Predator: A Crossbow Novel (Hector Cross Book 3)

“Not yet, no,” Capel conceded. “But we have to anticipate the moment when there is. The other issue to bear in mind is that anything you say before a case is a hostage to fortune once the case begins. It gives the other side a target to aim at, so to speak. They know what your argument is going to be and precisely how you are going to support it. If you were fighting a military battle, you wouldn’t tell your enemy precisely what forces you had and how you were going to deploy them. Well, the same applies in a legal conflict: you need to retain some element of surprise.”

Just to add to Cross’s frustrations, Mateus da Cunha was busy denying that he had anything to do with the events at Magna Grande. “It is absolutely correct that the waters in which this appalling tragedy took place will belong to Cabinda when she is a free nation, taking her rightful place in the world. It is also true that I am leading the fight for a free Cabinda. But as I have said, time and time again, I am fighting a political and moral battle; I am not engaged in acts of violence or terrorism. And in this case, I can prove that this was not an action by Cabindan fighters. As the whole world knows, the leader of the attack spoke French. As any French person could tell, his accent was African, probably Congolese. He was certainly not from Cabinda, for there the people speak Portuguese. His so-called political demands were just a fig-leaf for his crime. This was a robbery, a stick-up, not the act of true freedom fighters. I deny absolutely any connection with this event and I express my deepest sympathy for all those who died and all who have been bereaved.”

“You lying bastard,” Cross muttered as he watched da Cunha’s press conference on the BBC News at Ten. “You had plenty to do with what happened, you and Johnny Congo, and you bloody well know it.”

“Come to bed, you angry old man,” said Zhenia, gently teasing him as she stroked his furrowed brow. “Why would you want to watch bad people telling lies on TV when you could be making love to me?”

“Good question,” said Cross, looking with something close to wonderment at the beautiful girl who had come so magically into his life. For all the negativity in his life, Zhenia Voronova had retained her faith in him. “Nastiya told me that you were a hero, and I believe her, so I do not care what anyone else thinks,” she had told him with simple, almost childlike directness. “Also, I know you, Hector, the way that only a woman who loves a man can know him. You are a good, brave, honest man. That is why I love you.” Then she had paused, giggled, given him a look of pure, lusty wickedness, run a fingertip down his chest and purred, “Well, one of the reasons, anyway . . .”

Minute by minute, hour by hour, Jo Stanley saw the life draining out of Bannock Oil. For all the Bunter and Theobald veterans, the various Bannock accounts relating to family members and the trust had been a central part of their professional lives from the moment they joined the firm. Now they were following Bannock Oil’s stock price diving downward on their computer screens. There would be audible gasps as one barrier after another was broken and the decline went past 10 . . . 20 . . . 50 . . . even 80 percent.

The whispered conversations behind office doors became ever more desperate. People’s bonuses, their salaries, their jobs, even, were dependent on Bannock Oil’s continued prosperity, but now its very existence was in doubt.

Tension grew as the original Weiss, Mendoza and Burnett staff, right up to partner level, began to realize that this catastrophe could wreak havoc with their lives too. The three senior partners had gone out on a very long financial limb to raise the very high price—far too high, in the view of many legal bloggers and media pundits—that they’d paid for Bunter and Theobald. Now the only justification for that price was blowing up before their eyes.

Only one man in the whole set-up seemed unperturbed by the corporate and financial implosion taking place before everyone’s eyes. Oh, Shelby Weiss did his best to hide it. He maintained a look of anxious concern, suitably overlaid by a somewhat desperate attempt to sustain the morale of junior staff that befitted a partner with his name on the door. But Jo Stanley had taken Ronnie Bunter’s orders seriously. She had been watching Weiss with forensic attention to detail for the best part of two months now and, like a poker player mastering an opponent, she had learned to read his tells.

His doodles, for example, tended to be around and even swirly when he was relaxed, but tightened into jagged straight lines when he was anxious or tense. Now here they were, sitting in a partners’ meeting, with the chief financial officer describing in painful detail what the effects on annual revenue would be if the Bannock accounts dried up—how many staff would have to be laid off; how they would have to cut costs, not least by moving to cheaper offices in a far less prestigious location—and across the table from where Jo sat, Shelby Weiss was covering one corner of his legal pad with doodles that were positively rococo in their profusion of curves and curlicues.

For a moment she thought there might be an innocent explanation. Weiss interrupted the litany of disaster to say, “Look on the bright side, people. If Bannock Oil goes under, then there are going to be some real pissed beneficiaries of the trust wanting to know who turned the money tap off. And they’ll be suing anyone they can find to see if they can somehow get it back on again. We’ll be generating more billable hours than ever, just you wait and see.”

But his defiant show of optimism was almost immediately countered by his fellow partner Tina Burnett: “Nice try, Shelby, but that dog won’t hunt. Right now, there are only two family members who could possibly take action. One of them’s Carl Bannock, and no one’s heard from him in months and even years. The other is Catherine Cayla Cross. She’s just a baby and her daddy, Hector Cross, was the guy who was responsible for the safety of the Magna Grande oil platform that was attacked by terrorists, and the ship that got blown to the bottom of the Atlantic. If anyone takes legal action, Cross is going to the first guy they aim at. But is his little girl, who for all I know can’t even walk or talk, gonna hire us to take her daddy for every cent he’s got? I think not. And since Hector Cross’s money comes from his deceased wife Hazel Bannock Cross, which means it’s Bannock money, which is right now like saying no money at all, well, he ain’t gonna be worth suing anyhow, now is he?”

It was a devastating takedown, which would have been enough to deflate any man. But Shelby Weiss merely kept on doodling all the same circles and swirls, which meant that he still felt just dandy. And as Jo watched him through the rest of the day, she realized that there was a real spring in his step and a secret smile he was having to fight to keep off his face. Shelby Weiss’s firm was falling apart and it wasn’t bothering him at all because something else was happening—something linked to the Bannock crisis—that was making him far more than he was losing. But what?

Jo Stanley made it her business to find out.

First she called Ronnie Bunter and asked him to send her an email that she could pass on to Weiss. “It can be anything,” she said, “like, you’re worried about the welfare of your former staff at this time of crisis and you want to know what plans he has to deal with that.”

“Well, that’s true enough. I’ll get it to you right away.”

Once armed with the email, which she printed up, Jo waited till she saw Weiss walking to the john. Then she picked the message and headed toward Weiss’s office. His assistant, Dianne, was outside. Having started out doing secretarial work herself, Jo had always made a point of being polite and friendly to all the assistants, so she said hello to Dianne, exchanged a few quick words of chit-chat and said, “Is Shelby in? I’ve got a message from Ronnie Bunter that I hoped I could talk over with him.”

“He’s, uh . . .” Dianne gave her a conspiratorial smirk, and put her hand up by her mouth, as if to stop anyone else listening in. “He’s in the little boy’s room.”

“Do you think he’d mind if I left it on his desk?”

“Of course not! You go right on in, hon. You can wait for him if you like. I’m sure he won’t be long.”

Jo did not quite know what she expected to find in Weiss’s office, or what she would say to him to make him reveal what was going on. So it was pure chance that she saw his phone on his desk. Jo looked around. The office door was open, but Dianne couldn’t see her here. Treading as softly as she could, with her heart pumping and her nerves on edge, she stepped around behind the desk and looked down. There were two alerts on the screen, one saying that Aram Bendick had called and the other that he had left a voicemail message.

But why would Bendick be calling Shelby Weiss, and, it was clear, calling him regularly enough to be in his contacts list? The obvious connection was Bannock, but why would a financier in New York be talking to an attorney in Houston about that? Had Weiss been feeding Bendick inside information? No, that wasn’t possible. Even now, after the purchase of Bunter and Theobald, Weiss had no direct access to the inner sanctums of Bannock Oil. Unless . . .

“Miss Stanley, what can I do for you?”

The sound of Weiss’s voice hit Jo like a slap in the face. He was standing in the doorway, staring at her with narrowed, suspicious eyes. She could not control the guilt that flashed across her face, nor the tremor in her voice as she said, “I was just leaving something for you, sir.” She held up the email printout. “It’s a message from Mr. Bunter. He’s concerned about his former staff at this time of . . . of . . .” Her mind had gone blank, unable to find a word to end the sentence.

“At this time of temporary uncertainty?” Weiss suggested, walking toward his desk and glaring at her as though she were a hostile witness about to undergo a savage cross-examination.

“Er . . . yes, sir . . . I guess,” Jo blathered, getting out of his way as he sat down, feeling furious with herself for not responding better under pressure: Pull yourself together, woman!

“And why couldn’t he just ask me this question himself?”

“I don’t know, sir. I guess you’d have to ask him that. We were already in communication; maybe it was just easier for him to pass the message through me. Anyway, here it is.”

She held out the piece of paper and Weiss snatched it from her. He cast an eye over the printed text and then glanced up at her.

“Well, since you and Mr. Bunter are already ‘in communication,’ as you put it, you can tell him that I’ve read his letter and I’ll take it under advisement. As you can see, the situation’s very fluid at the moment. No one really knows what’s happening. When we do, Mr. Bunter will be the first to know.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You can go now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jo returned to her desk and started joining the dots, putting all the facts she knew and the connections between them into the most coherent logical order. When she’d finished she sat in silence, trying to come to terms with what she’d concluded. It was crazy, unbelievable, and yet it made more sense that any other possible explanation. She had to tell Ronnie Bunter what was going on and discuss it all with him, but a phone call was out of the question. It had to be in person. Meanwhile, there was one other person who needed to know and in this case, it had to be done in writing. Jo opened up her personal Gmail account and began to type.

In his office, Shelby Weiss was talking to Aram Bendick. “We’ve got a situation. There’s a woman here, Jo Stanley, works for Bunter—”

“The old guy you bought out, the one who was best buddies with Henry Bannock?” Bendick asked.

“Yeah, him.”

“So what’s the problem with this Stanley chick?”

“I found her in my office just now. I think she saw that you’d called.”

“So? People call each other all the time.”

“So she knows about, ah, our mutual acquaintance. He’s mentioned her to me by name. My point is, she can figure it out. So what are we going to do?”

“We?” said Aram Bendick. “There ain’t no ‘we’ in this. I am in New York City, on the other side of the country, and I’ve never heard of this woman before in my life. You, on the other hand, are just across the hallway from her. So you’re the one that’s gonna do what it takes to deal with the situation.”

Weiss couldn’t argue with that. So his next call was to D’Shonn Brown. “You and me need to talk. In private. I saw what you did for a friend of mine and I need you to do something for me.”

“Yeah? And why exactly should I do that?”

“Because you never, ever want me to be in a district attorney’s office, making a plea bargain, using whatever I can get to save my ass.”

“Hmm . . . I see. Where do you wanna meet?”

When Hector Cross saw an email from Jo Stanley in his inbox, headed “Please read this: Urgent,” he didn’t bother to open it. He had more important things to think about than the pleadings of an ex-girlfriend who’d not had the guts to stick it out with him. His entire waking life had essentially become a salvage operation. It was obvious that Bannock in its present form was doomed. The most likely scenario was that its assets and operations would be sliced, diced and sold off in little pieces to the financial vultures waiting to pick the flesh off the bones of a once great company.

Meanwhile, the legal vultures were circling around him. Ronnie Bunter kept him informed on an almost daily basis as attorneys and prosecutors across the U.S. competed to be the ones who would lead the class-action civil suits on behalf of the victims and their families, and the potential criminal case for negligence.

“If you want my advice, you should make yourself as poor as possible,” Bunter said during one of their calls.

Cross gave a bitter laugh. “I think the world is already doing that for me.”

“Well, yes, everything you or your daughter have tied up in Bannock is probably worthless. But you’ve still got a couple of valuable properties, and then there are all the private assets Hazel left you—her jewels and antiques alone have got to be worth enough to keep you and your descendants very comfortable for the rest of your lives. Just make sure that everything is in Catherine’s name, or in a trust—anywhere that a lawyer like me can’t get at it.”

“I’ve already got Sotheby’s and Christie’s both pitching for the right to auction the pictures,” Cross said. “It’s not just for Catherine. I want to make sure that all my people are properly looked after. They shouldn’t have to lose out because people in Houston put short-term greed above the need for proper planning and training. And they certainly shouldn’t be hurt because some legal bloodsucker wants to take me to the cleaners. I’ll take my lumps, but not at their expense.”

“That’s very noble of you, Heck.”

“Ah, not really . . . To tell you the truth, Ronnie, so long as I’ve got a roof over my head, some food in my belly and a good woman at my side, I couldn’t give a damn about money. Just look at the Bannock family. How much good did all Henry’s money really do them? Sure, they all lived lives of unbelievable luxury. From the day Hazel and I became an item, I never once flew on a scheduled flight, or caught a train, or did my own shopping, or ate at a normal pizza joint. Take those pictures. Every single one that was hung on any wall in any house or yacht or God knows what that Hazel owned was a copy. All the real ones were in bank vaults. So Henry Bannock had bought a bunch of masterpieces that no one could ever see. That’s just crazy.”

“There’s a reason people say that the rich are different,” said Bunter with a gentle chuckle.

“It’s worse than that, Ronnie. I lost Hazel because that money attracted evil like the brown stuff draws flies. They’re all dead—the whole Bannock clan, except for Catherine, and believe me, she’s going to be brought up to be a plain, simple, bog-standard Cross.”

“Technically, Carl Bannock isn’t dead.”

“Ha!” Cross exclaimed. “I’m in enough trouble already, so I won’t contradict you. But let me put it to you this way. Johnny Congo has been rampaging around the world causing trouble for the past few months and in all that time there’s not been the faintest sign, or hint, or sniff of the one human being in the whole world that Congo actually cares about. That should tell you something.”

“Not if I don’t want it to,” said Bunter.

Since that conversation, Cross had stepped up the process of asset-stripping his own life before anyone else could do it. Dave Imbiss, speaking for all Cross’s staff, had assured him that he had no obligation to beggar himself on their behalf. “We’re all very, very good at our jobs,” Imbiss told him. “That’s why you hired us.”

“It could be the other way around,” Cross said, only half in jest. “It could be that I hired and trained you. That’s why you’re so good at your jobs.”

“Either way, there’s no shortage of work in this world for people like us. Not that we’re looking for work, any of us. We’re all behind you, Heck. You’ve never let us down. We won’t do it to you.”

But Jo Stanley had let him down—or so Cross, whose view of loyalty was very much black or white, my way or the highway, had persuaded himself. Even so, she had always been an intelligent, level-headed individual. If she thought something was urgent, maybe it was. So, eventually, he opened the email. It read:

Dear Hector,

One day I would love to talk to you about what went wrong between us, and how very sorry I am about how things worked out and how I behaved—how I panicked, I guess. But this isn’t the time and that’s not why I’m writing.

I think I’ve found something out about the whole Bannock Oil disaster that explains a lot about why it happened. Maybe it can help you defend yourself against all the terrible things people are saying about you. I really feel so bad for you. Anyway . . .

Shelby Weiss was Johnny Congo’s lawyer, just before he escaped.

Then he got his firm to buy Bunter and Theobald—to get his hands on all the money from the Bannock Trust, if you ask me.

So now that Bannock’s collapsed, everyone at the firm is feeling terrible and frightened for their future.

Except Shelby Weiss. He’s as happy as a pig in you-know-what. And I wondered why that was. So I did a little snooping and I found that he’d been in touch with Aram Bendick, that hedge-fund guy who’s been boasting about all the money he made betting that Bannock would go under.

So now I’m thinking, what if Bendick knew that Bannock would be in trouble because he knew that things were going to go wrong at Magna Grande?

And what if he knew that because Shelby Weiss had told him, because Weiss is still Congo’s attorney?

I don’t know, I don’t think I’ve figured it all out yet, but I just hope there’s something there that you can use, because you don’t deserve to be attacked the way folks here are attacking you.

I know you, Hector. I know you are a good, brave man and you would never do anything unless you truly believed it was the right thing. So if I can help you, maybe you’ll think I’m not such a bad person, after all.

Please let me know if this has been any use to you,

Love,

Jo x

You clever girl,” Cross whispered to himself. “You clever, clever girl.” It was as if Jo Stanley had completed a circuit in his mind. The last wire was put in place and suddenly the lights went on. Now Cross could see the whole conspiracy in its entirety, and Congo was right at the heart of it.

Congo had given da Cunha enough money to buy his way into the struggle for Cabinda, but that was just a front for his real purpose, which was to attack Bannock . . . and attack me, Cross thought.

That explained why the so-called Cabindan rebels on the platform spoke French, not Portuguese. French was the language of the Congo, the tongue spoken by the coltan traders Carl and Johnny had done business with in Kazundu.

Somehow Congo had made the connection with Aram Bendick. Was it through Weiss? Or had Congo just seen Bendick’s name in the media and made the introduction himself? One thing was for sure: if Weiss had made money by getting in on Bendick’s bets against Bannock Oil, Congo must have made even more.

Bendick was the key to it. He knew exactly what had gone down. And if that knowledge was ever made public, if the full extent of the conspiracy was known, then no one would blame Hector Cross or any of his people for what had happened at Magna Grande, because the true perpetrators of that evil would be known, caught, convicted and punished as they deserved to be.

Cross called Dave Imbiss. “Get the team together,” he said. “I’ve got a job that needs doing, and if we get it right, there will be justice for all the people who died that night. And I want you to run it, Dave. It’s time you got to show what you can really do.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Imbiss said with a laugh. And then, in a much quieter, more somber tone, he added, “It’s good to hear you talk like that, Heck. Makes me feel we’ve got our boss back again.”

Hector felt his spirits rise. He was back in the game again and this time he knew he could win. When the phone rang and he saw Ronnie Bunter’s name on the screen, he answered with a cheerful, “Ronnie! Good to hear from you. How’s life in the great state of Texas?”

A silence descended on the line and then Bunter spoke in a voice that was cracking with emotion, “I don’t know how to tell you this, Hector, but . . . something terrible has happened.”

Jo Stanley left the office of Weiss, Mendoza, Burnett and Bunter at twenty past seven. This was much earlier than usual, but she’d seldom felt this dejected and lonely, as if everything had turned rotten and ugly and there wasn’t a single person in her world that she could turn to for comfort or solace.

She locked her safe and put on her old mink and the brightly colored scarf that Hector had bought her in Marrakesh on that wonderful weekend which now seemed like fifty years ago. As she studied her face in the mirror of her compact she thought about him again. She had tried to put Hector Cross out of her mind, but it was five days since she’d sent him the email. He had not replied.

