By edRogers
[Reviewed here on the novel’s publication day, October 6, 2018: “Coming soon to a Barnes & Noble store near you?”]
They tied up at the same pier they had left from three weeks before. Charlie found walking on dry land again strange to him at first. A person got used to the rolling of the boat. With each step back on land, he would be waiting for the roll.
Once paid by Mr. Tai, they went their separate ways. Edgar and Rufino were staying in a fancy hotel in Jaco, about 30 or 40 miles south of Puntarenas. It was a party town, lots of bars and women of the night. They asked Charlie if he wanted to join them, but he turned down the invitation. He promised to let them know about the boat in a couple days.
He called Margot and she picked him up at the bar down from the hotel he had checked into.
“How was your trip?” she asked.
With a half-laugh, Charlie said, “It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I should have pictures of everything you asked for: the sharks being killed, the drugs coming on board, and the offloading of the drugs. The good news is that Edgar and Rufino want to buy me out, so I believe this is a good time to walk away.”
“I’m sorry, Charlie, but I need you to make one more trip.”
“Wait until we look at the pictures. If I’m right, I have the finning of the sharks and the drugs coming on board and being delivered to another boat. If the pictures turn out good there isn’t anything else I can do by going back.”
“Charlie, I have been in touch with the American D.E.A. They want you to place a tracking device on the next shipment of drugs.”
“My God, Margot! Are you trying to get me killed? The small cameras I can hide and get off the boat without anyone the wiser. When the drugs leave our boat, we return to fishing, with someone else moving the drugs around. Anyone that finds that tracking device will know where it came from, and by the time those drugs reach their destination I’ll still be at sea where anything can happen.”
Margot felt lost. “Charlie, a couple of presidents have come and gone since finning was alowed to start back up, but the only thing that has really changed is how they act to the outside world. To the world, Costa Rica is a haven for environmentalists, a country that puts the environment first and profits second. Nothing could be less true. It seems as though every environmental law in the country has a loophole big enough to drive a truck through. And even when caught, no one goes to jail. That is why this is so important.”
She saw she was losing him – Charlie didn’t care about anything but staying alive. “Let’s speak of all this later,” Margot said, and reached over to put her hand on Charlie’s leg. His shorts rose at her touch. “A cold drink and a hot bath will make you and me both more comfortable. I’ve missed you, Charlie.”
The picture in Charlie’s head kept switching between Margot’s naked body straddling him and Rufino and Edgar throwing him to the sharks. He kept trying to convince himself that once she saw the pictures there would be no discussion of him going back to sea.
She turned onto the road that went up the mountain to her house, pressing the remote control as she neared the gate to open it. By the time she had parked and closed the gate, Edgar and Rufino were out of Charlie’s mind and only the beautiful woman beside him remained.
Inside the house, she headed to the bathroom. “Make us a couple of drinks and I’ll start the water.”
Charlie mixed a couple of rum and cokes, cut a lime, ran it around the glasses’ rims, and dropped it in. By that point, there was nothing on his mind that didn’t have something to do with having sex.
He carried the drinks into the oversized bedroom. The tub was close to a large picture window that looked out over the jungle garden in back of the house. It was the biggest bathtub Charlie had ever seen. He was six feet tall and he could lie back in the damn thing. There was no question about the design; the tub was built for two people. The faucets hung over the middle of the tub and out of the way of the bathers.
The bath was still filling as he approached. Margot had added bubble bath, and white bubbles were just reaching her breasts. Her red nipples against her pale skin were hard and stood straight out. They would rise from the bubbles with each breath, like beacons calling a sailor home. He handed her a drink and she ran her other hand up his shorts and gripped his erection. There was a narrow shelf at each end of the tub. Charlie took her drink back and placed both drinks on the shelf.
An hour later, he lay at one end of the tub with drink in hand and still breathing hard. A couple of times during the preceding hour he had thought he was going to drown. The floor was covered with water. He fell back on his end of the tub breathing hard. Margot had her foot between his legs, her toes playing with him. Charlie was thinking, If she’s looking for a second go, it will have to wait until I can breathe again.
