9:50 a.m. EST / 3:50 p.m. CET
“You’re such a good actress,” Laurent said to her as the sleek black Italian Agura helicopter soared above the outskirts of Paris. “Tell me—is there ever a time when you choose to use your acting skills when there isn’t a camera pointed at you?”
You mean like now? Cass wanted to say. She wondered if she’d done something to give herself away. She’d hoped she could see this as just another acting role, but unlike all the other acting roles she’d played, this one would have dire consequences if she failed. Laurent was right—there’d been times in her life when she’d pretended to be happy, or in love, but if she’d been able to fool other people, she’d never been able to fool herself. She’d been surrounded for a long time by people who were famous or wealthy, but during the time she’d spent in East Salem with Tommy and Dani and the others, she realized she much preferred being surrounded by people who were genuine and honest and weren’t playing games or trying to attach themselves to her for hidden reasons and agendas that had nothing to do with her.
She liked Laurent, but she had reasons to distrust her judgment. She didn’t think she’d done anything to let on that she was joining Bauer on his yacht to collect information, but still, Laurent worked for Bauer, so she had to be careful.
“I try not to,” she said. “But sometimes you have to. Like when you’re on the red carpet and you have the flu but you have to smile and look glamorous. Have you been on Herr Bauer’s yacht before?”
“This is my first time,” Laurent said. “I hear it’s quite special.”
“So I’ve read,” Cassandra said. “My mother was a cook on boats. I sort of grew up on them. There was an old man, I think he was from either Jamaica or Barbados, sort of a fishing guide, I guess. Whenever I’d admire somebody’s boat, he’d say to me, ‘Enjoy the ride, chile’, but doan’ fall in love wit’ it—soonah or latah, everah boat ever made ends up at de bottom of de ocean. Everah mansion falls down.’”
“Your accent is very good,” Laurent said.
“Thank you,” she said, though an alarm went off in her head. Laurent had introduced himself as a native Frenchman, and he’d gone on to add that he’d never been to the United States. His English was heavily accented but passable. As a nonnative English speaker, how would he know that her Caribbean patois was authentic-sounding?
The pilot interrupted to ask Cassandra if she wanted to do any sightseeing along the way, or if she simply wished to proceed directly to the Freiheit, where Udo Bauer was waiting. She opted for the latter.
The helicopter flew south from Paris, over Lyon and the Burgundy region of France, skirting the western edge of the French Alps and landing in Marseilles to refuel. Cassandra took a short walk from the helicopter, hoping to use her phone to call Tommy with an update, but Laurent came with her, explaining that Herr Bauer had asked him to keep an eye on her wherever she went to make sure she was safe from harm. She sent Tommy a text instead: ON MY WAY TO BOAT. WISH ME BON VOYAGE. :)
They flew east to Toulon and hugged the coastline as far as St. Tropez and Cannes before turning south over the Mediterranean. Laurent pointed out the islands of Corsica and Sardinia to the east, out the port window, and in the far distance, barely visible, the island of Minorca on the starboard side, where the sun was already lowering toward the horizon. An hour after leaving the coast, the helicopter banked and descended toward the ocean and the Freiheit itself—a sleek white sliver the length of an ocean liner. The landing pad on the fantail was natural grass; Cassandra wondered why until she exited the aircraft and saw a set of golf clubs and a bucket of golf balls off to the side. It doubled as a driving range, she realized.
“Cassandra!”
Udo Bauer was waiting for her, dressed casually in white pants and a white V-neck sweater, his skin tanned and toned. He greeted her with a kiss on the cheek and then bade his staff—a dozen young men dressed in white shirts, shorts, shoes, and knee socks—to take Cassandra’s bags to her stateroom. He introduced his first mate and personal assistant, a swarthy young man named Vito, and told her if there was anything she wanted, Vito would get it for her.
Something about Vito made her skin crawl. Intuition, perhaps, but she trusted her intuition. “Look for the guy whispering in his ear,” Tommy had advised her. “The number two guy. He’s going to be the one who’s most dangerous. That’s how they work, behind the scenes.”
“Would you like a tour of my ship, Miss Morton?” Bauer asked.
“Only if you call me Cassie,” she said. “And I would absolutely love a tour, Mr. Bauer.”
“Only if you call me Udo,” he insisted.
