A few minutes later the couple sat on the hut’s linoleum floor, Charlie aiming his speargun at them while Drummond bound their wrists and ankles with kite string.
They looked like Superman and Lois Lane fifteen years after their first meeting, Charlie thought, out on a date night now while their kids were home with a sitter. According to their driver’s licenses, their names were Colin and Eleanor Atchison. Odds were high that their real names were something else. And it was even money that they were now plotting to turn the tables.
For fear of drawing the attention of hotel security staff, Charlie kept the lights in the hut off. Drummond worked by the pink beam of a children’s flashlight, a miniature of Mount Pelee-squeezing the green mountain activated a tiny bulb within the red peak, theoretically simulating a volcanic eruption. His technique was to thoroughly tie captives’ legs together at the ankles, knees, and thighs, then practically mummify them from the waist up. Although the process was complex, Charlie had previously seen him execute it with the same dexterity that party magicians display when turning balloons into dachshunds. But now, lids heavy, head lolling, Drummond faltered.
The conditions weren’t helping. With the doors and windows shut, a small grate provided the only ventilation in the hut, which was stifling and thick with the scent of suntan lotion to begin with. Perspiration streamed down Charlie’s face, soaking his shirt. Like being slow-cooked in coconut oil, he thought.
The woman broke the heavy silence. “So … have you been in Europe?”
“I don’t believe so,” Drummond said before pausing to reconsider.
“Didn’t you just fly in from there?”
Almost certainly, Charlie thought, the spooks had gotten hold of Bream’s flight plan listing Warsaw as his point of origin, a ruse capitalizing on Poland’s lax documentation requirements. A minimal amount of detective work on their part and Gstaad would be blown.
Unwilling to assist them, Charlie looked away, which, he realized, probably served as an admission-in his experience, people like these two were human lie detectors.
“Please try to understand that we’re on your side,” the man said.
“Interesting,” said Drummond, as he often did to avoid creating an awkward gap in conversation. He fastened the knot behind the man’s neck and moved on to the woman.
“We can help you,” she said.
Charlie considered that the sole aim of their conversation was diversion.
The man craned his neck to look Charlie in the eye. “We all want resolution to your case, right?”
There was a certain affability etched across his broad face, and his eyes were full of a forthrightness that didn’t seem like artifice. Langley must have invented a new sort of contact lens, Charlie thought. But on the off-chance this really was one of the good guys, he said, “The problem is that your company’s idea of resolution is diametrically opposed to ours.”
“I’m not so sure. What’s yours?”
“Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, stuff like that.”
“Those perks come with responsibilities,” the man said. “In your case, answering to charges of a capital crime.”
Charlie sighed. “Have you asked yourself why you don’t have spears running through you already? The only times we’ve ever hurt anyone have been in self-defense.”
“What about Hattemer?”
“I’m sure the Cavalry did a great job of littering the scene with our fingerprints and nose hairs and whatever, but anybody who thinks the Cavalry are good guys has to have been drugged by them.”
The man shrugged. “What motive would they have had to kill Hattemer?”
“Not Burt Hattemer?” Drummond said.
Drummond had fled the scene of the killing just two weeks ago, yet his friend’s murder seemed to be news to him.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Charlie said. They could ill afford the distraction now. He turned to the man. “Their motive was to keep him quiet.”
“Interesting,” the man said, with a bit too much enthusiasm.
“We’d better gag them now,” Charlie said to Drummond.
“Check.” Drummond pressed a rolled-up T-shirt over the man’s mouth, stretched it around his ears, and knotted it behind his head. If Hattemer’s murder remained on Drummond’s mind, he gave no sign of it.
“I wish you could trust us,” the woman said.
“Same,” said Charlie.
She smiled. “In the interim, my only request is that you don’t leave my arms so high behind my back. One of my fellow officers in Farafra developed blood clots in both shoulders after just one hour with his arms tied behind a tree.”
Grunting acquiescence, Drummond loosened the kite string, allowing her wrists to fall even with her waist.
Charlie thought of Farafra, or at least the silver screen version, with its centuries-old sandstone spires and backdrop of date palms on sparkling Egyptian sands. What he wouldn’t give to go there someday with Alice. As much as any city on earth, Farafra conjured romance and adventure and …
It was an extraneous detail.
“Dad!” he screamed.
Drummond looked up from refastening the woman’s ankles in time to dodge the glistening barb she swung like a dagger.
Charlie didn’t dare fire the speargun for fear of spearing his father. Instead he flung a family-sized bottle of sunscreen, striking her in the jaw. The container bounced harmlessly to the floor, but the diversion allowed Drummond to swat the weapon away from her.
It landed in a tall wicker basket full of flip-flops. Retrieving it, Charlie nearly sliced his fingertips on the razor-sharp edge of what had passed for the woman’s engagement ring. Pressure on the spring-loaded diamond must have caused the metal band to uncoil into a blade. She had probably cut through the twine around her wrists a while ago, then waited for the opportunity to strike.
As Drummond refastened her wrists and gagged her, Charlie heard footsteps outside. Kneeling, he peered out the ventilation grate to see two young men, but only from the neck down. He didn’t recognize the bodies, but there was no mistaking the muscular, boxy builds-ex-military contract agents were the darlings of black ops personnel directors. Both men wore polo shirts, crisp Bermuda shorts, and, probably in a nod to pragmatism over tourist cover, cross trainers rather than sandals. They strode purposefully toward the beach. In a moment, even if they found nothing suspicious, they would rush back to the lobby and lock down the resort.
“The fun never stops,” Charlie said to no one in particular.
“Finished,” Drummond said, looking up from a pile of spent kite string spools.
“Good. Unless there’s anything in here that they can use to draw attention to themselves or to escape-flashlight circuitry that could turn a tube of aloe vera into high explosive, anything like that?”
Drummond shrugged.
“What if you were them?” Charlie waved at their captives.
“I’d try to get my hands on that.”
Charlie followed Drummond’s eyes to the telephone by the register. Seeing no need to chance it, Charlie rendered the phone inoperable by slicing the outside wire with the woman’s ring. At the same time, he thought of a way to stymie the two searchers. Unfortunately, his plan required using a phone.