The Devil and the Deep Blue Spy Page 6

  Then she heard the scream of a woman coming from a space slightly ahead of her on her left. Leaving the dagger on the sidewalk, she rose and peeked around the corner of the building. The space was a courtyard, a recess between two buildings with another building behind it. A bubbling fountain stood in the center of the space, which was lined with shops bearing signs: PARFUM, FLEURS, APOTHICAIRE. Beside the fountain, Carmen Lamont stared in horror at the body under the bus a few yards in front of her. She stepped forward, toward the sidewalk.

  Numb with shock and sickened as she was, Nora remembered the importance of not letting her quarry see her. She also realized that she was barefoot. Through the fog in her mind, she commanded herself to move. She turned around and ran back to the spot where she’d kicked off her sandals. By the time she’d put them on and hurried across the street behind the bus to the opposite sidewalk, a crowd had materialized at the front of the bus, and the driver and a few passengers had descended to the street. Cars in both directions were stopping, and people were pouring out of the nearest shops and businesses. A woman was screaming repeatedly, but now it wasn’t Carmen, who stood quite still on the sidewalk at the entrance to the courtyard, looking down at the dead man.

  The three children—two preteen boys and a girl of six or seven—had stopped their game to come see what was happening, and the little girl was crying as she stared. Nora had to get out of there, but she was compelled to risk a few moments. She knelt and folded the child in her arms, blocking her view. The girl buried her face in Nora’s shoulder and sobbed. Nora turned to the older of the two boys, who was perhaps thirteen.

  “Votre soeur?” she asked.

  The boy nodded, his eyes wide in shock.

  Nora gently placed the girl’s tiny hand in his and said to him, “Allez à votre maison. À votre mère. Allez!”

  With another swift glance at the accident, he nodded again and called to the other boy. “Sufi!”

  Sufi took the girl’s other hand, and they hurried away up the sidewalk in the direction of Place de la Victoire. When they were gone, Nora stood and walked in the opposite direction, toward the cruise ship docks. Her business with the children had been concealed from Carmen’s view by the bus, and now Nora turned her face away as she walked past her on the other side of the street. There was no chance that Carmen would see her, she decided. The woman still stood frozen, her gaze riveted to the sight between the wheels.

  Unnoticed in the confusion, Nora walked away as the first sirens sounded in the distance.

  Chapter 12

  She couldn’t breathe. She’d made it as far as the next intersection and crossed the street, heading for the waterfront, when her trembling body and hyperventilated breathing demanded that she stop. Her face was wet with tears, she imagined that her complexion was either chalk white or beet red, and she was staggering along like the town drunk. She had to sit down.

  Her first impulse had been to run all the way back to the ship, but she knew that was impossible, that she must keep Carmen Lamont under surveillance. This new stretch of sidewalk was cool and shaded, covered by second-story balconies, and there in front of her was the perfect solution: two little sidewalk tables on either side of a wide doorway to a restaurant. The farther table was occupied by two women, elderly tourists with a teapot, cups, and a guidebook, their shopping bags beside their chairs.

  Nora dropped into a chair at the nearer table, reaching into her bag for her travel pack of tissues. She was blotting her face and inspecting her pale cheeks in a compact mirror when a young man arrived through the open doorway between the tables and placed a menu before her. He also gave her a glass of iced water, which she bolted down as soon as he was gone.

  The menu was in French, of course, but Nora could understand it well enough. This place was a tearoom, with several varieties of tea and coffee, sandwiches, and a selection of desserts. It also had a house special beverage called Café Papillon, which looked to be what she would call Irish coffee. She ordered that when the waiter reappeared to replenish her water glass. He stared off at the bus on the next block for a moment before leaving to fill her order.

  The two women at the other table had noticed the commotion as well, and they were speculating about it as they sipped their tea. A few other people, employees and customers, came out of the restaurant behind her to gawk briefly before shaking their heads and going back inside.