I just hope nothing bad’s happened to him . . . as if the whole world falling in on him and Catherine Cayla isn’t enough. Poor little darling—I miss her as much as Hector.

Jo stared at the reflection of her own face in the tiny mirror. When did I get old? It seems like only yesterday I was young and carefree, but now I’m old and gray . . . and so damn lonely!

She saw the tears welling up in her own eyes and she closed the lid of the compact with a snap. No! I refuse to weep for him. I wrote that bastard a grovelling letter and he didn’t even have the decency to reply. She drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders. He is a hard, cruel man . . . and it’s finished. I don’t love him any more.

But she knew it was a lie.

Jo pulled on her soft knitted cap and tucked the loose strands of her hair under the brim, then she turned for the door. She heard Bradley Bunter in his own room at the end of the corridor but she didn’t want to talk to anybody, especially not Bradley. She closed the door to her own office softly and slipped off her shoes so that her stockinged feet would make no noise. When she reached the elevator she replaced her shoes, and rode down to the underground garage where her old blue Chevy was parked. As she drove up the ramp into the street she noticed another car coming up the ramp behind her, but she thought nothing of it. It was going-home time and there was a flow of vehicles in the street outside the rear of the building, so she had to wait a little before she was able to slip into the stream.

She remembered that her refrigerator at the apartment was almost empty so she took a right at the traffic lights on Maverick Street, and headed for the parking lot at the back of the Central Market.

Lobster! She decided. And a half-bottle of Napa Valley Chenin Blanc. That’ll cheer me up. And to hell with all men, they’re not worth the tears and suffering. She turned into the parking lot and cruised slowly down the row, found an open slot near the end of the row and reversed the Chevy into it. Then she climbed out and locked the doors and set off toward the market, without looking back.

The Nissan that had been following her since she left the offices of Bunter and Theobald was painted a color that had once had a fancy name like Mocha Pearl, but had long since faded to a nondescript shade of dust and dried manure. It drove slowly past Jo’s Chevy and parked near the end of the row of vehicles. The door on the passenger side opened and a Hispanic type in a dark-colored windcheater and baseball cap climbed out and sauntered back down the row of parked vehicles. When he reached the Chevy he took a large bunch of keys from the pocket of his windcheater. Working quickly he tried the keys in the passenger side lock one after another until the doors clicked open. He grunted in satisfaction and glanced around casually making certain he was unobserved. Then he slipped behind the rear seat and disappeared from view as he sank down as low as he could get between the seats and the floor. His companion remained hunched behind the wheel of the Nissan parked at the end of the row.

For a little less than ten minutes neither of them moved. Then Jo Stanley reappeared through the revolving doors of the market and hurried back toward her Chevy. She was toting a small plastic carrier bag. As she passed the parked Nissan the driver opened the door and casually trailed after her. While Jo placed the bag between her feet and busied herself with unlocking the driver’s door—Jeez, it’s time I got a car with central locking!—he walked on by without so much as glancing at her.

Jo got the door open and slipped behind the steering wheel. She reached across and placed her carrier bag on the empty passenger seat beside her, not noticing that the lock was still up on the passenger’s door, slammed the driver’s door closed, and leaned forward to insert the key in the ignition.

While her whole attention was fixed on getting the car started, the man crouched on the floor behind her rose up and slipped his right arm around her throat from behind. Holding her in a neck lock he leaned back with all his weight, pinning her to the seat and smothering the frantic cries she was trying to utter as her hands clawed ineffectually at his arms.

The second man who had walked on past the Chevy doubled back swiftly and yanked open the passenger door. As he slid into the seat beside Jo he reached into the front of his jacket and brought out a ten-inch butcher’s knife. With his free hand he ripped open the front of Jo’s mink jacket and laid his open hand on the bottom of her ribcage which was arched backward by the neck lock of the first assassin. With the skill born of long practice he placed the point of the blade on Jo’s skin, as precisely as a surgeon’s scalpel and with a single hard thrust drove the steel full length upward into Jo’s heart.

Both men froze, holding her from struggling, choking off any noise she might make. At the end she shuddered and her whole body slumped in death.

Neither of the men spoke a word throughout the entire procedure, but once she was dead the knife man used a small hand towel he brought out from his pocket to staunch the residual bleeding while he withdrew the blade from Jo’s chest.

The man who had pinioned Jo ransacked her handbag quickly and found her wallet. He removed a small roll of ten- and twenty-dollar bills but left her driver’s license. Then between them they pushed her corpse down on to the floor where she would not be obvious to a casual passer-by.

Then they slipped out of the Chevy unhurriedly, locked the doors and—still unhurriedly—walked back to their own vehicle and drove away.

Jo’s dead,” said Ronnie Bunter over the telephone.

“No, that can’t be right.” Hector Cross spoke quite calmly, certain that there must be some mistake. “I just read an email she sent me.”

“I’m sorry, Hector, but it’s true. She was mugged right outside the Central Market, on Westheimer. She’d just gone in to get some deli for her dinner and they were waiting for her when she went back to her car.” Ronnie Bunter had a calm, punctilious, old-school lawyer’s mind, but his distress had overwhelmed him. He was having difficulty forcing the words out past the sobs that Cross could hear gathering in his throat. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Bunter went on. “I mean, it’s a good neighborhood and she had a real nice apartment on Post Oak Boulevard . . . This is a safe area, Heck, I recommended it to her myself, but . . . but . . . I guess some guys, druggies or something, they were waiting for her in her car. They stabbed her, and took her purse . . . she died for a purse, Heck. What is this world coming to?”

“She didn’t die for a purse,” Cross said. “She died because she got too close to the Beast.” He drew a deep breath. “I am to blame for this. But I promise you one thing. I will avenge her. You can count on that.”

The following morning, Dave Imbiss informed Cross that he had devised a plan for dealing with Aram Bendick that would, at the same time, bring Jo Stanley’s killers to justice. The O’Quinns were immediately summoned to a meeting at which the scheme would be discussed, analyzed and pored over for any possible weaknesses before a final decision to put it into effect was made.

“Please, Dave, don’t tell me that your idea begins with me getting that disgusting man into bed,” Nastiya joked as they helped themselves to freshly brewed coffee.

“Don’t be daft, woman,” said Paddy. “If I know Dave, he’ll be after raiding Bendick’s house and killing him before he can reach his getaway car. That’s the kinda plan that always works perfectly, in my experience!”

“That’s enough!” snapped Hector, bringing the meeting to order. “This is about getting justice for Jo and for all the poor beggars who died at Magna Grande. Let’s not forget that, OK?”

The other three flashed glances at one another, like classmates who’d just discovered their teacher was in a bad mood, and sat down around the table without another word being said.

“Right then,” Cross went on, “what have you got for us, Dave?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I did consider the possibility of a honeytrap, as a means of blackmailing Bendick and forcing him to talk. And I looked at the likelihood of pulling off a forcible seizure, given that Bendick never has fewer that six bodyguards around him, both male and female, all trained by Mossad. But I rejected them both. Here’s the thing, boss. Like it or not, Aram Bendick is kind of a public hero right now. The media’s portraying him as a financial genius who called the odds and brought down an entire corporation, single-handed. It’s like David killing Goliath and then walking away with several billion dollars. Plus, he’s a blue-collar kid from the Bronx who made it all the way to the top. To us, sitting here, he’s a sleazeball who made his money over the dead bodies of innocent people. To the American people, he’s a hero. And you . . .”

Cross grimaced. “OK, I get it, I’m the Limey who screwed up and got everyone killed.”

“I’m afraid so, Heck. My point is, you can’t afford to be seen anywhere near the take-down. Nor can any of us because we’re all toxic. It wouldn’t matter what we made Bendick admit, he’d always be able to get out of it, just by saying we forced him, and the whole world would think we were trying to shift the blame for our mistakes. And that’s if the operation went right. If we messed it up and didn’t get to Bendick, or more people got hurt, well, if you think you’ve got legal problems now . . . man, they’d be a thousand times worse.”

“You told me you had a plan,” said Cross. “So far all I’ve heard is options that won’t work. Give me one that will.”

“It’s real simple. You get the law to do the work for you.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, has there actually been a writ or a warrant issued against you yet?” Imbiss asked.

“Not so far as I know.”

“And if I recall, didn’t you have a contact at the Texas Rangers—Hernandez, or something?”

Cross nodded. “That’s right. Lieutenant Consuela Hernandez was her name. She sounded to me like a damn good cop.”

“Well, as I recall, the Rangers took the same sort of crap from the media and the politicians when Congo escaped as you’re doing now over Magna Grande. What I’m getting at is, if you go through Hernandez to her boss and you say you’ve got a way to solve the murder of Jo Stanley, and nail the man who helped Congo escape, and name the men who were really responsible for the sinking of the Bannock A, well, my guess is he’d be real interested in that proposition. He gets his career back on track, you get out from under the heap of crap that’s been dumped on you and a bunch of guilty men get what’s coming to them.”

“That certainly sounds appealing,” Cross agreed. “But exactly how do you propose to work this magic trick?”

“Before I tell you, I need to ask one last question: would Ronald Bunter risk putting himself in danger in order to help you out?”

“What kind of risk?”

“Making bad people very angry if things went wrong.”

Cross thought about it for a moment. “If it was just me, yes, he probably would, though he’d really be doing it in Hazel’s memory. If it’s also to help avenge Jo, absolutely, he’d do anything.”

“Then here’s what we’re going to do . . .”

An hour later, just as Cross was bringing the meeting to an end, Paddy O’Quinn said, “There is something that has been preying on my mind ever since it all happened. The thing is, whoever was behind the attack seemed to know a helluva lot about our whole set-up. I mean, those lads on the Angolan helicopters found their way around that rig like they were carrying maps. And the fella that put the mine under the Bannock A knew precisely where to find her.”

“Are you suggesting someone betrayed us?”

“I don’t know, it just seems odd to me . . .”

A vision flashed through Cross’s mind, a memory of the terrorist leader, standing on the helideck, guiding his men to their targets around the oil platform. He knew exactly what he was doing . . . he knew!

“Suppose that’s true,” Cross said, “who was the mole? The only people who knew the whole picture and who had access to detailed plans are sitting in this room. I refuse to believe it was one of us. There isn’t anyone here whose conduct wasn’t exemplary . . . Are you saying I was the mole, Paddy . . . or Dave . . . or your own wife?”

“No, of course not!” O’Quinn protested. “I don’t believe that for a moment. That’s why I haven’t said anything until now. It’s just that the thought won’t leave my head, that’s all.”

“Maybe there’s an innocent explanation,” said Imbiss. “You can get a pretty good picture of any rig in the world, just by going online. And it was no secret that Bannock Oil was opening up the Magna Grande field. Anyone who knew that wouldn’t have a hard time locating a damn great floating refinery.”

“I suppose . . .”

“And don’t forget, Carl Bannock isn’t officially dead,” Imbiss continued. “So he was probably being sent corporate data, which means Congo would have seen it.”

Cross sighed and then grimaced in frustration. “Of course he would . . . why was I so stupid?” He saw the puzzled expression on the other three faces at the table and explained, “Bigelow’s spin doctor, Nocerino, called me . . . it was the night the Noatak went down. Anyway, he said he was putting together an investors’ letter about the Magna Grande field. You know, a puff piece saying what a great success it was going to be. He wanted me to say something about the security we were putting in place. I didn’t give away any big secrets, but the letter had a lot of information. Not enough to give Congo everything he needed to know, but enough to steer him in the right direction.”

Paddy nodded. “Ah, well then, that explains it . . . John bloody Bigelow and his merry men gave our enemies the information they needed to destroy us, then prevented us from doing the training we needed to do our jobs properly. They didn’t just shoot themselves in the foot. They slit their own throats as well, and probably stuck a stake in their hearts, just for good measure. Arseholes!”

The matter was settled. But that evening, just as Zhenia was leaving the O’Quinns’ house in Barnes, en route for a night with Cross, Nastiya stopped her sister by the door and said, “Have you been working for da Cunha?”

Zhenia stopped dead in her tracks and stammered, “Wha . . . what do you mean? Why would I . . . how would I work for da Cunha?”

“I don’t know. I just remember how sexy you thought he was. You sounded like a schoolgirl with a crush. Did you think he was sexy enough to make you betray Hector Cross?”

Zhenia looked appalled. “Betray Hector? But I love Hector. He’s the best thing that has ever, ever happened to me. I would rather die than hurt him.”

Nastiya looked at her, saying nothing, then nodded and said, “Good, I’m glad you said that. Because if I ever thought that someone I knew had betrayed Hector, even if it was someone I loved very much, with my own blood in their veins, I would kill that person without a second’s hesitation. So, anyway . . . off you go! Spend the night with Hector Cross and show him how much you really love him.”

Zhenia dashed down the front garden path to the taxi waiting for her by the curb. Nastiya closed the front door, paused for another second’s thought and then walked toward the kitchen, cursing to herself as she realized it was her turn to make supper.

Three days after Dave Imbiss had set out his plan, an elderly gentleman in an old-fashioned, bespoke suit that was beautifully cut but just a little bit shiny at the elbows strolled up to the reception desk at the newly enlarged firm of Weiss, Mendoza, Burnett and Bunter. He smiled at the pretty young blonde in a headset behind the great slab of polished black granite that served as a reception desk and said, “Excuse me, my dear, but could you tell me where I might find the partners’ boardroom?”

Her delicate little brows creased in puzzlement. “I’m sorry, sir, but that’s only for the partners.”

“Yes, I imagine that’s how it got its name,” he said in a kindly manner. “Luckily, I am a partner. My name is Ronald Bunter. It’s right there on the wall behind you.”

Despite the fact that she spent every working day seated in front of the four names etched on to a twelve-foot-wide glass panel, the receptionist could not help but glance behind her to check. “But that’s a different Mr. Bunter, sir,” she said.

“You mean Mr. Bradley Bunter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, he’s my son and it’s a matter of opinion as to which of us is the Bunter referred to on that sign. Nevertheless, I am a partner, I believe that a partners’ meeting is scheduled for eleven o’clock this morning, which is to say, five minutes from now, and I aim to attend that meeting, as is my right. So please, would you be so good as to direct me to it?”

“I . . . I . . .” Faced with the possibility that she might either be allowing a random geezer onto the premises, or barring the way to an actual partner who could have her fired, the receptionist had no idea what to do. So she made the smart move and pushed the decision up the line.

“One moment, sir,” she said with a brittle half-smile as she tapped on her keyboard. “Hi, this is Brandi. There’s a gentleman in reception who says his name is Bunter and that he’s our Mr. Bunter’s father. He wants to attend a partners’ meeting. Should I let him in?” She listened to the response, ended the call and then told Bunter, “Someone will be out to see you momentarily.”

That someone turned out to be Bradley himself.

His presence alarmed the receptionist. “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to disturb you. I just . . .” she twittered.

Bunter Jr. gave her a smile that managed to be both predatory and ingratiating as he said, “Don’t you worry, Brandi sweetheart, you did great.”

As she glowed in the warmth of his approval, Bradley turned to his father, “Gee, Dad, what brings you here today? I mean, it’s great to see you, but this is kind of unexpected.”

“I dare say it is, but here I am. Now, shall we go into the meeting?”

The other partners were no less surprised or more happy than Bradley Bunter at the arrival of the man who had been, until then, a very silent partner. And so Ronnie stayed all the way through the various items that the partners had tabled for discussion, almost all of which centered on the disastrous effect of the collapse of Bannock Oil, and by extension the Henry Bannock Family Trust, on the firm’s finances. It took quite an effort of will, since Ronnie, who had written the terms of the trust himself, and then administered it for decades without the slightest blemish—other than the obligation to pay huge sums to the odious Carl Bannock—was now seeing his life’s work fall apart before his eyes. Nevertheless, his lips were sealed.

Only when the partnership secretary asked if there was any other business did he raise his hand and say, “Yes, there are two matters, both linked to one another, that I would like to bring to my fellow partners’ attention. May I have the floor?”

The other partners could not deny him his say, and so Ronnie Bunter began: “The first matter I would like to raise, though I had hoped and expected that it would have been considered by now, without the need for me to say anything, is the tragic death of Jo Stanley.”

There was a low murmur of embarrassment around the table. Even lawyers could understand that there was something shameful about discussing their corporate and personal finances for almost an hour but ignoring the passing of a colleague.

“Jo worked for me for many years and I considered her a close friend, almost a daughter in some ways, I guess. I appreciate that she was much less familiar to those of you who have only just become her colleagues, but I know that many of the men and women who worked alongside her at Bunter and Theobald will have been hit very hard by her loss. I don’t know what plans have been made for her funeral, but I hope this firm will pay tribute to her in some way, and I absolutely insist that anyone who wishes to attend her funeral should be allowed to do so within working hours.”

There were nods around the table and the matter seemed settled until Shelby Weiss piped up, “With all due respect, Ronnie, we’re fighting for survival here. Every cent counts. Sure, it would be nice to commemorate Jo’s passing, but if folks are going to go to her funeral, they’d better do it on their time, not ours. I mean, what if there’s a wake and they end up getting blasted and dancing jigs when they should be back at work, racking up billable hours?”

Ronald Bunter was not a flamboyant litigator. He did not show off in front of a jury. He seldom even raised his voice. But he had a quiet, steely way of nailing a hostile witness or a lying defendant that was just as effective as any amount of showmanship. And it was that persona to which he reverted now.

“On a point of information, Mr. Weiss, Jo Stanley was not, to my knowledge, an Irish-American and so the question of a wake does not apply. I only met her parents once or twice and they struck me as delightful people: modest, understated and God-fearing. They loved their daughter very much indeed and I am quite certain that they will mark her passing in a way that reflects their personalities and their values. So I insist: the former staff of Bunter and Theobald, at the very least, must be allowed to attend her funeral without being penalized in any way for doing so. I trust we will not require a vote.”

Even Weiss did not dare force the issue, and so Ronnie continued: “The other matter I wished to discuss also concerns Jo Stanley inasmuch as it relates to the manner of her passing and the reasons behind the assault that was made upon her.”

“What reasons?” Weiss snapped, with a vehemence that drew one or two puzzled looks from around the table. “She was mugged. Case closed. It’s unfortunate, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but, hey, shit happens.”

