Exposure (9 page)

She paused. “So, what was in the package?”

He grimaced.

“Not what...”

Helene swallowed.

“The package was a person? You were involved in a kidnapping? Who was it?”

He shrugged.

“I don’t know and I didn’t ask. I never even saw his face. But it was a man. Oldish guy, I’d guess by the way he moved. The other three picked him up, like I said, and they’d already bagged him by the time they got him on the chopper. We finished the op and I flew him up to Nevada. We were met my some local muscle and then we went our separate ways. I never saw any of them again.”

Helene processed the information.

“So the only thing we’ve got to go on is when and where this happened. Does that give us anything?” she said hopefully.

“Maybe,” he said, wrinkling his face in concentration. “But the thing is I
did
know one of the other guys on the op: Bill Bailey. We’d met on a bi-lateral training mission some years back. Of course, we didn’t let on because it was obvious that would have been a major no-no: no name, no pack-drill. But, yah, I know one of the guys.”

Helene sat back.

“Good. The fact that he’s a friend is a definite bonus.

Charlie shook his head impatiently.

“I didn’t say he was a friend,” he corrected her. “I said he was someone I’d met through training.”

Helene frowned.

“Will he help us? Can you trust him?”

“No,” he said shortly. “Actually, Bill’s what the old man would have called a chiselling little weasel.”

He examined her worried expression.

“But don’t worry about it: I can handle him – if I have to.”

Helene breathed out slowly. “Then that’s where we start,” she said. “Do you know where he is?”

“Not exactly, but I think I know how to find him.”

Helene waited impatiently.

“And? Are you going to let me in on the secret?”

“Well, I might just do that, Helene,” he said smugly. “But first answer me one question...”

She rolled her eyes.

“Fine. Go on.”

“Did you pack a bikini in that grab bag of yours?”

Chapter 7

The sun was hot and Helene was grateful for the protection of her sunglasses. She was still squinting in the bright light of day, having spent too many hours cooped up on a plane. Although really she had no grounds for complaint, having just travelled first class.

She caught sight of herself in the plate glass window of the arrivals lounge and had to smile. With the sleek, blonde French plait and designer leisure wear, her own mother wouldn’t have recognised her. She’d travelled under the name Eliza van Cartier and somehow Charlie had arranged a fake passport, and first class ticket worth several thousand pounds.

‘Miss van Cartier’ had enjoyed the free champagne and smoked salmon and had slept comfortably for most of the journey from LAX, where they’d changed planes.

Charlie had travelled separately under the name Oliver Parrick, a businessman from Perth. They hadn’t spoken since Heathrow the day before. It was better to minimise the number of opportunities for them being seen together, he’d said.

Helene hadn’t minded that bit: it was easier for her to concentrate when his clear, blue eyes weren’t boring into hers.

After two days of preparation, they’d hiked out of the valley and caught the bus to the nearest town and from there, travelled on to Glasgow. Charlie had left her to go shopping – with a fake credit card – and had also left specific instructions on what to buy: a good bag, expensive clothes and a wig that changed her appearance.

It had been more fun than she’d expected. And if it hadn’t been for the squirming anxiety she felt constantly in the pit of her stomach, the whole experience would have been a gas.

Charlie hadn’t said what his plans were, but when they’d met up again he was carrying the fake passports and had dyed his own hair dark brown. In fact with the charcoal grey suit he wore, she’d nearly walked past him in the street. Just something about the smile on the stranger’s face had made her look twice. He was also wearing brown contact lenses.

Helene hadn’t wanted to know how he’d got the fake passports, although she could have made a shrewd guess, but she’d insisted on paying for her ticket – when Frank had paid her, of course. And when it was safe for her to access her bank account.

But he’d refused.

“The tickets are on me: my pleasure.”

Helene was insistent.

“No, I must pay you. I mean: I want to keep a reckoning of everything so I can pay you back when I can.”

She didn’t want to be in his debt.

He’d smiled, rather patronisingly.

“It’s not a problem, Helene, because I didn’t pay for the tickets.”

He’d sounded like he was explaining to a child.