  She drank the second glass of water more slowly, gazing up the street at the crowd. The police had arrived, and soon an ambulance joined them. A lone policeman was stationed at the intersection to redirect traffic from the block. Carmen still stood in the same spot, staring. Behind her on the sidewalk, a uniformed officer knelt beside the dagger, inspecting it without touching it—that would be the job of the scene-of-crime people later on.

  Nora relaxed back in the chair. Her respiration and heartbeat had slowed, and the shaking in her limbs had ceased. Now that she was somewhat calmer, she wondered if leaving the knife there had been wise. Probably: Anyone on the bus might have seen her if she’d picked it up, and she would have become a person of interest instead of the innocent bystander she hoped she’d appeared to be.

  She hoped that nobody had noticed her, and she hoped there were no CCTV cameras on the block. She scanned the street but couldn’t see any. She figured she was safe waiting here for Carmen Lamont: No sane person who’d just pepper-sprayed a man and caused his death would sit down in plain sight a block away from the scene and order—

  Irish coffee. The waiter lowered the steaming, frothy mug to the table, and she could smell the whiskey through the whipped cream. She smiled at him and took a long swallow. The warmth of the strong coffee and the even stronger liquor surged through her, reviving her. Now she could think; now she could confront the terrible truth.

  She’d just killed a man.

  Whatever he’d been up to, he’d been up to no good: Nora had thought he was a murderer or a thief or a rapist. Did that justify the pepper spray? Yes, of course it did. Carmen Lamont was alive and unharmed.

  But Nora had just killed a man.

  There was no getting around it. She now had a total of eight kills, what her husband and his colleagues would call sanctions. Well, no, not really—a sanction was preordered and premeditated, and this had been an accident. But the result was the same. Jeff had told her it never got easier, and he would know. Nora had no idea how many people her husband had killed, and she’d never asked because she knew he didn’t care to think about them. She didn’t care to think about her own list, either, and yet…

  And yet she wondered who he was. Could he have been a hired assassin? Nora could think of two people aboard the Tropic Star who might want Carmen dead: her husband and his mistress. Had one of them employed this man? A quickie-divorce-by-murder? It was a possibility.

  This mission was going sideways. She and Jeff had been assigned to find a notorious international terrorist, and she’d veered off in a new direction, becoming involved in the intimate details of Claude Lamont’s marriage. Verbal abuse, physical abuse, infidelity: These were all hot buttons for Nora, but that didn’t justify endangering the op.

  Still, professional or not, she’d already made her decision to protect Carmen Lamont, no matter the consequences. It was entirely possible that Claude was trying to kill his wife, and Nora wasn’t about to let that happen. Jeff could tackle Claude and Diablo for the CIA. Nora was going to stick with Claude’s immediate victim—and she’d have to keep an eye on Melanie Dunstan as well.

  She’d learned another lesson today: When you’re tailing someone in a café, always pay cash. The mere hindrance of waiting for a credit card could mean the difference between success and failure. If she’d been unable to catch up with Carmen and her would-be attacker…

  She took out her phone and paused, staring down at it. She wanted to call her husband, but he was off on a hike somewhere; he wouldn�
��t be able to do anything at the moment. Hamilton Green? Their handler must be informed, but Nora hesitated to call him, and she knew why. She had the distinct fear that Ham would find fault with what she’d done, that he might not approve of her focus on the abused wife rather than the husband who could lead them to their real prize. Ham wouldn’t criticize her—he’d never done that, and she was sure he never would—but she’d sense his disappointment, and that was something she couldn’t bear right now.

  In the end, she called Ralph Johnson. She told him what had occurred, and he immediately took charge, telling her not to worry, that he’d contact Jeff and Hamilton Green. He ended the call before she could explain further, but she felt better anyway. Jeff and his colleagues faced challenges like this every day; they knew what to do in these situations. Nora was comforted by the thought.

  But she had one big question now, and she intended to ask Jeff when she saw him again this afternoon. She put away her phone and finished her coffee just as Carmen Lamont passed by on the sidewalk across the street. Carmen wasn’t window-shopping now; she stared straight ahead of her as she moved. Nora could see that she was upset, preoccupied, which was to be expected. Nora wondered if the woman had ever seen a dead body, or if this had been her first. She wondered how much Carmen knew about her husband.