“Thank you, Mr. Weiss,” said Bunter, not feeling any need at all to match the volume or intensity with which Weiss had interrupted him. “You’re making life much easier for me. You see, I had been a little nervous about making the allegations that I am now going to lay before my fellow partners. But all your words and actions only serve to persuade me of its strength. So let me state my case—”

“You can’t just come in here and hijack this meeting!” Weiss shouted.

“Keep digging, Mr. Weiss, you’re just making the hole you’re in that much deeper.”

“I’m sorry,” Tina Burnett interjected, “but what the hell is this all about? Ronnie, what are you trying to tell us?”

Ronald Bunter paused. His brow furrowed. For a moment it might have seemed to the other occupants of the boardroom that he was just an old man who’d lost his train of thought. In fact, he was an old litigator who knew exactly how to put an audience on the edge of its seats. Finally, a fraction of a second before someone else said something, he replied, “I’m telling you, Ms. Burnett, that your partner Shelby Weiss was almost certainly responsible for the death of Jo Stanley, which I contend was no random mugging but instead a targeted assassination. I furthermore assert that the reason for the assassination was that Ms. Stanley had established a link between Mr. Weiss and the financier Aram Bendick, the same Mr. Bendick who, as you cannot help but have noticed, has been bragging about the vast fortune he made by betting against Bannock Oil. And I believe that further investigation will show that the reason why this discovery of Ms. Stanley’s was so dangerous to both Mr. Weiss and Mr. Bendick was that they were engaged in an international conspiracy to use an attack on the Bannock field at Magna Grande, off the coast of Angola, as the means to precipitate the collapse of Bannock Oil. And finally, I am certain, though I cannot as yet prove it, that the prime mover in this conspiracy was Mr. Weiss’s client John Kikuu Tembo, better known to most of you by his alias Johnny Congo.”

“That’s a damn lie!” Weiss shouted as the partners’ meeting descended into uproar. It took more than a minute before Jesús Mendoza, the oldest and most authoritative of the Weiss, Mendoza and Burnett trio, was able to restore order and say, “These are some serious accusations you’re making, Ronnie. Do you have the evidence to back them up?”

“To the standard of criminal proof? No, Jesús, I don’t. But do I have the kind of case you would have grabbed with both hands when you were the brightest young DA in East Texas? Hell yes.”

“Then you’d better lay it out for us.”

So Ronnie told the story, right from the moment Jo Stanley forced Hector Cross not to throw Johnny Congo out of the back of a plane, but to give him up to the authorities; to Congo’s mysterious involvement in Cabinda; to Jo’s observations of Weiss’s strangely unconcerned, even upbeat mood in recent weeks; her discovery of Bendick’s name on Weiss’s phone (which, Bendick pointed out, Weiss had almost certainly observed, or at the very least suspected); her email to Cross and her sudden death.

He concluded, “I can’t produce a smoking gun, or not yet, anyway. But if I were a young, ambitious DA, I would right now be getting subpoenas to seize all Mr. Weiss’s telephone and email records, not to mention his bank accounts, though my guess is the dirty ones are all overseas. I think you’re an evil bastard, Weiss, but you’re not a dumb one. I’d also be calling the FBI, the Feds, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York—I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that’s the court that has jurisdiction over the financial centers of New York City—to put Aram Bendick under the microscope, too. I’d be looking into the trades Mr. Bendick made, and his movements, both inside the United States and beyond in the days immediately preceding the start of financial hostilities against Bannock Oil, and I’d call the State Department, because they’ll want to start lobbying the Swiss and the Cayman Islanders and possibly the Panamanians to open up their banks to our investigation.”

Weiss was sitting, white-faced and silent, as the recitation went on. He’d spent years reading juries, so he knew, just by looking at the other lawyers in the room, that they were buying Bunter’s story, whether he had the smoking gun or not. Now he had to fight back.

“You’ve got nothing, Bunter,” he snarled. “No evidence, no witnesses, no documentation—nothing but the crazy theories of a woman who was clearly desperate to appease the lover she’d walked out on, and to make up for feeling bad about keeping Johnny Congo alive. If you people want to listen to more of this garbage, fine. Me, I have had enough. I’ve got work to do. Maybe if you had some work, Bunter, you wouldn’t be wasting time on garbage like this.”

Weiss got to his feet, knocking over his chair as he did so, and stalked out of the room.

“Thank you, Ms. Burnett, gentlemen, for letting me say my piece. I thought it went very well, didn’t you?”

Oh yeah,” said Major Bobby Malinga of the Texas Rangers, who was sitting in a van across the road from the Weiss, Mendoza, Burnett and Bunter offices listening to the feed from the wire that he had attached to Bunter’s chest a couple of hours earlier.

“Come on, Weiss, call your daddy . . .” Hector Cross muttered.

A second later Weiss dialled a 646 area code, indicating a Manhattan-based cellphone number. The number started ringing. “Pick it up . . . pick it up,” Hernandez muttered. Then she pumped her fist and mouthed, “Yesss!” as the unmistakable voice of Aram Bendick answered, “What do you want?”

“We’ve been made,” Weiss replied, sounding on the verge of panic.

“Whoa! Take a chill pill. Calm down. What happened?”

“You remember that chick I told you about, Jo Stanley, the one you said I should deal with?”

“No.” Bendick’s voice was flat, emotionless, crunching in the bluntness of the denial.

“Sure you do. You told me she was none of your business; I had to fix it. Well, I did.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Now Weiss became angry and that helped calm his nerves. “Listen, smart-ass. I’m talking to you as a lawyer and I am telling you that Stanley figured out what we were doing. And she told her old lover, Cross, the guy who screwed up the Magna Grande situation.”

“Ouch.” Cross winced in the stuffy darkness of the van.

“And Cross told Stanley’s old boss Bunter, who showed up at my office an hour ago and laid it all out, the whole thing, right in front of my partners. That’s four attorneys, all of them officers of the law, who now know about a conspiracy to destroy Bannock Oil and defraud its stockholders. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re guilty of that conspiracy. And that’s not even the worst part. See, Bunter also suggested that the Magna Grande disaster was masterminded by my client and your investor Johnny Congo, specifically with the aim of lowering the price of Bannock stock, from which we both profited. And that puts us this close to a conspiracy to cause the deaths of more than two hundred people, more than half of them U.S. citizens. Do you hear me, Bendick?”

“Sure, I heard what you said, but you’ll notice I didn’t say anything because I honestly don’t have a goddamn clue what you’re talking about. I have a long record of backing my judgement on positions some folks think are crazy. Some I lose. More often I win. This was one of those cases, and I’d like to see anyone try and prove otherwise. See you around, Mr. Weiss.”

“Damn!” Hernandez threw her headphones down on to the workbench in front of her. “That bastard’s right, he didn’t say a thing we can use.”

“Did you seriously think he would?” Hector Cross asked. “The point is, we have a confession from Weiss and I’m sure that your colleagues in the Harris County DA’s office can use that as leverage to get him to make a statement implicating Bendick, with evidence to back up his claims. I’m guessing that if he was acting for Congo in the commission of a crime then he can forget about attorney–client privilege. You heard what Ronnie Bunter said: Get on to every federal agency that has anything to do with money, terrorism or good old-fashioned crime and put them on the case. Forget how cool Bendick was on the phone, it’s squeaky-bum time now. I bet he’s got all his munchkins deleting emails, dumping files in the trash, shifting dirty money to offshore accounts. It’ll all be kicking off.”

“I don’t know why you’re sounding so goddamn cheerful,” Hernandez said. “If he’s doing all those things he’s destroying the only evidence that could ever get him convicted.”

“That’s what you think.” Cross dialled a number on his phone and pressed the “speaker” button. They could all hear the number ringing and then an American voice saying, “Hi, boss, what can I do for you?”

“Very simple, Dave, just let them know what you’ve been doing over the past few hours and days.”

“Cut a long story short, I’ve been hanging out with some old buddies from the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. They were real happy to help me track down the people responsible for the deaths of so many of their fellow citizens, some of them military veterans. So we got out our laptops, put our heads together, started writing code just like the good old days and, what do you know? We hacked right into Aram Bendick’s corporate computer system, so we already have all the evidence he’s trying to hide, and can see what he’s doing right now, as he does it. That means we can track all the money he’s trying to hide, which so far amounts to a little over two point five billion dollars . . . no, sorry, make that two point seven billion . . . Man, he really made a lot of money out of killing all those folks!”

“That’s great work, Dave. Tell all the guys who helped you thank you very much from me. And a massive pat on the back for you, too. I think you may just be an actual, living genius.”

Imbiss laughed. “You’re the boss, Heck, so I won’t contradict you!”

Cross ended the call and turned his attention back to Malinga. “Here’s what we just established today. Shelby Weiss had Jo Stanley killed. Question: Who would he go to if he wanted a hit? Answer: Whoever it was that organized Congo’s escape, because don’t tell me Weiss doesn’t know who that was.”

“Oh, don’t worry, he knew,” Malinga replied. “And he’s not the only one. The guy in question is a businessman, claims he’s legit, name of D’Shonn Brown.”

“Any relation to Aleutian Brown?” Cross asked.

“Brother, why do you ask?”

“Oh, I bumped into Aleutian a while back.”

“Did you, ah, bump hard?”

“Hard enough, but don’t worry, it was a long way from your jurisdiction.”

Malinga gave a wry smile of approval. “Well, then, I appreciate your efforts to keep the streets safe for law-abiding folks to go about their business. Hernandez, time we put a call in to the DA’s office. We’re going to need warrants for Weiss’s office, home, phones: you name it. And as soon as you find any connection to D’Shonn Brown—one conversation’ll do it—we go for warrants on him too.”

“You make sure you get them,” Hector Cross said to Malinga as Hernandez started barking into a phone. “Jo Stanley was a good woman, and she believed in the rule of law above all else. The least she deserves is for her killer to be caught, tried, found guilty and punished.”

“Saves you having to do it, huh?” said Malinga.

“She’s the only person I wouldn’t avenge personally. I thought about it—I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t. But she wouldn’t have wanted it.”

“Good, because I’d hate to be coming after you as well as Weiss and Brown.”

“And Bendick, don’t forget about him.”

“Oh, I haven’t, you can count on that. And I will make those calls you were talking about. Not to mention the U.S. Customs, Federal Aviation Authority and New York Port Authority. If Aram Bendick took a plane or a boat or any other means of transport to get out of the country in the weeks leading up to Magna Grande, I’m going to find out about it.”

“Then what?”

“Then I’m going to hand the whole damn thing over to the Feds and watch them take the credit. I’m just a good ol’ boy from Texas, Mr. Cross. So far as I understand, which is not too far, Aram Bendick was involved in an international conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism as a means of rigging the markets.”

“Sounds about right,” Hector agreed.

“You’re going to let the Feds do their job, though, right? Not tempted to take any shortcuts?”

Cross laughed. “On occasion I am quite capable of obeying the law. Besides, I want the pleasure of following this story as it unfolds. I want to see Weiss and Bendick do the perp walk. I want to see the look on their greedy, lying faces as their lawyers deny all the charges. I want to watch all the evidence emerge . . . And one day, maybe, I want to see them locked away for a very, very long time.” “Well, then I guess I’d better start making those calls,” said Malinga as he cocked his white Stetson over his right eye at a jaunty angle.

There were only twenty-three of them gathered on the top floor of Seascape Mansions, Cross’s safe house in Abu Zara. The Magna Grande disaster had left Bannock Oil in almost total disarray. John Bigelow had been forced to resign as the company’s President and CEO as had the remainder of the board of directors. Bannock Oil had been placed in administration and the assets of the company sequestrated. The remainder of the company’s drilling concessions in the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans had been sold off at fire-sale prices in a desperate bid to meet the company debts. The only properties that remained in the company’s possession when the dust finally settled were the Zara oilfields, which had an estimated life of a mere fifteen years. All in all, the net market value of Bannock Oil Ltd had been reduced by a staggering 80 percent.

It was an abysmal low point for a company that had once been so illustrious. Nevertheless Bannock Oil still required protection and Cross had come through the disaster with his reputation almost untarnished. He had taken advantage of the Bannock asset sales to buy back Cross Bow Security for a fraction of what he had once been paid to sell it.

At least Shelby Weiss and Aram Bendick were no longer a threat. They had been found guilty by the Supreme Court of Texas of conspiring to cause the destruction of the Magna Grande drilling operation for their own gain, and causing the deaths of more than two hundred people aboard the Bannock A, many of them U.S. citizens. The judge has sentenced them in court to jail terms of fifty years and seventy-five years respectively. They would almost certainly die in prison before they even came up for parole. In a desperate bid to mitigate his sentence, Weiss had told investigators everything he knew that linked D’Shonn Brown to the operation that had sprung Johnny Congo on his execution day, and it was only a matter of time before Brown was wearing an orange jumpsuit and eating prison food too.

Cross and his team, however, still had a job to do, protecting what remained of the Bannock Oil Company. So now he held up both hands for silence, and laid out the scale of the task. “We haven’t seen the last of our enemies. The most virulent and dangerous of them are still out there, lurking in the undergrowth, keeping a low profile, waiting till the world is looking the other way. Mateus da Cunha and Johnny Congo, alias Juan Tumbo, alias King John Kikuu Tembo won’t be appeased until they’ve wrested the Magna Grande oilfield from the control of the Angolan government. They intend to do this by completing the job that the Magna Grande disaster started. That’s to say: creating unrest and anarchy, destabilising Cabinda to the point where da Cunha can step in, present himself as the nation’s savior and declare independence from Angola. And if thousands more innocent victims are slaughtered and mass destruction is perpetrated once again, they won’t care. It’s all just part of their plan.”

The atmosphere in the room had changed from lighthearted banter to serious, professional concentration. “They have time on their side and massive funds at their disposal,” Cross went on. “For da Cunha, this is all just a matter of naked greed. He lusts after the mineral riches of Cabinda. Congo’s different. He wants revenge for the death of Carl Bannock, for wrecking his personal empire in Kazundu, for sticking him on death row, for forcing him out of Venezuela. So he’s got a vendetta against me personally. He wants me dead. And the feeling is entirely mutual. I want him dead too.”

Cross paused for a moment to let his words sink in. Then he went on.

“So . . . we’ve been making plans. Most of you don’t know this, but Nastiya O’Quinn, helped by her half-sister Zhenia, has been able to infiltrate the enemy camp and win da Cunha’s trust. That gives her a lead to Congo too. Neither of them are aware that Nastiya and Zhenia are connected in any way to Cross Bow Security. They believe that Nastiya is a Russian financier who heads up a company that specializes in raising funds in her country of origin to invest in activities which can deliver maximum rewards, regardless of legality. Let’s face it, the average Russian oligarch wouldn’t be worth a rouble if he’d ever worried about the law.”

There were knowing smiles on the faces of many of the audience, but a few of the others looked dubious. Then one of the Cross Bow men raised a hand.

“Do you have a question, Pete?” asked Cross, somewhat reluctantly.

“Yeah boss, it’s about Nastiya. She was with us on the Kazundu job. What if Congo saw her then. No disrespect, Nastiya, but you’re not the kind of woman that a man forgets.”

That got a quiet laugh from the audience and a smile from the woman herself. Cross, however, looked thoughtful. “That’s a good point. What’s your reply, Nastiya?”

“Yes, of course I was on the expedition to Kazundu. But I was with Paddy, my husband, leading the attack on the airport. We never went near the castle where your team captured Congo.”

“What about the return flight?” Cross insisted. “Are you sure he never had sight of you then?”

“Certain,” Nastiya assured him. “You had Congo shot full of drugs, knocked out cold and wrapped up in a cargo net in the rear cargo cabin for the whole return flight. I was in the front passenger cabin. Congo never got so much as a peep at me.”

Cross glanced across at Paddy O’Quinn. “That’s how I remember it too. What do you reckon, Paddy? Has Congo ever seen your wife?”

“My wife is always right, Heck. You know that. And I’d kill the man who calls her a liar . . . if Nastiya hadn’t got to him first.”

There were a few guffaws from those who had reason to remember Nastiya’s mercurial temper.

“OK, so we’re all agreed that Nastiya is clean.” Cross accepted the evidence. “Johnny Congo has never laid eyes on her and Mateus da Cunha is enchanted by her beauty and brains just like any other natural-born man. So far as da Cunha’s concerned her name is Maria Denisova and she has even found four genuine oligarchs to invest in his plot to cut Cabinda out of Angola and turn it into his personal fiefdom.”

“I am sorry to have to correct you, Hector,” Nastiya cut in. “It is my father who has found the four oligarchs for da Cunha. And I must be losing my looks. When da Cunha laid eyes on Zhenia for the first time he made it very obvious that he had switched his romantic interest from me to her.”

Nastiya looked wryly at Zhenia, who sat in the seat beside her, grinning at her triumph over her big sister.

“When did he ever see her?” Cross demanded, making no effort to hide his personal interest in the subject. “Is there something going on here that I should know about?”

“Nastiya is teasing you, Hector,” Zhenia hastened to reassure him. “When she Skypes da Cunha I sit beside her and keep quiet, but I pretend to take notes just like a good secretary. Nastiya has even chosen a new name for me. I am called Polina Salko. This makes me sound like a polony sausage I think.”

“No one could ever confuse you with a sausage,” Cross assured her, trying to keep from smiling as his audience burst out with wolf whistles and ribald comments. He waited for them to quieten again before he continued, “So, the reason I’ve summoned you all today is that last night we got a lucky break. Da Cunha informed Nastiya that he’s chartered an ocean-going yacht which he intends to use as a mobile base during his struggle to seize control of Cabinda.”

Cross allowed himself a momentary half-smile of satisfaction as he added, “Apparently he made a point of boasting about the shell companies he had used to carry out the deal, so that no one would ever know he was the actual customer.”

There was a murmur of excitement from his audience but Cross ignored it and went on speaking quietly. “Up until now Johnny Congo had disappeared completely from our radar. We’re almost certain that he led the attack on the FPSO Bannock A, but we have no idea where he has holed up subsequently. However, I think it’s reasonable to assume that both Congo and da Cunha are going to be aboard this yacht and that they’ll use it as a bolt hole if their operations in Cabinda backfire upon them. In the meantime, however, da Cunha has invited both Miss Denisova and her secretary . . . ”

“Señorita Sausage!” a wag piped up from the back row.

Cross glared at him, trying, not entirely successfully to suppress a smile.

