‘Yacht Springer, take a look to your port quarter.’
Kelly lifted his mike. ‘Anybody I know?’ he asked without looking.
‘Where the H have you been, Kelly?’ Oreza asked.
‘Business trip. What do you care?’
‘Missed ya,’ was the answer. ‘Slow down some.’
‘Is it important? I have to get someplace, Portagee.’
‘Hey, Kelly, one seaman to another, back down, okay?’
Had he not known the man… no, he had to play along regardless of who it was. Kelly cut his throttles, allowing the cutter to pull alongside in a few minutes. Next he’d be asked to stop for a boarding, which Oreza had every legal right to do, and trying to evade would solve nothing. Without being so bidden Kelly idled his engines and was soon laying to. Without asking permission, the cutter eased alongside and Oreza hopped aboard.
‘Hey, Chief,’ the man said by way of a greeting.
‘What gives?’
‘I was down your sandbar twice in the last couple of weeks looking to share a beer with you, but you weren’t home.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t want to make you unfit for duty.’
‘Kinda lonely out here with nobody to harass.’ Suddenly it was clear that both men were uneasy, but neither one knew why the other was. ‘Where the hell were you?’
‘I had to go out of the country. Business,’ Kelly answered. It was clear that he’d go no further than that.
‘Fair enough. Be around for a while?’
‘I plan to be, yeah.’
‘Okay, maybe I’ll stop by next week and you can tell me some lies about being a Navy chief.’
‘Navy chiefs don’t have to lie. You need some pointers on seamanship?’
‘In a pig’s ass! Maybe I ought to give you a safety inspection right now!’
‘I thought this was a friendly visit,’ Kelly observed, and both men became even more uncomfortable. Oreza tried to cover it with a smile.
‘Okay, I’ll go easy on you.’ But that didn’t work. ‘Catch you next week, Chief.’
They shook hands, but something had changed. Oreza waved for the forty-one-footer to come back in, and he jumped aboard like the pro he was. The cutter pulled away without a further word.
Well, that makes sense. Kelly advanced his throttles anyway.
Oreza watched Springer continue north, wondering what the hell was going on. Out of the country, he’d said. For sure his boat hadn’t been anywhere on the Chesapeake – but where, then? Why were the cops so interested in the guy? Kelly a killer? Well, he’d gotten that Navy Cross for something. UDT guy, that much Oreza knew. Beyond that, just a good guy to have a beer with, and a serious seaman in his way. It sure got complicated when you stopped doing search-and-rescue and started doing all that other cop stuff, the quartermaster told himself, heading southwest for Thomas Point. He had a phone call to make.
‘So what happened?’
‘Roger, they knew we were coming,’ Ritter answered with a steady look.
‘How, Bob?’ MacKenzie asked.
‘We don’t know yet.’
‘Leak?’
Ritter reached into his pocket and extracted a photocopy of a document and handed it across. The original was written in Vietnamese. Under the text of the photocopy was the handwritten translation. In the printed English were the words ‘green bush.’
‘They knew the name?’
‘That’s a security breakdown on their side, Roger, but, yes, it appears that they did. I suppose they planned to use that information for any of the Marines they might have captured. That sort of thing is good for breaking people down in a hurry. But we got lucky.’
‘I know. Nobody got hurt.’
Ritter nodded. ‘We put a guy on the ground in early. Navy SEAL, very good at what he does. Anyway, he was watching things when the NVA reinforcements came in. He’s the guy who blew the mission off. Then he just walked off the hill.’ It was always far more dramatic to understate things, especially for someone who’d smelled gunsmoke in his time.
That, MacKenzie thought, was worth a whistle. ‘Must be rather a cool customer.’
‘Better than that,’ Ritter said quietly. ‘On the way out he bagged the Russian who was talking to our people, and the camp commander. We have them in Winchester. Alive,’ Ritter added with a smile.
‘That’s how you got the dispatch? I figured SigInt,’ MacKenzie said, meaning signals intelligence. ‘How’d he manage that?’