  Nora paid her bill—with cash—and followed Carmen back to the Tropic Star.

  Chapter 13

  Jeff had a secure CIA-issue smartphone that Nora envied. She made a mental note to ask Ham Green to give her one on future missions—assuming there were any future missions. She wasn’t exactly doing a bang-up job with this mission. Still, she figured that she deserved an up-to-date Company phone instead of the stripped-down relics they’d given her so far, unofficial part-time employee that she was.

  Jeff also had a secure electronic tablet, and it was on this screen that she watched the local news. She sat at the dining table in their cabin, the remains of their room-service dinner pushed to one side, trying to follow the newscaster’s rapid French. Jeff was off somewhere, spying on the Lamonts. He and Nora had dined in the cabin because Nora didn’t feel sociable after this afternoon’s events. He’d left the cabin as soon as he’d finished his meal, giving Nora his tablet to learn whatever she could about the accident. The Lamonts had dined at the captain’s table tonight, so surveillance was relaxed, but now Jeff was on the job again.

  Jeff’s afternoon had been scenic but uneventful. Claude Lamont and the Dunstans had stayed together throughout the bus rides and walking tours, including the steep climb to the impressive waterfalls below the volcano. They’d been perfectly friendly all afternoon, as far as Jeff could determine. Melanie Dunstan and Claude hadn’t so much as glanced at each other in any way but civilly, and Brian Dunstan was evidently unaware of their relationship. Jeff’s knee had made it through the nature walks just fine, and he’d taken lots of photos to show her. But he was more concerned about Nora’s afternoon.

  She’d broken down in the cabin when she told him, and he’d held her while she sobbed. She remembered the little girl sobbing in her arms, and that had been the worst part of the incident. Well, the second-worst part: Nora had killed a man.

  “No,” Jeff had assured her. “No you didn’t, Pal. You protected a vital figure in an ongoing Company operation—an operation that could have important consequences for America and any number of other countries. If that guy had been successful today, Claude Lamont would have left the cruise and gone home, and we’d have missed the opportunity to find Diablo. That’s the truth, Pal, and that’s how you have to think of it.”

  He’d called Ham Green, who already knew about the accident from Ralph, and Ham had briefly spoken with Nora, essentially repeating what Jeff had just told her. Then Jeff had ordered dinner in the cabin—chicken Florentine, one of her favorites, with a bottle of white wine—and she’d dined in her bathrobe. Nora had finished everything, plus dessert, despite her conviction that she wouldn’t be able to eat a bite. She was learning that shock, fear, and other messy emotions didn’t necessarily kill the appetite of an active CIA agent. There simply wasn’t time for it.

  The newscaster droned on in French about some local government scandal, then a house fire in Basse-Terre that had killed three people. Nora was giving up hope of seeing anything about her ordeal when the screen abruptly filled with footage of the bus and the crowd around it. She leaned forward, straining to understand the narration, and translating it to herself as:

  “Marcel Arvide, thirty-eight, a resident of Martinique, was killed by a city bus in downtown Pointe-à-Pitre this afternoon when he apparently tripped on a curb and fell into the street, according to witnesses. Police were attempting to notify any family he might have had, but no relations have been found so far. The authorities in Martinique have a record of him, however: He served two sentences in prison there for assault and attempted murder. A knife was recovered at the scene, and an ongoing investigation will seek to determine the exact cause of Arvide’s accident. In other news…”

  Nora shut down the tablet. There’d been no mention of the pepper spray, which suggested that it hadn’t been detected yet—or that the police were keeping this detail to themselves while they investigated further. But there’d definitely been no mention of a mysterious woman, possibly a tourist, near the scene of the accident, and no CCTV camera footage. Nora took that as good news. Everyone would have been focused on the body, and she’d crossed the street behind the bus and left the scene almost immediately. If the three children were found and questioned, they’d say a lady on their side of the street had told them to go home; they hadn’t noticed her until she’d knelt before the little girl. And Carmen Lamont hadn’t seen her at all.

