London Station, several years ago. His service record is impeccable—”

Fyke could not suppress a snort at that one.

Nikki rolled on over him.

“And he is now is an
honorably
retired agent of the Central Intelligence Agency—”

Cannon’s eyes were filling with moisture, but she drove that down and steadied herself, her throat working.

“Horseshit. Nobody ever
retires
from the CIA. If he were actually
retired
, then I doubt you’d be here. And it doesn’t cut a lot of ice with me to find out a man I thought was a dear friend is just another professional liar.”