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  “I’m a hostage!” he shouted. “The leader is in there, he’s got a handgun.”

  Paddy remained where he was, covering this hostage on the floor, broken glasses in his hands, while the captain took off toward the mess hall. He cracked the door open.

  “You’re all going to die!” Aumont screamed.

  The captain threw a flash grenade in and quickly entered after the modest detonation. He shot Aumont in the head.

  “I never thought I’d be this happy to have a weapon pointed at me,” the hostage with a Canadian accent said as he tried to repair what was left of his glasses.

  “My pleasure, sir,” Paddy replied with a hint of a smile.

  Paddy was looking around for any movement, almost anticipating a last stand on the terrorist’s part. But there was none, his colleagues had expertly taken care of them. There were no other explosions. This hostage had managed to deactivate the bomb.

  AUGUST 5

  MONDAY

  Chapter 20

  The entire raid had been conducted in less than fifteen minutes. Corpses had been found in the engine room; the whole crew of the ship had been slain. Rosa Salinas’s husband was among the casualties. Only the captain had been spared for his navigational knowledge and usefulness on the airwaves. No terrorist had survived.

  The hostages were evacuated via chopper to Sumburgh in Scotland where the SAS debriefed them and verified they were who they said they were. Three hours later, the hostages boarded a military aircraft that took them back to Paris.

  Jeff entered the terminal at Charles-de-Gaulles Airport holding Emily’s hand. She had sat next to him on the plane and insisted he accompany her to her mother. She was already in tears when she spotted her daughter. She ran to her and Emily let go of Jeff’s hand to meet her halfway. Jeff had never seen so ardent an embrace.

  “Mummy, this is Jeff. He’s my friend,” Emily said when he had reached her. “He played hangman with me.”

  Emily’s mother shook his hand. “Thank you for looking after my little girl.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Maternal instinct or something.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  She gave him a nervous hug and kissed him on the cheek.

  Jeff turned to Emily. “You take care, all right? If you ever cross the Atlantic give me a buzz, we’ll do something.”

  He wrote his email address down on a piece of paper the mother provided. He hugged Emily goodbye and strolled away, glad he had no luggage to pick up.

  He wondered if his parents had been notified of his abduction. He remembered his parents had been away on a golfing weekend to Lake Placid and they were incommunicado. He gazed around and saw no one was waiting for him. He walked out and hailed a taxi.

  Jeff entered his hotel room and at that instant considered it the most beautiful room he had ever seen. He was still hungry and thirsty in spite of the food the Scots had given them in Sumburgh, but his exhaustion outweighed all his other needs. He crashed on the bed, rolled under the covers and fell asleep.

  Jeff’s sleep was interrupted after fifty-five minutes.

  It had been nothing more than a nap. He got up, responding to the persistent knocking at the door.

  “You should put ice on that lip,” Bellamy said.

  “Hey, Mr. Bellamy.”

  Jeff’s voice was groggy and he rubbed his eyes. He went to the nightstand and picked up his spare glasses; the handbook mentioned that two pair of eyeglasses should always be brought when traveling. They were last year’s model, but they would have to do.

  “You had your fire baptism. You can call me John.”

  He walked past Jeff and entered the room.

  “I’m fine, you’re fine, everybody’s fine. Could I go back to sleep and meet you somewhere for dinner?”

  “No can do. I need you to get back to work right now.” He sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Could you speak a little louder please? I can’t hear you, my bullshit alarms are going apeshit.”

  “Jeff…” Bellamy interrupted.

  “Don’t Jeff me. I just spent two days with terrorists, guns pointed at me all the time. I’ve been spat at, beaten, and threatened. Some folks witness a bank robbery and they’re in therapy for years. Can’t I get one day to fucking sleep?”

  If he could call the man John he could tell him what he thought, he figured.

  “I understand how you feel, nothing would give me more pleasure than to give you the week off. But you don’t seem in shock to me.”

