The End Game

The riddle was a significant one. Whoever had set up the surveillance on Maria and Liz knew they could ask for a million dollars, or five million dollars, or a bag of diamonds, and the Ottone family would have no problem supplying the demand. Money would mean nothing to them. When Frank Sinatra Jr. was kidnapped by Barry Keenan and his hapless pals, it wasn’t because Keenan loved “My Way.” He was broke and needed money to live on. In Colombia, where kidnapping is the lone growth industry in a sagging economy, where they could practically put up Chamber of Commerce billboards that say MORE THAN THREE THOUSAND RANSOM KIDNAPPINGS THIS YEAR! and no one would blush, since it’s the best investment opportunity in the country.

Most people don’t just stumble into an abduction. If you kidnap someone, you usually have to be willing to kill that person, and if you’re willing to kill someone-in this case, a woman and a child-that means you’re desperate. Barry Keenan wasn’t desperate, he was stupid, and when you’re stupid, you involve more stupid people in your employ and eventually someone breaks, their morality gets the better of them, and the plot all falls apart, as it did with Sinatra Jr. The Colombians and Mexicans are desperate and engaged; a dangerous combination, but one that takes savvy. The Colombian model involves in-depth knowledge of the people you’re pressuring, which made Gennaro’s issue all the more curious. Whoever was on the boat, whoever had contacted Gennaro, whoever needed him to lose, knew he couldn’t go to the authorities, knew somewhere, somehow, that Gennaro had dirt on him that could get his wife and child and himself killed without any secondary exertion at all.

Intimate.

Elegant.

Flawless.

“This is going to be a costly mission,” Sam said, as if he’d been listening in to my thought process, though more likely he was just thinking about how much he was enjoying the fruits of the mission thus far and wouldn’t mind daily update meetings in the suite. “With the kind of intel we’ll be reconning, this will require an absolute DEF-CON Level X-Ray Attachment, right, Mikey?”

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that Sam used to be an actual Navy

SEAL.

“I can pay whatever you need,” Gennaro said. “That’s not a concern.”

I told Gennaro I’d need the names of everyone on the boat with his wife, the names of everyone who sailed with him on the Pax Bellicosa and a simple understanding that from now on, he answered to only one person.

Me.

“We need to make this problem disappear before you ever get on your yacht,” I said. “Eliminate any possibility of problems, and make sure your wife and daughter are safe. When will they be in American waters?”

“Race day,” he said. “Maria gets nervous when I race, so they’ll be right outside Government Cut. She always says if she has to wait for me at the end, she won’t have any nails left. But if she can see me stream past, when everyone is even, it’s easier. I’ve never understood it. It sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

“No,” I said. “Sounds like she just wants to see you perform. You watch the beginning of a two-day race, it’s just the sport, not the competition.”

“Maybe you’re right,” he said.

“She probably doesn’t care if you win or lose, Gennaro,” I said. “And neither does your father.”

Gennaro reached out and shook my hand, and this time it felt like there was an actual body behind the hand.

“I trust you,” Gennaro said.

“I’m going to get your wife and child off that boat alive.”

“I know. I do.”

“Good. Now you tell me something so I know I can trust you: Got any idea who might have blown up that million-dollar yacht this afternoon?” Gennaro nodded once, very slowly. It was enough. “Let me guess. It helped your end game?”

“This isn’t the life I wanted,” he said.

“Who has that, exactly?” I said.

“My wife,” he said. “My daughter.”

“Then we’ll keep it that way.”

We left Gennaro out on the terrace and made our way back to the elevator. Two days wasn’t much time, but then kidnappers don’t generally work with your schedule. Once you have the ability to manipulate time, you have the ability to manipulate emotion, which meant that we’d need to have an idea who the players were long before Gennaro took to the water.

“So,” I said to Sam after we stepped into the elevator, “did you forget the part about the Bahamas?”

“I must have.”

“And the part with the fixed races?”

“Took me by surprise.”

“Because I asked you about that and, as I recall, you said it was impossible.”

“It’s hard to keep up with technology,” Sam said. “Ten, fifteen years ago, you told people they could watch a movie on their telephone they would have sent you to an asylum. It’s a crazy world, Mikey. Ever changing.”

We rode the rest of the way down in silence, partially because I was waiting for Sam to start explaining to me why he hadn’t told me all of the facts he certainly knew outside the sudden advent of great new technological advances in cheating, and partially because I think Sam was trying to figure out what his answers would be.