Just a little. And she struggled against it and the tiny part of me that could think at all through the cloud of caveman terror was sure she would break away and keep coming forward. But she didn’t. She stayed stopped. And then . . .
Bernadette began to rise up into the air.
It’s hard to explain this, but at the time it made perfect sense.
I mean, in my mind she had already turned into some kind of supernatural thing, so yeah—of course she could fly. And I just stood and watched for a couple of seconds before it occurred to me that—wait a minute; really? I turned around and looked at the gunwale. The piece of metal I’d grabbed was the dual controls for the cargo hook. Bernadette wasn’t really flying back to Oz. I had jammed the control lever down to wind in the cable; that was all.
I turned back and took another couple of seconds to watch Bernadette fly anyway. Seriously, why wouldn’t I? It was partly fear that she’d jump down and come after me again—but the other part was just pure old-fashioned fun. She had a big hook stuck in her gut, and it was hauling her up into the air—yay! At last, right in front of my eyes, somebody truly bad was getting what they deserved. That almost never happens.
I finally snapped out of it and reached for the cargo hook’s controls. I’m not sure what I meant to do, and I never got to figure it out, because just when I got my hand on the lever again, a truly big wave came over the transom and knocked me off my feet. I held on to the lever as I fell, until my fall yanked it out of my hand. The boat rolled horribly, the water sloshed over me, the cargo arm swung wildly out over the side of the boat, with Bernadette dangling on the end, and another giant crash of thunder nearly deafened me.
I spit salt water and wiped my eyes clear, but I didn’t need to look too hard to know. We were in danger of broaching to, filling with water, and sinking. All of a sudden, that seemed more interesting than watching Bernadette fly away.
I pulled myself to my feet on a deck now ankle-deep in water, and more pouring on board every second. So I forgot about Bernadette and floundered up to the bridge. Even harder now; my injuries were worse, I was wading through water, and the boat was rolling like a hog in mud. I pulled myself up the ladder as another giant wave slopped over the transom. But we were still floating, and I got to the controls. I turned us back on course, turned on the pumps, and prayed.
It was a very busy forty minutes later that the island came in sight. The storm had not let up, but we were no longer taking on water, and the pumps had done their job. We were going to make it to the dock. The crew Bernadette had summoned would be waiting for us, and then—
Bernadette.
I jerked around and looked back, and she was gone. For just a second I was scared witless—and then I saw the steel cable of the cargo crane. It hung over the side, half slack. When the wave knocked me over I must have jammed the control lever forward, unspooling all the cable and dumping Bernadette into the ocean. I thought it might be a good idea to leave her there. I was pretty sure there were things in these waters that would eat just about anything—great white sharks especially. That made me smile. I felt sorry for the shark that tried to take a bite out of Bernadette.
The crew was waiting on the pier. I didn’t think they’d heard what had happened on Île des Choux; it was too soon. And anyway, they weren’t about to argue with anything Bernadette had told them to do. They gave me a couple of odd looks—I mean, they must have wondered where she had gone. I thought it might be a bad idea to show them. Instead, I just took over her role and ordered them around. We got Monique onto the little cart and across the island to the jet, and half an hour later we were in the air.
The flight to Cape Town took forever. I sat beside Monique the whole time, just watching her. Nothing changed. She was breathing, her heart was beating, and that was it.
An ambulance was waiting when we landed. It took us straight to what was supposed to be the best hospital in South Africa. The doctors took one look at Monique and got very serious looks on their faces. They put her on a gurney and rolled her quickly away,
and I followed, up until we got to surgery. They wouldn’t let me in, wouldn’t even start to operate until I agreed to go sit in the waiting room.
I did. I sat in the waiting room and waited. The magazines were lousy, the coffee from the vending machine was worse, and the smell of medicine and anguish was overwhelming.
I just fucking hate hospitals. I hoped this was a good one.
I waited.
44
In the three and a half weeks since the raid on Île des Choux, Frank Delgado had really had time for only three things: paperwork, interviewing prisoners, and more paperwork. Normally, this was exactly the sort of bureaucratic routine BS that made Delgado crazy. But this time, he didn’t really mind. He had a clear and simple happy thought that kept him going as he waded through endless heaps of official forms, prisoner transfers, interview transcripts, and itemized expense forms.
Riley Wolfe’s mother.
The thought was never far from his consciousness. The first telephone call he’d made when they returned from the Kerguelen Islands was to the surveillance team around Wolfe’s mother. She was still there, the team was ready and waiting, and everything was as it should be. Yes, Riley Wolfe himself had slipped away—again—and was now at large. But Delgado had his mother under constant watch. And Riley Wolfe always came back to her. Always. When he did, he would find the FBI waiting for him.
So Frank Delgado waded manfully through three and a half weeks of soul-crushing tedium, and for the first ten days he had done so with something very close to a smile on his face. But as time passed and Riley Wolfe did not turn up at his mother’s bedside, the almost-smile faded. It was replaced by a worried frown.
It had been too long. Wolfe should have returned by now.
When he did not, Delgado speculated that perhaps he had been injured, or even killed. The only reason to believe he was alive and had escaped Île des Choux during the raid was Rosemond’s sketchy description of the man who had limped down to the dock and taken a boat. Delgado had, of course, done his due diligence and checked the story. All members of the French team were accounted for. None of them had gone back for “medical supplies.”
The story fit Riley Wolfe perfectly. It had to have been him. That meant he had left alive and well, except for the limp. So why hadn’t he hurried back to check on his mother?
Delgado worried at that for a few days. There were plenty of possible reasons, but none of them felt right. Delgado knew only a very little about Wolfe, but he knew that Riley would have made a beeline to his mother as soon as he returned. If he was alive and at liberty, he would head there as soon as possible. That was his pattern. But he hadn’t.
One of the things that made Frank Delgado a successful investigator was his ability to think outside the box. He had solved many puzzling cases in his career by turning assumptions on their heads and looking at things from a different angle. And when he finally did that with this puzzle, he came up with a very troubling thought.
Assume Wolfe was alive and free. No point to the surveillance otherwise. He would have been to see his mother by now.
Assume further that he would stick to his habitual pattern and visit his mother ASAP. He would have been there already.