Along with the heat and the tropical flora, Mindelo has the feel of some city in the West Indies. Surrounding it, the sharp crags give everything else the appearance of a barren wasteland. On the beaches, the volcanic rock metamorphoses into glistening sand that slides into a turquoise sea.
Sitting on a glistening beach and watching the dreamy image of the boats on the water through the liquid crystal display of a digital camera, Medic inhales deeply and slowly.
He and The Handler are relaxing in the shade of a pavilion off of Avenida Marginal, a sun-drenched road that traces the western limit of the city. They’ve explored a small part of the sprawl which extends east from there in a mix of colourful colonial houses, restaurants, and modern establishments. It was a nice change of pace from the previous night.
Their arrival on the island of São Vicente was treacherous but exciting. A careful trip around a rocky outcrop ended on the storm-whipped rocks of a large shipyard. They scuttled their mini subs as best as they could and dragged their cases over the jagged boulders while being savaged with salty spray.
Once on shore they quickly found shelter in an unlocked warehouse and dried off. The exhilaration of what they’d just accomplished quickly hit them.
“Holy shit!” said Medic exuberantly. “That was fucking nuts!”
“Yeah!” replied The Handler, barely containing her enthusiasm behind her beaming face. “That was the first time I’d ever done anything like that. Fucking nuts indeed!”
Medic was surprised at her answer. “This is the first time you’ve done that?”
“Yeah,” she responded proudly with a shit-eating grin. “This is how an agent’s gotta work. Gotta keep it fresh, original, new. Do something really unexpected, especially on sensitive missions like this one, and especially since we’re being targeted.”
“That was,” remarked Medic, pausing to underscore the rest of his remark, “pretty fucking impressive. You got us across an ocean” — he holds up a finger — “smuggled us into a foreign country” — a second finger — “and got rid of our accomplices.” — finger three.
“Lukas was a scumbag,” she added with a repelled squint. “Benny, Faisal, Mohamed, they were no angels either. They knew exactly what they were doing and who they were working for. They didn’t care.”
“Who?” asked Medic after trying unsuccessfully to remember the names.
“The Malaysians,” she explained with a hint of smiling derision. “You never bothered to learn their names? Dude, we were on that ship for over a week.”
He pursed his lips and shrugged. “I dunno. I guess I didn’t want it to get personal.”
“It’s only personal when they know stuff about you,” she said, slapping his shoulder.
He was reminded again of the solid secrecy that she maintained around herself, and of his own permeable openness. He didn’t like how it hung over him.
They wiped down and ditched the submarine containers under a pile of lumber, put everything else inside the duffel bags, and set out along the shoreline in the direction they’d come from the night before. By then the rain had become a wafting mist and their conversation had turned to the identities they would be using.
She would be Handy Jayden, which she thought sounded mildly provocative, and he would be Hans Gruber, because why not. They’d flown in for a business meeting on a charter flight from Amsterdam the day before and then taken a ferry. Improper stowage and rough water meant that most of their luggage, along with their identification, was floating out there in the Atlantic somewhere. “Or whatever,” explained The Handler flippantly. “We’ll improvise if needed.”
After that Medic remembers sitting on some rocks as they watched the half-sunk wreck of the Rhosus / Tenebra bob helplessly up against the sizable yacht into which it had plowed. The storm was leaving but the waves were still high and the tug boats were having trouble separating the two vessels.
In the early morning light, Lukas’ decrepit ship looked like an aging turd pressed against the gilded porcelain yacht into which it had wedged itself. People lined the nearby beach, watching the surreal scene of nautical carnage amidst the tranquility of pleasure craft and small fishing boats.
The Handler expressed her belief that the vessels with boarding ladders pressed up against Lukas’ ship were probably marine police. The smugglers’ arrests must’ve happened while she and Medic were trudging over the long stretch of soggy beach toward the crash site.
With the sun firmly placed in the eastern sky and the dark clouds already just a thick smudge on the horizon, they picked up and walked into the city. There they were able to enjoy a free breakfast courtesy of the lost luggage story and some sympathetic hotel staff.
In the shade of the beach-side structure, with take-out containers full of “kitchen mistakes” and a small bottle of similarly smuggled grogue, Medic continues to look into the viewfinder of the digital camera. The extended lens is zoomed into a blue and white catamaran coming in to dock at one of the smaller wooden piers in the distance. Two people are standing on deck, a man in an all-white ensemble of cap, shorts, and short-sleeved button-down, and a woman in a billowing bleached kaftan, her hand holding down a wildly undulating, wide-brimmed sun hat, also white.
He snaps a picture and hands it over to The Handler who is lying in her back with a towel over her face, a loose and lustrous black ponytail poking out from underneath, flowery shirt clinging to her sweaty body. Medic tries not to let his gaze linger too long.
“What about that one?” he asks wearily.
She thrusts out her hand and Medic places the camera into her open palm. She brings it down to her face, lifts the towel, and squints at the image as she works the camera’s controls.
“What does that say? Honey Badger?” she says, zooming into the name on the side of the boat.
Medic takes the camera back and looks at the small screen. “That’s what I see,” he acknowledges. He then pans around in the zoomed image. “What about them?” he asks again, handing the camera back to The Handler.
She takes it and examines it intently, staring at the still image of the couple on the deck. “I think we can work with that,” she replies, pulling a corner of her mouth into a half-smile. “Boat looks comfy too.”
She relinquishes the camera and puts the towel back over her face.
Due to the listing ships in the harbour the water’s off-limits but people line the beach, some propped up on their elbows and watching the unusual scene from under caps or through sunglasses, some oblivious. Medic cocks his head to the side and stares off down the hot stretch of blinding sand as he ponders the next step of their plan.
“I’m still not sure if I’m okay with this, just taking from people, using them like this. Lukas, okay, yeah. But these people, I dunno. And this food here–“
The Handler yanks the towel off her face and bolts upright. “Gonna stop you right there,” she says with a calm that surprises Medic. “These feelings that you’re having are great but keep them in your pants, okay? This is how I get things done. If you don’t like it, there’s the door” — she shoots a thumb over her shoulder.
“And just for your information,” she continues with one eyebrow cocked, “the food we got this morning we got because I asked. That’s it. You’d be surprised how often the word please works.
“In any event, agents gotta be resourceful and sometimes that means putting their icky feelings aside,” she ends with a mock smile.
A moment of silence passes with only the sound of the lapping ocean surrounding them.
“So what now?” asks Medic, pointing the camera back at the people in white to watch them tether their small double-hulled yacht to the dock.
“We follow ’em and try to make friends,” she replies. “Keep an eye on them while I get our shit together.”
As she begins to pack, he tracks the two targets as they slowly make their way to the harbourmaster’s hut. After some time they emerge and begin walking leisurely along Avenida Marginal toward Medic and The Handler. By the time he looks over at her, The Handler’s packed everything into the duffel bags and is motioning for him to follow her.