  He could’ve told him about how he’d stayed in the office over the weekend to monitor the situation and to try to find him, but he wasn’t about to initiate a pissing contest.

  “Are you a doctor? How do you know I’m not emotionally fucked up for life?”

  “’Cause you did everything right. I heard you told the hostages that were with you how to act, what to say. You knocked Aumont away with a can of pop. That’s not the doing of somebody who’s got issues.”

  “So, reading the handbook makes me Jesus Christ?”

  “No, applying it does. Don’t fight me on this, we both know you’re itching to get back into it.”

  What scared Jeff the most was that on some level Bellamy was right.

  Sure, he would have preferred to sleep for the next twelve hours, but he couldn’t help but love being appreciated. He loved being needed, feeling important. He had a purpose, he played a role in the national security of his country. For an instant, he wasn’t tired anymore.

  “What’s it about anyway?” he asked like he was still disinterested, sitting on the windowsill.

  “We got wind that Didier Ledoux flew out of the country with his wife and his daughter last night. They went to Bermuda.”

  “Hoooooo, somebody call the cops quick, a Frenchman went on a family trip.”

  “Their flight back is Friday. That seems a little too short for a family trip. Also, I personally checked and Ledoux had to cancel two meetings that were set for today and Wednesday. Seems like the trip was a last minute decision. Could be nothing, could be everything. I just want you to tail him, see what he’s up to.”

  “I suppose you know the flight schedules.”

  Bellamy smiled. “British Airways has an eight-fifteen from Gatwick, you’ll need to connect. It’s paid for.”

  “Great,” Jeff said, shaking his head.

  He noticed for the first time that Bellamy had brought back the gadget case from the embassy.

  With flight time and time zones, it was still morning when Jeff arrived in Bermuda.

  The weather was excessively humid and he welcomed it after spending time in the North Sea. He had managed to sleep on the plane and that felt even better.

  He walked to a public telephone and inserted his credit card in; he hadn’t had time to exchange his money for Bermudian dollars yet. He flipped the directory to the hotels section and began calling.

  “Hi, my name is James Munroe, I wonder if you can help me. I have a meeting this morning with a Mr. Didier Ledoux, a Frenchman. The thing is, I lost the paper where he wrote where he’d be staying, well the airline lost it, I should say. Is he staying with you?”

  All answers Jeff received were polite, but in the negative. Until he called the Fairmont Hamilton Princess.

  “Yes, Mr. Ledoux is staying with us.”

  “Ah, thank you!” Jeff sounded like he had just passed a kidney stone. “You are a lifesaver. Say, could you tell me what room?”

  “Uh, I don’t…”

  “Listen, I’ll probably be late to the meeting. Mr. Ledoux is a very peculiar man, if I’m late I’ll lose the contract. And I really need that contract. I’m just gonna call him up from the lobby.”

  “I could connect you, sir.”

  “No, it’s too early. That could lose me the contract even faster. I’m not going to have time to ask the front desk. Look, I’m sure you have the authority to give me the room number.”

  “Room 312, sir.”

  “Thank you so m
uch.”

  He hung up and as he jogged to hail a cab decided he wouldn’t lose time exchanging his US money; Bermuda currency was on par anyway.

  “Fairmont Hamilton Princess please,” he told the driver.

  Jeff went to the front desk and smiled at the young man who had talked to him earlier on the phone. He asked for a room on the third floor and was relieved to find out one was available. He figured his lack of a reservation would probably mean higher rates, but all went on the company plastic anyway.

  He entered his room and took in the view of Hamilton Harbor for a moment. He then went to work.

  If he were to follow Ledoux around, he would have to know in advance what he would be doing. That was the optimum surveillance condition. He pondered installing bugs in his room like he had done in Paris, but standing outside his door waiting for him to leave might appear suspicious. He opted for the best method in the circumstances.