“. . . has invited both women to accompany him on his expedition. We don’t know where or when he is planning to pick Nastiya and Zhenia up. All we know is that it will be within the next two weeks or so, but it won’t be in Cabinda. My guess is that he’ll be travelling around the world seeking financial, diplomatic and even military support for what he will present as a noble struggle for Cabinda’s freedom.”

Cross fell silent for a moment to let the tension build up, then resumed: “This could be our main chance, and possibly our only chance to catch both da Cunha and Congo in the same deadfall. So we need to start planning now. Dave . . . ?”

Dave Imbiss came up beside Cross and launched straight into his presentation. “Da Cunha told Nastiya that the yacht is a brand new seventy-meter Lürssen called Faucon d’Or, or Golden Falcon, for those of you who don’t parler français. I’ve managed to get hold of a copy of the blueprints of the Faucon d’Or’s sister ship. Both vessels were built by the workshops at Lürssen’s headquarters in Bremen-Vegesack. So listen up, people. Here’s what you need to know . . . ”

Imbiss spoke for almost thirty minutes, and he passed around photographs and blueprints of a magnificent modern motor yacht. He ended by recapping the most valuable information he had regarding the ship’s specifications. “So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen: seventy meters of luxury with accommodation for ten passengers in five staterooms. Her cruising speed is around twenty-two knots but she has a top speed of forty knots. There is not much afloat that is capable of running her down in a stern chase, I am afraid.”

Cross wrapped up the meeting with a few final words. “That’s all for now. We all have to be patient and wait until Mateus da Cunha gives Nastiya the rendezvous details for their next meeting. We have no way of anticipating where or when that will be; or if Johnny Congo will be aboard the Faucon d’Or. But Dave will work on building up the contents of his box of tricks, and Paddy and I will try to formulate some sort of plan to ambush the Faucon d’Or once we have an inkling of its whereabouts.” He looked at the row of faces that confronted him and he shrugged. “OK, so as a plan of action it sucks like a newborn baby. But you know what they say—things can only get better. We’ll meet again tomorrow to brainstorm the situation; ten a.m. on the rooftop terrace. I’ll provide a good barbeque and a couple of cases of beer. I expect you lot to provide the good ideas.”

By noon the following day they had downed a few dozen cans of beer and eaten several pounds of steak and chops off the coals. Catherine Cayla had stripped off her bathing suit and with shrieks of laughter soaked everybody who came within range of her miniature portable swimming pool. But she was the only one present who was patently enjoying herself.

“We simply can’t cover all four oceans and the seven seas with a single boat,” Cross continued lugubriously.

“Bot!” Catherine sang out, repeating his last word. Cross ignored her and went on:

“To do the job we’d need several hundred boats.”

“Bots!” Catherine increased her volume to get his attention.

“For a pipsqueak your size you have a voice like a foghorn.” Cross told her with paternal pride. “I definitely need another beer.” He set off toward the self-service bar under the umbrella at the far end of the terrace.

Immediately Catherine emitted a banshee wail of “Daddy going!” and she launched herself out of the inflatable swimming pool and fastened herself on to Cross’s right leg like a limpet.

Cross stooped, picked her up and tossed her high in the air. He caught her again as she dropped. “Sorry, baby!” he told her. “Daddy is not going. Daddy is staying with you.”

“Daddy staying!” she rejoiced, and hugged him around the neck. Cross found himself another beer and the two of them came back and dropped into the canvas chair beside Dave Imbiss.

“I hope you don’t mind if I interrupt your father-daughter bonding session, Heck,” Dave asked. “We need to figure out a way of tracking Nastiya and Zhenia when they go aboard the Faucon.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Well, a smartphone is about as good a GPS tracking device as you can get these days. Nastiya’s already got a Maria Denisova phone, loaded with contacts, photos, notes and apps that support the legend for her cover. If we give Zhenia something similar then as long as they’re near the phones, we can just track them on Find My Phone and we’ll know where they are.”

Cross considered the suggestion for a moment, then replied, “Only as long as da Cunha doesn’t take the phones, remove the batteries and prevent then sending a signal.”

“Well, an iPhone is a sealed unit, so he can’t take the batteries. And I don’t think he can take the phones, either, not as long as the Voronovas’ cover holds. I mean, so far as da Cunha’s concerned, Maria Denisova’s the link to his biggest investors, so he’s not going to insult her by taking her phone. These days if you take someone’s phone, that’s like taking one of their limbs.”

“Okay, point taken. But da Cunha can ask her politely to disable Find My Phone and then what do we do?”

“Have another app in there that does the same thing, disguised as a shopppng app, or a game or whatever. So he thinks he’s solved the problem, but he hasn’t.”

“How is she going to get a signal in the middle of the ocean?”

“Not an issue. The kind of people who charter yachts like the Faucon’s demand total connectivity, anywhere on earth. It’ll have satellite comms, phone signals, Wi-Fi, you name it.”

Cross nodded, accepting the argument and was about to say as much when he was interrupted by the high-pitched squeal of an attention-seeking toddler.

“Bot!” Catherine declared, attempting to stuff a chubby little hand in her father’s mouth to silence him, so that she could be the center of the conversation once again.

Cross ducked his daughter’s fist and went on airing his thoughts. “So where are da Cunha and Congo going to be? Logically, they’ve got to be somewhere in easy reach of Cabinda, which means the Atlantic, off the coast of West Africa. But that still leaves a helluva large patch of water. Even if we know the Faucon d’Or’s location, we’ve still got to get on board and the speed that yacht can cruise at, we’ll have a hell of a hard time catching up.”

Catherine seized a handful of her father’s hair and twisted his head around until he was facing out toward the Arabian Gulf. “Bot!” she squeaked. “There bot!”

For the first time Cross looked in the direction that his head had been pointed for him. “Good God!” he said in tones of wonderment, looking at the fastest, meanest, blackest, sharpest-looking craft he’d ever seen in his life racing across the dazzling expanse of water. “You know, she is right. There is a boat out there. What a clever girl!” He looked back at Dave. “Do you have any idea what that is . . . and where we could get one??”

“Whoa!” Dave gasped, oblivious to Cross’s question. “You don’t see one of those babies too often.”

Cross looked at his deputy quizzically. “And . . . ?”

“That’s an Interceptor. Made by an outfit from Southampton. The concept was a forty-eight-foot powerboat with teeth, something that could chase down any pirate or drug smuggler on the water, or land a dozen Special Forces troops so fast it would be in and out before the enemy even knew it was there. They claimed that thing could do 100 miles-an-hour, even gave one to the Top Gear guys to play with. Without the guns, obviously.”

“Thank God for that. But speaking of guns . . . what does it have?”

“In full military spec? Oh, man . . .” Imbiss grinned contentedly. “Up at the bow you’re talking about a Browning M2 .50-caliber heavy machine gun, mounted on a retractable Kongsberg Sea Protector weapons platform and firing control system, complete with smoke-grenade launchers. Aft of the cockpit, say hello to a Thales Lightweight Multi-Role Missile launcher, that’s got surface-to-air and surface-to-surface capability, so it can take out aircraft and ships.”

“Handy,” said Cross. “Where can we get one?”

“Well, normally I’d say we can’t because the makers went out of business.”

“Really? From what you say it sounds like a fantastic bit of kit.”

“I don’t know, maybe the Interceptor was just too fantastic for its own good. You know what bean-counters are like, Heck. They don’t trust anything that looks like that much fun. But a few of ’em were built, just as unarmed speedboats and they come up for sale from time to time. And seeing as how that one’s got the royal crest of Abu Zara flying from the stern . . .”

“By God, so it has,” Cross said, screwing up his eyes against the glare.

“. . . I think I know who got his hands on one of them.”

“No, don’t tell me. Let me guess!”

“Right first time.” Dave laughed as the boat slowed, made a nimble, ninety-degree turn to port and headed toward the shoreline, coming straight toward them. “That’s one of His Royal Highness Emir Abdul’s latest toys.”

“I’d love to see it running at its top speed.” Cross went to the railing of the terrace, still carrying Catherine, and he looked down at the outlandish craft as it loafed along just offshore. Suddenly one of the panels of black armored glass which enclosed the bridge slid open and a helmeted head appeared in the opening. The helmet was removed to reveal a familiar face, accompanied by a cavalier wave.

“His Royal Highness is at the controls. Perfect!” Cross grinned. He returned the cavalier royal wave and then handed Catherine to Nastiya in order to free his hands. He waved his iPhone above his head and pantomined receiving a call from HRH.

Even though he had a special relationship with the Prince Cross was not privy to his personal number. The Prince understood his message immediately. He ducked back into the cabin and emerged again holding his phone to his ear. After a short pause Cross’s phone rang.

“Good afternoon, Major Cross.” The Prince spoke into his ear.

“She’s a beauty, Your Royal Highness! Would you let me see you give her the full gun?”

“Of course, Major. It will be nothing but a pleasure.” The Emir waved again. His head disappeared and the armored glass panel slid closed behind him.

Suddenly the air was filled with a high-pitched whine like a Boeing jet engine starting up. Then the sound rose swiftly to a pitch that threatened to pierce Cross’s skull and bore into his teeth. The bows of the sleek ship rose out of the water for half its length. Then she stood on her tail and started to run. Cross thought she’d been moving fast the first time he saw her. Now he realized that had been a mere amble compared to the speed she could reach when she really tried. The wake was hurled high into the air like a shower of glittering white salt, shot through with rainbow colors. Seemingly within seconds the long elegant black hull was a distant speck on the horizon.

“I don’t believe it!” Cross shook his head and Catherine shook hers every bit as vehemently as her father had done.

“Naughty!” she scolded Prince Abdul. “Naughty man!”

With a determined expression Cross turned back to Dave Imbiss. “You’ll never guess what I am thinking,” he challenged him.

“It’s written all over your face in capital letters, boss.”

“His Royal Highness owes me one.”

“More than one,” Imbiss nodded, “the number of times you’ve saved his precious oilfields from rebels and terrorists over the years.”

“I’ll take Nastiya and Zhenia with me when I go to call upon him. You know what Abdul’s like. He can seldom deny anything to a pretty girl, let alone two pretty girls.”

Cross, O’Quinn and Imbiss were in full dress uniform with decorations. The two Voronova sisters wore long skirts and veils to cover their hair, so as not to give offense to His Royal Highness, but still made these traditional Islamic outfits seem sensual and exotic. They arrived at the palace in a pair of Land Cruisers, to be met at the main gates by a squadron of the Emir’s camel corps, much to Zhenia’s delight. The only time she’d ever seen camels at close range before had been at the Moscow circus.

The visitors were escorted up through the lush green gardens to where His Royal Highness waited to receive them at the main doors of the palace. This personal greeting was an exceptional honor, normally granted only to fellow royals, but the two of them were old companions. A few years previously Cross had hosted him on a lavish hunting safari to East Africa which turned out to be an unqualified success. Prince Abdul was an avid shikari and, having paid a fortune in permits as if he were tipping a waiter, he bagged a mighty bull elephant whose tusks tipped the scales at a little over 200 pounds the pair. Even more importantly the prince harbored wonderful memories of Cross’s deceased wife Hazel Bannock. As head of the Bannock Oil Company, she had made the fateful decision to reopen the Abu Zara oilfield when every man in the oil industry thought it had run dry. She proved them all wrong, and earned vast fortunes both for Bannock Oil and Prince Abdul.

He and Cross embraced and bussed each other on both cheeks. Then HRH did the same to the ladies, but he lingered longer and more attentively in the process. Finally he shook hands with Paddy and Dave before he took Cross’s arm and escorted him through to one of the splendid pavilions in the inner gardens. The others trailed along behind them. In the pavilion they were ushered to embossed leather armchairs arranged in a circle, and as soon as they were seated a file of white-clad footmen served them with sweetmeats and iced fruit juices.

They conversed in Arabic, which Cross spoke fluently, another reason why HRH held him in such high regard. The others tried to look intelligent and from time to time nodded and smiled as though they also understood what was being said.

The two men chatted for almost an hour before Cross felt that he had approached the real object of his visit sufficiently obliquely not to make himself seem callow and give his host reason to be offended. Even then, he made his speech courtly, almost flowery to disguise any suggestion that this was a mere business meeting.

“I must tell you, Prince Abdul, that I was amazed and envious of the racing machine in which I saw you yesterday. I hesitate to call it a speedboat for that would give entirely the wrong description of such an extraordinary craft.”

HRH’s eyes twinkled but he kept his expression nonchalant as he waved his hand dismissively. “I imagine you are speaking of the Interceptor? It is kind of you to remark on such a trivial acquisition, hardly worth mentioning, of course. But I thought it might be an amusing toy for my elder sons to play with when they return from Oxford University at the end of term. I had to buy four of them so as to prevent the boys squabbling over them.”

“A wise decision, I am sure. I would fight to the death over such a beautiful machine if I were given the chance.”

HRH smiled at Cross’s confession, and then went on to extol the virtues of the craft in loving detail. “The hull, you know, is composed of Kevlar and carbon-fiber, making it immensely strong, yet also very light. The diesel engines produce around sixteen hundred horsepower, which is almost twice as much as the current generation of Formula One cars, although they are little more than battery-powered toys these days.” He paused and chuckled contentedly. “But please forgive me, my revered friend, I do not wish to bore you with such a trivial subject.”

“You are certainly not boring me, Prince Abdul. On the contrary I am utterly fascinated.”

“Then perhaps after we have eaten the midday snack that my chefs have prepared for us, you will allow me to take you for a short trip around the bay?” the Prince suggested eagerly.

“I can think of nothing that would give me greater pleasure, Your Royal Highness.”

All of them hurried through the luncheon, paying scant respect to the magnificent banquet that was served to them by more uniformed staff and chefs in high hats. Then they were conducted down to the private dock by the Emir in person, where moored against the jetty with its engines idling was one of the midnight-black machines. Sinister. Forbidding, and absolutely thrilling in its coat of non-reflective paint, it seemed poised to charge into action.

The Emir ushered his guests into the marina building where they changed into lifejackets and crash helmets, and were given a safety briefing. Then they were on board the Interceptor. The Emir dismissed the ship’s captain from the controls and took his place in the throne-like driver’s seat. Cross buckled himself into the co-pilot’s seat alongside him. Zhenia’s laughter and light chatter slowly faded into an anxious silence as they were led to their seats. She seized her big sister’s hand and clung to it as they were strapped in.

“Will we be in danger?” she whispered anxiously, and Nastiya made calming sounds and shook her head.

Finally a worker on the jetty cast off the mooring lines. Prince Abdul eased open the throttles. The engines murmured and the Interceptor moved sedately out through the entrance to the yacht basin and into the open water of the Gulf.

As the engines produced more power the Interceptor rose higher out of the water, and the sandy golden beaches began to flow past them sedately at first, but gathering speed swiftly.

“Brace yourselves!” the Prince sang out, and suddenly the boat seemed to have wings. Nastiya retained her calm expression, but she clung on to her seat with both hands, while Zhenia screamed like a teenager on her first ride on the roller coaster at Coney Island Fair, and flung both her arms around her big sister’s neck.

The shoreline flew past the windows, blurring with the speed of their passage. The other craft they passed seemed to be frozen in the water. Nearing her top speed the Interceptor leaped from the tops of the waves, taking flight like a gull to cover prodigious distances with a single bound, passing over the three or four intervening crests without touching them, then crashing down on top of the subsequent wave and raising a glittering tower of spume. Every person aboard was thrown forward violently against their safety harness, but almost immediately the mighty engines drove the hull on once more and they were thrown back against their heavily padded seat. Every head nodded vigorously in unison.

“One hundred miles an hour!” Prince Abdul sang out in English at the top of his voice. Cross let out a cowboy yell, and Zhenia cried almost as loudly in Russian:

“Please God! I know I have been a bad girl. Just let me live and I swear I will never do it again.”

“Include me in that, O Lord!” Nastiya muttered grimly. “Whatever it was my baby sister did.”

An hour later the Interceptor returned to the private dock and the minute she touched the quay and HRH cut the engines Zhenia threw off her safety harness and leaped from the seat. With both hands covering her mouth she raced for the toilet at the back of the cabin. She made it just in time, but the sounds of her distress carried clearly through the flimsy door to an interested audience.

When Zhenia re-emerged she curtseyed to the Prince and asked to be excused from the rest of the visit to the palace, so Cross sent both sisters back to Seascape Mansions with Paddy and Dave Imbiss to take care of them. He felt sorry for Zhenia, but the opportunity to be alone with the Prince was too good to pass up.

As soon as they had left HRH invited Cross up to his gunroom, ostensibly to show him the matching pair of Holland & Holland 12-bore Royal Deluxe Sidelock shotguns that had been delivered to him by the makers the previous week. The true reason became apparent, however, as soon as they were alone and the Prince had locked the gunroom door.

“Now I am sure that a nice glass of iced tea would refresh us both?” he said, and without waiting for a reply from Cross he keyed open one of the steel gun safes and reverently brought forth a bottle of fifty-year-old Glenfiddich Scotch whisky and two crystal tumblers. He half filled the tumblers and as he carried one of them to Cross he dropped his voice: “Glenfiddich only releases fifty bottles a year!”

“Say no more!” Cross followed his example and whispered back. They clinked glasses and drank. After a long, companionable silence Prince Abdul sighed with pleasure and set his glass aside.

“Now, my old friend, you can tell me what really happened to the Bannock Oil Company that reduced it from one of the giants of the industry to a pygmy struggling for its very existence. This is of pressing concern to both of us. You must have suffered as cruelly as my family and I have done.”

Cross blinked at the idea of his financial status being compared to that of the Oil Sheik of Abu Zara, but he recovered swiftly and nodded.

“Indeed, Your Highness, the past few years have been the most tragic period of my life. First Hazel’s murder, and then the ruin of her company . . .” He paused, drew a deep breath and went on: “Forget what they’re saying in the media. The men who’ve been jailed aren’t the real perpetrators here.”

“I know that Congo was one of the men who murdered Hazel,” Prince Abdul said, and Cross nodded again.

“Yes, him and Carl Bannock,” Cross answered him. “Her own son-in-law.”

“Ah, yes! I remember now!” HRH said. “Of course I remember how you captured Congo and handed him over to the U.S. marshals here in Abu Zara. But I don’t know what happened to Carl Bannock. He seems to have disappeared . . . ?” HRH made it sound like a question.

“Carl Bannock is dead, but his corpse will never be found,” Cross answered. “But Congo’s still alive. He put together the Magna Grande attack with a self-proclaimed African freedom fighter called Mateus da Cunha . . .”

