Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [114]
It was the perfect place to get work done without interruption.
When Jack spent time in his apartment off the Embarcadero, he often looked toward the Richmond Bridge from his bay window, thinking about the night he’d spent at the light station with Rachel. He had fallen in love with the place back then—at least that love was real—but all these years later he had yet to repeat the experience.
Wickham’s driver took them down a desolate, rutted access road that threatened to destroy the limousine’s suspension. After about twenty thumping minutes they reached an old, dilapidated pier.
The light station stood just across the water, the windows of the house lit up, the lighthouse beacon shining like a large star in the night sky. It was a foggy night, but the light broke through the fog in dispersed rays.
There was a twenty-eight-foot open Chris-Craft waiting for them, its pilot nodding to them politely as Jack, Sara, Wickham, and his bodyguard stepped aboard. The sun was down and the air had grown chilly, the sea breeze whipping at their clothes and hair as they found seats and sat down.
Wickham and his bodyguard sat in back, and the senator took a cigar from his pocket, lighting it under a cupped hand as the pilot started the engine. Then, as they pulled from the dock, he contentedly tilted his head back and blew smoke into the air.
“Gorgeous foggy night,” he said over the whine of the motor. “Nights like this make it hard for me to go back to Texas. Or worse yet, D.C.”
“There’s no place else on earth like the bay,” Jack said.
Sara’s jacket apparently wasn’t doing its job, because she sidled up next to Jack, trying to use his body to buffer the cold wind. As the boat rumbled, skimming the surface of the water, he put an arm around her and pulled her close, thinking about their brief encounter back in Faisal’s apartment. As corny as it might sound, he felt as if he’d finally found his soul mate, the one woman in this world he would ever want or need.
A Muslim woman, if that didn’t beat all.
She nestled her head against his shoulder and murmured softly. “Who are these people we’re meeting?”
“Friends of the senator. Probably upper-echelon law enforcement and government types. People he thinks he can trust.”
“Why out here? The isolation?”
Jack nodded. “Barely a smudge on the map. They want to stay as far off the radar grid as possible. Just like—”
He stopped himself but it was too late.
“Brendan and Alain and the others?” she said.
“Sorry,” he said. “I really am.”
“No need,” she said. “It is like our headquarters in Paris. That is a tribute to my fallen comrades.”
She pulled him closer and kissed his cheek and for a moment he managed to forget what they’d been through, and tried to think about what was to come.
The key was stopping Hassan Haddad, wherever he might be. If he was out there in the wild with some kind of explosive, they all needed to be very worried.
Jack thought again about nearly bumping into the man outside that pub near al-Fida’s flat.
If only he had known.
If only.
After several minutes they pulled up to a long dock and boathouse that extended from the side of the island. There were already two boats moored side by side there, a thirty-eight-foot Downeast cruiser with an open cockpit and an older, smaller Luhrs. Two rubber dinghies with outboard motors bumped up against the dock on the opposite side. Beyond them was a fast Novurania rigid inflatable. Jack guessed it was used by a caretaker to speed over to the shore for provisions.