Cynthia: Littera

While the two of you luxuriate in your well-earned rest, perhaps Doctor Yoshida and I can ponder this clue as to the identity of our adversary. While it is entirely possible that the Magician- or "G.G." as the letters carved into his knife inform us are his initials- is completely unknown to us, I believe we will be best served by forming the assumption that he has in some fashion had contact with us, however briefly.

And so the list of those with whom we have been presented over the course of our investigation, and the admittedly wildly subjectively deduced probability that they are secretly the Magician:


-Garrett, my new caretaker. Since the authorities arrested and detained Jeffrey, my first caretaker, his replacement has proven himself to be an uncaring lout, without any interest in human interaction with me of any kind beyond the obligation of his profession. I understand all too well that caring for a quadriplegic can be a tedious and degrading assignment, but he truly does appear to gaze upon me as simply a slab of flesh that is being kept alive for no discernible reason.

For all that, while I detest him, I find myself crossing him off of the list of suspects simply because he is so thuggish. I tend to consider the Magician- while existing as a creature of staggering malevolence- to be more refined in his countenance. However, perhaps knowing this, he would present a more brutish face in an attempt to play on my expectations.

-Doctor Godsby, my physician. I have only written about the Doctor in passing, and in truth I barely know the man, but on my list of suspects I believe he should be at the very apex. Smooth, refined, exceedingly cold and brusque... he is most as I would imagine the Magician to be.

-Glen, owner of the shipping boat, the Liberator. (Miss Stroud, an update on his last name, if you please, at your convenience) While the description given of the man made it seem as though he was incapable of plotting even the most basic of schemes, again as with Garrett this could well have been the Magician praying on our assumptions of his natural disposition.


And allow me to relate on a personal note that I have never been more proud of you, Joshua, nor you, Miss Stroud. This last exploit in Australia was an enormous victory for us, and while I remain more committed than ever to our enterprise, if nothing else comes of this investigation, I can rest knowing that some measure of revenge has been meted out to our enemies.

Mary: Likely Suspects

November 7th, 2008: Glen, Josh and I walked into the Sea Breeze Yacht Club Bar overlooking the ocean, and once it had been made clear that Glen would not be running a tab and that we would pay cash up front the bartender agreed to serve us. Glen started to apologize for the inconvenience, then lost interest and downed half of his Budweiser. I had talked Josh into switching to beer so he was nursing a chestnut-colored microbrew. I sat down in the U-shaped booth next to Josh, ordered a cranberry juice on the rocks and tried to think of something else to ask Glen.

Josh eyed the pinball machine in the corner of the bar hopefully, but a quick glare from me kept him anchored at our table. Eventually he turned to Glen and asked, "So what do you think happened to your boat? Whirlpool? Pirates? Sirens? I'm a landlubber so I really don't know how often ships go lost at sea anymore."

Looking none too pleased with having to shift his focus from drinking to talking, Glen nevertheless answered. "Ships hardly ever go lost anymore, really. Not if they have GPS, anyway. Pirates can be a problem, but they don't just come out of nowhere. You usually have a pretty good idea where they are and how to avoid them. Could it have been pirates? The GPS went out on the Liberator right after she changed course southward. Maybe she got boarded then taken over, but the Captain should have been able to get at least a distress call off first." Another pull of his Bud and it was gone, Glen already signaling the waitress for another. "I've gone over it again and again, and I just don't know what the hell happened out there. If they started taking on water they would have radioed. There was no land nearby for them to wreck on anyway. They were in the middle of the damn Pacific!" He pounded his fist on the table just hard enough to draw the attention of the other patrons, and I gave a little placating smile back at them hoping not to get thrown out.

In an attempt to keep him from ranting, I asked, "Are there places known for losing ships in that part of the world? Like a Bermuda Triangle?"

"The Triangle's bullsh*t," he scoffed. "Tourist stuff. Go over the numbers, it's about what you'd normally expect."

Josh started slowly shimmying out of the booth, edging toward the pinball machine, but another quick kick under the table stopped him with a wince. Under his breath he grumbled, "Same exact spot she kicked last time. Goddamn."

Glen continued, oblivious. "There are spots known for shipwrecks, no question, but the Triangle? Nah. Problem is, all the known ship graveyards are thousands of miles away from where we lost contact with the Liberator."

I sipped my cranberry juice while Josh rubbed his knee. "Like where?"

