Riley was trying to decide if he looked adorable or ridiculous in her knee-length sarong when he pivoted around, leaned his back against the side of the cabin and put his feet up on the cockpit seat, his legs bent at the knee. She looked away. Peering ahead, out through the windows of the dodger, she could feel his eyes on her. On top of that, after his hours in the sun, he smelled of male sweat and testosterone. From the corner of her eye she could see he hadn’t moved, and she stared straight ahead, determined not to smile.

Behind the freighter, a wide, high-speed catamaran ferryboat was also trying to crowd her out of the channel. These French didn’t seem to have very good manners. Like her passenger. He was still grinning at her.

“What do you find so amusing?” she asked without looking his way.

“You.”

Her eyes flicked for a second in his direction, then away. He still hadn’t changed his position. She said nothing.

“Don’t you ever smile, Magee?” he asked.

“I told you to be quiet. And stop calling me that.”

He made a big show of pantomiming zipping his lips closed and throwing away the key.

She looked at him, not letting her line of vision stray lower than his chin. “While you’re at it,” she said, and though it took some effort to keep a straight face, she managed.  “When you’re wearing a skirt, you might want to keep your legs closed, too.”

CHAPTER NINE

Washington, DC

March 18, 2008 

4:47 p.m.

Diggory Priest stood at the center of the star on the floor of the Capitol Crypt and checked his watch for the second time. Most of the tour groups had finished for the day. There were a couple of stragglers on the far side of the large room, teenagers, giggling in front of a glass case that held a model of an earlier design for the Capitol. The Crypt was located on the first floor of the United States Capitol building, directly under the Rotunda. Though the room over Priest’s head had sometimes hosted the lying in state of dead presidents and other luminaries, he’d been told the Crypt, in spite of its name, had never been used for funerary purposes. Now, the large columned space only housed artwork and exhibits about the history and architecture of the building. Diggory thought the man he was meeting had quite a sense of humor to have chosen this location. He checked his watch again. He had not ever known him to be late to a meeting, but given the vagaries of political emergencies, he would give him five more minutes.

It was only after the gigglers had disappeared that Diggory heard the tapping of leather shoes crossing the polished stone floor. The man who approached him was wearing an elegant charcoal suit, white shirt, and red tie. The suit looked good on his lean frame, and he carried a buttery soft and worn Italian leather attaché case. He extended a hand as he approached Diggory.

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting long?”

“Not a problem, sir. It’s always a pleasure to see you,” Diggory said. He was uncertain of the protocol for names in this particular situation — much depended on the nature of his assignment. Traditionally, members called one another by the names they had taken on the night of their initiation, but this man was so well known from newspapers and television, it was difficult to call him by anything other than his title. Diggory’s Bones name was one formerly used by Averell Harriman and Dean Witter, Jr., among others. God of Thunder.

The man standing before him was Beelzebub.

“I haven’t got much time, Thor, so let me get straight to the point.”

At the sound of that name, Diggory relaxed. “I’m listening, sir.”

“We have a sub rosa exigency.”

Diggory nodded. They all did it. It was their way of talking down to him by trying to talk over him. Sub rosa. Secret. As if he didn’t know. As if he hadn’t made it his fucking specialty.

“It’s down in the islands. Your neck of the Caribbean.” The Agency had sent him on assignments from Barbados to Haiti to Latin America. Places that oozed with poverty and hordes of dark-skinned people. Now, men like Beelzebub saw him as their trouble-shooter in the region.

“I’m asking you to handle this for us with the kind of discretion that has become your trademark.”

“I’d be happy to.”

“Something may surface — bringing up a top secret past operation. One we thought was long buried and gone. This cannot come to light. Not now, not ever.”

“Understood.”

 “As I’m sure you are aware, these are tenuous times for us. If this information were to go public at this point, with the election barely six months off and the fucking economy imploding — impossible to contemplate the damage. They’d use it against us. Hell, both sides would. Anyway, we’ve had a man on the scene down there for several weeks, a senior agent, but I’m not satisfied with his results. I asked the circle to name the top man for this sort of thing, and they named you.”

“I can be on the first plane out.” Top man, perhaps, he thought, but what they were really looking for was their top janitor — still taking orders. Cleaning up their sub rosa exigencies in dirty little corners of the third world.

“Excellent. You’ll be going to Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe. Your contact is Caliban. He will fill you in on the necessary details.”

“Yes sir.” He shook Beelzebub’s hand.

“Thor.” The older man tightened his grip and locked his eyes on Dig’s. “You’ve never had a more important assignment. Our very existence is at stake.”

Diggory slipped out the north entrance of the Capitol Building and headed up New Jersey Avenue to the Hyatt where he had checked in the night before. As he navigated his way across intersections and up the street, he raised the collar of his coat and thrust his hands deep into his pockets.

Blasted cold. Thankfully, he was now headed south. But this was more than merely looking for a more hospitable climate. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for. He had always known one day they would ask him to clean up a mess so big he would be able to use it to his advantage.

The time had come for him to take what was rightfully his. What had Beelzebub said?  Impossible to contemplate the damage. Or the power that would be his if instead of making it all disappear, Dig made it his own.

In spite of the cold, he smiled.

And the timing could not be more perfect. The stars were aligning for him. It so happened he also had a bit of unfinished business down in the Caribbean. Business with someone who, last he’d heard, was in Antigua on her boat and headed south. She was key to the whole operation. All things come to he who waits. He had waited long enough.

CHAPTER TEN

Pointe-à-Pitre

March 25, 2008

3:45 p.m.

Once the anchor was down and she’d made certain it was set, Riley hurried to lower the dinghy.

“You sure you won’t let me give you a hand?” he asked.

“No, I’ve got it.”

He stuck his lower lip out in a pretend pout and this time there was no getting around it. He did look adorable. It would have been easy to accept his help, but for her own reasons, she needed to do it alone. It wasn’t that she had anything to prove. It was simply part of the discipline. Once she started accepting help, it would be easy to start expecting it. Next thing you know, they’d be involved. A couple. That’s what had happened down in Lima and look how that had turned out. No, she’d stick to doing things herself.

She went below to her cabin, closed the door and pulled off her T-shirt and changed into a clean white polo shirt for her trip to Customs and Immigration. In the main salon she slid on some boat shoes, then stopped at the navigation station to collect her paperwork.