“The name sounds familiar . . .”

“I’m sure it does. He’s not shy of publicity, when it suits him. If you want to know why Bannock Oil is now virtually worthless, don’t look any further than them.”

“Tell me what happened,” said Prince Abdul. “Not the media story, but the truth.”

The Prince remained silent but his expression was intense as Cross recounted what had happened. “What chance do Congo and da Cunha have of taking control of Cabinda?” he asked, when the story was done.

“Well, the Feds seized all of Bendick’s funds when he was indicted, so Congo lost all the money he was hoping to make by short-selling Bannock Oil. But the fact remains, they got to the rig and the Bannock A and that’s put the wind up all the other oil companies in the region, and it’s made Cabinda even more vulnerable. My guess is that a lot of people were thrilled by the sight of Africans humbling a mighty U.S. oil company. It won’t take much to get them on the streets, demanding independence.”

“I can believe that,” the Prince agreed. “But aren’t Congo and da Cunha worried that they might be betrayed? Weiss was Congo’s attorney, Bendick knew him by his Juan Tumbo alias. Surely it would be in their interest to co-operate with the authorities.”

Cross shook his head. “They’ve been pleading the fifth for months and frankly I don’t blame them. Congo can reach into the U.S. prison system like a kid reaching into a sweetie jar. They’d be dead the moment they opened their mouths.”

“So now they want to get their hands on Cabinda. Well, in a way I do not blame them. I of all people understand the value of oil. But a plan like theirs, to create a war of independence, costs money. A great deal of money. Where are Congo and Mateus getting theirs?”

“Those two young ladies you took for a ride on your Interceptor this afternoon have found Russian investors willing to finance the seizure of Cabinda.”

“I take it your people cannot be assisting this plot . . . ?”

“Congo and da Cunha think they are, which is what matters to me,” Cross explained. “But don’t worry. I’ve not gone rogue.”

“I’m very glad to hear it, old friend. So, do you know where the two conspirators are now?”

“Yes and no. Their precise location is currently unknown. But da Cunha has a large and very comfortable yacht, the Faucon d’Or, at his disposal, and wherever it is, I’m betting he’s on it, and Congo with him. I believe that they’ll use the ship as a command post for their operations inside Cabinda. Da Cunha’s invited the Voronova sisters to join him, officially so that they can report back to his Russian investors. Unofficially, I’m sure he has other ideas.”

“Quite,” said the Prince, understanding precisely the reason powerful men invite beautiful women onto very large, expensive yachts.

Cross got back to business. “We’ll be tracking the women via their smartphones. Once they’re on board Faucon d’Or they can guide us to where it is cruising.”

“Then you will arrest them and hand them over to the U.S. authorities, yes?”

Cross looked right into the Prince’s eyes, his jaw set, his expression unflinching. “In my experience, arresting Johnny Congo is a total waste of time. Next time I am going to save everybody a great deal of trouble, simply by killing him out of hand.”

The Prince frowned, gave his head a short, vigorous shake and then put a fnger in one ear as if to clear it. “You know, it is the strangest thing, but sometimes I am a little hard of hearing. Perhaps I go shooting too often. They say that loud gunfire can damage one’s eardrums.” He paused for a moment, and then nodded. “So, we understand one another . . . Now, tell me, how are you planning to effect the capture of da Cunha’s yacht while it is at large upon the ocean?”

“We’re going to go hunting, with the Faucon as our prey. We should have no trouble catching up with it, seeing that we will be travelling at almost a hundred mph.”

Prince Abdul stared at him in blank incomprehension for a few moments and then what Cross had said sank in and his voice rose. “You don’t really expect me to give you the use of one of my beautiful new XSMG Interceptor attack boats, do you?”

“Why ever not?” Cross asked with wide-eyed innocence, and the Emir threw his head back and guffawed with laughter.

Through his mirth he grunted, “I have always said that the English are the most arrogant people in the world. You are the living testimony to the truth of that statement.”

The good news is that HRH has given us the unrestricted use of one of his Interceptors,” Cross announced to a meeting of the top brass of Cross Bow Security a few hours later. Dave Imbiss pumped his fist with a shout of, “Yes!” as Paddy O’Quinn slapped him on the back, Nastiya said, “Oh, well done, Hector,” and Zhenia blew him a discreet little kiss.

“The bad news, however, is that we don’t know precisely where we should deploy it.” The excitement in the room suddenly abated as they all came back down to earth. “Also, the Prince bought his boats for pleasure, not warfare, so they are entirely unarmed. And the Interceptor has a range of two hundred and fifty miles at a steady cruise, but the miles per gallon go way, way down once you put the pedal to the metal.”

Now his team were looking positively glum. “Don’t despair, children,” Cross chided them. “All is not lost. We have a pretty good idea of da Cunha and Congo’s likely whereabouts, so if we aim for the waters off Cabinda—which we all know far too well—we won’t be far off. And it really doesn’t matter if there aren’t any machineguns or missiles on board because we can hardly strafe the ship let alone sink it if we have two of our people aboard. And thanks to there being no weapons, the Interceptor weighs next to nothing—barely ten tons, in fact—which makes it light enough and small enough to fit in the belly of a C-130 transport. And you all know what that means.”

“Hello again, Bernie and Nella,” Paddy piped up.

“You’ve got it,” said Cross. “Mr. and Mrs. Vosloo are back on the payroll.”

The couple were part of a small group of pilots for hire who specialized in flying people and cargoes in and out of dangerous places across the African continent, frequently under fire. They operated a battered old Lockheed C-130 Hercules that looked as though it was only held together by the power of prayer. But they’d got Cross and his team in and out of more tight spots than he could count and the plane, its pilots and their passengers were all still more-or-less in one piece.

“That’s all well and good, Heck,” said Paddy, more seriously now, “but that Interceptor’s not built to be at sea for extended periods. It’s going to need refuelling and servicing. I don’t see us pitching up in a yacht basin, even assuming there is such a thing in that part of the world. That boat would attract more attention than a Ferrari in a supermarket car park.”

“I agree,” nodded Cross. “But we don’t need a marina. Our old friend the Glenallen has been sitting in a dock in Luanda, Angola, waiting for someone to buy her as part of the Bannock Oil everything-must-go sale. The current dismal state of the oil industry, particularly offshore, means that there aren’t many takers. So the broker is happy to charter her out to us at a very reasonable rate. She’ll be crewed, fuelled and ready to go in a matter of days.”

“Go where, though?” Imbiss asked.

“Libreville, Gabon. It’s just up the coast from Cabinda and Gabon is as peaceful and democratic as one can expect in that part of the world, as well as being one of the richest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which means that people are a lot more reasonable. Being naturally concerned that his precious boat doesn’t fall into the wrong hands—an over-attentive customs man, for example—Prince Abdul has agreed to declare it official diplomatic cargo, bound for his consul in Libreville.”

“Does he have a consul in Libreville?”

“He will by the time we get there. So Dave, I need you to stay here with a couple of guys—I need two with naval experience—to supervise the loading and transport of the Interceptor and then to crew it at the far end.”

“What about a mechanic?”

“It comes with its own engineer, like a horse with its groom. HRH insists. I need that boat in the air within the next forty-eight hours at the absolute maximum. Thirty-six would be better. Twenty-four would be best.”

“Got it.”

“Meanwhile, Paddy, you and I are going to go ahead to Libreville. I’m envisaging an assault on the Faucon d’Or with two teams of three men. That’s you and me, with two men each.”

“Will that be enough?”

“I reckon so. There won’t be many hostiles on board the yacht. Those things are only built to take a maximum twelve passengers, plus crew. Any more than that and they count as commercial passenger vessels and all sorts of additional rules and reg’s apply.”

“I can’t see Johnny Congo worrying too much about health and safety,” Paddy observed.

“True, but I can see Master Mateus caring very much about his own comfort and about putting on a show for the ladies. He won’t want armed men crammed into every nook and cranny. Besides, Paddy, there’s something very, very wrong with the world when six well-armed, highly experienced men with Special Forces training can’t take down a floating gin-palace like the Faucon.”

“Good point, boss.”

“Then it’s agreed. We’ll take a spare man for each team, just in case, and we’ll fly commercial from Dubai to Libreville. There’s an Air Ethiopia flight via Addis Ababa that gets us there in under ten hours, and a Turkish one that’s a lot longer. If we stagger our arrivals over three flights and book every ticket individually, none seated together, that should avoid setting off any alarm bells anywhere. Dave, can you be responsible for bringing all our gear in the Herky-bird? If it goes with you we can get it covered by diplomatic privilege, along with the boat. Everybody clear so far?”

There were nods of assent all around.

“Good,” said Cross. “With a fair wind and a bit of luck we should be able to get everyone in place by the time Nastiya and Zhenia are taken aboard the Faucon d’Or. It’s an absolute priority, so far as I’m concerned, that you two women spend as little time as humanly possible onboard. You’re going to be in very grave danger, and if your cover’s blown, then God help you. So you two matter more than anything. It’s far more important to me to see you both alive than to see Congo dead.”

“To see both would be best,” said Nastiya.

“Quite so. But you don’t have to go through with this.”

“Don’t worry about me, I’ve been in much worse situations, you know that. But Zhenia, you have not been trained as I have. You don’t have my experience.”

“She’s right,” Hector said gently, looking at Zhenia. “Nastiya can do this alone if she has to. She can say that you’re ill or make some other excuse. No one will think any the worse of you.”

Zhenia did not hesitate for a second. “I am going,” she said. “It is time that I stopped being a spoiled little girl and became a woman who is worthy to stand alongside all of you. I know all about nasty, violent, abusive men. My father is one of them. Believe me, I can look after myself. And if I can’t, well, I have my big sister to protect me.”

Cross was sorely tempted to pull rank and take Zhenia off the job. He hated the idea of sending the woman who meant more to him with every day and night they spent together into danger. But if he did that, he would show her up in front of the others and brand her as more special to him than them, thereby infuriating her and upsetting the balance of the team. So he went against every one of his protective, alpha-male instincts and said, “Well done. That’s just the attitude we expect at Cross Bow Security.” He saw Zhenia stand just that little bit more proudly and a fractional nod of Nastiya’s head told him that she approved, too.

“You and Nastiya stay here till you get the call from da Cunha. Then wherever he is, fly via Moscow. He probably knows about my connection to Abu Zara by now and Congo certainly does, so any flight from the Gulf will attract suspicion. Once you’re on the move, keep us informed where you are for as long as you can. Once you go silent, we’ll keep tracking your phones. Dave, talk them through the procedure.”

Imbiss explained how there would be a separate tracker app in case da Cunha was smart enough to insist on them disabling Find My Phone. “So, I need to hide it within an app that you would normally have on your phone. You guys got any preferences?”

“Net-a-Porter?” suggested Zhenia.

“That’s my little sister for you, always shopping!” laughed Nastiya.

“I do other things too . . . isn’t that right, Hector?” replied Zhenia, smiling sweetly at him.

Cross rolled his eyes as the others all laughed. He was tempted to call a halt to proceedings. They were supposed to be conducing serious business. People’s lives were at risk. Then he stopped himself. Yes, that’s right. Any one of these people could be dead before the week is out. So let them laugh. There’ll be time enough to be serious before this operation is through.

A day had passed, filled with planning, listing, trying to think of everything, fitting into hours what in an ideal world would take weeks. “It’s like packing for the holidays,” Paddy O’Quinn had blithely remarked. “But with guns.”

Now a new day had dawned and Cross was on his way. Before he got into the cab that would take him to the airport for the flight to Libreville Cross stopped for one last look back up at his apartment. Right now, he knew, Catherine Cayla’s nanny Bonnie would be holding her up to one of the windows that looked down from the penthouse floors of Seascape Mansions. He waved up at the tower, smiling broadly, trying to look jaunty, as if nothing could possibly happen and Daddy would always come back.

For now, though, there was hard, dangerous, bloody work to be done, and Cross set his mind to think of that and nothing else. By the time the cab was pulling away from the curb he was already dialing the Vosloos’ number: again. Normally it was never hard to get hold of them, even if one did have to make oneself heard over the sound of straining engines and passing bursts of anti-aircraft fire. But not this time. His first call had been put straight through to voicemail. So had his second, six hours later. This was his fourth attempt, and once again the only answer he got was a recorded message. “Come on!” he muttered to himself, “Pick up the bloody phone!”

He had to have that Hercules. Without it the mission would be over before it had even begun.

Two hundred feet above her father, Catherine Cayla had recognized him and shrieked with excitement until he disappeared into the cab. Then she cried out, “Daddy going!” and dissolved into bitter tears and a wailing lament of half-formed words that might as well have been Tibetan chants or the hunting songs of an obscure Amazonian tribe for all that anyone other than Bonnie could understand them.

“Daddy coming back soon,” she consoled her charge and took her through to the kitchen to watch her favorite Peppa Pig DVD and eat her dinner. Zhenia, who had been feeling a little tearful herself when Cross had finally extricated himself from her farewell hug, given her one last kiss and gone off to war, came into the kitchen too, to make herself a consoling cup of coffee.

She sat herself down at the table, next to Catherine’s high chair.

“I know how you feel, little one,” she said, smiling sympathetically at the sad little child, who was snuffling in bitter and inconsolable misery.

Zhenia was fascinated by Catherine. She knew that if her relationship with Hector was to have any hope of surviving in the long term, he had to know that his woman and his daughter were friends. So sheer self-interest necessitated Zhenia making an effort to be nice. But more than that, having thought of herself as a daughter and a little sister for so long it fascinated her now to find herself as the big one: not a sister and not yet a stepmother—she was not yet ready even to imagine herself as that—but an adult with a responsibility to care about a child, if not to care for her.

For her part, Catherine was of course still far too young to understand that Zhenia was her father’s girlfriend. But instinct told her that this lady was important to her daddy, and she was fascinated by Zhenia’s big eyes and her soft lips that smiled so nicely. The little girl liked being the object of the young woman’s attention and the woman felt a warm, calming pleasure when she was close to the child. They basked in one another’s company quite happily for a few minutes while Bonnie made Catherine’s porridge and smiled to herself at the relationship being built on the table beside her. Then she placed the bowl on the tray of Catherine Cayla’s high chair and advised Zhenia, “I’d stand back if I were you, dear.”

“I’m sorry . . . ?” said Zhenia, looking up at the nurse with a puzzled expression on her face.

A second later, all was explained. Catherine had made an instant, heroic recovery and was merrily attacking her porridge with all her father’s energy and determination, as if determined to coat herself and everybody else within splashing distance.

“Oh!” cried Zhenia, scrambling to her feet as a large dollop of porridge sailed through the air and straight into her coffee cup, sending an eruption of espresso and skimmed-milk foam across the table.

“I tried to warn you!” laughed Bonnie as Zhenia too collapsed in a fit of the giggles.

The noise attracted Nastiya to the room. “Enough of this nonsense!” she declared, working hard to maintain a suitably severe look on her face. “Come, Zhenia, we have work too!”

“Did you hear that?” Zhenia said to Catherine, who had stopped eating for a moment, distracted by the new arrival in the room. “That is my mean big sister. Isn’t she mean and cruel?”

Nastiya folded her arms, but said nothing. Zhenia looked at her, realized that further resistance was futile and, like a good little sister, followed her back to work.

The Voronova sisters were nothing if not industrious. They arranged accommodation and transport for the men arriving in Libreville, along with a truck to carry the Interceptor from the airport to the water. They liaised between the Abu Zara Foreign Ministry and the authorities in Gabon to ensure the unimpeded passage of the Interceptor and everything about it when it arrived in that country. They cajoled, sweet-talked and begged the shipbroker who was chartering out the Glenallen to get her to sea even more quickly than he had promised. They worked on installing a complete identity, suitable for a top businesswoman’s personal assistant on the smartphone Imbiss had given her. But in the end there came a time when all the calls and emails and texts dealt with, they’d installed everything that was needed on the phone and all they could do was wait for the one call that mattered most of all: the one from Mateus da Cunha.

Hector was on the ground at Addis Ababa airport when he finally got the call from Nella Vosloo. “How’s it going, Heck, you old rogue?” she asked.

“I’m fine, thank you, Nella,” Cross replied. “You have no idea how glad I am to hear your voice.”

“Ach, don’t try to woo me with flattery, Heck. Just tell me: how soon do you want us? How far do you want us to go? And how much are you going to pay?”

Cross chuckled at Nella’s unmatched ability to cut straight to the chase. “I want you yesterday. I need you to fly a boat . . . ”

“I fly planes, Hector. For boats you need a sailor.”

He tried again: “All right, then, I need you to stick a boat in your plane and fly that, plus Dave Imbiss, a couple of his men and the boat’s engineer from Abu Zara to Libreville, Gabon. And I’ll pay you less than you want but more than I think you deserve, same as usual.”

“You always were a miser, Heck,” she said, though they both knew that he paid in full, on the nail every time.

“So, where are you right now? And why couldn’t I get through to you?”

“Jordan. We were getting a family of Syrian Christians out of the country, one step ahead of those Islamic State bastards. It got a little hairy.”

“Is the plane in one piece?”

Nella burst out laughing. “You know you’re supposed to ask how your friends are before you inquire about their belongings, right?”

“I know you’re all right just by listening to you,” Cross pointed out. “I know Bernie must be all right because you wouldn’t be talking this way if he wasn’t. What I don’t know is how the Hercules is doing.”

“Oh don’t you worry about that. You know what those militia men are like, couldn’t hit an elephant’s arse at ten paces. Pray and spray, that’s how they shoot.”

“So you can do the job?”

“Give us a night’s sleep and we’ll be on our way in the morning.”

“And the money?”

“Don’t you worry about that, Heck. We’ll send you an invoice when the job’s done.”

The hours dragged by painfully slowly for the Voronova sisters. They played with Catherine Cayla and chatted to Bonnie and when this palled they played fiercely competitive chess, and accused each other of cheating. Then they described to each other in detail the lives they had lived while they had been separated, and agreed that they were infinitely happier now that they had found each other. Nastiya was struck by how many lovers Zhenia claimed to have sampled in so short a space of time, and she accused her little sister of exaggerating, which was the subject of more argument and detailed discussion. They had a lot of lost time to catch up on. Without their menfolk to intervene and distract them they discovered that they actually liked each other more than they had expected to. But mostly they just waited, and waited, and then they waited some more.