The waitress brought another Budweiser. "I just mean in general, there are spots known for it. Greek islands have a lot of wrecks, but most of them are from World War II. Except for Euboea, that's had wrecks all throughout history. Also-"

"Euboea... is that near Evia? I read something about that island recently." Taras' post mentioned Evia and Glen's reference to Greece reminded me of it. One of the Magician's people, Theophanes was from there.

Glen snorted, covering his mouth as he laughed, the first time he'd done so. It was a braying, grating sound and I was comforted by the fact that based on his temperament and financial situation, he wouldn't be doing a lot of it in the future. "No, no."

"Oh, never mind then-"

He smirked in that way that men do when they know something and you don't. "Euboea isn't near Evia. Euboea is Evia. They have two names for it. God knows why. And who cares? There are islands the Liberator may have washed up on, but Greece would be impossible."

"Whoa, what? What was that? That island?" We finally had Josh's attention. "Wait, that was from Taras' post-"

I watched Glen's face for any recognition of the name, but there was none. Before Josh could say anything else I continued, "What about other places for a ship to wreck? Places south of the Liberator's position? You said it had headed that direction before the locator stopped functioning."

Glen was shaking his head before I'd even finished. "Too far. All way too far. Thousands of miles! What, pirates took over the ship, then traveled for days just to wreck? It makes no sense!"

"Just humor me. Please." I reached into my purse and counted out two hundred dollars in cash, sliding it over to him on the table.

He stared at it for only a moment before clutching it and shoving it in his pocket. "South of their position you've got the islands of Micronesia, and south of there is New Guinea. Farther south is Australia, but now you're going so far... the only place that's really known for shipwrecks is a little spot of nothing you've never heard of on the south side of the continent. Do you have any idea the type of distance-"

This time I was the one to pound the table. Josh's beer tipped over, foam spilling over the edge onto the carpeted floor while Glen saved his drink with a cat-like grab. I knew the answer, and as soon as I said the words I saw on Glen's stunned face that I was right. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end as I said in a hushed voice, "Wardang island."



As the sun set over the water, in the car on the way back to the hotel, I made plane reservations to Adelaide, Australia, the closest major city to Wardang Island. From Adelaide we could rent a decent car and drive to Port Victoria, where the island was just offshore. We had spent the first few minutes of the drive talking about how crazy it was to just jet off to a place halfway around the world on the basis of only the thinnest, most circumstantial evidence, but neither of us really had the heart for an argument about it. Josh reminded me of my own new rule:

-We no longer look at phenomena that we don't understand and think that it is impossible. We take everything in, no matter how insane, and grant it instant credibility. There is no room anymore for cynicism. We've seen too much.

Without taking my eyes off the road, I said to Josh, "We'll have to move fast. I can make arrangements for the jet to-" I looked over at him then and saw that he was snoring lightly, his head tipped back against the passenger side window and his mouth open. I searched for some light classical music on the radio, found it and drove on, my mind churning. "Tomorrow. We'll go tomorrow."

Mary: Ocean Master

November 7th, 2008: After sitting through an hour-long meeting with Captain Harold Pullman of the San Diego Coast Guard, I had lost all interest in boats, the sea, water itself and life as I knew it. Captain Pullman was perhaps the most boring and uninformative human I'd ever met, and I raced back to the hotel to pick up Josh purely out of survival. I knew it was going to be difficult to grab Josh and still make it on time to my second appointment, but the thought of going through the rest of the afternoon without a single laugh made my stomach ache.

Once I saw Josh, however, I immediately regretted my decision. He had evidently stayed at the bar the entire time I had been gone and had run up quite a tab. I poured him into the car and asked him how many margaritas he'd downed. I immediately regretted the question as well. "When the sun is shining down on you and you're drinking not for pleasure but for survival, then the number is of no consequence." He gestured heavenward, warming to his subject. "Had we been back at some bar in Milwaukee then without question I should have been cut off two or three ago, but here in sunny California there's a different standard- hrm, you're not wearing your swimsuit now."

I pulled onto the expressway, following the GPS's directions to the meeting. "Just don't attempt to say 'consequence' again during the meeting. We'll have to squeegee the dashboard off as it is."

He brushed aside my comments with a carefree wave. "Pfft! Consequence schmonsequence!"

"And now the windshield. Thanks at least for not facing me when you did that." I'm sure he wouldn't appreciate my using the word "giggle" to describe what he did for the final ten minutes of the drive, but I can't think of a more applicable one.

