Commander-In-Chief

  Noah just stared at the strange woman with wide eyes.

  Kate said, “You aren’t staying here?”

  “No, my dear. I am not a babysitter. You will remain in the care of these men.” She turned and left the room, but as the door shut Kate heard a bolt being slid into place. She checked the door and saw the lock had been removed, obviously so it could be attached to the other side.

  • • •

  Martina Jaeger climbed the stairs out of the saloon, pulling a mobile phone out of her bag on the way. She walked forward on the catamaran’s main deck, just next to the anchor chain, which drooped down into the water from the center of the bow.

  A local number was answered moments later by a man with a Russian accent. She didn’t know the real identity of the man called Popov, but she assumed he was FSB.

  “Yes?”

  “We have them.”

  “Any problems?”

  “Of course not. They are on the boat with the contractors. My husband and I will be returning to Europe immediately.”

  “Very well. Leave Kate Walker’s phone with the men on the boat. I will be there within the hour.” The line went dead.

  Martina turned to find Braam standing close to her. They high-fived on the bow with a grin and went back downstairs to grab their backpacks, then they tossed them onto the dinghy and motored off. The four men on the boat had said nothing to them, nor they to the men.

  As Braam opened the throttle on the dinghy’s engine, he leaned over to Martina. “It’s nice here. I’d like to come back.”

  Martina said, “This job was beneath us. I’ll only come back if they have something for us to do.”

  Braam shrugged a little. “The pay was the same.”

  Martina looked at her brother for a moment. “You do this for the money still? Braam, darling, you really worry me sometimes.”

  43

  Terry Walker looked up from his computer and checked the clock on his wall. It was almost seven p.m., which meant he had only a few minutes before the Robinson landed at the helipad to fly him back home for the evening.

  He rubbed soreness from his eyes and started to close down his computers for the night, but his mobile phone rang. Looking down, he saw that it was Kate’s number. “Hello, darling. I’m on schedule. I’ll be home in half an hour.”

  To his surprise, a man replied. He immediately recognized the Russian accent of Mr. Popov. “We are very sorry to have to take these measures, Mr. Walker, but you forced our hand.”

  “What?” He looked down at his phone, double-checking to make sure it was, in fact, Kate’s line calling. “Where . . . where is my wife?”

  “She is perfectly safe. I promise you that. She will remain so, as long as you comply with our requests.”

  Terry Walker was overcome with a feeling of disbelief. That some joke, some trick, was being played on him. He even coughed out a little laugh. “You’ve got me, Popov. Bloody good joke, mate. I don’t know how or why—”

  He heard a shuffling on the line, then a new voice. Soft, distant, unsure.

  “Dad?”

  Walker’s blood ran cold. “Noah?”

  “They say you have to do a job for them, it will only take you a couple of weeks. You’ll do it, right? Mom and I need you to do it. They wanted me to tell you that.”

  Tears poured down Walker’s face and his voice cracked. “Where’s your mother, Noah? What have they done?”

  “Her mouth is all covered with tape. Dad, I think they are pirates. Tell me you’ll do what they want you to.”

  “Yes, of course. Don’t worry, buddy.”

  There was a knock at the door to Walker’s office. He leapt to his feet, unsure.

  Popov said, “You can answer the door.” He hung up the phone.

  Walker ran to the door, thinking Kate would be on the other side. He flung it open, only to find the man called Ivanov standing there. Two big, tough-looking men stood behind him, their hands held behind their backs.

  The Russian called Ivanov said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Walker. But I need to come in and talk.”

  • • •

  A few minutes later Ivanov and Walker sat in the office, staring at each other across Terry Walker’s desk. The Australian’s eyes were rimmed red, and he’d made no attempt to wipe his tears off his cheeks.

  The two big men remained in the lobby. They hadn’t said a word.

  Ivanov said, “So, Mr. Walker, it is very simple. We know your security setup. You have retinal scanners and fingerprint scanners here that you have to use to log in. You can only make trades and purchases from your office computer so that no one can steal your credentials and operate under your identity. For this reason we cannot take you somewhere else to do this, we must remain here. This makes things difficult, but we have a plan. You and I will live at a private residence here on Tortola. We will simply go to work every day, but you will not work with any other clients. Only our account. You will purchase two hundred sixty-six million dollars a day in Bitcoin in automatic small increments, then you will sell it for dollars in other small automatic increments through your tumbler system. The dollars will be deposited in accounts that I have already established throughout the world. I will enter the information at the end of each transaction to disburse the money.”

  Walker said nothing.

  Ivanov added, “Obviously, the more quickly we conduct this operation, the better it will be for everyone. I am hoping the addition of the money into the marketplace will bring up the market, and we can increase our trading volume.” He smiled. “And shorten the amount of time you are inconvenienced by all this.”

  Still, Walker did not reply.

  “You will also let the staff at Tarpon Island Resort know that your wife and son have been called away to tend to a family illness. They will be well taken care of, but we will hold them until you fulfill your end of the bargain.”

  Slowly Walker rubbed the wetness from his face, and he sat up. “I won’t be staying with my family?”

