Amidships, he came across an open door and used the muzzle of the Glock to nudge the gap a little wider. He swept left and right, finding no threats.
The well-appointed room was in some disarray. A tea service lay upended where it had been knocked to the floor. On the big plasma TV that dominated one wall, a movie was freeze-framed in mid-flow, the characters on screen caught shouting at one another, the “pause” icon blinking in the corner of the display. The remote was on the carpet where it had fallen.
Marc examined it, following the trail of disruption around the room. This was Dima’s cabin, the largest on the yacht. He must have heard something, Marc reasoned. Paused the movie, stopped to listen. What had come next? A shot? A cry of alarm? It had been enough to send the accountant running, tipping over the tea, heedless of the mess.
Dima was still alive because he hadn’t tried to get off the yacht. He’d gone forward, deeper into the hull.
Killing time in the departure lounge at Gatwick, Marc had memorized the Jade’s original internal schematics from a website for boating enthusiasts, and now he ran through them in his mind’s eye. Where would Novakovich go to ground?
He played a hunch.
* * *
The yacht’s galley was white plastic and brushed steel, and the only light came from the soft blue glow of a giant refrigerator. There were shadows everywhere and plenty of places to hide. Panning the pistol, Marc reached out a hand to feel for a light switch and felt a sudden pain in the small of his back. He flinched reflexively, tried to turn, and for his trouble got the glinting length of a Sabatier chef’s knife pressed to his throat.
A man in expensive-looking cotton slacks and an unbuttoned shirt confronted him, his pug-face filmed with sweat and set with fear. Dima Novakovich, very much alive and balancing on the edge of open panic. “Put the gun on the table, motherfucker,” he hissed. “I’ll open you up!”
Marc felt the tip of the kitchen knife nick the side of his chin and he kept very still, raising the Glock and taking care to show he had his finger off the trigger. “I’m not one of them.”
“Shit!” Novakovich retorted. “Give me the gun! I slit your throat!”
“Dima, listen to me.” Using his first name actually startled the Lithuanian, and he blinked. Marc pressed on. “I’m here to get you out. They’re upstairs. They’ll find us.”
The broker kneaded the grip of the blade. He wasn’t a killer. According to Interpol’s records, Novakovich only made money off selling weapons, never using them himself.
Marc kept eye contact with the other man. Each second that he wasn’t stabbing him, Dima was losing the momentum to carry out his threat. “Who sent you?” he demanded.
“British intelligence,” Marc lied. “I’m a friend of Samantha Green.” Mentioning Sam’s real identity was the only card he had to play. He was taking a chance that she had given Novakovich her real name in their dealings.
When the man backed off a few steps, he knew his gamble had paid off. “Where?” Novakovich looked around. “She is here?”
Marc blew out a breath and rubbed at the new cut on his chin. He doesn’t know about the freighter. That made sense. It had only been days since the incident in Dunkirk, and if Novakovich was on the run from his Combine masters, he’d be out of the loop. “We got wind of this,” Marc went on, making it up as he went, “Sam sent me.”
For an instant, an almost childlike look of relief crossed the broker’s pale Slavic features. On some level, Dima was so terrified that he wanted it to be true, he needed to be convinced that someone had come to rescue him; but then it passed and he became suspicious again. “Just you?” Novakovich sized him up and frowned.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t believe you.” The broker pulled a gold-plated iPhone from his pocket and pressed it into Marc’s grip. “Call her! I want to talk to her!”
“Don’t be stupid,” Marc snapped, improvising on the fly with a half-truth. “Zero profile, mate! Sam said radio silence!” He pressed on before the man could question his story. “The others are ashore. Look, you want to play twenty questions or you want to get off this boat?”
“What I want is to—” Novakovich stopped short as a low gurgling rumble shuddered through the floor beneath their feet. Kitchen utensils chimed against one another as the Jade set slowly into motion.
