Aground on St. Thomas Read Free Page B

all this energy?” the aide panted, but there was no time to ponder the question. In all the twisting and turning, Cedric temporarily lost sight of the hefty politician.
    He stopped in a hallway intersection, puzzling at the circuitous route.
    The Fixer must be lost, Cedric reasoned. He allowed himself a modicum of hope. Maybe they wouldn’t make it out of the building after all.
    But when he reached the exit a few minutes later, he found the two men kneeling on the floor, peeking out the door’s upper screen.
    “Where to next?” Cedric whispered, crouching beside the Governor’s visored head.
    Fowler replied with a raised finger to his lips.
    The federal agents had reached the lobby and were conversing with the woman who had been stationed by the security scanners. One of the men demanded impatiently to be let through.
    After a tense back-and-forth, the lookout stepped aside. She spoke loud enough to be heard across the first floor.
    “The Governor is upstairs in his office.”
    Scraping chair legs and shuffling feet communicated the agents’ progress through the building. Once the uniformed men started up the central staircase, Fowler pushed open the screen door and crept outside.
    The trio tiptoed through a courtyard and across a path leading to a gate in the high-security fencing that encircled the back side of the property.
    Surely, the feds would have covered the building’s rear access, Cedric thought, internally exasperated.
    But the area appeared to be clear. Fowler unlocked the gate and eased himself through to the other side. After checking around the far corner of the building, he waved for the others to follow.
    Not wasting any time, the Governor jumped through the opening, joining Fowler on a sidewalk attached to a flight of stone steps that led up Government Hill. The public stairs cut between Government House and an adjacent structure, another Colonial-era building that served as the parsonage for a local church.
    Cedric proceeded more cautiously through the gate, expecting that at any second he would hear the sharp whistle of an arresting federal agent.
    To his dismay, he too crossed to the outer sidewalk unimpeded.
    He poked his head around the edge of the building and looked down toward the waterfront, still in disbelief at the ease of their escape. Craning his neck to see over the intervening neighborhood, he scanned the shoreline.
    By now, he reasoned, the watchful residents of Charlotte Amalie would have noticed that something was amiss. The cruise ship traffic in and out of the harbor was closely scrutinized by the island’s taxi drivers, tour guides, jewelry shop sales force, restaurateurs, and everyone else tourism-employed in the up-slanted town. Many were no doubt wondering why the day-trippers had yet to disembark—and why a navy vessel was moored in the deepwater port beside the fancy cruise ship.
    Cedric grimaced at the scene below.
    Frustrated citizens stood on the sidewalks, waving their disabled cell phones in the air, grumbling about the sudden loss of signal.
    Confusion reigned among the street vendors. Many of them had given up for the day and had begun packing their mass-produced goods into the plastic bags provided by the moneymen who financed their shilling operations.
    A truck drove through the downtown streets, cruising at a snail’s pace with its windows rolled down. The vehicle’s radio had been set to an earsplitting volume. The speakers pumped out the broadcast of a local station whose transmitter had so far avoided being shut off.
    Cedric couldn’t make out the broadcast words, but the message was heard loud and clear across Charlotte Amalie’s lower downtown area.
    The backgammon players pocketed their dice, gathered their checkers, and folded their game boards. The remaining street vendors rolled up their wares. In the high-end alley shops, staff and storeowners scurried to secure the iron gratings used to protect their merchandise at night. The pickpockets had