  The steward arrived and took away the dinner tray. Nora was reattaching the half-empty pepper spray canister to her key ring when her husband returned to the cabin.

  “They’re all tucked in for the night,” he said, “unless Claude is having another rendezvous with Mrs. Dunstan. If so, good luck to them—it’s not part of our op.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Nora said.

  He sat across from her at the table. “What do you mean, Pal?”

  She shook her head. “When I got away from the bus this afternoon, my first thought was that I should go up to Carmen, introduce myself, and tell her everything I know.” Jeff’s look of alarm made her hurry on. “Don’t worry, darling; I didn’t, but I decided to ask you about it when I got back here. We’re assuming she knows about Diablo, but she doesn’t know about the attempt on her today. Shouldn’t I tell her about that? For her own safety, if nothing else? That man with the knife—he was a criminal, a violent felon. Who’d hire a man like that to kill Carmen Lamont? Her husband, that’s who!”

  “No, Pal,” Jeff said. “We can’t jeopardize the mission.”

  Nora shrugged. “Well, I’m going to keep a close watch on Carmen, anyway. If anything were to happen to her now, I’d feel responsible for it, and I don’t want that on my conscience—”

  The buzzing from elsewhere in the room cut her off. Her phone was on the night table. She rose and went to retrieve it, glancing at the readout: Ralph Johnson.

  “Hello, Ralph.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Baron. I briefed Mr. Green on the trouble you had today. I hope you’re feeling better.”

  “I’m getting there, thank you.” She placed the phone on the dining table and resumed her seat. “Jeff’s here with me, so I’m putting you on speaker. Do you have any news for us?”

  “Yes,” Ralph said. “Brian Dunstan is a minor executive with a major hotel chain based in London—he’s the buyer for their kitchen and housekeeping supplies. He and Melanie met Claude Lamont and a sales rep from Compagnie Mistral over dinner at Largo in London last year, and the hotel chain now uses Mistral products exclusively. They hit it off, and now the Dunstans have dinner at Largo with Claude Lamont whenever he’s in London on busin
ess trips. Claude told them about his Caribbean cruise over dinner a couple of months ago, and he suggested that they should do it, too, so they did—but they promised not to crowd Claude and his wife on the cruise ship.”

  “Wow,” Nora said. “How did you find all this out?”

  Ralph produced his trademark chuckle. “One of our contacts in London knows a talkative waiter at Largo.”

  Nora remembered the talkative receptionist who’d told Jeff’s Puerto Rico contact all about the private banker who’d met Claude at El Morro. “So the rumor is true: The CIA has ears everywhere!”

  “Well, sure,” Ralph said. Then his voice became serious again. “Are these people involved in your assignment?”

  Jeff joined the conversation. “We don’t know, Ralph. What we do know is that Claude is stepping out on Carmen with Melanie Dunstan.”

  Ralph chuckled again. “Oh, I see.”

  Nora’s ordeal this afternoon was catching up with her. Stifling a yawn, she rose from the table. “Ralph, I know you and Jeff want to discuss all your other ongoing ops, and I need to sleep. Before I go, any word on the girl from El Morro?”

  “Not yet, but they’re looking for a facial match with your photos. We’ll let you know if we find anything.”

  “Thanks. My friend in Lyon should have information soon, too, maybe tomorrow. Good night, guys.”

  “Good night, Mrs. Baron.”

  Nora leaned down and kissed her husband as she passed him on her way to the bed across the room. She removed her robe and crawled in between the sheets. Jeff raised the phone to his ear as he switched off the cabin’s overhead lights.

  The memory of the bus and its screeching brakes kept her awake for a while, but sheer exhaustion soon defeated it. She drifted off to the low murmur of Jeff’s voice, awakening only briefly, when the ship’s horn blasted as they sailed at midnight. By then, Jeff was asleep beside her. She curled up against him and sank back into mercifully dreamless oblivion.