  “No. They will be held somewhere else.”

  “I will work with you. I will do whatever you want. But I want my family to remain here in the area. I don’t want you shipping them off to Siberia.”

  “Certainly. No one is going to Siberia.”

  “Return them to Tarpon Island.”

  “Out of the question.”

  Walker held firm. “Look. You need my compliance. You made that obvious by the steps you have taken. You will get what you need, but you have to give me something in return.”

  “I’ll give you your family back. Not enough for you?”

  “No, it’s not. I want to see them while I work. You deliver me to them, every single night. I don’t care what you have to do to do it, I don’t care what I have to do.”

  Ivanov said, “My colleague, Mr. Popov, said you would ask for this. Here is what we are prepared to do. I will give you a walkie-talkie. Its range is fifteen miles. You can communicate with your family once a day. If they can transmit to you, then you know they are in the area.”

  Ivanov pulled the device out of his coat and turned it on. He held it out and Walker took it.

  Immediately, he pressed the talk button. “Kate? Kate, are you there?”

  His wife’s voice came through the speaker after a few seconds. She sounded impossibly far away, but Terry wondered if what he was hearing was just her fear. “I’m here, Terry.”

  “How are you? Have they laid a finger on you?”

  He could tell she had been crying. “We are okay. They taped my mouth for a bit, but I’m fine.”

  Terry started crying himself again. “Good. It’s going to be just fine. These men just need me for a couple of weeks.”

  “They told me. Please do what they say.”

  “I promise I will. Where are you?”

  “
I can’t tell you. They told me not to.”

  “Are you sure you are all right?”

  “I’m . . . I’m feeling better than I was, actually. No more of that damn nausea, which is a surprise, considering.”

  Suddenly Walker knew his wife was trying to tell him something. He wasn’t sure what it was. He thought a moment, but then Ivanov motioned for him to wrap up the conversation.

  “I have to go, darling, but we’ll talk tomorrow. They told me I could talk to you every night.”

  To this she just said, “Okay.”

  “I love you, Kate. I’m sorry, but this will be over soon.”

  Instead of his wife, Popov came over the radio now. “You start work in the morning.”

  Terry Walker looked up to Ivanov. The Russian looked upset by having to listen to the conversation between Walker and his kidnapped wife. His face was pale, his eyes narrow, almost as if he was taking it all in for the first time.

  Walker said, “I’ll fulfill my end of the deal, mate. You just see that you fulfill yours.”

  Ivanov’s eyes cleared and he nodded forcefully. “Mr. Walker. I want you to understand that, despite this uncomfortable arrangement we have established, we are still paying you, and paying you an incredible amount of money. When this is all over, when you are reunited with your family, I hope you will take that money and remain quiet about all this. What I know about your operation could ruin you. What you know about us, on the other hand, could realistically only get you killed. You go to the police, and men like Mr. Popov will find you long before the police find us.”

  Walker decided to make one last play to end the kidnapping. “I understand, and I agree totally to your terms. So just let my family out of this.”

  Ivanov’s obvious insecurity about the arrangement disappeared in an instant. Walker saw this man was not going to call the whole thing off. Ivanov said, “Mr. Walker, you are a businessman, after a fashion. You understand the fundamentals of indemnification. Your family, sadly, is insurance for us. Nothing more.”

  Walker saw there was no reason to protest. He told himself he would do everything they wanted him to do. What alternative did he have?

  Walker and Ivanov left the office together a moment later, the two big men following them down to a waiting car.

  • • •

  Terry Walker was taken to a luxury villa on the top of Saint Bernard’s Hill, far on the west side of Tortola Island. He was marched along with three guards through a tiled entryway, past a formal dining room with views out to the sea, and down a hallway to the first-floor master bedroom. Along the way he saw no fewer than six men, all dressed casually. Some were white, some were black, others appeared Hispanic. He was certain few of them, if any of them at all, were Russian other than Popov and Ivanov. He had no idea who they were, but he knew without reservation they were armed, and they wouldn’t hesitate to do the bidding of their Russian masters.

  Walker was frisked thoroughly by a guard, then locked in the master bedroom. He walked around the space and saw all the windows were secured and he heard the rhythmic footsteps of a sentry on the colonnade that wrapped around the outside of his room. He had no doubt another guard was posted outside his door.

  Walker lay down on the bed, facing the rotating ceiling fan above.

  He thought about his conversation with Kate. What had she said? Something about her stomach feeling better, and that this surprised her, considering the situation. She hadn’t said a thing about her stomach since they’d rented a sailboat a few months back. The plan had been for Terry to take a few days off from his work to sail up to Anegada Island, but the trip turned into a disaster. Kate had been so violently ill that they’d had to return the boat after just one day.

  Why would it surprise her she was not feeling the same effects now? Clearly, Terry deduced, because she was not on land.

  And what had Noah said? Something about pirates?

  Yes, Terry realized. His wife and child were clearly being held under guard on a boat.

