Twice a Spy_ A Novel - Keith Thomson [49]
It was enough to go on, DeSoto decided.
If worse came to worst, he always had his Beretta.
It was a bright morning with a colorful array of spinnakers in bloom on the Baie de Fort-de-France. The Riva Aquarama runabout skipped across the waves at an exhilarating forty knots, its chrome trim sparkling. Just stepping aboard the iconic craft had made Charlie feel like a movie star.
In the next seat, adding to the illusion, DeSoto steered the boat with one hand and held a thermos of espresso in the other. Sure his tan was too orange, his teeth were too white, and his hair was too fake, but when Charlie squinted against the sun’s glare off the water, the real estate agent passed for Cary Grant.
Charlie might have enjoyed the experience except for the police cutter bobbing ahead, a monstrous black thirty-caliber machine gun mounted on its foredeck. If the policemen glanced at the Riva through binoculars and recognized the fugitive Marvin Lesser—or if the forest of instruments sprouting from the cutter’s wheelhouse included a camera with facial recognition software—Charlie would wind up in a cell. Then things would get bad.
Drummond lay behind Charlie and DeSoto on the sundeck, his recently Clairol-ed black hair flapping aft; Charlie had gone “Golden Sunshine” himself. Drummond’s lethargy was genuine, the side effect of his medication. Charlie thought the attendant crankiness added a bit of plausibility to his role as a man reluctant to part with twenty-eight million of his hard-earned greenbacks.
“So what do you think of the Empress Joséphine?” DeSoto asked.
Preoccupied by the policemen, Charlie struggled to find a response. “Terrific golf course, underrated empress.”
DeSoto laughed as only someone hoping to sell a $28 million property could.
Charlie watched the policeman at the machine gun crane his neck to speak to the pilot. Eyes glued to the Riva, the pilot reached for the controls. Water began lathering around the cutter’s stern and, sure enough, the craft launched onto a course to intercept the runabout.
Intolerant of gaps in conversation, DeSoto said, “I always say that golf is the only game where you strive for a subpar performance.”
Charlie faked a laugh. And asked himself why he and Drummond hadn’t simply chartered a dive boat, taken it to within a mile of Fielding’s island, then swum the rest of the way underwater. Anyone who’d seen a Saturday morning cartoon knew that was the way to go.
He reached back and nudged Drummond from his slumber. “Hey look, Mr. Larsen, a police boat with a thirty-caliber machine gun.” He hoped the reminder of the gift to the police, if not the imminent danger it posed, would spur his father’s mind.
Drummond looked up. “Oh,” he said. Getting comfortable again, he closed his eyes.
The police cutter chugged to within a hundred yards.
DeSoto cut his engines, bringing the runabout to a skidding stop. His only concern seemed to be his appearance, which he checked in the control panel. “As opposed to a lot of the other Caribbean islands, one thing you won’t have to worry about here in Martinique is crime,” he said. “The police don’t miss a trick.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Charlie. If he could grab hold of DeSoto’s thermos, he might heave its steaming contents at the policeman on deck and gain control of the machine gun.
The cutter pulled to a halt, paralleling the Riva. Both the machine gunner and the pilot were young Martinicans with muscles that swelled their dark blue uniforms.
“Ça va, Monsieur DeSoto?” asked the pilot.
“Ça va, Sergent François,” DeSoto said, a little New Jersey evident in his French. He dug an envelope from his breast pocket and handed it across the three-foot-wide lane to the pilot. “Ça va?”
“Ça va.” Stuffing the envelope into his own