‘Sorry about those, but we didn’t want you falling over the side. The water’s a little rough; we were just protecting you while you got some air.’
‘”Protecting…?” Goddamn you, you bastards drugged me and carried me out of there against my will! You’ve kidnapped me! My office knows where I went tonight… you’re going to draw twenty years for this, all of you! And that son of a bitch Bollinger will be impeached and spend—’
‘Hold it, hold it,’ broke in the man, raising his hands, calmly protesting. ‘You’ve got it all wrong, Congressman. Nobody drugged you, you were sedated. You went crazy back there. You attacked a guest of the Vice President; you might have killed him—’
‘I would have, I will kill him! Where’s that doctor, where is he?’
‘What doctor?’
‘You lying shit!’ yelled Kendrick into the wind, straining at the cloth straps. Then he was struck by a thought. ‘My car, the driver! He knows I didn’t leave.’
‘But you did. You weren’t feeling too well, so you didn’t say much and you wore your tinted glasses, but you were very generous with your tip.’
As the boat lurched in the water, Evan suddenly looked down at the clothes he was wearing, squinting in the dim wash of light coming from the cabin behind him. The trousers were a thick corduroy and the shirt a coarse black denim… not his clothes. ‘Bastards!’ he roared again, and again another thought. ‘Then they saw me get out at the hotel!’
‘Sorry, but you didn’t go to the hotel. About the only thing you said to the driver was to drop you off at Balboa Park, that you had to meet someone and you’d take a cab home.’
‘You covered yourselves right down to my clothes. You’re all garbage, you hired killers!’
‘You keep getting it wrong, Congressman. We were covering for you, not anybody else. We didn’t know what you’d been snorting or shooting into your veins, but as my excitable grandfather would say, we saw you go pazzo, crazy, you know what I mean?’
‘I know exactly what you mean.’
‘So naturally we couldn’t let you be seen in public, you can understand that, can’t you?’
‘Va bene, you Mafia prick. I heard you—”I’m in charge,” you said. “I know people who can handle this,” you said that, too.’
‘You know, Congressman, although I admire you a great deal, I’m very offended by anti-Italian generalizations.’
‘Tell that to the federal prosecutor in New York,’ replied Kendrick as the boat dipped sharply, then rose with a heavy wave. ‘Giuliani’s been putting you away by the truckload.’
‘Yes, well, talking about things that go bump in the night, which we weren’t but we could have been in this water, a number of people in Balboa Park saw a man who could easily fit your description—I mean dressed like you when you left the hotel and then in the limo—going into The Balthazar.’
The what?’
‘It’s a coffeehouse in Balboa. You know we’ve got a lot of students down here; they come from all over, and there’s a large contingent from the Mediterranean. You know, kids from families who lived in Iran and Saudi Arabia and Egypt… even what some still call Palestine, I guess. Sometimes the coffee gets out of hand, politically, that is, and the police have to quiet things and confiscate items like guns and knives. Those people are very emotional.’
‘And “I” was seen going inside, and naturally there’ll be those inside who’ll confirm “I” was there.’
‘Your bravery has never been questioned, Congressman. You go into the most dangerous places looking for solutions, don’t you? Oman, Bahrain… even the house of the Vice President of the United States.’
‘Add bribery to your list, garbageman.’
‘Now just a minute! I haven’t anything to do with whatever you came to see Viper about, get that straight. I’m just providing a service beyond my official duties, that’s all.’
‘Because you “know people who can handle this,” like someone wearing my clothes and using my car and walking in Balboa Park. And maybe a couple of others who were able to get me out of Bollinger’s place with no one recognizing me.’
‘A private ambulance service is very convenient and discreet when guests become ill or over-indulge.’
‘And, no doubt, one or two others to divert whatever press or maintenance people might be around.’
‘My nongovernment associates are on call for emergencies, sir. We’re happy to provide assistance wherever we can.’
‘For a price, of course.’
‘Definitely… They pay, Congressman. They pay in lots of ways, now more than ever.’
‘For also including a fast boat and an experienced captain?’