Da Cunha had Maria Denisova’s number. He’d said he would get in touch to set up the voyage on his yacht. But no call came.

“I am too old to be sitting by the phone, waiting helplessly for a man to ring,” snapped Nastiya. But she waited nonetheless.

Another day went by. The Vosloo’s Hercules arrived in Abu Zara and the work of loading the Interceptor began. Dave Imbiss called a couple of times, just to let off steam about the frustrations of dealing with Hassan, Prince Abdul’s engineer, who was evidently so terrified of his master’s wrath, should there be even the faintest scratch on the ship’s paintwork, that he was making it almost impossible to get the job done. Imbiss had picked Darko McGrain to be one of the men responsible for helping him transport the Interceptor to Libreville and then crew it once they were on the water. It said a lot for Hassan’s obsessive concern for his boat’s well-being that not even McGrain’s fearsome temper could make him more co-operative.

There was another hold-up with three of Cross’s men who had taken the Turkish Airlines flight to Libreville, which went the scenic route, via Istanbul and Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Evidently there was strike action by Turkish air-traffic controllers and they were stuck in Istanbul, even further from their destination than they had been in Abu Zara.

But these seemed like minor inconveniences and no reason to worry. So Nastiya turned to Zhenia, said, “Don’t you hate waiting for a man to call?” and texted da Cunha: “So, when are we going to meet? Maria x.”

He replied within the hour: “Where are you?”

“Moscow.”

“How soon can you leave?”

Well, I have to get to Moscow first, she thought, then replied: “One day. Have work to finish here first.”

“OK. Fly to Accra, Ghana. Give me your flight details. You’ll be met at airport with onward tickets.”

“OK. Cool x”

“Just as long as we don’t end up with Ebola,” Nastiya said, pulling a long face at Zhenia as she sat down at her laptop and started looking at schedules. There was an Aeroflot flight the next morning from Moscow to Accra via Amsterdam. “Thank God! The plane is operated by KLM,” sighed Nastiya who considered herself a patriot, but not when it came to air travel.

They flew overnight to Moscow, they waited for three hours at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow then made the surprisingly short, six-and-a-half hour flight to Kotoka International in Accra.

At the arrivals barrier there was a Ghanaian taxi driver, who spoke only pidgin English holding up a board with Nastiya’s name ingeniously misspelled upon it. He drove them to the Tulip Inn in central Accra. There they found that a reasonably comfortable suite had been pre-booked for them. They fell into bed exhausted by the journey and slept until late the following morning. When they went down to the dining room for lunch there was a message from Mateus da Cunha at the reception alerting them to the fact that the next leg of their journey had been arranged to commence the following day at 9 a.m. But in the meantime they both had appointments booked at the hotel beauty parlor for the afternoon and for the dining room in the evening.

The bill for dinner had been pre-paid and included a bottle of Pol Roger. Zhenia remarked as she sipped the champagne, “Mateus da Cunha may be a crook but he has good taste; you and genuine French champagne.”

“Don’t tell my husband,” Nastiya pleaded.

While they were dining the receptionist came through from the lobby with another message: “A car will pick you up tomorrow morning at eight o’clock.”

“Should we send a message to Cross to tell him what is going on?” Zhenia asked.

Nastiya thought aloud. “Can da Cunha monitor our phones? No. Not until we’re on the boat. He’s not the CIA.”

She texted Cross: “In Accra. Pick up at 08:00. Destination unknown.”

A few minutes later came a reply. “In Libreville. Glenallen fine, but no Interceptor and men still stuck in Istanbul. Be careful.”

“What did Hector say?” Zhenia asked as Nastiya read the message.

“Oh, nothing much. He’s in Libreville. He says we have to be careful.”

“The Voronova sisters . . . careful?” Zhenia laughed. “Does he know us at all?”

After dinner, a three-piece band was playing loud jazz in the bar lounge. Nastiya took a table as close to it as possible, and under cover of the music she quietly took Zhenia through their cover story, and the details of the fictitious oligarchs who were reputedly eager to invest in the Cabinda project.

“Oh, we’ve been through this so many times, I’m bored with it. I know the story. You’re my boss. I’m your PA. If anyone asks me a difficult question, I’ll just play the dumb secretary and say, ‘How should I know?’ Now, please, can we have some more champagne. Mateus can afford it.”

“No,” said Nastiya, firmly. “I want you looking sharp and beautiful tomorrow. We must be ready to dodge any surprises that get thrown at us. Now it’s bedtime for you, and eight hours’ sleep.”

Cross went to bed at midnight and was woken an hour later by Dave Imbiss calling from Abu Zara, which was three hours ahead. “We’ve got a problem, boss. The Herky-bird’s here, and being refuelled now. Bernie and Nella are grabbing some shuteye, but they’re basically all systems go. Trouble is we’re not going anywhere because I cannot get this sonovabitch engineer to understand that our mission is (a) time-sensitive, and (b) more important than scratching or denting his damn speedboat.”

Cross could hear children screaming, a woman shouting and a man pleading with all of them to quieten down. “Where the hell are you?” he asked.

“At home with the Hassans. I guess they aren’t happy I woke them all up. Can you have a word with him, make him see the light? Here, I’ll put him onto you . . . ”

“Peace be upon you, Hassan,” Cross said, and was greeted by a torrent of furious Arabic, which even he, who spoke the language, had a hard time following. But the gist was unmistakable: Hassan was not happy about having his beauty sleep disturbed and was now even more determined to be as unco-operative as possible.

Funny how a jobsworth sounds the same in any language, Cross thought to himself. But he had dealt with the type before and had long since realized that there was no point arguing, or not on their terms, at least. So he waited until Hurricane Hassan had blown itself out and then said, “I am going to tell you two things: what is going to happen, and why it is going to happen. And while I am speaking, you will listen to me, as I have listened to you. Do you understand?”

Cross took the resentful grunt that was Hassan’s only response as a form of assent.

“Then understand this, too. His Royal Highness, the Emir Abdul, peace and blessings be upon him, has honored me with the inestimable privilege of his friendship, unworthy though I am. As a token of his esteem he has, with infinite generosity, seen fit to bestow upon me the use of his magnificent boat. Thus, what is going to happen is that you are going to assist my associate Mr. Imbiss and his men to load that boat upon the airplane that is going to carry it to me.”

There was a brief verbal flurry from Hassan, though the tone had turned from furious indignation to a feeble, plaintive whine. He was, it was clear, terrified of the repercussions to him and his family if the boat entrusted to him should suffer any damage in his care.

“I hear your concerns, Hassan,” Cross said, a little more emolliently. “So now I will tell you why you will do as I say, and why it will be to your benefit to do so. You will agree, I am sure, that His Royal Highness places his honor as a prince, a man and a friend above mere trifles such as money and possessions.”

Hassan did indeed accept the truth of this proposition.

“To you and I, this boat may be a magnificent machine, but to His Royal Highness it is a mere trifle. Now, the reason why he has bestowed the boat upon me now is that I am engaged upon a mission, one that will lead to the death of a wicked man, who is my enemy, and thus His Royal Highness’s enemy too. As part of this mission, two very brave women have been called upon to risk their lives, so that this evil man may be defeated. I treasure the lives of these woman, and thus His Royal Highness treasures them too.”

“Of course, of course,” said Hassan, with something close to eagerness.

“Thus, any man who helps with this mission and contributes to its success will gain great glory and receive my thanks, and that of His Royal Highness. He can be assured of rewards and blessings. But . . . ” Cross let the word hang in the air, “Should any man hinder the mission, and should it fail because of his unwillingness to be of assistance, he can be sure of His Royal Highness’s wrath, for he will have dishonored his Emir as well as himself, and betrayed his Emir’s friend and then he will have made two enemies who can make his life a very short, and miserable, and uncomfortable existence, so that he is crushed, like a scorpion beneath a boot, and ground into the dirt like a scrap of camel dung, and his family must live forever with the shame of his disgrace.”

There was total silence on the other end of the line. Then Cross heard the distant sound of a string of plaintive, heartfelt apologies, then profound assurances of immediate assistance.

Imbiss came on the line. “Great work, Heck,” he said. “It’s going to take a while to put this baby onto a pallet and get it in the hold. Then we’ve got to stow all the other kit. So I can’t promise to be in the air much before seven-hundred hours, our time. But the Vosloos have promised to put the pedal to the metal. Call it ten hours flying time, maybe a shade more. That makes our ETA between fourteen and fifteen hundred your time, with the boat in the water an hour after that.”

“Damn, that’s cutting it fine,” Cross said. He could hear a door slamming then footsteps: Imbiss and Hassan must be on their way. “The girls are being picked up from their hotel at eight this morning. From that point on, we have to assume that they’re in the hands of the enemy.”

A thought suddenly struck Cross: something so obvious he could not imagine how he’d missed it before: “Will you be able to track them while you’re in the air?”

“I think so, sure. Seems like Bernie and Nella have been doing all right for themselves lately. They’ve given the plane a total overhaul. You wouldn’t recognize it, Heck. I mean it actually looks like it might fly.”

“That’s a change!

“Totally. Hang on a second . . .” A car door opened, there was a brief pause, then a car engine starting, then Imbiss again: “What was I saying? Oh yeah, the Vosloos have dragged the communications systems into the twenty-first century. They’ve got satellite connectivity for phone and internet. Should be fine. Nastiya and Zhenia are in Accra, Ghana now, right?”

“Yes, which means the Faucon d’Or has to be in the Gulf of Guinea. That makes our lives a lot easier trying to find it. Da Cunha and Congo can’t sail north or east because they’ll run into Africa. They won’t go west unless they’ve suddenly decided to cross the Atlantic. And Cabinda’s to the south. So pound-to-a-penny, that’s the course they’ll take.”

“Which’ll lead them straight toward Libreville,” Imbiss said.

“Exactly. I’ve told the skipper of the Glenallen not to stop here but keep heading north, to close the distance as much as possible between him and the Faucon. We can catch up with him in the Interceptor.”

“Still, there’s got to be seven hundred miles of ocean between Accra and Libreville. Hell of a distance.”

“Don’t remind me. But we’ll find the Faucon d’Or and we’ll get to it in time.”

“Damn right we will!” Imbiss replied.

They both spoke in tones of absolute certainty. But as Cross ended the call, and laid back in his bed he knew that for all their shows of confidence, the odds were still against them.

After breakfast the next morning the Voronovas’ taxi driver was again waiting for them downstairs in the hotel lobby. “Where are you taking us today?” Zhenia demanded of him.

He laughed delightedly and answered, “Yes! Da! Jawohl! Today. Me taking us.” This turned out to be the limit of his vocabulary, and the end of the conversation.

“I guess we’ll know when we get there,” Nastiya consoled her little sister.

The taxi crept at a walking pace through the incredibly crowded streets of the city. Their driver began sounding his horn as soon as he engaged the clutch and did not lift his hand from the button until they reached their destination, almost an hour later.

This turned out to be a small creek on the outskirts of the city. It was surrounded by a grove of coconut palms, under which native fishing boats were drawn up on the beach, with their nets spread out to dry. The taxi drove down to the edge of the water and parked alongside a floating jetty against which were moored three floatplanes, one of them an amphibious Twin Otter.

The taxi driver climbed out and yelled something in the local language and after a while a head appeared behind the windscreen of the Otter. The pilot had obviously been asleep in the cockpit. He opened the door and climbed down on to the jetty.

“Are you the passengers for the Faucon d’Or?” he shouted in a South African accent. Once assured that they were, he and the taxi driver carried the girls’ luggage down the jetty and loaded it into the plane. The pilot paid the driver and they took their seats in the back of the floatplane, which taxied out through the mouth of the creek and lined up into the breeze and the chop of the water.

As soon as the pilot had taken off and settled into flight Nastiya leaned over the back of his seat and asked him, “What are you doing in such a godforsaken part of the world?”

He grinned. “I work for a company who services the oil-exploration ships. Mostly we fly pretty girls and other goodies out to them.”

“I am sure my husband would love to hear you describe me as a goodie,” she told him primly.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “You look much too happy to be married.”

Nastiya kept a straight face and they flew on in silence across the blue waters of the Gulf of Guinea. Zhenia was slumped in her seat, fast asleep. Good, she needs her rest, thought Nastiya, and then, My God, I’m turning into her mother!

It was almost midday now and the pilot was flying into the sun, so they were heading south, toward Libreville. Toward Hector and Paddy! But how far had they come? Trying to sound as casual as possible, Nastiya asked, “How fast have we been flying?”

“Ach, just the regular cruise speed. Call it two-eighty kph, about a hundred and seventy miles an hour. Our journey’s roughly five hundred miles.”

“Will you fly straight back to Accra?”

“Not unless I want to run out of fuel and die! No, I’m heading on to Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Got some other clients waiting for me there.”

An hour in the air stretched into two, then three. Finally the pilot pointed ahead through the windscreen.

“There she is: the Faucon d’Or. Nice little dinghy, isn’t she?” He began to bleed off altitude and banked steeply over the yacht, which lay at anchor a few hundred meters off a narrow beach with dense jungle further inland. “That’s Nigeria you can see beyond her.”

Peering down at the yacht Nastiya was astonished by the size and pristine condition of the vessel. Zhenia had woken and was looking down at it too. “That looks good enough for Roman Abramovich,” she said.

“No way!” the pilot laughs. “That’s just a dinghy next to one of his!”

There was barely any wind and the plane landed on the flat calm water with barely a bump. As the pilot taxied toward the ship a motor launch detached itself from the bottom of the gangway and came to meet them. Nastiya and Zhenia climbed down on to one of the floats and hopped across to the launch. As soon as the crew had transferred the girls’ luggage into the launch it headed back toward the yacht. Behind them the pilot of the Twin Otter took off and headed back for the Ghanaian shore.

As the launch approached the Faucon d’Or a tall and elegant figure appeared on the aft deck and looked down at them.

“Who is that?” Zhenia demanded with sudden interest.

“That is Mateus da Cunha,” Nastiya told her.

“If you are sure you don’t want him, then I don’t mind taking him off your hands as a favor, my darling sister.”

“I thought you were in love with Hector Cross?”

“I am, but it’s not an exclusive relationship.” Zhenia kept a straight face but when she winked at Nastiya they both burst out laughing.

“Now I know beyond any shadow of doubt who your father is,” Nastiya told her.

Nastiya climbed the gangway to the deck of the Faucon d’Or ahead of her sister as befitted her status. A bodyguard, dressed in a charcoal gray suit, white shirt and dark blue tie, as if completely indifferent to the fact that he was on a yacht off West Africa, rather than a street in New York or Paris, helped her aboard. He looked her up and down, examining every inch of her, mentally undressing her. Nastiya knew that the guard’s interest was anything but sexual. He was deciding whether she was carrying a concealed weapom. Evidently satisfied that the perfect cut of Nastiya’s white, knee length dress left no room for an excess ounce of flesh, let alone a knife or gun, the guard gave a little nod of the head. Then da Cunha stepped forward to greet her and kissed the back of the hand that she offered him.

“Welcome on board the Faucon d’Or, Mademoiselle Denisova. I hope your journey from Moscow was not too onerous?” he asked solicitously. “I must apologize for not meeting you personally at Accra, but I’m sure you appreciate that these are critical times and I am concerned to keep you out of general view until our objects have been achieved.”

“We Russians are accustomed to hardships. I am certain our journey will be very much worthwhile in the end, and this small inconvenience will soon be forgotten.”

“Let us hope that is the case,” Mateus observed, and then turned to greet Zhenia as she stepped off the gangway. Watching him without seeming to do so, Nastiya saw the pupils of his eyes dilate slightly, and his expression soften as he realized how lovely she was, with the bloom of youth still fresh upon her. She felt a stab of concern as she wondered if she might have led her younger sister into a dangerous situation. She was just too beautiful for her own good, and their hosts were ruthless killers and criminals. A stab of anxiety struck her. I just hope Hector gets here soon. That text last night was really worrying.

Nastiya forced any negative thoughts from her mind and smiled easily at Mateus.

“This is my assistant, Polina Salko. She graduated from Moscow University with a first class honors degree and she has been employed by me for three full years. I can vouch for her discretion and her acuity.”

“You are both more than welcome.” Mateus lingered over the slim white hand just a little longer than was necessary. Then he stood back. “There are suites prepared for both of you, which I hope will live up to your expectations. The stewards will take you to them. Your luggage will follow momentarily. Take as long as you need to freshen yourselves. Then when you are ready, please ring for your cabin steward who will escort you to the salon. I will then take the opportunity to introduce you to our other important guest, His Majesty King John Kikuu Tembo.”

Nastiya felt a quick frisson of excitement to hear him use Congo’s alias. The huntress in her sensed that they were nearing the climax of the chase. The quarry was gathered on the killing ground. All that remained was for the hunters to assemble.

“There is one minor matter with which I must trouble you. I’m sure you appreciate that His Majesty’s personal security is of paramount importance. So if I could ask you to disable the location finder on your phones that would be very much appreciated.”

“Of course,” Nastiya said. She and Zhenia went through the procedure while da Cunha looked on.

“Thank you so much,” he said when they were done and Nastiya was suddenly struck by the strange artificiality of the situation. A woman with a false identity complying with the security requirements of a freedom fighter who was really a thief on a giant scale, and a king who was a convicted murderer. Their situation was as absurd as a farce, and yet as deadly as the bloodiest tragedy.

The stewards ushered the two women to the lift in the entrance lobby and they descended to the lower passenger deck. The suites which awaited them were luxurious but compact in accordance with the limited space available in the vessel. They were situated at opposite ends of the central passageway that ran fore and aft, but Nastiya thought this fact was of little significance.

Before she and Zhenia parted she said, “I will be ready in half an hour, Polina. Come to my room then and be sure to have your iPad with you. I’m sure we’ll be taking notes.”

As soon as Nastiya reached her own suite she closed and locked the door, then while she brushed her hair she scanned the deck above her and the hull and bulkhead surrounding her for any indication of a CCTV camera hidden in them. She was suddenly aware of the sound of engines and a gentle vibration through the hull. They were getting underway. At the end of the agreed thirty minutes, there was a tap on the door.

“Thank you, Polina,” said Nastiya. “And now, I think, it is time to greet His Majesty.”

As they entered Mateus stood up from his easy chair, but his companion remained seated and fixed the two girls with dark and brooding eyes. Nastiya paused on the threshold and returned his scrutiny with an equally noncommittal expression, but inwardly she felt deeply disturbed.

