I held up a hand. “She’s right. So that leaves the rubber launch we rode in to Basseterre. It’s got a motor but the fuel tank is small. We’ll run out before we get halfway to land, but it has sails and charts. Helen, you’re the only one of us who knows how to sail. Grab anything you think we’ll need. Nat, you sound the alarm and pitch a wall-eyed fit until people start getting into boats. A little bit of old-lady hysteria will get them nervous. Mary Alice, provisions. Water and any food you can find that’s packaged. It may be some time until we’re picked up or can get to an island. Leave your phones. No credit cards, but bring all your cash. And leave the passports. From the minute we go over the side of this boat, we’re operating off-grid.”
Nat groaned and Helen looked resigned. Ditching the passports and credit cards would be a pain when we eventually reached land, but anything that could track us was out of the question.
I started to get up, but Mary Alice stopped me. “You realize what this means? We’re burning our identities. Our own identities.”
We looked at each other, our faces grim. Every assignment had brought cover identities, pseudonyms and papers we tossed aside as soon as the job was done. We never traveled or worked under our own names; it was too dangerous. The aliases gave us a buffer, a layer of protection between our civilian lives and the work we did.
And now the work was forcing its way in, unwanted and uninvited.
“We don’t have a choice,” I said simply.
She nodded. “I know. I just . . . Akiko.”
We were silent again. Akiko would get a call, the call. Someone from the State Department, probably. Informing her in short, awful phrases that her wife had been lost at sea.
“Not a now problem, Mary Alice,” I told her flatly.
I got up and this time she didn’t stop me. I grabbed a few bottles from the minibar and put them into the laundry bag from the wardrobe along with the morning’s newspaper and a T-shirt.
My identification and other papers I left. If any scraps survived, they would support the fiction that we had died in the explosion. I pocketed my cash—a few hundred American dollars—along with a tin of Altoids. I stripped the thin neoprene case off of my e-reader and put the case into the same pocket, stopping just long enough to grab a couple of large safety pins out of the vanity kit to secure it closed.
Into the other pocket went the Swiss Army knife I’d brought in my checked bag, but I left that pocket open just in case I needed quick access to it. I grabbed my lighter, heavy and silver, stashing it in my pocket with the knife. There wasn’t much in my jewelry roll, just a few pairs of hoop earrings and some diamond studs, which I put into my ears. They were a carat each, so clear and flawless they looked like fakes, but they’d be a useful source of cash if we needed to pawn them. Also in the jewelry roll was a narrow belt of gold coins that looked like replicas but were Pahlavis, souvenirs from a job in Iran and the only other thing of value I had brought. I would have clipped it around my waist, but it clattered like hell so I handed it over to Helen for safekeeping. She stuffed it into her Birkin with her address book and her pills.
By the time I finished sorting my things and turned my attention back to the others, they were on their feet. The change in posture had changed the mood. They were focused now, serious and businesslike. We checked our watches—some things we like to do old-school—and looked at each other. We were in a small huddle, standing close enough to one another that I could smell Helen’s Shalimar, Natalie’s neroli oil, Mary Alice’s green tea shampoo. A wave of love for them hit me so hard, it nearly buckled my knees.
“Screw it,” I said abruptly. Emotion is a good way to get yourself killed, the Shepherdess had taught us. I hefted the attaché case.
“You’re taking it?” Helen asked.
“It’s better this way. The lower down it is when it detonates, the greater the chance it will take out the whole boat.” I went to the door and took one last look. “See you on the other side.”
“The other side,” they said. Three old women, nodding their heads like the witches in Macbeth. I’d known them for two-thirds of my life, those impossible old bitches. And I would save them or die trying.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I made my way belowdecks, stopping a few times to dodge around a corner when a crew member passed. It seemed to take ages to reach the engine room, but my watch said it had been less than ten minutes. I wasn’t surprised. Time always seemed elastic on a job. Seconds felt like eternities and whole hours could pass in an instant. Heather Fanning’s key card swiped me right where I needed to go, and I slipped into the room, keeping my ears open for the sound of any engineers who might be hanging around. It was after nine and most of them were probably finishing their dinners or hitting the crew bar. A few would be left to supervise that everything was running smoothly, and they could do that by monitoring the computers. There wasn’t much call for them to hang out by the NGL tanks, I realized. It seemed as good a place as any to stash the case, so I wedged it between two tanks, counting on the shadows to conceal it from a casual glance.