“You’re quite sure? He would have paid in cash. Or perhaps with a wire transfer from the First Caribbean Bank or the MaartensBank here on the island. Say, five, six months ago. Who knows, he may even have come back.”
“I’m sorry,” Michel said again, the specifics starting to alarm him, “I don’t recognize him. And I would if he had been here, of course. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to—”
“Let me show you this one, then,” the mustached man said, firmer. “Another photo. You know how these things sometimes work. It may freshen everything up again.”
The man pulled a second photo out of his breast pocket and laid it on the counter next to the first.
Michel froze. His mouth went dry.
This second photo was of his own daughter.
Juliette, who lived in the States. In D.C. She had married a professor at George Washington University. They’d just had a baby, Danielle, Issa’s granddaughter, his first.
The man watched Issa’s composure begin to waver. He seemed to be enjoying it.
“I was wondering if that refreshed your memory.” He grinned. “If you knew this man now. She’s a pretty woman, your daughter. My friends tell me there’s a new baby, too. This is a cause for celebration, Monsieur Issa. No reason they should ever be involved in nasty business like this, if you know what I mean.”
Issa felt his stomach knot. He knew precisely what the man meant. Their eyes locked, Michel sinking back on his stool, the color gone from his face.
He nodded.
“He’s American.” Michel looked down, and wet his lips. “As you said, he doesn’t look the same now. His hair is closely shaved to his head. You know, the way young people wear it today. He wore sunglasses, no spectacles. He came here twice—both times with local bank contacts. As you said, maybe six or seven months ago.”
“And what was the nature of the business, Monsieur Issa?” the mustached man asked.
“He bought stones, high quality—both times. He seemed interested in converting cash into something more transportable. Large amounts, as you say. I don’t know where he is now. Or how to reach him. He called me on his cell phone once. I didn’t take an address. I think he mentioned a boat he was living on. It was just those two times.” Michel looked at him. “I’ve never seen him again.”
“Name?” the mustached man demanded, his dark pupils urgent and smiling at the same time.
“I don’t ask for names,” Michel said back.
“His name?” the man said again. This time his hand applied pressure to Michel’s forearm. “He had a bank check. It had to be made to someone. You did a large transaction. You had to have a record of it.”
Michel Issa shut his eyes. He didn’t like doing this. It violated every rule he lived by. Fifty years. He could see who these people were and what they wanted. And he could see, by the intensity in this man’s gaze, what was coming next. What choice did he have?
“Hanson.” Issa moistened his lips again and exhaled. “Steven Hanson, something like that.”
“Something like that?” The man now wrapped his stocky fingers around Issa’s fist and squeezed. He was starting to hurt him. For the first time, Michel actually felt afraid.
“That’s what it is.” Michel looked at him. “Hanson. I don’t know how to contact him, I swear. I think he was living off his boat. I could look up the date. There must be a record of it at the harbor.”
The mustached man glanced back around to his friend. He winked, as if satisfied. “That would be good,” he said.
“So that makes everything okay, yes?” Michel asked nervously. “No reason to bother us again. Or my daughter?”
“Why would we want to do that?” The mustached man grinned to his partner. “All we came for was a name.”
Still shaking, Michel closed up his shop and left shortly after. He locked the rear entrance to the store. That’s where he kept his small Renault, in a little private lot.
He opened the car door. He didn’t like what he’d just done. These rules had kept his family in business for generations. He had broken them. If word got out, everything they’d worked for all these years was shot.
As he stepped into the car and was about to shut the door, Michel felt a powerful force push at him from behind. He was thrown into the passenger seat. A strong hand pressed his face sharply into the leather.
“I gave you his name,” Michel whimpered, heart racing. “I told you what you wanted to know. You said you wouldn’t bother me anymore.”
A hard metal object pressed to the back of Issa’s head. The merchant heard the double click of a gun being cocked, and in his panic, his thoughts flashed to Marte, waiting for him at dinner. He shut his eyes.
“Please, I beg you, no….”
“Sorry, old man.” The pop of the gun going off was muffled by the Renault’s chugging engine. “Changed our minds.”
The first thing that came back was the data from Mustang World. The list of new subscribers Hauck had asked for.
Back at home, he glanced over the long list of names. One thousand six hundred and seventy-five of them. Several pages long. It was organized by mailing zip code, starting with Alabama. Mustang enthusiasts from every part of the globe.
From the bank trail he’d found at Dietz’s, it seemed a valid assumption Charles might be in the Caribbean or Central America. Karen told him they’d sailed around there. The bank manager on St. Kitts had told Hauck someone else had been looking for Charles. He’d also have to have access to these banks at some point.
But as he flipped through the long list, Hauck realized Charles could be anywhere. If he was even in here …
Slowly, he started to scan through.
The next thing that he got was a call from Joe Velko.
The Joint Inter-Agency Task Force agent caught Hauck on a Saturday morning just as he had put on a batch of pancakes for Jessie, who was up with him that weekend. When she asked about the red marks on his neck and the stiffness in his gait, Hauck told her he’d slipped on the boat.
“I pulled up some hits for you on that search,” Joe informed him. “Nothing great. I’ll fax it out to you if you want.”
Hauck went over to his desk. He sat in his shorts and T-shirt, holding a spatula as twelve pages of data came rolling in.
“Listen,” Joe told him, “no promises. Generally we might get a thousand positive hits for any one that could actually lead somewhere—and that means merely something we can pass along to an analyst’s desk. We call any correlations to key input ‘alerts’ and rank them by magnitude. From low to moderate to high. Most classify in the lower bracket. I’ve spared you most of the boilerplate and methodology. Why don’t you flip over to the third page?”
Hauck picked up a pen and found the spot. There was a shadowed box with the heading “Search AF12987543. ALERT.”
Joe explained, “These are random hits from some online newsletter the computer picked up. From something called the Carlyle Antique Car Auction in Pennsylvania.” He chuckled. “Real cloak-and-dagger stuff, Ty. You see how it says, ‘1966 Emberglow Mustang. Condition: Excellent. Low Mileage, 81.5. Shines! Frank Bottomly, Westport, Ct.’”
“I see it.”
“The computer picked up the car and the connection to Connecticut. This communication