Ordinarily, after leaving the inlet they would have gone north on the river and returned to their original launching site. Now they simply wanted to get to the mainland as fast as possible, which meant a straight path east. They passed the western tip of the island and made their turn toward Georgetown.
“Oh, shit!” Reuben was staring back toward the island as he heard the boat engine coming. “Row like your lives depend on it,” he bellowed to Stone and Caleb. “Because they sure as hell do.”
Seeing that Caleb and Stone were growing tired, Reuben pushed them out of the way and took up the oars again, pulling with all his considerable strength.
“I think they’re gaining,” Caleb said breathlessly.
A shot hit right next to him, and Caleb joined a cowering Milton in the bottom of the boat.
Stone ducked down as another shot passed by, and then he heard Reuben cry out.
“Reuben?” He turned to look at his friend.
“It’s all right, just a glance, but I’d forgotten how much they burn.” Reuben added grimly, “They’ve got us, Oliver. It’ll be five corpses for those bastards tonight.”
Stone looked toward the wispy lights of sleeping Georgetown. Even though the river was fairly narrow here, with the fog they were still too far away for anyone on shore to see what was going on. He glanced back at the oncoming boat. He could now make out the silhouettes of the two men on board. His mind raced back to the businesslike manner in which the unfortunate Patrick Johnson had been dispatched. Stone envisioned the gun being placed inside his own mouth, the trigger pulled.
Suddenly, the motorboat veered away from them.
“What the—” Reuben said.
“It must be the police boat. Listen,” Stone whispered, pointing south of their position and cupping his ear.
In a relieved voice Caleb cried out, “The police? Quick, get their attention.”
“No,” Stone said firmly. “I want everyone to remain as silent as possible. Reuben, stop rowing.”
Reuben looked curiously at his friend but stopped pulling at the oars and just sat there. “We’ll be damn lucky if they don’t run right into us,” he complained in a low voice.
All of them could now clearly hear the whine of the big engine. Through the fog they saw the green starboard side running lights of the patrol boat passing by less than thirty feet away. The policemen on board wouldn’t have been able to hear the engine of the other boat over their own, nor could they have seen the rowboat, which had no lights. The members of the Camel Club held their collective breath and watched as the patrol boat slowly glided along. When it was finally out of sight, Stone said, “Okay, Reuben, get us to shore.”
Caleb sat up. “Why didn’t you want us to alert the police?”
Stone waited until the sharp outline of land came into view before answering.
“We’re out on a boat we’re not supposed to have, going to a place we’re not supposed to be. A man has been killed and his body left on Roosevelt Island. If we tell the police we witnessed a murder, we’re admitting that we were there. We can tell them we saw two men who then tried to kill us, but we have no proof of that.”
Now Milton sat up. “But you and Reuben were hurt.”
“My hand is only scratched and Reuben’s was just a glance, so there’s no conclusive proof a bullet was involved. Thus, the police are left with the fact that there is a dead body that was transported by boat to the island we were on. We have a boat that could have performed that task quite easily, and there isn’t another such vessel around, since that motorboat will be long gone by the time we explain things. We are persons whom the police might not put much credibility in. So what do you think would be the most logical result of our telling them our story?” Stone looked at each of them expectantly.
“They’d arrest us and throw away the key,” Reuben muttered as he ripped off a piece of his shirt and tied it around the minor wound on his arm. “What I’d like to know is how those two bastards suddenly realized we were on the island.”
“They must have heard us,” Stone said. “Or else they came back for some other reason and noticed something amiss. Maybe I didn’t put the note or the pin back properly.”
“You didn’t say what the pin was,” Caleb noted.
“It was the lapel pin customarily worn by Secret Service agents.”
“You think he was an agent?” Reuben asked as they drifted to shore.
“Presumably, he has some connection.”
When they reached land they swiftly pulled the boat ashore and hid it in an old drainage ditch near the seawall.
Even the unused water tower situated in the middle of downtown had not escaped this push for greatness. At first the town fathers had wanted to put Brennan’s picture and the seal of the president of the United States on the tower. When told that this would neither be legal nor in good taste, they instead painted it in the Stars and Stripes, thereby connecting the man and the town. The three men in the van were also very interested in the nation’s chief executive, for an entirely different reason.
The three men were tall, and possessed the leanness of people unfamiliar with a western diet of saturated fat and sugar. Two were Arab and the other Persian, though they had downplayed their Middle Eastern origins by shaving off their beards and assuming the style typical of college
students—namely, baggy jeans, sweaters, athletic shoes and plenty of attitude. They were enrolled as part-time students at the local community college studying basic engineering. In reality each was proficient in certain areas of science that had to do with barometric pressure, wind deflection, air drag and coefficiency as well as more esoteric subjects like the Coriolis effect and gyroscopic precession.
Two of the men were from Afghanistan and in their late thirties, though they looked much younger. The other man, the Persian, was thirty years old and hailed from Iran. Their professors and classmates believed them to be from India and Pakistan. The three Muslims had found that to most Westerners the term “Middle Eastern” covered more than 3 billion people, from Indians to Muslims, with not much attention given to the nuances of nationality or ethnicity. And it wasn’t as though they were an oddity in Brennan. Over the last decade there had been a large influx of Middle Easterners into the United States, particularly in and near major metropolitan areas. Many new businesses in Brennan were owned by hardworking Saudis, Pakistanis and Indians.
When they reached their apartment, a block from Main Street, someone was waiting for them. The man didn’t look at them when they entered, but continued gazing out the window.