He brought the glass to his lips and slowly sipped it. He could see Margot over the top of the glass. She was smiling and still had a glow about her. God, what a beautiful woman!
She stood and reached for a king-size towel. Most of the bubbles were gone due to their encounter. However, some still clung to her breast and gorgeous ass. He followed her every move.
“I’m going to get some wine,” she said. “That Coke is just too sweet. When you finish. come in the living room and we’ll talk.”
The mood had changed, and just as he was getting his second wind. He finished his drink slowly, in no hurry for the conversation to come.
Margot opened the refrigerator and removed the bottle of Chardonnay. She had picked up her robe on the way through the bedroom and now dropped the towel and put it on. She picked the towel up and hung it over the back of a chair on her way to the couch. She was both happy and kicking herself for getting involved with Charlie. She knew how dangerous putting that tracking device on the drugs would be, but it had to be done, and Charlie was the only one who could do it.
Three days after Charlie had gone to sea, she had contacted the D.E.A. through the American Embassy in San Jose. The next day, two agents had rung the buzzer at her gate.
“Ms. Rosenburg?” A man held up his ID in front of the camera. “I’m Agent R.J. Morris, and this is Agent A.T. Nowak. We’re here in regards to your contact with the Embassy.”
“Please come in,” she said and pressed the button that opened the gate.
“Come and sit down. Can I get you something to drink – coffee, Coke, water, or something harder?”
“We’re fine, thank you,” Agent Nowak intoned. They both picked the couch, which left her in the chair across from them. Agent Nowak took out his notebook and asked, “Ms. Rosenburg, you said upon your contact with the Embassy that you had information about a drug ring. Can you clarify that for us.”
She took a deep breath, knowing it was the moment of no return. Once she told them what she was doing, there would be no going back. “I’m sure you know by now I’m an environmentalist?”
Agent Morris spoke, “We know your background. You have made a few enemies within the Costa Rican government.”
Margot smiled. “You know what they say about breaking eggs and such. However, I believe this is much larger than anything I’ve ever done before.”
At that point, Agent Morris took out his notebook too. “Could you give us the highlights of what you believe you have found.”
“I have been fighting to stop shark finning for ten years, with very little progress. A lot of government officials are in bed with a Taiwanese crime family. I believe that that organization is using the shark finning not only to make money from that product but also to hide an international drug operation.”
“What proof do you have?” Agent Nowak asked.
“At the moment I have nothing but rumors, but I have a friend on one of the boats working for Mr. Tai. He’ll be bringing back pictures of the drugs. I wanted you to be ready to move when he returns.”
Agent Morris closed his notebook. “Ms. Rosenburg, if we were in the States, we could do all kinds of things with just the pictures. We could set up cameras, wiretaps, and even search Tai’s warehouse – all that with just the pictures. Here it doesn’t work that way. We are guests, and not very welcome guests at that. The U.S. gives Costa Rica a great deal of money in the war on drugs, but we have limited powers. They can’t kick us out for no reason but unless we have hard concrete evidence we can’t do anything.”
Margot walked to the tap and ran a glass of water. Coming back, she asked, “What do you need in order to get into Tai’s warehouse?”
Agent Nowak looked at Morris and smiled. “We would need a tracker placed on the shipment. With that, we could follow it right to Tai. They’ll have to give us a warrant.”
Margot drank her water and wished it was rum. “I’ll talk to my friend, but what you’re asking is very dangerous for him. Things can go wrong, I need your guarantee that you’ll have a boat or helicopter close by to get him off that boat if things go bad.”
For a few moments you could hear a pin drop, and then Agent Morris spoke. “We can do that. We’ll have a Coast Guard helicopter sitting on Coco Island and a boarding party on a boat waiting for the tracking beacon to start. The second that happens, we will move in and arrest everybody on the boat. That way, your friend’s cover will stay intact and he’ll be safe.”
…Charlie came into the living room with only his shorts on. Margot smiled at how brown he had gotten. He had been so white the first time they made love, he looked like part of the sheets.
She patted the couch. “Come over here. We need to talk about placing that tracker. I don’t want you to do anything that you’re not comfortable doing.”
| Copyright © 2018 by Ed Rogers |
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