Twice a Spy_ A Novel - Keith Thomson [61]
Hadley cut in. “Do you have a rendezvous time or place?”
“They’re gonna call me as soon as they find whatever it is they’re looking for. They’ve got me booked for the whole week.” Bream broke free of Stanley’s stare, shifting his focus to the copper teakettle.
Hadley set her BlackBerry on the table and cupped her right knee, signaling to Stanley her belief that the pilot was dissembling. Stanley twisted his wedding ring, indicating his agreement.
The BlackBerry vibrated, rattling against the table. Hadley snatched it up.
“Well, how about that?” She relayed the text message. “Lesser and Ramirez have been captured at sea by the Royal St. Lucia Police Force and are on the way to a detention center.”
Bream grinned. “Well, it’s a good thing you came to see me, isn’t it?”
The forty-foot Royal St. Lucia Police cutter chugged toward a remote island known as Detention III, a dismal, rocky place, apparently immune to vegetation, and so tiny that the architects had had no choice but to build up: The four-story brick prison stood at a slight incline. Painted battleship gray, it was part tenement house, part lighthouse, surrounded by two rings of twenty-foot-high electrified wire fencing and, in the event of a power outage perhaps, an outer fence topped with coils of old-school razor wire.
Drummond was handcuffed to a long bench in the police cutter’s stern. If he had a plan, he had to have dreamed it up, literally, while napping during the hour or so since their capture. Escape seemed impossible to Charlie, who was handcuffed to the other end of the bench.
“Lesser” and his young accomplice “Ramirez” might be able to buy their way out, though. Charlie had gleaned that Detention III was administered by a private maritime security firm called Starfish, contracted by Saint Lucia, Dominica, Martinique, and other islands in the area.
In the rest of Charlie’s scenarios, Detention III would effectively be a CIA detention center for him and Drummond. And the grave for Alice.
The washer sat on the prow, still strapped to its pallet. If the Saint Lucia policemen didn’t already know what the Pristina held, they would soon, when one of them peered under the lid—which someone would do eventually, out of boredom if not simple curiosity. They would then place urgent calls to the bomb squad. Enter the Cavalry.
While tidier than the exterior had led Charlie to expect, Detention III’s plain tile interior smelled like it was hosed down with seawater in lieu of proper cleaning. At the intake desk, three of the Saint Lucia cops uncuffed Charlie and Drummond and handed them over to two Starfish jailers, men who wore generic navy-blue fatigues with badges identifying them as Guard L. Miñana and Guard E. Bulcão. Both West Indians, Miñana and Bulcão spoke English with the sharp Hispanic accent familiar to Charlie from Brooklyn.
Miñana, with his slight build, quiet demeanor, and round spectacles, could have passed for an actuary if it weren’t for the worn wooden cudgel, which he gripped as if it were a cutlass. As the trio of Saint Lucia policemen prepared to depart, he slipped them a small stack of greenbacks. On the way out, one of the cops drummed the lid of the washing machine. Miñana smiled, seemingly pleased with his new purchase.
The heavyset Guard Bulcão meanwhile frog-marched Charlie to the wall next to the intake desk. “Face the wall, arms and hands apart,” the guard barked, then proceeded to pat Charlie down.
Miñana gave the same treatment to Drummond, who, although awake, didn’t seem that much more alert than when he was asleep.
“Now the both of you turn around real slow and take off all your clothing, drop it to the floor, then say ‘Ah.’ ” Miñana demonstrated by sticking out his own birdlike tongue.
The guards probed Charlie and Drummond’s mouths as well as every other body part where a weapon might be hidden.
Bulcão scooped their clothing and possessions from the floor, stuffing the lot of it into a large brown paper bag. “You guys can get this stuff