The reception desk inside stood abandoned. The clicking of his shoes echoed as he crossed the tile floor, and he heard giggling from a back room. He cleared his throat.

About a minute later, a young woman with enormous breasts and a huge gap between her front teeth emerged from the back room pushing at her lopsided bra with the back of her wrist. Her hair was tousled, and her skin flushed when she saw him look at the open buttons of her blouse. She clutched at her neckline and said, “Bon soir, monsieur.”

He told her who he was and explained that he needed information.

Whether it was his ID or his charm, he didn’t know or care, but the secretary immediately showed him into the office of Monsieur Beaulieu, the French Immigration officer who, the girl said, had been on duty that afternoon. He was the one who had spoken to the American woman.

The man was in his shirt sleeves, his tie pulled loose, his bulbous nose reddened from the half-empty bottle of wine and the pair of smudged tumblers standing on his desk. Diggory showed him the same ID he had shown the secretary, and Beaulieu, impressed, invited him to take a seat. The immigration man told him that technically they were closed. That was the reason things were so informal at the moment. Clearly, he wanted to make a good impression on the important American agent.

Diggory didn’t care if he was preparing to slam it to the secretary on the desktop in the next hour. He just wanted some information. He spoke to the bureaucrat in flawless French.

“You understand that the questions I am asking you are confidential and of utmost importance to the national security of both of our nations. The young American woman on the sailboat in the harbor. Marguerite Riley. Did she clear in here?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I have her passport right here. There was a serious difficulty.”

“What happened?”

“She came in to clear, and she told us she had one passenger on her yacht. Picked him up in the water offshore off the coast of Basse Terre this morning.” He snickered and made a snorting noise in his large nose. “She said he was totally nude. Well, except for a necklace.”

“Describe this necklace.”

“She said it was a coin of some sort. Gold.”

“And the man’s name?”

“He gave her a false name.”

“What was the name?”

“Robert Surcouf.”

Diggory closed the door behind him leaving the immigration officer and his secretary to continue with the disgusting little rendezvous he had interrupted. He stood on the doorstep and watched the lights reflecting on the water of the inner harbor, the French tourists and locals mingling as they hurried on their way to home or dinner or, like Beaulieu, to surreptitious meetings or animal gropings.

There were more than six and a half billion human beings roaming this earth, most of them little better than the vermin that climbed aboard the fishing boats at this time of night.  How marvelous that his Riley had crossed paths with the man he now sought. He would enjoy the opportunity to use her again and to finish, finally, the business he had started. Even Yorick would have to appreciate the symmetry of the situation. Life appeared random, that is until something like this fell into his lap. But here was another signal that his time was at hand. While he didn’t believe in God or Destiny or that any force like fate ruled men’s lives, Diggory saw this as proof that men like him, superior in intellect and breeding, often also had plain luck on their side — and the intelligence to know how to take advantage of it.

He patted the front pocket of his shirt, feeling the shape of the passport there, and he felt the hot blood rushing to his core. She was his now.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Aboard the Bonefish

March 25, 2008

8:15 p.m.

Riley didn’t stop crying until she reached her boat. She hoisted the dinghy in the davits, unlocked the main hatch, and turned on her anchor light. Routine was what always saved her. In the service, it had been her job, her duty and the best way to move beyond what had happened to her brother. When you had a job to do, something you had trained for, you could lose yourself in the work. After she’d left the service, she floundered back in DC, chafing under the memories and her attempt to live with her father. She’d always lived frugally and saved during her years on the government’s payroll, so she took her life’s savings and bought and moved aboard the Bonefish. On the boat, she had maintenance, routine, things she had to do to keep herself sane and the boat safe and secure.

On this night, her routine allowed her to get back in control, but her mind wouldn’t turn off. Seeing Dig again had brought it all back. He’d called her that last morning in Lima, and she had gone to his apartment. They’d made love, and then with the sunlight streaming in the window bathing their naked bodies in golden light, he had asked her to do a favor for him. Of course, she had said. At that moment, she would have done just about anything to get to spend more time with him.

Stop it, she told herself. She reached up and turned on the overhead light in the main cabin, then slid onto the settee in front of her MacBook laptop computer. She tapped the space bar and the screen blinked on to reveal her email inbox. She still had not opened the email she’d received from Mercury that morning, but the name Hazel Kittredge was listed beneath the name of her employer and she clicked on her friend’s email instead.

Darling,

How are you and where are you? Please tell me you’re shacked up on some luscious Caribbean island with a well-endowed gorgeous man who owns a rhum distillery or some such romantic thing. You’re not still doing this all-alone-Super-Woman routine, are you? Call me!

XX,

Hazel

Riley smiled and felt for the first time in over an hour that she might be able to shake off the pall that Diggory Priest had cast over her life. She reached for her cell phone and thought a moment before dialing, wondering where and in what time zone her friend might be.

Like Riley, Hazel had grown up the daughter of a career diplomat, but Hazel’s father had never needed to work. Hazel’s grandfather had started life as a share cropper until he invented some device that improved car mufflers back in the fifties, and ever since her family had been those Kittredges of Atlanta.

She dialed Hazel’s U.S. cell on the off chance she was stateside. Hazel picked up on the second ring.

“Darling! Where are you?” Her friend’s soothing alto voice worked better than a Valium.

“Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadaloupe.” Riley turned her body on the settee, settled back into the pillows, and stretched her legs out on the velvet upholstery.

“And you’re headed down to the Saintes, I hope?”

“Yup. Tomorrow morning.”

“I envy you. They make better croissants there than in Paris. You know Daddy has a little place down in Martinique. Maybe I’ll fly down and we can catch up.”

She sighed. “Hazel, that would be so great.”

“Riley, what’s the matter? I can hear it in your voice. Something’s wrong.”

“I ran into an old acquaintance today.” She stopped, trying to remember how much she had told Hazel last fall. “Remember that guy I told you about? The one from Lima?”

“The son of a bitch who couldn’t even be bothered to call you after the fucking terrorists nearly blew you up? Oh yeah, I remember him.”

“He surprised me on the street today. We exchanged a few words, and I sort of lost it and slapped him.”

“Good for you!”

“Not really. Not good at all. I thought if I ever saw him again I’d be able to figure it all out. You know, like my old shrink used to say ‘find closure’ and all that. But instead, I smack him and then turn and run off crying like some silly female.”