She knew who this was. She had seen photographs and video images of him. She had even seen him in the flesh as he was carried on board the aircraft at the Kazundu airfield after his capture by Hector and Paddy. But then he had been unconscious from the massive doses of sedatives that they had injected into him, and trussed up in a rope cargo net that would have immobilized a silverback gorilla.

She had never seen Congo as he was now: fully conscious and focused, a massive, menacing figure. He seemed twice the size of a normal man. He was dressed in black linen trousers and a black silk shirt, with most of its buttons open to reveal a heavy gold necklace on his chest. The aura of restless, menacing evil that emanated from him was so intense that it took a massive effort of will for her to remain still and hold her ground, rather than to recoil from him.

“Your Majesty, may I present Mademoiselle Maria Denisova?” da Cunha introduced her. Nastiya held her breath while Johnny Congo examined her; but he showed no sign of recognition. His only reaction was to incline his head slightly to acknowledge her existence, but in return Nastiya swept him a deep curtsey. When she rose to her full height once more she moved aside to give Zhenia space to step up beside her, but she addressed Johnny Congo:

“Your Majesty, may I present my assistant Miss Polina Salko.”

Zhenia was clearly as overawed as her elder sister had been, but she did not hide it as effectively. She attempted what was probably the first curtsey of her life. It was not a success and Nastiya recognized it as a nervous reaction to fear. It’s not a problem. She’s meant to be a secretary. Of course she’s over-awed in the presence of royalty.

Da Cunha indicated that they should take the couch opposite the King and he returned to his easy chair; while Congo listened da Cunha immediately plunged into the business in hand, asking Nastiya to give him details of the men who were prepared to risk their wealth on backing his venture to wrest Cabinda from greater Angola, and then questioning her shrewdly. In doing so da Cunha displayed his crisp intelligence and full command of his subject, but Nastiya had prepared for this with Hector and Paddy so she was able to keep pace with him, occasionally referring queries to Polina to be followed up after the meeting was concluded.

Congo sat with his hands thrust deeply into his pockets and his knees slightly apart. He said little, and when he did speak his accent was American and his speech patterns were hardly those of an African monarch. Even so, Nastiya could not help but notice that his observations were sharp and his questions cut straight to the point. He seemed particularly interested in the money that was being invested, the terms on which it was being given and the precise means by which the procceds, when they came, would be divided.

“Your Majesty has a remarkable grasp of finance,” she said, and the compliment was one of the few completely sincere things she’d said since she’d boarded the yacht. “Might I ask where you acquired it?”

“The street, the yard and the school of hard knocks,” he said, flatly. When he looked at Nastiya his pupils were speckled like agate and cruel as those of a predator; but the whites of his eyes were bloodshot and smoky.

“Well,” said Mateus da Cunha, “shall we have lunch? We eat under an awning on the rear deck. The breeze is very cooling there and the chef has prepared a superb buffet for us.” He spoke as if they were all decent people, engaged in reputable business in the finest possible surroundings. But the pretence of civility was like a fragile paper screen, behind which a monstrous danger lurked, pacing up and down in the darkness, gathering its strength, waiting to be unleashed.

Libreville airport was just a stone’s throw from a long expanse of golden beach, but the Interceptor had to be fuelled and that meant taking it a few kilometers down the highway to Port Mole. A massive construction operation was underway there, transforming an industrial dock into a massive complex involving a marina, hotels and beaches for tourists, and tens of thousands of affordable homes for the locals.

“Damn, that’s impressive,” said Imbiss as they sped past the vast building sites.

“Welcome to the new Africa,” Cross replied. “People in the West still think of starving kids with swollen bellies, holding out begging bowls, but Africans aren’t like that any more. They don’t need our charity, however much some people want to give it to them, just to feel better about themselves. What they need is our business.”

“Speaking of business . . .” said Paddy.

“I hadn’t forgotten,” Cross said. “Not for a second.”

“So, the latest readings I have from the trackers show the Faucon d’Or cruising southeast at about twenty knots, past the Nigerian oilfields. Their next landfall is the island of Malabo, off the coast of Equatorial Guinea. They’ve got a volcanic nature reserve on the southern end of the island: incredible landscape, rainforest, black sand beaches. If I were da Cunha and I wanted to impress an investor who looked like Nastiya that’s where I’d moor up for the night, maybe have breakfast on the beach in the morning.”

“And if I were Johnny Congo, I wouldn’t wait that long to make my move on one or both of the women,” said Cross. “If we aren’t on the Faucon a lot sooner than breakfast we’ll be too late.”

“Amen to that,” Paddy sighed.

“So,” Cross continued, “this is how we play it. And it won’t take long to describe because I’m keeping it simple. First we get to the Glenallen. I want a fast crusing speed. We’ll still be able to catch up without any problem and there’s no need to risk blowing the engines by going flat-out until we absolutely have to. We winch the Interceptor aboard the tug. Hassan gives it the once-over, while we check our kit. Any questions so far?”

He looked around the white Mercedes minibus that was taking them to the dock. There were a couple of shakes of the head, but no one felt any need to speak.

“Right. We launch no more than five miles from the Faucon d’Or then keep the Interceptor in the lee of the Glenallen as we close on the target. If anybody’s looking at the radar, I want them to see a single vessel.”

Now Imbiss said. “They’re still going to see a ship closing on them. What do we say if they ask who we are and what the hell we’re doing?”

“Simple. We give them the name of the Glenallen, tell them it’s an oilrig support vessel—if they check they’ll find both those statements are true—and say we’ve chartered it to use working the rigs up in the Nigerian oilfields.”

Imbiss nodded, satisfied by that.

“Okay,” Cross continued. “We keep the Interceptor hidden behind the Glenallen for as long as possible and try to stay downwind of the Faucon, so that the sound of its engines is blown away from the target. I don’t want them to hear us coming a mile off.

“Then, when we’re no more than eight hundred meters from the target, we hit the gas and go like stink. Chances are, they won’t have a full-time radar operator, but even if they do, he’s not going to believe his eyes. We’ll be closing on him like a torpedo, not a ship. So he’ll ask someone, and they’ll come and look, and before they’ve decide what the hell to do, it’ll be too late.

“The lowest part of the Faucon is the stern, so that’s what we aim for. I don’t want to hang about gentlemen. Three of us get over the stern rails while the second group of three keep us covered and suppress any enemy fire, then they come on over the rail, too. Paddy, you come with me and one other man in the first group. Dave, I want you to lead the second group.”

“At last! Action!” Imbiss exulted.

“Listen, we want to detain and if necessary terminate Congo and da Cunha. But more than anything else, we have to make sure Nastiya and Zhenia, are safe. We’ll start at the top of the ship, with the outside decks and reception tooms, then move down to the cabins below. This isn’t subtle. It’s not complicated. But it does require everyone to be focused, disciplined and ruthless in the execution of their duties.”

And we have to get there on time, Cross added to himself. Above all else, we have to get there on time.

But it was almost four in the afternoon now, and they still weren’t in the water.

The women had lunch and tried to combine polite conversation with some pretence of doing business as the Faucon d’Or motored southeast, past a steel forest of rigs and platforms.

“Did you know that the gas and oil from those installations is worth more than one hundred billion dollars a year to the Nigerian economy, in export revenues alone?” da Cunha said. “One day, Cabinda will be that rich.”

“And so will we,” Nastiya said raising her glass in a toast.

“To black gold!” da Cunha exclaimed.

He was a charming, attentive host, as befitted a man of his privileged background. Congo, however, was a sullen, brooding presence. He had gone into his shell and his silent presence loomed over the table like a massive thundercloud on the horizon, coming ever closer, bringing with it a mighty storm.

In the afternoon, the Voronovas changed into their swimming costumes and sunbathed between dips in the yacht’s outdoor whirpool tub. They chatted to one another and to da Cunha, too, though Congo still barely said a word. Nastiya kept a discreet eye on the suited figures of the bodyguards, counting three of them, though it was possible that more might be below deck, resting before the night shift. She thought about alerting Cross to their presence. No, the risk is too great. If the message is intercepted, we’re dead.

Soon the afternoon had drifted by and it was time to change for drinks and then supper: a lobster bisque, followed by a supreme de volaille (the chicken meltingly tender within its crisp brown skin) served with rice and miraculously fresh green vegetables, with a perfect crème caramel. The meal was simple, yet cooked to a three-star Michelin standard that raised it to something close to high art. The wines, notoriously difficult to maintain in good condition at sea, especially in the tropics, were as well chosen and delicious as the food. It was a meal to raise the lowest spirits, good enough to allow the sisters to forget, at least while they were seated at the table with the canvas awning pulled back to reveal the infinite majesty of the cloud night sky, that they were in mortal danger.

Somewhere to the south, aboard the Glenallen, three men were doing their best to restrain their own instinct for violence.

“For God’s sake, boss, forget the bloody radar signal and just let the Interceptor rip,” Paddy O’Quinn pleaded. “My wife’s aboard that bloody yacht.”

“And my woman too.”

“Yes, I know, I’m sorry . . . But Jesus wept! So what if they see us coming. There’s no way they’re carrying anything that can hurt us.”

“They don’t have to hurt us, do they? They hurt the women. Look I get it. If we go too slowly, anything could happen to them. If we go too soon, anything could happen to them. We have to time this exactly perfectly, or . . . ”

Cross didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to. Every man there was thinking about Nastiya and Zhenia. They knew exactly how the rest of the sentence went.

Dinner had been concluded. There had been more talk, more drinking, more silence from Congo. Finally Nastiya had said she was going to bed, pleading exhaustion after two nights and days of travel.

“Of course, I quite understand,” said da Cunha. “We shall be stopping for the night soon, so that you will be able to sleep more peacefully and then, in the morning you will wake and—voilà!—paradise. It is called Malabo. I think you will like it very much.”

“I’m sure I will,” said Nastiya, for the way da Cunha had enunciated “Malabo” in his French accent did indeed make it sound irresistible. “I think you should go to bed, too, Pola,” she said to Zhenia. “I’m sure there will be work to do in the morning . . . Once we have visted paradise.”

The two sisters went down to Nastiya’s cabin. As the door closed behind them, Zhenia snuggled into her sister’s arms.

“I am so glad I found you,” she whispered. “I was so lonely without you.”

“I am glad also,” Nastiya agreed, “but it’s well after midnight now. We both have to get some sleep. And I’m supposed to be your boss, who only cares about your ability to do your job. Time to get back to your cabin.”

“Oh very well, then.” Zhenia pouted. “But I shall miss you.”

“Don’t forget to lock your door,” Nastiya added, speaking to her sister’s back. Did she hear me? Should I go after her? she wondered. Oh, stop worrying! She’s a grown woman. She can look after herself.

What kind of shit was that you made me eat tonight?” snarled Johnny Congo.

“That,” replied Mateus da Cunha, who was regretting his involvement with Congo more with every second that passed, “was French cuisine, the finest food in the world.”

“Yeah? French faggot food was what it tasted like to me. Just gimme a plate of home-cooked fried chicken, or nice fat ribs, barbecued Texan-style till the meat falls off the bone. Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

He brooded a little longer, a crystal tumbler filled with neat Scotch clutched, barely visible within a giant fist, the fury inside him now almost tangible. “Gohn’ play me some music,” he growled. “Listen to my man Jay-Z.” He fiddled with his phone, found what he was looking for and linked in to the ship’s sound system. “This is about a brother tellin’ a dumb white cop, ‘You can’t touch me, fool.’”

A second later the entire room seemed to explode with the ear-splitting volume of “99 Problems. It sounded to Mateus da Cunha like a physical assault on his ears. Congo listened to the rapper chanting over the pounding heavy metal riff then walked across to da Cunha. He had to shout to make himself heard. “I got business to attend to. Touch the music, I’m-a rip your damn face off.”

Da Cunha stayed in the room. Congo’s behavior was the last thing he needed. In a few days, the first of the apparently spontaneous riots that would start the process of insurrection was due to hit Cabinda City. He should be planning, concentrating, thinking of every eventuality, but couldn’t hear himself think over the music. Then again, no one could hear him shouting at the door Congo had just walked out of, either, screaming how much he hated him.

The captain of the Faucon d’Or had supervised their mooring off the coast of Malabo. He left one of his men on the bridge, just in case the clients changed their mind and decided to sail off again in the middle of the night. People who could afford to rent this sort of boat never stopped to wonder whether their demands were reasonable or practical. They simply expected them to be obeyed, at once, without question. So there had to be someone ready to do that.

That issue dealt with, the Captain settled down for the night. He grimaced at the racket coming from the main lounge, but he was well used to late night parties and kept a stock of the very best noise-reducing earplugs for precisely this eventuality. Once they were in, the only thing he could hear was the sound of his own breathing.

Up on the bridge, the First Officer had checked the radar, established that the only ship in their vicinity was a tug sailing north to Port Harcourt, then settled down to play Call of Duty on his tablet, mixing the clients’ music, which he didn’t mind at all, with the sound of gunfire from his game. He nodded contentedly, thinking the two went pretty well together, all things considered.

The three bodyguards were down in the crew’s quarters, with the fourth member of their team, whose turn it was to take the nightwatch and who had, as a consequence, been asleep all afternoon. Two of them were Serbians, one Frenchman and a Belgian, all employed by a Paris-based contractor. Their boss was a former mercenary, who’d seen countless African coups come and go and he smelled another one the moment he heard from da Cunha’s people. So he’d not sent any of his best men, ones that he’d miss if they were rotting away in an African jail. Instead, da Cunha got four hard, tough fighting men, all of whom had criminal records and none of whom gave a damn for anyone but themselves.

Right now they were sharing a bottle of brandy, playing poker and making a desultory attempt to chat up the two French girls who served the meals, fixed drinks at the outdoor bar and generally made client’s voyages as pleasant as possible. In theory, someone was supposed to be topside, as a lookout. But the team leader, Babic, who was one of the Serbs who had been up to the bridge, talked to the First Officer and ascertained that there was only one other ship remotely near and that was sailing north up to Nigeria. So there was no need to worry. The Belgian, Erasmus, was meant to be handling the night watch. Babic would send him topsides in a while, just to check that all was well. In the meantime, he was happy for them all to sit with the booze, the cards and the stewardesses.

Then Babic heard something. “What’s that sound?” he said.

Erasmus, who was dealing, stopped flicking cards across the table. He frowned in concentration, “It’s just the shit music from the lounge.”

Babic shook his head. “No, it’s coming from outside. Check it out.”

“Can I finish dealing?”

“No.”

Erasmus sighed, picked up his handgun, stuck it in the back of his trousers and walked away, his shirt outside his trousers, not bothering to put on his suit jacket.

He’s out of shape, thought Babic, catching a flash of Erasmus’s bulging gut beneath the loose shirt. Time I did something about that.

On the Interceptor, Cross and his men were readying themselves to go into battle. He and Paddy were taking Frank Sharman as the third member of their team. He’d earned the right after his exceptional conduct on the rig. Imbiss was leading Carl Schrager and Tommy Jones in what he and Schrager liked to call Team USA, Much to Jones’s disgust. The yacht was a far less dangerous environment than the oil installations at Magna Grande had been, with little risk of a stray bullet sending the whole vessel up in flames. So they were armed with Canadian Colt C8 assault rifles in a Close Quarter Carbine configuration. In recent years the C8 had become the standard individual weapon for U.K. Special Forces, which was all the recommendation that an ex-SAS man like Cross needed. The men were all dressed in a Special Forces style: black jumpsuits and balaclavas, goggles, and black body armor over their chests. They were linked by a short range communications system.

The rules of engagement were simple. Anyone who was unarmed, female or looked remotely like a non-combatant was off limits. Congo, da Cunha and anyone fighting on their behalf was to be engaged with maximum force and minimum scruple.

They were now so close to the Faucon d’Or that it seemed to fill the windscreen of the Interceptor’s control room. “Bloody ’ell, she’s lit up like the Blackpool illuminations,” muttered Sharman.

“Cut the engines,” Cross said. The Interceptor had enough momentum to cover the last hundred meters without the need for power. It seemed as though they’d got this close without being spotted. That was close to a miracle, but he wasn’t going to push his luck any further. From now on they would close on their prey in silence.

Nastiya had difficulty falling asleep. Even when she succeeded it was fitful and she kept starting awake with her heart racing and dark fantasies lurking at the back of her mind, unable to shake off the unease of feeling defenseless in the stronghold of her enemies. She had no idea when Hector and Paddy would arrive. It might just be a few hours, or it might be days.

Nastiya dreamed of angry, insistent rhythms, men shouting, a woman screaming, calling to her. She tried to ignore it, but it became more urgent until she shot upright in her bed, fully alert and awake. She listened, expecting that the voice would fade away as the other sounds had done. But it didn’t happen. Instead the voice grew more insistent, until suddenly she recognized it.

“Zhenia!” she screamed and leaped from the bed. She ran to the door and fumbled with the lock but her fingers were clumsy and numbed with sleep. At last she got the door open and ran out into the passageway in her short nightdress. Zhenia’s cries were louder now and more frantic: jumbled shrieks for help, fighting against the blare of music, interrupted by squeals of agony and appeals for mercy. Nastiya raced down the passageway and reached the door to her sister’s cabin. From within she heard the sound of heavy blows, and an instantly recognisable man’s voice.

“Did you jus’ bite me bitch? Gonna knock your teeth out for that.”

Congo! Nastiya turned the door handle and tugged at it with all her strength but nothing gave. It was locked from the inside. She backed away until she reached the bulkhead behind her. Then she ran at the door, leading with her right shoulder. The impact was brutal, but the sturdy oak panel was resilient as steel and stopped her dead in her tracks.

Again she backed away and gathered herself. At that moment the sounds of distress from behind the door rose to a crescendo that pierced Nastiya’s very heart. She clenched her fists at the level of her belly, hunched her shoulders and screamed the three words of power that unlocked the innermost recesses of her strength. Then once again she launched herself at the door. This time she hardly felt the impact, but the woodwork exploded in a cloud of splinters around her as she ran into the cabin and turned to the double bed at its center.

Johnny Congo reared up from a jumble of bedclothes. He was so tall that his head almost touched the deck above him. His shoulders seemed as wide as the bed itself. His body was stark naked, every inch of it polished as anthracite, fresh cut from the coalface. His belly was heavy and protuberant. From below it his penis reached out as thick as his wrist, pulsing and kicking to the impulse of his blood and his lust.

