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“You really don’t know? They’re evacuating New York!” she shrieked.
Mr. Beckett and Mr. Joyce looked at each other in horror.
“No,” Mr. Joyce groaned. “Not now. We’re so close.”
“You said a ransom. What ransom?” said Mr. Beckett.
“The BBC said the Americans said they were evacuating New York and the Eastern Seaboard because of a tsunami warning,” Katarina said as she screeched around a traffic circle, nearly on two wheels. “But the BBC said that was an unlikely story and that there were rumors about an impending terrorist attack and a ransom demand.”
“We didn’t ask for a ransom,” Mr. Joyce said. “Who would do that if we didn’t?”
“Two words. Dmitri Yevdokimov,” said Mr. Beckett after a long thirty seconds.
“That son of a bitch we bought the aluminum dust and the pump trucks from?” said Mr. Joyce.
“He’s the only one clever enough,” Mr. Beckett said, looking out at the passing island countryside. “Besides, he’s a computer expert. I knew I shouldn’t have given him my fucking e-mail. He must have hacked us—saw our plans and the video we were going to show after. He put two and two together, copied the video, and tried to pull a ransom deal.”
“I’m going to handcuff him to a radiator and snip out his liver with a pair of kitchen scissors!” Mr. Joyce said, screaming, as he punched at the door of the car. “He ruined our entire plan!”
“It gets worse!” Katarina yelled. “The fucking Americans are here! Armenio texted me two hours ago with this,” she said, handing Mr. Beckett her phone.
American soldiers just arrived in the village. I will do my best to keep them away but I will set it off manually if I can’t. Whatever happens the deal is still on.
“I keep trying to call him back, but he doesn’t respond. He must be under arrest by now. Or dead. It’s over. What are we going to do now? I’m all over Armenio’s phone. We need to get out of Cape Verde now.”
“It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters,” said Mr. Joyce, starting to cry in the backseat.
“Katarina, stop the car!” said Mr. Beckett, suddenly clutching his chest. “I’m not kidding. My chest. I’m having chest pains! I need my medication! In my bag in the trunk. Pull over! Please! Oh, it hurts!”
Katarina pulled over on the side of the deserted two-lane country road beside a stubbled field with baby sheep and goats roaming over it. Mr. Beckett stumbled out onto the shoulder and went to the trunk.
“Katarina! Help me—over here!” said Mr. Beckett a second later.
When she arrived at the trunk, Mr. Beckett without preamble smashed Katarina in the face with a tire iron. Blood poured out between her fingers, clutched to her face, as she began immediately to backpedal.
He hit her again in the back of the head as she turned, then she fell backwards into an irrigation ditch filled with muddy rainwater that ran parallel to the road.
She was beginning to crawl back up onto her knees when Mr. Beckett arrived to finish up. Right there in broad daylight, with three more blows to the head, he beat her to death with the tire iron as the baby sheep looked on.
A minute later, he was back on the road next to the car. He wiped the tire iron with a thin pink sweater that had been draped on the back of the driver’s seat before he chucked it back in the trunk, tossed the sweater in after it, and closed the lid. Crushing her cell phone under his heel, he found and pocketed its SIM card before he checked his watch. Then he got into the driver’s seat and made a U-turn back toward the airport.
He wriggled his wet toes in his muddy shoes as he drove. He’d have to hit the gift shop for some socks.
He hadn’t killed Katarina because she had disappointed him. On the contrary, she’d been loyal and competent to a fault in helping to set everything up. He’d even been good friends with her father back during the Cape Verdean revolution he’d helped bring about.
He killed her simply because he always covered his tracks. That’s why he had been in business for so long. It was the secret of his success.
In the backseat, Mr. Joyce was still sobbing.
“I know it’s disappointing after all our hard work,” said Mr. Beckett. “All the money, all the planning. We got rooked—they were ahead of us by a few measly hours. It was the ambitiousness of the plan. The more people, the more moving parts, the easier for one to malfunction.”
“But that city! That city deserves to be destroyed! What about Mikhail? What about Mikhail?!” sobbed Mr. Joyce.
“This isn’t over. Not by a long shot,” Mr. Beckett said reassuringly. “We need to regroup and go to the backup plan. We’re still ahead of them. We’ll use the Dutch passports and be back in New York by tomorrow.”
Mr. Beckett looked up at the narrow-bodied DC-9 airliner on takeoff that roared low over their car as they turned into the airport access road.
“There is more than one way to skin a cat, my son,” he said.