  He rolled over and put his face in his pillow, curled up into the fetal position. It didn’t matter where they were, Terry told himself, because no one was going to come and help them. The only way he could save his family was by making Ivanov and Popov satisfied that he had fulfilled his end of the bargain.

  • • •

  Andrei Limonov stepped out on the patio off the living room with a bottle of vodka and a glass. He sat next to the infinity pool, looking down the side of the hill, to the lights of West End Bay below. The water in the bay on the far side of the lights was blacker than the sky above.

  He drank two shots of warm vodka in close succession to calm his nerves. He’d just poured his third glass when he saw the headlights of a big SUV approach up the long and winding driveway. The lights disappeared on the other side of the house, and soon Vlad Kozlov joined him by the pool, sitting in a chair on the other side of the little table. The gray-haired Russian poured himself a shot from a glass he’d brought with him from the bar. He drank it down quickly before turning to Limonov. “How did it go with Walker?”

  Limonov said, “He is here. He will comply. We won’t need to use him for very long. I think all the transfers will be complete within three weeks at most. We can then release the family and let them get on with their lives.”

  Kozlov said, “I understand.”

  Limonov added, “This man knows what he’s dealing with here. If he speaks about this with anyone, even years down the road, he understands you’ll kill him.”

  Kozlov did not reply to this.

  Limonov decided he would say no more. Instead, he poured another shot of vodka. While he drank it he wondered if, despite any arrangements already made or understood by all the parties, the Australian locked in the master bedroom of this villa was nothing more than a dead man.

  44

  John Clark climbed into the dinghy tied off on his sailboat just after midnight, leaving Adara Sherman behind on the fifty-two-foot Irwin. He cut engine power when he was still a half-mile off Tarpon Island, which meant he had to paddle for nearly fifteen minutes, but the water in this bay was nearly as placid as a swimming pool, and he had the added benefit of being able to point himself directly at all the lights coming from the big villas on the hillside to guide him to just the right spot for his landing.

  It had been a long while since the ex-SEAL had hit a beach in a small watercraft, but he was certain he’d never conducted a midnight raid on a five-star resort. He had a feeling he could have had Adara call ahead to arrange a piña colada and a grilled lobster under glass waiting for him once he landed on the shore, except for the obvious wrinkle that he was not a guest at the exclusive island retreat.

  He pulled his boat up off the white sand and dragged it under some meticulously maintained foliage, alongside a pair of high-end wooden recliners. Then he passed a little copper bucket where he could dip his feet in water to wash off the beach sand, which he declined to do. Quietly he headed up the pathway on the hill toward his target location.

  When he was halfway up the path he heard a noise ahead of him. He stepped into the sandy area below the mangroves just to his left and ducked down behind a jacaranda. Other than the loud pops in both of his knees as he knelt, he didn’t make a sound.

  Fifteen seconds later two young men passed, both holding rakes. One had a mesh bag over his shoulder, and Clark got the idea they were on their way down to the beach to comb it for any tiny bits of seaweed that might have washed ashore.

  The guests of Tarpon Island didn’t want to wake up to a pristine paradise marred by nature.

  Clark shook his head. As a member of Navy special warfare, he’d swum through swamps so green and gooey he could have written his name on the surface with his fingertip. He was cut from a very different cloth from the average patron of this swanky place.

  When the two men were out of sight he p
ulled a night-vision monocular out of his pocket and used it to lead him the rest of the way up the winding stone path that led directly to the sliding back door of the immense villa.

  There were lights shining on the second floor, he’d seen this from the bay, but the ground floor appeared to be completely dark. John looked for the telltale tiny red lights of a security system or motion detector anywhere on the ground floor, but he saw nothing.

  He tried the glass door and, to his surprise, found it unlocked. He pulled it open a foot, then retreated back to a thick copse of bushes off the patio.

  A few minutes later, when no one came to investigate the breach, he felt certain there had been no security system activated at the villa, so he returned to the back door and entered slowly.

  It took him nearly five minutes of slow, steady movement to make it from one end of the ground floor to the other. The space looked neat but well lived in, but there was no one here at present.

  Eventually he doubled back to the stairs out of the living room, and he took these up, still moving at a near glacial pace. He had his night-vision device in his hands, but he’d taken the time to let his eyes adjust to the low light, so he didn’t use the monocular.

  On the second floor he found a child’s room. Again, it looked like someone was living there now, but they weren’t in the bed or the adjoining bathroom. He’d been told Walker had a young son, and he found himself surprised the kid was out of his bed well past midnight.

  He made his way into the master bedroom next, crept in complete silence, and moved to the bed. Here he did use his monocular to confirm it was empty.

  Another minute to check the second floor more carefully and he was done.

  It was on his second pass around the property that he noticed the shattered wineglass by the couch. That someone had just left it there along with the wine on the tile floor made no sense, unless they had to leave in a hurry.

  Unless it was something bad.

  As he headed back down the stairs, Clark spotted a security camera high on the wall. For a moment he was worried this camera linked with the resort’s security office, but that didn’t make much sense to Clark. He couldn’t imagine some millionaire checking into this chic place with the full understanding he or she would be watched like a research specimen.