“Oh. Then how?” said Helene, feeling rather dim.

He sighed theatrically.

“I hacked into the air miles accounts of a couple of people who spend way too much time travelling by plane. They won’t even notice. Satisfied?”

Helene rather wished she hadn’t insisted on knowing, but she couldn’t stop herself from demanding the truth. It was an ingrained habit, after all.

“And the clothes? The money?” she pressed.

His lips twitched as if he were trying to suppress a smile.

“Trust me when I say you don’t owe me a penny.”

Helene wasn’t happy but further probing had got her nowhere.

“I can’t be involved in anything illegal,” she had said loftily.

He’d laughed outright at this.

“Fraud isn’t illegal? Obtaining money from Frank under false representations – that’s not wrong? Helene, you’re probably on the FBI’s ‘Most Wanted’ list by now.”

In the end she’d just had to give in, with rather poor grace.

Once in the airport arrivals lounge, Helene had slipped into the women’s bathroom and changed out of the expensive clothes. She pushed them into a supermarket carrier bag and stuffed them in a bin. Pity. It was much harder to leave behind the very desirable It-bag that she’d so enjoyed carrying. Her grab bag was shabby by comparison, which was exactly the look she was now going for.

She’d arrived first class as Eliza van Cartier and now she was leaving cattle class with her new identity as April Summers, an aging hippy chick with cut off denim shorts, long, untidy hair that made her look like Goldie Hawn and tie-dyed shirt.

Nobody gave her a second glance as she lounged in the sunshine at Honolulu’s international airport.

Released from the confines of the aeroplane, she enjoyed the feeling of freedom that the softly scented air and sun’s warmth gave her.

Whilst she waited for Charlie, she was fascinated to see the parade of humanity that passed before her: the young and hopeful, the wealthy elderly visiting from all over the world to enjoy the gentle climate, the astonishing beauty of the native Hawaiians, the corpulence of some of the older ones, and a stream of tanned young men, casual in shorts and T-shirts.

Charlie was one of them: he was now dressed as a surfer dude in baggies and flip-flops and sported a fresh buzz cut. It suited him. She was glad to see that his eyes were back to his natural blue. But she had no idea from where he’d managed to acquire the seven foot surfboard in a battered carry bag. She knew better now than to ask.

“Hi there, April,” he said, casting his eyes up and down her new identity, approval in his voice.

She shifted uncomfortably.

“So where next?” she said.

He shrugged as if the answer was obvious.

“We find Bill.”

“I guessed that bit,” said Helene, thinly. “But where do we start? I mean, he might not even be using the same name by now.”

Charlie looked unconcerned.

“Bill wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box; that’s one of the reasons he was chosen for the grunt work, I think. He was always mouthing off about spending his fee on ‘fast cars, fast waves and fast babes’ – his words, not mine. He was a bit of a tosser,” he said thoughtfully. “I got the impression he reckoned he was a Big Wave rider; it was probably just hot air. But he did talk about coming to live on the Islands when the job was over.”

Helene felt depressed despite the beauty of the day. It was a needle in a haystack, but… and it was a big but… she had lasted this long as a journalist for a reason: she was good at finding people who didn’t want to be found. It was just a case of asking the right people the right questions. And a question of time. She didn’t know how much they had of that.

“Then I guess we should start with the mother lode: Waimea Bay,” she said.

He looked at her with surprise.

“Yeah, that was my guess, too.”

I wasn’t born yesterday, kiddo, she smiled to herself.

The fact was that she’d spent enough time at her cottage in Cornwall to have met any number of surf dudes: men who never grew up, never shouldered any responsibility that took them away from the sea. Their lives were ruled instead by the tide times and weather charts: when a low pressure rose over the Atlantic and a powerful swell arrived on the shore, jobs, homes, girlfriends and children were left behind for the call of the waves. Many capable young men – and not so young – spent their summers in the West Country and their winters in warmer climes, chasing the waves, the restless waves.

Helene understood the impulse all too well, although it wasn’t surf that called her.

She wondered what happened to them as they grew older. What was attractive about a beach bum at 20 or 30, maybe even 40, was sad at 50. What did an old surfer do – paddle away?