‘Oh, we can’t take credit where it isn’t due,’ protested the man from the Mafia, enjoying himself. ‘This is their equipment, their skipper. There are just some things people do better for themselves, especially if one of them is going into the heavily patrolled waters between the US and Mexico. There’s clout and then again there’s different clout, if you know what I’m saying.’
Kendrick felt a third presence but, turning in the chair, saw no one else on the deck of the pleasure yacht. Then he raised his eyes to the aft railing of the bridge. A figure stepped back into the shadows but not quickly enough. It was the excessively tall, deeply tanned contributor from Bollinger’s library, and from what could be seen of his face, it was contorted in hatred. ‘Are all of the Vice President’s guests on board?’ he asked, seeing that the Mafioso had followed his gaze.
‘What guests?’
‘You’re cute, Luigi.’
‘There’s a captain and one crew. I’ve never seen either of them before.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘On a cruise.’
The boat slowed down as the beam of a powerful searchlight shot out from the bridge. The Mafia soldier unstrapped himself and got up; he walked across the deck and down into the lower cabin. Evan could hear him on an intercom, but with the wind and the slapping waves was unable to make out the words. Moments later the man returned; in his hand was a gun, a standard issue Colt .45 automatic. Suppressing the panic he felt, Kendrick thought of the sharks of Qatar and wondered if another Mahdi across the world was about to carry out the sentence of death pronounced in Bahrain. If it was to be, Evan made the same decision he had made in Bahrain: he would fight. Better a quick, expeditious bullet in the head than the prospect of drowning or being torn apart by man-eaters of the Pacific.
‘We’re here, Congressman,’ said the Mafioso courteously.
‘Where is here?’
‘Damned if I know. It’s some kind of island.’
Kendrick closed his eyes, giving thanks to whoever cared to accept them, and began to breathe without trembling again. The hero of Oman was a fraud, he reflected. He simply did not care to die, and fear aside, there was Khalehla. The love that had eluded him all his life was his, and every additional minute he was permitted to live was a minute of hope. ‘From the looks of you I don’t think you really need that,’ he said, nodding his head at the weapon.
‘Not from your press reports,’ replied the Secret Service guard positioned by the upper ranks of the underworld. ‘I’m going to unbuckle you, but if you make any sudden moves you won’t set foot on land, capisce?’
‘Motto bene.’
‘Don’t blame me, I’ve been given my instructions. When you provide a service, you accept reasonable orders.’
Evan heard the snaps and felt the wide cloth straps loosening around his arms and legs. ‘Has it occurred to you that if you carried out those orders you might never get back to San Diego?’ he asked.
‘Certainly,’ answered the Mafioso casually. ‘That’s why we’ve got the Viper in a vice. “Viper in a vice.” Acceptable alliteration, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I wouldn’t know. I’m a construction engineer, not a poet.’
‘And I’ve got a gun in my hand, which means I’m not a poet, either. So behave, Congressman.’
‘I assume “Viper” is the Vice President.’
‘Yes, and he said he’d heard the name and it was an insult. Can you imagine? Those fuckers had the moral turpitude to bug our unit?’
‘I’m appalled,’ replied Kendrick, rising awkwardly from the metal chair and shaking his arms and legs, restoring circulation.
‘Easy!’ cried the Secret Service man, leaping back, his .45 levelled at Evan’s head.
‘You try sitting in that damned thing for as long as I did the way I did and think you’re going to walk a straight line!’
‘Okay, okay. Then walk a crooked line over there to the side of this fancy tug, to the steps. That’s where you’re getting off.’
The yacht circled in what appeared to be a cove, then in fits and starts—with sputtering forward and reverse screws—banked into a dock perhaps a hundred feet in length, with three additional boats, each smaller, faster, more powerful, bobbing on the other side. Shaded wire-meshed lights illuminated the watery berth as two figures raced out of darkness from the base of dry ground, stationing themselves beside the appointed pylons. As the boat was expertly manoeuvred into its tyre-protected resting place, lines were thrown fore and aft, the stern line whipped over by the Mafioso, the weapon in his left hand, the bow line by the lone crewman. ‘Off!’ he yelled at Kendrick as the yacht bounced gently into the dock.