He still held Zhenia by one arm. She was struggling weakly and her face was swollen and bruised and splashed with blood where he had beaten her. When he recognized Nastiya he gave a bellow of laughter and threw Zhenia carelessly aside. She struck the bulkhead and slid down it to sit on the cabin floor. Congo drew back his right leg and delivered a full-blooded kick into her lower belly. Her cry of pain was cut short as the air was driven from her body and she doubled over.

Congo took no further notice of her, but he moved quickly to cut Nastiya off from her escape route to the doorway.

“Well look who’s here,” he leered, “you been high and mighty all day. Let’s see how you act when I got you on your back, beggin’ at me to stop.”

Before he finished speaking Nastiya launched herself at him feet first. His chin was still raised and his throat was open, guffaws of laughter spilling out of it. She went for it, aiming her rock-hard heels at his bulging Adam’s apple. The force of it would have broken his neck. But with the quickness of a great jungle cat he lowered his chin and took her heels in the center of his forehead. Even so it drove him back three paces into the bulkhead behind him. But this caught him and kept him on his feet.

Congo’s reflexes were unimpaired, still so finely tuned that as Nastiya dropped back toward the floor, he reached down with both hands and grabbed one of her ankles in each great fist. He swung her around, head first and she smashed into the bulkhead. The blow left her barely conscious, robbed of any ability to fight, completely at Congo’s mercy.

Up on deck, Erasmus couldn’t hear a thing, except for the rap. He walked up to the bows and looked into the darkness. There wasn’t much of a moon that night and clouds were scudding across the sky, obscuring its faint light. He was damned if he could see, or hear anything out there. Muttering curses at Babic for sending him on a fool’s errand, he walked along the port side of the yacht, which was facing toward the island they were supposed to be visiting in the morning.

Erasmus reached the stern of the Faucon d’Or. He leaned against the rail, thinking how much he’d like to light up a Gauloise right now, rueing the fact that smoking was banned for all staff aboard ship. Then he saw something, out of the corner of an eye, something moving out on the water. He looked again and saw it, something low and black, as sharp and pointed as a dart, gliding across the water at extraordinary speed, coming straight at him.

“Merde!” Erasmus muttered, and reached behind him for his gun.

Dave Imbiss was leading the second group to board the yacht. That meant he had to cover the first. So he was standing on the bow of the Interceptor, roughly at the point where the for’ard weapons system would be mounted, with his C8 held across his body.

He’d been watching the man at the stern rail, uncertain whether he was a combatant or not and, waiting for him to make a move. Then he saw him look directly at the Interceptor, and their eyes met, like lovers across a crowded room, except that there wasn’t the slightest shred of love in this first sighting.

Imbiss saw the man reach behind him, he raised the C8 to his shoulder, and took aim.

He saw the hand emerge with something clutched in it.

He waited a fraction of a second to make certain what that something was.

Then he fired.

The bullet hit Erasmus in the throat and killed him instantly. Now the Faucon d’Or had no one to defend it against the men coming in from the sea.

Zhenia was curled on the floor, still doubled up with agony, both her arms nursing her lower abdomen where Congo had kicked her. Already she was bleeding from between her legs, she heaved herself upright, her face grimacing at the effort and staggered over to protect her sister.

Congo shouted with wild glee, “Yeah! Come get your head beaten in, you dumb bitch.” He swung Nastiya’s body like a club and Zhenia was unable to dodge the blow. She was hurled back against the bulkhead once more. Her fingernails scrabbled against the woodwork as she tried to keep her balance and prevent herself from falling. Blood was streaming from one corner of her mouth and dribbling down her naked chest on to the deck. Her knees buckled under her and she slid down the bulkhead and collapsed on to the floor, only half conscious, sobbing weakly with pain.

“I ain’t done with you yet,” Congo told her, “gonna take care of this other one first. But you’re gettin’ every inch of what you need.”

He swung Nastiya once more and this time when she hit the bulkhead her right arm, which was wrapped around her head to protect herself, caught the full force of the impact. The bone in her elbow shattered with a sharp crack, and she screamed.

Johnny Congo dropped her on the bed, and stood over her breathing heavily. “Open up, sugar,” he grunted. “Papa’s comin’ in.”

Even in her agony Nastiya tried to sit up, but with his left hand he shoved her back on to the mattress and forced his knee between her thighs. “Shit!” he muttered, looking down at his crotch. “Damn dick’s gone soft on me.” He took it in his right fist and with a few quick strokes restored its stony rigidity.

Now he was ready to do his thing.

The men from the Interceptor swarmed over the stern rail, stepped across Erasmus’s corpse and fanned out across the rear of the Faucon d’Or.

There was no one else on the outside decks. Cross, O’Quinn and Sharman slipped like black wraiths past the whirlpool tub, across the deck where da Cunha, Congo and the Voronova sisters had taken lunch and into the main lounge.

They found da Cunha pacing up and down, talking to himself, completely oblivious to their arrival until Cross was standing in front of him with a gun-barrel pointed right at his heart. It took seconds to immobilise his hands behind his back with cable ties and cover his mouth with duck tape so that he could not alert anyone else.

Cross waited the few seconds it took for Imbiss and his men to arrive. “Jones, you watch this sorry bastard. Dave, Schrager, secure the bridge and take command of the vessel. Paddy, Sharman, we’re going below.”

Sharman went aft toward the crew quarters. The first two doors he knocked open revealed sleeping men in bunks. White crew uniforms were hanging from hooks on the wall beside them. Sharman put a finger to his mouth to silence one of the men, who woke, propped himself up and peered, bleary-eyed at the intruder.

Then Sharman came to the door to the crew’s mess. He could hear voices inside, men’s and women’s. From the way the men were talking, they did not know the women well. So they weren’t crewmates.

Sharman kicked open the door. Three men were sitting at a table. The women, two of them, were standing a few feet away, clutching mugs, not wanting to get any closer to the men.

That made Sharman’s life a whole lot easier. So did the Sig Sauer pistol lying on the table, the one that one of the men was reaching for.

Sharman hit all three before any of them had got a bead on him. He stopped, looked, noticed one of the men stirring and hit him again. The echo of the shots reverberated around the cramped space. None of the men moved.

“Excuse me, ladies,” Sharman said. “Best be on my way.”

Cross and O’Quinn were heading toward the passengers’ staterooms, Cross leading the way. He came to a room with a partially open door, stepped up to the side of the door frame and indicated to O’Quinn to carry on to the next room.

Cross counted three, silently in his head, then kicked the door fully open with the C8 at his shoulder, seeing everything through the gun sight as he looked left, then right and saw nothing. The room was empty.

Congo’s attention was so completely concentrated on the woman between his legs that he did not see the black-clad figure that appeared silently as a ghost in the doorway that Nastiya had smashed open. He did not see him raise the slender long-barreled pistol to his masked face—but he sensed him. And he reacted.

O’Quinn had Congo in his sights. All he had to do was fire. But then he saw Nastiya on the bed beneath his target. Beneath all his banter and blarney, O’Quinn was a true professional soldier. He was disciplined, calm, well used to fighting and killing men up close and personal. But this was too personal. The sight of his wife distracted him, made him hesitate. Only for a second, but that was enough.

Congo rolled himself from the bed with feline speed for such a gigantic body, fired by an animal instinct that had saved him fifty times before; a prescience beyond normal human reasoning; an intuition forged in battle and mortal danger.

He landed on all fours beside the bed and then sprang forward, straight at O’Quinn, his legs pumping, driving him across the cabin floor like an Olympic sprinter, bursting from the starting blocks.

Congo had no idea who the man behind the black balaclava was and he didn’t care. He hit O’Quinn like an avalanche, knocking him off his feet. He got down on his knees, straddling the fallen body, and pulverised the faceless head with four sledgehammer blows to his temples, two on either side.

O’Quinn’s C8 was trapped between him and Congo. The punches to his head left him dazed and concussed. His grip on the weapon loosened and Congo ripped it from his hands.

Nastiya was in a world of pain and confusion, unable to make sense of what was happening. Zhenia was still curled up against the cabin wall.

Congo got to his feet, the C8 in his hands. He pointed the rifle down at O’Quinn and fired three times at point-blank rage: head shots, blowing his head to pieces.

Then Congo ran for the cabin door and went through it . . .

. . . just as Cross was coming out of Nastiya’s cabin. He saw Congo’s naked form emerge from the other cabin, saw the C8 in his hand, realized he must have taken it from Paddy O’Quinn and then hurled himself back into the cabin as Congo raised the C8 and fired a second quick, three shot burst.

Congo saw the second intruder disappear behind the cabin door. He didn’t stop to find out if he’d hit him too. He reached the companionway within three long strides and went up it, taking the stair treads four at a time. When he got to the top he glanced through the glass doors into the lounge. Da Cunha was on the floor, dead or merely disabled, Congo wasn’t sure. Another one of the masked men—by now Congo was figuring this must be some kind of Delta Force attack—was there. The man spotted Congo. This time he fired first and the glass shattered as the bullets hit them.

Congo ran out onto the deck, heard a voice shout, “I have a visual on Congo!, heard a gun firing and threw his own away as he ran to the side of the deck, vaulted the rail and plunged down into the black Atlantic waters.

Cross ran to the door of the other cabin and saw that O’Quinn was dead. For now that only registered as a fact: man down. The mourning and grief would come later.

The two women looked like they were in bad shape. But they were alive and they were no longer in harm’s way. Not unless Congo survived long enough to attack them again.

By the time he was on deck Cross knew that Congo was in the water. He spoke into his mike: “Man down below decks. Paddy’s dead. Someone go and look after the girls. I’m taking the Interceptor, going after Congo.”

When Cross reached the boat, Darko McGrain was at the helm as he had been since they’d left Libreville. “Stand aside,” Cross ordered him. “I’m taking the helm.”

One look at Cross’s face and McGrain knew that there was no point in debating the issue. “She’s all yours, boss,” he said.

The water covered Congo’s head for a few brief seconds. Then he shot to the surface and struck out for the distant shore.

The moon had emerged from behind the clouds and there was enough light in the sky to show the black outline of the jungle-covered hills of Malabo. That was where he was heading. His great bulk gave him buoyancy and he was a natural-born athlete and a tireless swimmer. He sliced through the water with powerful strokes of both arms and legs, keeping his head low and not breaking his stroke until he saw that the shoreline was already perceptibly closer.

Congo rolled over onto his back for a moment to look back the way he had come. The Faucon d’Or was still brightly lit but the vessel was so far off that he could see only its superstructure. He felt a lift of relief that there was as yet no sign of pursuit. He rolled over in the water, put his head down and swam on with no diminution of effort or of speed. After another couple of minutes he paused again to draw breath, to tread water and to listen. He found that now he was short of air and there was a pounding in his ears. His chest was laboring. Age and good living had taken their toll. He desperately wanted another few minutes of rest.

Then he heard something unusual. It was the sound of an engine running at high revolutions, almost the sound of an aero engine at take-off power. He turned in the water and looked back the way he had come and saw the beam of a searchlight suddenly leap out and begin sweeping the surface of the sea, lighting the crests of the wave tops like day but leaving the troughs in darkness.

He realized that the beam of light emanated from the low and streamlined superstructure of a strange craft, which was dancing toward him across the surface of the darkling sea. His spirits quailed and he was possessed by a deep and sudden dread.

He turned and pitted all his strength and determination against the promise of death that he knew was contained in that beam of dancing light.

Now his thrashing legs kicked up a froth of luminous spray, and the beam of light fastened upon it. Congo glanced back over his shoulder and the light struck him like a physical blow, dazzling and blinding him. He turned away from it and swam on toward the land. Behind him he heard the engine beat of the pursuit craft rise to a shriek, like the hunting cry of the Black Angel of Death.

Cross turned the wheel half a revolution to starboard, lining up the bows with the patch of broken water, and smoothly eased the throttles open.

“It’s Congo, no doubt about it. I’m going to take him out.”

“Hit him hard, boss,” said McGrain.

“Count on it,” Cross assured him, and turned the helm fractionally to port, lining up the bows with Congo’s head.

At the last fraction of a second before impact Congo duck-dived under the bows. He threw his massive legs high in the air and the weight of them pushed his head down swiftly below the surface. The Interceptor roared over the spot where he had disappeared just seconds previously.

“Damn it to hell, I missed him,” Cross muttered. But as he spoke they all felt a sharp rap on the hull under their feet.

McGrain gave a shout of joy. “No you didn’t, you tagged him.”

Cross throttled back and circled the disturbed patch of water in which Congo had disappeared. The beam of the searchlight caught patches of bright crimson where blood was rising to the surface. Suddenly Congo’s head appeared above the water.

The propellor had sliced off Congo’s left foot like a meatcleaver. His face was contorted in pain, but that only intensified the hatred with which he glared at the Interceptor. His agony and defiance came together in a single, wordless bellow, then he fell silent again, waiting like a wounded bull before the matador for the coup de grace.

Cross circled back and then looked beyond Congo. “What’s that?” he asked, but there was no need for an answer as the searchlight picked out a dark triangular shape knifing across the water toward Congo’s bobbing head.

Cross scowled. “Sharks! I’m not going to let those greedy bastards kill him before I do.”

He opened the throttles of the Interceptor and the boat surged forward once again. Congo could barely keep his head above water now, let alone take evasive action. The boat smashed straight into him, driving him deep below the surface. Cross circled back and cut the engines. They drifted over the bloodstained wake until slowly Johnny’s corpse floated to the surface upon its back, and stared up at the dawn sky through empty sockets.

The sharp bows of the Interceptor had parted his skull down the center to the level of his chin. Both of his eyes were dangling loosely from their sockets; popped out of his ruined skull by the impact.

“D’you want me to haul him out, boss?” McGrain asked.

“No, I’ve finished my business here. The sharks are welcome to him now.”

It seemed like only seconds before the first gray reef shark came scrounging down the trail of fresh human blood. It drifted down below the floating corpse and came up beneath it to sink its multiple rows of triangular teeth into Johnny’s buttocks and worry off a mouthful of his flesh.

Soon the water was boiling with the long sleek bodies and black-tipped fins and tails. They fed until the last scraps of Congo’s body were devoured and then they gradually dispersed.

Cross felt no sense of triumph. He had done all this for Hazel. But it struck him now that Congo’s death had stripped away the last traces of her existence from his heart, for she had somehow been kept alive, in spirit at least, by Cross’s desire to avenge her.

“He’s gone,” Cross murmured to himself.

“Aye,” said McGrain. “And he’s no’ coming back again, either.”

They took Paddy’s body back to Libreville aboard the Glenallen, stored in one of the ship’s walk-in freezers: better that than have him rot in the tropical heat.

Early the following morning, Cross arranged for a doctor to be flown up from Cape Town in a private jet to look after Nastiya and Zhenia once they reached dry land. He spent the rest of the day by the sisters’ bedsides. With the passage of time, Cross’s grief at Paddy’s death deepened along with his guilt. He had planned and led the assault on the Faucon d’Or. Therefore the death of one of his men was his responsibility, and the fact that Nastiya, battered and bereaved as she was, insisted that it was not his fault only made Cross feel all the more culpable.

Paddy had been his brother in arms and his dearest friend. And so, through a long night on the water, Cross sat around a table with Imbiss, and the other Cross Bow team members. One bottle after another was added to the clutter on the table in front of them as the men let their emotions pour out. They veered from one extreme to another at bewildering speed, from wild laughter as they competed to tell the most outrageous stories of Paddy’s madcap exploits, to bitter tears as the reality of his passing hit home. Cross was the last man to weep. But when the dam burst and the tears finally came, he was inconsolable.

When they arrived in Libreville, the two women were examined in hospital. The doctor assured Cross that neither had suffered any lasting injury: with time and rest both would make a full and relatively speedy recovery.

Cross still had work to do. The Faucon d’Or had yielded a treasure trove of evidence—phones, laptops, a mass of printed material—which he handed over to the Gabon authorities, who immediately prepared for da Cunha’s extradition to Angola.

Cross took his leave of da Cunha at the quayside. The would-be President of an independent Cabinda was a sorry sight: unwashed, unshaven, still dressed in the clothes he’d been wearing when they’d captured him. The cable ties had been removed from his wrists, but only so that they could be replaced by handcuffs.

“Farewell, dear Mateus,” Cross saluted him. “An Angolan jail isn’t the kind of accommodation you’re accustomed to, I’m afraid. They say most prisoners would rather die than spend the rest of their lives rotting in that particular hell. So . . .” Cross paused to savor the moment: “I wish you a long, long life.”

Da Cunha’s facial expression was a strange mixture of fury and despair, but before he could reply one of his captors thrust his baton into da Cunha’s kidneys and he fell to his knees, gasping with the pain.

For a second, Cross almost felt sorry for him.

It was another three days before the women were allowed to travel. “I’m going back to London with Nastiya,” Zhenia said, once the doctor had delivered his verdicts. “She needs help organising Paddy’s funeral.”

“I’ll come with you,” Cross said. “I can help, too.”

“No, we’ll be fine. Go back to Abu Zara. See Catherine Cayla. It will do you good to be around life, instead of death. And she needs her daddy to be with her.”

“You’re right, I should have thought of that. But we’ll be in London, both of us, in plenty of time for the funeral.”

“And I’ll be waiting for you . . .”

Cross emerged from customs and entered the arrivals terminal at Abu Zara International Airport. Suddenly Cross heard a high pitched shriek of excitement as Catherine Cayla spotted them, broke free of Bonnie’s grip and raced to meet her father.

Cross laughed as he tossed Catherine high in the air before catching her and kissing her. As he put her back down on the ground he looked in wonder at this gorgeous little girl whom he loved and who loved him in return. He thought of the woman waiting for him in London. He had spent the past week immersed in death, but now he knew that life had to go on and that this girl and this woman represented life and hope and joy to him. Together they had the chance to be a family, to build a home, to find a shelter from the storm that had surrounded him for so long.

He was in the car on the way back to Seascape Mansions when his phone pinged. He had a text message. It came in three parts. The first said, “I feel much better. But . . .” The second was a selfie of Zhenia flashing him a wicked, ravishingly sexy smile. The third said, “I need my man . . . beside me, on top of me, in me . . . Now!! xxxx”

A broad grin spread across Hector Cross’s face.

“Happy daddy!” said Catherine Cayla.

Cross looked down at his daughter and then, sounding slightly surprised, as if he’d just been told something that he had never realized before he said, “Yes, quite right. I am a happy daddy.”