We pulled up at the Ocean Master Shipping Company and even Josh in his impressionable state was underwhelmed. It was a simple rectangular building on the edge of the docks, it's brick facade badly in need of repair and the awning over the door smeared with seagull droppings. A small, dilapidated sailboat bobbed in the water in the rear of the building, and after a few seconds of watching it I wasn't so sure it wasn't actually sinking.

Inside, the Ocean Master Shipping Company was split into three rooms, two offices in back and an open reception area in front, the receptionist's desk vacant. The sound of rock music could be faintly heard drifting from the rear of the building. The walls had faded pictures of boats hung on them, and the carpet was at least twenty years old and had probably never been cleaned. Three, foot-long model boats stood on display by the front window. Josh sighed and began fiddling with the models while I rang the bell on the receptionists desk. Thirty or so seconds later I rang it again, and a man trudged out from the rear-left office.

He was in his early forties, tall with thinning hair and unshaven. The dark circles under his eyes looked like tattoos. His voice came out in a defeated monotone. "Ya?"

I introduced myself as Mary Smith (my new, fake identity. Uncreative, but difficult to track down) and told him we were looking for any information he might have on his boat the Liberator. With a grunt he waved us back into his office, which was decorated exactly like the reception area but with file folders and papers strewn all over it. The man introduced himself as Glen and without preamble launched into his tale of woe.

The Ocean Master Shipping Company had three boats: one was being held in the Philippines because he was unable to pay the harbor fees, the second was so decrepit he'd had to scrap it for parts and the third was the Liberator, lost at sea. Creditors were closing in on him and the odds were he was going to have to shut his doors within the month. "No one wants to find that boat more than me, Miss Smith. I want to make sure those guys are okay, and financially it would mean the world. Otherwise, it doesn't look too good."

Josh, having carried the model boat back to the office with him from the lobby began making motorboat noises with his lips. I gave him a quick kick under the desk and asked Glen to tell me everything he knew about the package he'd been hired to ship to Nagasaki.

Glen shrugged. "No harm saying now, I guess. I got a call from a guy said he wanted to ship a package and he'd pay cash; said he'd deliver it to me that night. How he knew the Liberator was leaving port that day I don't know. He said he'd take care of pickup on the other end, easy as can be. That night there was a knock on the front door." He rethought it, adding, "Not a knock... more just like scratching. Who knows how long they'd been out there. I open the door and there's this black guy holding an old-looking steamer trunk. As soon as I open up he walks right by me and puts it down in the lobby, then hands me an envelope filled with cash, triple the going rate. I told him I needed him to sign the forms and take care of paperwork, but he just brushed right by me like I wasn't even there, walking off down the street. He hadn't even come in a car, just walked holding that big trunk."

"This might seem like an odd question, but was he smiling?"

His thin eyebrows shot up in surprise. "How do you know that? He had the freakiest smile and he never said a damn word."

I bulled ahead. "So you didn't have the paperwork but you shipped the package anyway?"

He shrugged again, the gesture clearly one he used often. "He paid triple."

"Did you look inside the trunk?"

Grimacing, he said sheepishly, "I was worried it was drugs. I needed the cash, but I didn't want to be a mule. I don't make it a habit of looking in other people's things."

Trying to stifle my excitement, I asked as calmly as I could, "What was in the trunk?" Josh had finally torn his attention away from the model boat and leaned forward to hear.

"Just three things: an old knife, a top hat and a cape. The hat and cape looked like antiques, but well maintained. That's it, really."

"Were there any initials on the knife hilt?"

Glen cocked his head, growing suspicious. "How do you know so much about it? I didn't look that close, I just wanted to make sure it wasn't drugs."

I fought the urge to curse. "The voice on the phone, what did it sound like?"

Again, the shrug. "Just a guy."

Josh peered through the back window at the derelict sailboat tethered to the dock in back, his curiosity finally getting the best of him. "What's up with that sh*t-heap back there? That's not one of your shipping boats is it? Christ, not even the gulls will crap on that thing."

Glen stared at him flatly. "That's where I live."

To say the pause that followed was agonizing would not begin to do the moment justice. Finally, Josh swallowed and offered lamely, "Hey, like Miami Vice! Where Crockett lived. On a boat." He coughed, the silence lengthening until he continued, "So, what say we continue this conversation where we can get drinks?"

"This is a business. These are business hours."

"I'm buying."

Glen ran a hand through his thinning hair and resignedly offered up his signature shrug. "I'll get my coat."