‘As you said, a cool customer.’ Ritter smiled. ‘That’s the good news.’
‘I’m not sure I want to hear the bad news.’
‘We have an indicator that the other side might want to eliminate the camp and everyone in it.’
‘Jesus… Henry is over in Paris right now,’ MacKenzie said.
‘Wrong approach. If he brings this up, even in one of the informal sessions, they’ll just deny, and it might spook them so much that they’ll try to make sure they can deny it.’ It was well known that the real work at such conferences was done during the breaks, not when people had to address the issues formally over the conference table, the very shape of which had taken so much time.
‘True. What then?’
‘We’re working through the Russians. We have a pipeline for that. I initiated the contact myself.’
‘Let me know how it turns out?’
‘You bet.’
‘Thanks for letting me talk to you,’ Lieutenant Ryan said.
‘What’s this all about?’ Sam Rosen asked. They were in his office – not a large one, and the room was crowded with four people in it. Sarah and Sandy were there, too.
‘It’s about your former patient – John ??ll?.’ That news didn’t come as much of a surprise, Ryan saw. ‘I need to talk to him.’
‘What’s stopping you?’ Sam asked.
‘I don’t know where he is. I was kind of hoping you folks might.’
‘About what?’ Sarah asked.
‘About a series of killings,’ Ryan answered at once, in the hope of shocking them.
‘Killing who?’ This question came from the nurse.
‘Doris Brown, for one, and several others.’
‘John didn’t hurt her -‘ Sandy said before Sarah Rosen was able to touch her hand.
‘Then you know who Doris Brown is,’ the detective observed, just a little too quickly.
‘John and I have become … friends,’ Sandy said. ‘He’s been out of the country for the past couple of weeks. He couldn’t have killed anybody.’
Ouch, Ryan thought. That was both good and bad news. He’d over-played his hand on Doris Brown, though the nurse’s reaction to the accusation had resulted in a little too much emotional response. He’d also just had a speculation confirmed as fact, however. ‘Out of the country? Where? How do you know?-‘
‘I don’t think I’m supposed to say where. I’m not supposed to know that.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ the cop asked in surprise.
‘I don’t think I’m supposed to say, sorry.’ The way she answered the question showed sincerity rather than evasion.
What the hell did that mean? There was no answering that one, and Ryan decided to go on. ‘Someone named Sandy called the Brown house in Pittsburgh. It was you, wasn’t it?’
‘Officer,’ Sarah said, ‘I’m not sure I understand why you’re asking all these questions.’
‘I’m trying to develop some information, and I want you to tell your friend that he needs to talk with me.’
‘This is a criminal investigation?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘And you’re asking us questions,’ Sarah observed. ‘My brother is a lawyer. Should I ask him to come here? You seem to be asking us what we know about some murders. You’re making me nervous. I have a question – are any of us under suspicion of anything?’
‘No, but your friend is.’ If there was anything Ryan didn’t need now, it was to have an attorney present.
‘Wait a minute,’ Sam said. ‘If you think John might have done something wrong, and you want us to find him for you, you’re saying that you think we know where he is, right? Doesn’t that make us possible … helpers, accessories is the word, isn’t it?’
Are you? Ryan would have liked to ask. He decided on, ‘Did I say that?’
‘I’ve never had questions like this before, and they make me nervous,’ the surgeon told his wife. ‘Call your brother.’
‘Look, I have no reason to believe that any of you has done anything wrong. I do have reason to believe that your friend has. What I’m telling you is this: you’ll be doing him a favor by telling him to call me.’
‘Who’s he supposed to have killed?’ Sam pressed.
‘Some people who deal drugs.’
‘You know what I do?’ Sarah asked sharply. ‘What I spend most of my time on here, you know what it is?’
‘Yes, ma’am, I do. You work a lot with addicts.’
‘If John’s really doing that, maybe I ought to buy him a gun!’
‘Hurts when you lose one, doesn’t it?’ Ryan asked quietly, setting her up.
‘You bet it does. We’re not in this business to lose patients.’