Cassandra had seen every kind of ship there was to see in her childhood, moving from island to island, rental to rental, always in transition, nothing ever settled or final. She’d told Tommy, when he’d asked her if she wanted to go out on his Boston Whaler to do some fishing, that she’d made a vow to never set foot on a boat again, because she was done with things that floated or drifted without anchors. Even so, she was impressed by the Freiheit. It went beyond the materials used, the Carrera marble from Tuscany, the Brazilian rosewood, the handcrafted New Zealand deerskin upholstered furnishings, the Persian rugs, the salon the size of a hotel lobby, where, Bauer informed her, he occasionally held parties or business gatherings. The whole was more than the sum of the parts, for some reason—though the parts were impressive indeed.
There was a tennis court below decks, and a garage where he kept a black Bentley, a red Ferrari, a camouflaged military-grade fully armored Humvee (“for the times when my presence is required in war zones”), and a pre-WWII restored Citroën that had belonged to his grandfather. The ship towed behind it a twenty-five-foot wooden speedboat as a tender, as well as an inflatable Zodiac and a pair of Jet Skis that Bauer suggested they try out in the morning, if she was feeling up to it.
“I need the tender because the only two ports capable of hosting a ship of this size are Monaco and Antibes,” he said.
The galley, staffed by a team that included a chef Bauer had hired away from a four-star restaurant in Paris, featured three walk-in freezers where they stored fresh supplies taken on whenever they docked (“Though if we needed to, we could stay at sea for a year and be quite comfortable”) and enough gas burners to cook for a party of a hundred.
“You will see your stateroom in a minute, but let me show you my pride and joy first,” he said, leading her down a set of stairs to a movie theater. “By the way, I have been watching all your films so that I might know your work better.”
“I don’t mind subtitles, but voice-overs freak me out,” she replied. “You have no idea how odd it is to watch yourself when the words coming out of your mouth have been dubbed into a foreign language. I hope that’s not what you wanted to show me.”
“No, no—I have something much better.” He moved to a control panel, pressed a sequence of buttons, and the movie screen disappeared into the ceiling while the lights came on behind it, revealing a huge aquarium, inside of which swam a great white shark, easily fifteen feet long and four feet across.
Cassandra gasped audibly.
“Isn’t he remarkable?” Bauer said. “I call him Prachtvoller. German for ‘magnificent’.”
“I thought great white sharks were impossible to keep in captivity.”
“Quite so,” Bauer said. “But he is not captive. He is free to come and go as he pleases—the bottom of the tank is open to the sea. He comes here because we feed him. It was actually quite easy to train him. We move his food a little closer, a little closer, until finally he comes inside my ship. Sharks are opportunistic feeders, but if he finds a reliable food source, he stays with it. He’s been following the Freiheit for almost a year now. We thought for a while we’d lost him, but he came back.”
“Very Thunderball,” Cassandra said. “Did you know I was almost a Bond girl? My agent thought it would ‘sultry up my brand,’ but the producers thought it was too much of a leap. Does he do any tricks?”
“None whatsoever,” Bauer said. “He’s the king of the sea. He makes all the other fish do tricks.”
Like you, she thought. Like your friends from St. Adrian’s.
“You must be tired from your flight,” Bauer said. “Would you like some time before dinner to refresh yourself? A nap, or perhaps a swim? I have a heated pool on the top deck.”
“I think a nap,” she said. “I’m still a bit jet-lagged.”
“Of course,” he said. “I will have the ship turned so that your balcony faces the west. I’ve made a few phone calls and arranged for a particularly fine sunset tonight.”
She stared at him, not sure what he meant.
“A joke,” he explained.
On deck, she was distressed to see the helicopter taking off. By the end of the helicopter ride, she’d come to see Laurent as an ally, someone she might be able to turn to in a pinch. Bauer explained that the helicopter would return tomorrow. Still, she felt uneasy. She felt . . . trapped.
In her stateroom, which was larger than any hotel suite she’d ever stayed in (and she’d stayed in some of the best hotels in the world), she took out her GPhone and tapped the screen, only to read that there was no signal. That, she’d expected. But when she tried to use the satellite link, her screen told her the uplink was blocked. That, she had not.
She checked her purse to make sure the .32 was still there. It was all she had—that, and her wits.
They would have to suffice.
“Are you there, Henry?” she asked her phone.
“I’m here, Cassandra,” Henry said. “How may I assist you?”
“Just checking in,” she said. “Feeling a little lonely. Nice to have someone to talk to. Besides myself, I mean.”
“I like talking to you as well,” Henry said. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”
“How about a bedtime story?” she asked.
“Once upon a time—”
“I was kidding,” she said. “Maybe later.”
“I will remind you later.”
“What time zone am I in?”
“European Central Time. Or Heure Normale Europe Centrale in French. Would you like me to—”
“That’s good,” Cassandra said. “Just stand by. I might need you.”
“I will stand by.”