  A telephone instrument has always been the perfect bugging device; there’s already a microphone, a power source, and a landline transmitter. Digital technology made it possible to manipulate the system into turning the phone into a pickup tool.

  Even when the handset was on the hook.

  There were four different methods Jeff could have used to achieve this without leaving his room. He chose the one he had tried once during his class on phreaking – telephone hacking. He would turn Ledoux’s phone into monitor mode using the computer telephone system maintenance procedures.

  He hooked his laptop to the phone line and sat at the table with it. It took about an hour to do what he was sure could be done in a few minutes by an expert. When he was done, he picked up his own handset and brought it to his ear.

  “Je veux aller voir les dauphins, papa,” a little girl of about nine said.

  “Don’t you want to go to the beach instead?” Jeff assumed it was Ledoux’s wife.

  “No, we can go to the beach anytime at home. I want to see the dolphins!”

  “Anything you want, ma chérie.” Jeff was sure it was Ledoux, he recognized his haughty pitch.

  Jeff rummaged through the gadget case and found a small amplifier which he plugged into the phone as an alternative to the handset. He listened to their conversation until they left for lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon keeping an eye on the family as they swam with dolphins.

  AUGUST 6

  TUESDAY

  Chapter 21

  The dolphins had taken the entire afternoon, after which the Ledouxs had had dinner in an upscale Saint George restaurant. The evening had them enjoy a show. Jeff was glad when they had gone to bed before midnight; he needed the sleep.

  He had a nightmare. He was back on the ship and Aumont had a gun to his head. He pressed the trigger. Jeff yelled like a madman and pummeled him to death with the can of Coke. Jeff woke up, startled. He was gasping for air and he was disoriented for an instant.

  It was day, he was in Bermuda. He heard a loud ringing next to his ear.

  The speaker he had hooked to the phone was in his bed next to his ear. Had the ringing woken him? Was it the nightmare? In his mind, if it was the phone then his subconscious had forgotten – and forgiven him – the last weekend’s events. He prayed it was so.

  He grabbed his glasses and extended a hand to his laptop to press a key. The recorder started just as Ledoux picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Morning, Mr. Ledoux.” The voice was distinctively North American.

  “Don’t use my name, please.”

  “I didn’t know you were so sensitive.”

  “It’s just that this is not my favorite part of the operation.”

  Jeff scribbled operation on top of a single sheet from the hotel stationary. He didn’t want anyone coming in after he was gone to lift the impression of what he had written from the pad.

  “Tell me about it, I’m gonna have to look at your ugly mug.”

  Jeff frowned. He would have to play the tape back to be sure, but the about had sounded an awful lot like aboat. The man was Canadian, Jeff was almost certain of it. He wrote it on the paper.

  “Show some respect.”

  “I don’t need to show you anything. You disposed to do this or not?”

  “Of course.” Ledoux sounded irritated.

  “All right then. Is your guy in town?”

  “He’s supposed to be.”

  “Great. At noon at the Café Lido, it’s at the Elbow Beach Hotel.”

  Is that where you’re staying? Jeff wanted to ask.

  He noted the rendezvous on his paper. He knew he would probably destroy it without having shown it to anyone or having consulted it further, but it helped him visualize the situation.

  The two men hung up and Jeff was about to stop the recorder when he remembered his bug would still be picking up conversations.

  “Who was that?” It was Ledoux’s wife, speaking French.

  “I have to meet someone for lunch. I might have to spend the afternoon also so you two had better exclude me from your plans. Maybe you could take her sailing, you always wanted to show it to her.”

  Jeff stopped recording and turned down the volume of the amplifier as the sounds of a shower running and television cartoons filled the room. He had much to do and not much time to do it in.

  He began with the Canuck on the phone. Using his sound editing software, he extracted the words spoken by the stranger and spliced them one after the other. He saved it in MP3 format. If he could find out who the man was perhaps he could determine what Ledoux was up to.

