She went out of focus and the lines of the room started to heave as if the entire structure was breathing. “What was in…?” His tongue was too heavy; the words wouldn’t come.

“You don’t have a staff and you didn’t call anyone at AP, Mr. Pardee. That was a stupid lie. We’ll have to put ‘self-importance’ down under cause of death.”

Pardee tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t obey him. He slid off the chair and his legs splayed straight out in front of him.

Beth Curtis bent over him, pushed her lips into a pout, and baby-talked. “Oh, are his wittle wegs all wobbly?” She stood up straight and put her hands on her hips. To Pardee her face floated like the moon through clouds.

She said, “You’re probably thinking that I’m being unusually cruel to tease a dying man, but you see, you’re not dying right now. Soon, but not right now.”

Pardee tried to form a question, but the room seemed to go liquid and crash over him like a black wave.

Sebastian Curtis walked down the dock to where the crew of the Micro Spirit was unloading fuel drums from a longboat. He was wearing his white lab coat over Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, a stethoscope hung from his neck like a medallion of power.

The Micro Spirit’s first mate, who was drinking a Coke while supervising the unloading, jumped up on the dock to meet the doctor. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Curtis said. “Are you in charge here?”

“I’m the first mate.”

Curtis regarded the tattooed Tongan. “Mr. Pardee will be staying with us for a while. He’s asked me to tell you not to wait for him.”

“That don’t bother you?” the mate asked. It seemed strange to him after the effort Pardee had made to sneak onto the island.

“No, of course not. In fact, we’ve offered to fly Mr. Pardee to Hawaii when he finishes his work.”

The mate had never heard Pardee’s name in the same sentence as the word “work.” It didn’t sound right. Still, he had his job to do

and the doctor was paying double freight for these barrels. He said, “Is he going to pay his fare?”

Curtis smiled and pulled a wad of bills out of the pocket of his shorts. “Of course. He asked me to give you the money. How much is it?”

“From Truk, one way, is three hundred.”

The doctor counted out a stack of twenties and held it out to the mate. “Here’s six hundred. Mr. Pardee asked me to pay the round-trip fare, since that’s what he originally contracted for.”

The mate stared at the stack of bills. He had known Jefferson Pardee for ten years and had never even known the man to buy a beer; now he was just giving him three hundred extra dollars? Three hundred dollars that the company and the captain didn’t know about. “Okay,” he said. He snatched the money out of the doctor’s hand and shoved it into his pocket before the crew could see.

He would get the whole crew drunk and they would toast the generosity of Jefferson Pardee.

The Lear 45 was a working corporate issue, the seats upholstered in muted blues and grays, facing each other over small worktables. For some reason Tucker had expected something more unusual: bright carnival colors with a monkey in a flight attendant outfit perhaps; a stark metal interior stripped for cargo; maybe stainless steel over enamel with a lot of complicated medical gizmos. Nope, this was the standard, run-of-the-mill station wagon model of your basic four-million-dollar jet.

He slid into the pilot’s seat and a rage of adrenaline coursed through him, as if his body was reliving the crash of the pink Gulfstream. He fought the urge to bolt, let the adrenaline jag settle to a low-grade nausea, then started his preflight checklist. Everything looked normal; the instruments and controls were in place. He snapped on the power for the gauges and nothing happened: no lights, no LEDs, nothing.

He felt the plane move as someone came up the retractable steps and suddenly one of the guards reached around him and inserted a cylindrical key into a socket on the instrument board. The guard turned the key several times and the cockpit whirred to life.

“This thing has a main power cutoff?” Tuck said to the guard.

The guard removed the key and walked off the plane without saying a word.

“Nice chatting with you,” Tuck said. He’d never seen a plane with an ignition key and he was sure that this one was not factory-issue. Why? Who would steal a jet airplane? Who could? I could, that’s who. The doctor had installed the key to keep him from re

peating his performance in Seattle. The missionary bastard didn’t trust him.

Tuck checked the navigation computer. It was, as Beth Curtis had told him, set for an airfield in southern Japan. He watched as the LEDs on the nav computer came on, indicating that it was acquiring the satellites it needed to locate his position. When three were lit, his longitude and latitude flashed on the screen; when a fourth satellite was acquired, he had his current altitude: eight feet above sea level. He thought of Kimi navigating by the stars and felt a twinge of guilt for not trying harder to find him. He resolved to look for the navigator personally when he got back to Alualu.

He ran through the checklist and threw the autostart switches for the engines. As the twin jets spooled up, Tuck felt his anxiety float away like an exorcised ghost. This is where he was supposed to be. This is what he did. For the first time in weeks he felt like his head was clear.

He pushed the controls through their full range of motion and checked out the window to make sure that the flaps and ailerons were moving as well. Beth Curtis was coming across the compound toward the plane. At least he thought it was Beth Curtis. She wore a sharp, dark business suit with nylons and high heels. Her hair was pulled back into a severe bun and she wore wire-frame aviator sunglasses. She carried a small plastic cooler in one hand and an aluminum briefcase in the other. She looked like one of Mary Jean’s corporate killer attorneys. Her third identity in as many days.

She walked into the plane and the guard pushed the hatch shut behind her. She stashed the cooler and briefcase in the overhead, then climbed into the cockpit and strapped herself in the copilot’s seat.

“Any problems?” she said.

“You look nice today, Mrs. Curtis.”

“Thank you, Mr. Case. Are we ready?”

“Tuck. You can call me Tuck. I need you to look out the window and tell me if the flaps and ailerons move when I move the controls.”

“They look fine. Shall we go?”

Tuck released the ground brakes and taxied out onto the runway. “I need to pick up some sunglasses while we’re in Japan.”

“I’ll get you some. You won’t be leaving the plane.”

“I won’t?”

“We’ll only be on the ground for a few minutes, then we’ll be coming back.”

“Look, Mrs. Curtis, I know you think that because of the circumstances that brought me here that I’m a total fuckup, but I am really good at what I do. You don’t have to treat me like a child.”

She looked at him and took off her sunglasses. Tuck wished he had sunglasses so he could whip them off like that.

She said, “Mr. Case, I’m putting my life in your hands right now. How much more confidence would you like?”

Tuck didn’t really know how to answer. “I guess you’re right. Sorry. You could be a little less mysterious about what’s going on here. I know that we’re not flying supplies, not with this plane and the kind of money you’re paying me.”

“If you really want to know, I can tell you. But if I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.”

Tuck looked from the instruments to catch her expression. She was grinning, a deep silly grin that crinkled the corners of her eyes.

He looked at the instruments. “I’m going to take off now. Okay?”

“And I haven’t even shown you the best way to fight boredom on our little island.”