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information to change the political atmosphere in the basin, or embarrassing foreign diplomats trying to buy off the Caribbean. In the past the former colonial empires divided up negotiating with each island to use their power imbalance for leverage. Suddenly those nations faced more united fronts. And even bands of islands trying to negotiate with major cities instead of larger countries. With thirteen sovereign nations serving on the UN, and with some of those island nations having populaces in the hundreds of thousands, a single Caribbean nation’s vote was cheap. CIG helped the South Caribbean work as a bloc.
    Since 1823, U.S. agents claimed the Caribbean as the backyard of America thanks to the Monroe Doctrine. CIG headquarters in Bridgetown set off a firestorm of Caribbean chatter when a picture “leaked” online of the brass plaque on the inside door of their headquarters that said FUCK MONROE .
    Most Americans hadn’t picked up on the reference, but Caribbean politicians had, and suddenly diplomats were knocking on doors and asking what the hell CIG was.
    And after that little stunt, CIG got folded within CARICOM, the larger political entity that had been creating a common Caribbean economic zone and tighter integration of the islands. Suddenly CIG members weren’t tricksters and men like Roo given a second chance to reform their lives, but clean-cut kids getting recruited from the University of the West Indies. And just as suddenly, Roo had found, he was sent off to the Arctic to keep an eye on larger world politics. Shivering his ass off between icebergs so that CARICOM had eyes on the ground.
    He hadn’t seen Zee in a long, long time. Last he’d known, Zee was head of an ad-hoc team monitoring Middle East money trying to run away from the worst of the post-oil situations to settle in Trinidad, as well as Indonesian and Chinese influence buying.
    Last he’d heard.
    Before Roo’d gotten out of it all.
    There were so many foreigners playing around in the Caribbean. All of them convinced they were part of some “exotic” game, dragging their shiny mega-yachts down into the islands to host clandestine events while anchored off pretty sandy shores.
    Any of them could have gotten Zee into a shitload of trouble that blew back on him. The upper echelons, the bankers and corporations and rulers of the world, they didn’t like pushback in what they regarded as neutral vacationland.
    Fuck.
    Fuck them all. Roo snorted and crossed the street.
    “Watch you-self!” a man in a blue suit shouted, swerving his moped to dodge Roo.
    “Sorry, sorry.” Roo hopped to the sidewalk.
    “Hi.” The woman at the desk smiled brightly. And in a precise and careful, half-imitated British BBC broadcast, half-Tortolan accent, said, “I’m sorry, if you’re here to get a box we are just about to close.…”
    “Box ninety-five three four,” Roo said, wincing as the repetition of the box number made him recall the sound of Zee’s voice.
    The desk lady froze.
    “Nine five three four?” she asked.
    “Yes.” Roo glanced around. What had he missed? Something was wrong.
    “On box nine five three four, there is an extra security feature. It is a verbal password; we do this for our executive plans.” She had a phone in her hand. “If you don’t get it right, I promise I will call the police. Someone came in this morning and tried to get me to open the box. They tried to bribe me.”
    She sounded outraged by the thought, and she eyed Roo suspiciously.
    Someone else had been here already. Which probably meant the mailboxes were being watched. Roo had missed it.
    But never mind. He was here. No turning back.
    “The password is: ‘I’m one sad motherfucker,’” Roo said with a sad smile. Because that was a very Zee sort of password, the one he’d left on his post-death message.
    Roo glanced around, jumpy, waiting for something bad to happen. But she nodded primly and walked behind the wall of mail slots and boxes. The