But even the surf rats, the grommets who’d never yet left Cornwall dreamed of the big one: Waimea Bay, pumping a winter swell of 30 plus feet. Only a few were brave enough, or foolhardy enough to surf that monster.

She knew that, unlike Britain, Hawaii had no continental shelf, which meant as the swell got near to the Islands the weight of water was rapidly forced upwards, creating a massive, hollow wave that broke onto a razor-sharp reef. If you missed your footing or got munched by the blow out, the coral was waiting to tear holes out of your frail carcass of soft skin. It was the Holy Grail of surfing.

That was in the winter. In the summer, the islands were a tourist haven for travellers from mainland States, Japan and Australia. Right now, that included April Summers and her toy boy Wes Oaks.

They hopped on the dusty bus with a load of other surfers and beach Bettys to get to Oahu’s surf Mecca: Waimea.

The journey took over two hours but by listening, chatting, blending in, they worked out that all the serious surfers hung out at either Sunset and Turtle Bay or Haleiwa. From there the surf wannabes could chill out, listen to the weather reports and hang out with the old guys who’d surfed Waimea in the sixties and some who even remembered Duke Kahanamoku, although as he’d died in 1968, Helene reckoned it was a bit like saying you’d seen the Beatles playing the Cavern before they got famous.

Parts of Oahu fitted Helene’s idea of a perfect Hawaiian island. Other parts were built up and touristy: tower block hotels blotting the perfect sunset. It must have been paradise once.

Surfers didn’t like to think about this: they liked to think they were free spirits, bucking the trend of nine to five, but they were actually part of a huge, multinational industry powered by petro-chemicals and the worldwide thirst for oil. All those super light weight thrusters and easy-to-carry longboards: they were made from fibre glass, polyurethane and epoxy resin – by-products from the oil wells that pumped across the Middle East, 9,000 miles away. And although neoprene wetsuits weren’t much used in Hawaii where the ambient water temperature was a constant 23
o
C, neoprene was the material that allowed European and US surfers to take to the waves all winter where the water is just 7
o
C or 8
o
C. You could even buy neoprene balaclavas or helmets to help cope with ice cream headaches or ward off surfer’s ear – so long as you didn’t mind looking like the Gimp.

As the bus rattled down the Kamehameha Highway, Helene felt a sense of well-being that was at odds with the unfeasible task that lay ahead. She couldn’t help it: the warm air, the light hearted people, the beauty of the island: I’d have to be a miserable old bag not to feel its charm, she thought.

Charlie lounged at the back of the bus, the very picture of the surfer dude who had little luggage and no worries.

Even so, by the time they stepped off the bus at the small town of Haleiwa, they had a rough plan.

The driver told them that ads for spare rooms would be pasted on the central lettings board.

“Don’t take a room at Madam Jo’s,” the driver yelled out of the window as he drove away, “not unless you want to be kept awake all night by the banging!”

Helene wondered if he meant it was near a building site: except that builders didn’t work at night, not even in Hawaii. She soon learned that Madam Jo’s was the local knocking shop.

“It could be a good place to gather intel,” Charlie whispered in her ear. “You know, research.”

She threw him a supercilious look but he just grinned at her, unabashed. He turned back to the board, still smiling, and made a show of studying it carefully.

Several of the ads were house shares which would have given them good access to info, but not the privacy that they were going to need – especially as Helene was keen that no-one discovered she was wearing a wig. She wanted to hide the laptop, too. Although lots of younger surfers had a cheap laptop so they could Skype their parents and face-time their friends on networking sites, it didn’t fit in with Helene’s image – and more privacy just meant fewer questions.

Eventually Charlie pointed out something that could be suitable: Double room for rent in quiet home. $185 a week, in advance.

They got directions and found they could walk to the location. The house was in one of the quieter streets, just behind a shaper’s shop, and minutes from the harbour.

The woman renting the room was an elderly Hawaiian momma, with thighs like a couple of redwood canoes and vast swathes of flesh engulfing her stern face. Helene thought she saw a likeness to the Easter Island carvings.