The East Brother light station was practically unknown outside of the Richmond-San Rafael area. Established in 1874, it was located just off Point San Pablo in the northern part of the bay, perched atop one of the tiny islands called the Brothers. Ships making their way to Sacramento, through the strait between the San Francisco and San Pablo bays, had to negotiate numerous small islands and indented coastline that were treacherous at night or in fog. The lighthouse was the solution. East Brother Island was dominated by a large two-story beige Victorian-style bed-and-breakfast, fronted by the rectangular tower of the lighthouse itself. Despite being only a quarter mile from the shore, the island was isolated and quiet, except for the occasional bray of a foghorn.
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. He probably came and went in a larger vessel, better equipped to handle bigger loads from the mainland.
The pilot maneuvered their small boat into an empty space next to a ladder, then tied the boat down and gestured for everyone to disembark. They all climbed up and stepped onto the dock, then moved up a short ramp that led under an umbrella of trees onto the island itself. They continued along a small cement concourse past the old wooden fog signal building-which was little more than a large wooden shed with two pneumatic foghorns mounted on its roof-and moved toward the Victorian bed-and-breakfast on the far side of the island.
West Brother Island was visible just beyond this, a dry, elongated chunk of earth that was crowded with cormorants, gulls, and other bay birds sharing the bare, steep rock. Nesting pelicans had taken over the entire grassy area of the island. Just as with humans, the strongest birds had the best real estate. Off to their left, about one mile across the bay, was the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, its iron cross-work frame obscured by the fog.
“It’s beautiful here,” Sara said.
“Tell that to my ex-wife.”
She looked at him. “What?”
He shook his head. “Actually, forget I said that. It’s not worth talking about.”
Poking up from the center of the concourse was the large rounded surface of a cistern. Jack knew that there were no water lines out here and the island had been specially designed to collect rain. Water was so scarce, in fact, that the night he and Rachel visited, they hadn’t been allowed to shower before bed. Such a privilege was granted only to visitors on extended stays.
They moved past the cistern toward the main house, and the closer they got, the more reticent Jack began to feel. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it but he suddenly felt as if something were off, his fight-or-flight instinct quietly kicking into gear.
He glanced at Wickham’s bodyguard, Mr. Laser Pointer, who was standing just to his right, then turned to Wickham himself as they approached the house.
“Senator, who exactly are we meeting with?” Jack asked.
“I already told you,” Wickham said. “People we can trust. Probably the only people we can trust.”
Then they passed under a set of white stairs that led to the second floor and moved onto the small porch fronting the first-floor entrance.
The interior of the house matched its exterior-old, quaint, with a Victorian-style flavor, all the way down to the furniture. The foyer walls were lined with framed black-and-white photos of the light station in years gone by, along with old photos of Richmond and San Francisco and the bay.
As they stepped inside, Jack could hear voices.
“It’s just past dinnertime,” Wickham said, “so they’re probably all in the dining room to your left. Let’s go in and make introductions.”
It sounded more like a command than a request, but Jack and Sara turned to their left, moving through a doorway into a narrow room dominated by a long white-clothed dining table.
Everyone stopped talking when they entered.
Seven men sat at the table, dirty dishes and drinks and ashtrays in front of them, cigars in hand, the sickly-sweet smell of their smoke hanging in the air. Jack recognized a few of the men immediately, all of them old-timers like Wickham-Senator Mitch Tomlinson, a Democrat from Maine; William Arland, a high-powered financial consultant and former chairman of the Federal Reserve; James Featherstone, an undersecretary at the British Home Office; and Clyde Parkinson, former assistant director of the FBI. The others were undoubtedly movers and shakers of the same caliber, but their faces weren’t familiar to Jack.
Except one.
At the far end of the table sat a man who always got his blood pumping. A man he had hated with such ferocity for the last two years that he felt like leaping across the table and strangling him. It was the man responsible for the smear campaign that had destroyed his career.
He spoke directly to Jack with a distinct Austrian accent. “Have a seat, why don’t you, Mr. Hatfield.”
It was billionaire Lawrence Soren.