  All he had on the unfamiliar person was his voice and it could probably be helpful to someone who had better equipment. The techies at CSE would love this one. He once again connected the laptop to the phone line and dialed into the CSE intranet. Having access to his email, he sent the audio file to Bellamy.

  Jeff glanced at his watch; he had just over three hours to take a shower, scope out Café Lido, and find out what gadget he would use today.

  Because his glasses weren’t tinted like the ones he had broken, Jeff had to purchase a pair of plastic flippers, which he clipped on. With a baseball cap lowered onto his forehead he was barely recognizable.

  The interior dining room of Café Lido was packed and the only available tables were on the ocean terrace. Jeff had gotten here early and he sat at a table with a newspaper, scanning incoming customers.

  Driving around to the location he’d had the opportunity to take in the island. Bermuda was part of the British Commonwealth and it was palpable. Cars were driven on the left side of the road, gas prices were ridiculous, and cricket was the sport of choice. It had first been inhabited by English settlers who were shipwrecked by a hurricane in 1609 while heading for Virginia.

  First known as Virgineola and then later Somers Isles, Bermuda took its name from its discoverer, Spanish navigator Juan de Bermudez. It had first served as a steppingstone for the colonization of British American colonies, but had become a military haven during the American Revolution. George Washington had sent letters asking Bermudians to steal gunpowder as some had done to help Americans in the battle of Bunker Hill.

  It was in the American Civil War that Bermuda had made its money. Commerce with the Confederate South had proven lucrative. Bermuda received goods from Nova Scotia, which supported the Union Army of the North, and then sold them to the Confederates in the South. The island then became a tourist destination for wealthy North Americans who wished to escape the harsh winters of the mainland.

  With time, it developed into a major offshore financial center. With one of the highest per capita income in the world, the cost of living in Bermuda was overwhelming. Jeff began feeling bad about always charging everything to his company card. He was sure France wasn’t paying anymore.

  It was 12:05pm when he spotted Ledoux being escorted by a hostess in Bermuda shorts.

  They stopped at a table thirty feet to his right. There was already a man sitting at the table, he didn’t stand to greet his guest. He w
as in his early forties and had a receding hairline. He wondered if he was the Canadian or whether he was the third man they had talked about.

  Jeff raised the shotgun microphone from his lap and set it down on the table, pointing it toward Ledoux. He concealed it with the newspaper which he folded down. The sound was transmitted to a mini tape recorder. He had one earphone, the wire running under his shirt so he could listen to the conversation while not standing out.

  “I thought you said your guy was supposed to join us,” the Canadian man said.

  “Give him a minute.”

  Mention names, come on, Jeff thought as he stuffed some raviolis in his mouth. He felt like the artificial meat burgers of famous American fast food chains, but there were no franchises whatsoever in Bermuda.

  He wondered why there hadn’t been any miniature photographic equipment in the case. He made a note to talk about it with Bellamy.

  “Your family’s good?”

  “Yes, quite.” Ledoux had no desire for small talk. This meeting made him nervous and he obviously had trouble understanding how the other man could be so calm.

  “I drove past your hotel. Nice.”

  “Yours isn’t bad either.”

  “I’m not staying here. I don’t have the money for that. Not yet.”

  Damn, Jeff mentally swore. He wouldn’t be able to find out who the stranger was unless he followed him, which he couldn’t do. But then he would realize it meant he was on a budget. That told him a lot.

  Whatever reason these men were meeting for, it was to be lucrative. But then so was the bribe Ledoux was taking from McDonald Mining Consolidated. Jeff had more questions than answers at the moment.

  A third man joined Ledoux and his colleague. He was tall and slender, flirting with the forties. His skin was amber and given the black hair of his moustache Jeff believed him to be of Latin origins. His sports jacket looked expensive and so did his toupee.

  “Hello, my friend,” he told Ledoux, shaking his hand. His accent confirmed Jeff’s suspicions. “So this is our operations manager?”