Free Barracuda by Mike Monahan

said
Andrej as he ruffled Alex’s hair. The two men walked to Hiroshi’s
suite at the opposite side of the building. Andrej rang the
doorbell and announced himself. A young Japanese boy answered the
door and motioned the two men to come in.
    “Come into my study,” Hiroshi ordered.
    Andrej motioned for Alex to remain in the living
room area of the suite while he entered the study. Andrej
immediately noticed the Bible sitting on the desk in front of
Hiroshi. “You’d better have a word with your waiters,” he announced
instantly.
    “My waiters?” Hiroshi questioned, taken
aback.
    “Yes, your waiters. They treat my staff
like second-class citizens when they are in the restaurant. Just
last night, one of your waiters removed an important journal from
one of my staff while he was having dinner.”
    “And how did my waiter do that?” asked Hiroshi
with sarcasm.
    “My loyal accountant had dinner and then used
the restroom to wash up. His journal was missing when he returned
to his table, and he was unable to locate the waiter. This morning,
he called the lost and found desk. The staff were uncooperative to
my man, and he aired his grievance to me. I went off on a tangent
thanks to the home office, but now I’m here to complain.” Andrej
was playing a bluff, and being a gambling man, he knew that in this
situation it was a good strategy.
    “It is very honorable to protect the ineptness
of your men, but do not try to do it at the expense of mine,”
Hiroshi fumed. He was a man of few words, but he always got his
point across and let people know who was boss. He picked up the
ledger and handed it to Andrej. “Never again,” he said.
    Andrej also was furious. He hated Hiroshi’s
condescending attitude. The prick had seen right through his
deception, and as a result, he was humiliated. He wanted to storm
out of the office, but he knew that he must kowtow to the director
and show respect. Andrej put the Bible under his arm and began to
walk out with his tail between his legs.
    “You are not dismissed,” an angry Hiroshi
shouted. “There is an additional problem now that your man has left
our crimes in plain sight.”
    Andrej hesitated. “I don’t understand.”
    “Those two shark doctors found the register, and
we cannot take a chance that they understood the contents. It’s
your mistake, so I leave it to you to correct. Use some initiative
and make sure the correction does not bring shame to the
Majestic.”
    “I understand,” Andrej responded in a firm,
deliberate voice. His anger was thus replaced with a sense of
purpose. He knew that he had to hastily eliminate the two
scientists before they could report their accidental findings.
    He and Alex walked back to their suite in
silence. Alex had overheard everything and knew that they were in a
pickle. If the situation wasn’t corrected immediately, it could
cost them their lives.
    Andrej summoned Tanya, his spy, to his office
and together they concocted a scheme. They knew that James always
carried the scuba gear to the skiff, making three or four trips.
Once the boat was loaded he helped Dr. Collins carry on the camera
equipment and they went their merry way. Tanya would engage James
in conversation and learn their secret diving location, leaving
Andrej’s henchmen free to initiate a plan to eliminate the
scientists and make it look like an accident.
    ***
    Dr. Collins found himself more bothered than he
had expected by the illegal activity that they had fortuitously
stumbled upon. He made a long distance telephone call to his niece
in New York to discuss the status of his research. Terry Collins
was his brother’s daughter, a noted marine biologist working on a
grant from Princeton University. She was examining the unexplained
red tides that were killing off shellfish in the Long Island Sound.
A multimillion-dollar industry had been brought to its knees
because the water was becoming deoxygenated. Most fish just swam
away to an area where the water had