“Pretty much, yeah. I’ve been living out of hotels.”
“Grab everything and follow me.”
Court retrieved his bags from the backseat of the car, heaving the duffel. The bigger, older Hanley made no effort to help him; he just held the Yeti, and then the two of them began walking down to the dock.
A Christmas tree sparkled through a porthole in the first houseboat they encountered, but there were very few other signs of life around the marina. The two men passed rigid-hulled inflatable boats and runabouts no more than ten feet long, bowriders, bay boats, and ski boats a little bigger,many covered for the winter, some up on winches, but most bobbing in the water in dozens of slips. As they came to another pier, the smaller craft gave way to larger catamarans, sailboats, and even luxury yachts up to one hundred feet long.
When they reached pier B, Hanley turned and they kept walking.
Court couldn’t imagine what this was all about. “What’s the deal, Matt? We going for a ride?”
“You’ll see,” the older man said.
Court saw a large boat docked at the end of the pier.
He recognized it by its shape; it was a sports cruiser, maybe sixty feet in length, old-looking, with a white body and a dull beige stripe running the length of the hull. A beige hard top covered the helm.
Though relatively large compared to most of the other vessels at this marina, it was certainly no luxury yacht.
The name on the bow readShip Happens, Two.
The port of registry was the Hamptons.
The transom was just a step off the pier, and there didn’t seem to be anyone on deck.
“It’s a 1996 Sea Ray 630 sport cruiser,” Matt said as he boarded. “Upgraded in the past couple of years.”
“What happened toShip Happens, One?” Court asked as he stepped aboard onto the transom himself.
“Hit an iceberg. Sank in the North Atlantic.”
“Really?” Court asked, surprised.
Hanley made a face of disappointment. “No, man. I don’t know. Didn’t ask.”
On the aft deck Court put his bags down, then looked out into the marina, still unsure what they were doing here.
Hanley said, “She’s faster than she looks.”
“Whose boat is this?”
“My company bought it.”
Court laughed. “Which company?” Court had been registering companies up in Delaware just a few days prior.
“TerreCom Industrial Consulting,” Hanley said. And then, “Your new employer.”
Court hadnotregistered a company by this name. “Okay, what do we do at TerreCom?”
“Ostensibly, we facilitate relationships between foreign manufacturing industrial sectors and…” He paused. “I don’t really know. It’s written down somewhere. It’s legit, but purposefully boring as shit. TerreCom was a shell company started by the Agency in the eighties. It was run out of a clearinghouse of shells in Delaware for decades, but we bought it legally, and now we’ve leased a suite in an office park in Norfolk, hired a few staff of ex–intelligence community folks with the right clearances.”
“We’re a CIA front,” Court said.
“Negative. Weboughta CIA front. We’re running it ourselves.”
“Bought it with what?”
“CIA money.”