Pocketing the phone in case Novakovich decided to make the call himself, Marc held up a hand to wave him back and peered out into the corridor. Through one of the portholes across the way, he saw the Capo Taormina headland slipping away as the yacht retreated from its moorings. The hit-team had raised the anchor and were taking the Jade out to sea, into the deeper waters of the Med. Once they were far enough out, it would be easy to scuttle the boat and let it sink without a trace. He turned back. “Time to go. I’ve got a secure location on the island, we can, uh, debrief you there.” Marc had no idea how he was going to keep up the fiction that he was still an active MI6 officer, but right now he had to deal with what was in front of him. “Is there another way off this thing?”
Novakovich emerged behind him and pointed down the corridor, no longer questioning the narrative. “A garage. I have a launch, jet-skis…” He shook his head. “But we can’t go yet. I have to get something.”
Marc heard footfalls on the deck, directly above his head. “No time!” he whispered. “Come on!”
The broker gestured with the knife. “Not going without it.” He set off down a narrow side passage. Marc swore under his breath and followed. Nothing about this was going as he had hoped.
* * *
The short corridor ended in what appeared to be a bulkhead panel, but Novakovich fumbled at a plate in the deck and slid it back to reveal a numerical keypad. He punched in a string of digits and the bulkhead popped open on concealed hinges. The broker pushed it open and Marc caught a draft of dry, machine-chilled air and the faint ozone smell of electronics. Inside the hidden compartment was a pillar of black and silver that went from floor to ceiling. Webs of thick yellow data cables emerged from the back of it and constellations of blinking green lights flickered up and down the surface of the device.
“You’ve got your own server,” muttered Marc, more to himself than to Novakovich. “Of course you have.”
It made sense. The broker’s clients were, after all, people of private and dangerous natures, and the details of their business could never be entrusted to a conventional data store. By keeping his own computer server in a mobile location, isolated from the internet until it needed to be connected by satellite, Novakovich could offer security to any kind of illicit transaction. In effect, he was carrying his own little pocket of the dark net around with him.
“They punch holes in the hull,” Novakovich was saying, as he used the Sabatier to work at a set of latches in the server stack. “Sink my Jade. The only way to obliterate all this.” He gave a bitter smile. “Seawater is not kind to circuits.”
He seemed a lot more upset about the loss of his yacht than the woman lying dead on the stern deck, or his executed employees. Marc said nothing. He didn’t need to like the man, he only needed what Novakovich knew about the rat hiding inside MI6.
With a snap of connectors, a thick module the size of a hardcover book came free in the broker’s hand and he clutched it like it was his firstborn child, discarding the knife. Marc recognized the shape of a military-grade hard drive. It looked like one of the heavy-duty models used by the Russian navy aboard their nuclear submarines, tempest-shielded to resist electromagnetic pulses, fireproof and waterproof.
“This is my passport, you understand?” Novakovich told him. “You take me to a safe place, this will tell you what you want to know.” He pushed past Marc and made his way back up the side passage. “We go now.”
Marc scowled. He reached for the other man’s arm, trying to pull him back, and missed. “Wait, it’s not safe.”
But Novakovich wasn’t listening. The broker emerged into the corridor running the length of t
he passenger deck and almost collided with the stealth-suited gunman moving down toward them. There was nothing Marc could do to stop what happened next.
The shooter flipped up his weapon and opened fire without a flicker of hesitation. The short-barrel MP9 submachine gun released a cluster of silenced rounds that ran up Novakovich’s body, some of the bullets sparking off the case of the hard drive. Novakovich cried out and crumpled backward with a crash.
The gunman pivoted sharply at the corner of the passage and turned the muzzle of the MP9 toward Marc. His night-vision goggles would easily render the space visible, and there was no cover at all.
Marc took the offensive and attacked as the weapon came toward him. With the Glock in his fist, he brought the heavy butt of the pistol across, smashing it into the lenses of the gunman’s NVG rig with such violence that broken shards were driven into the shooter’s cheek and eyes. The gunman jerked the MP9’s trigger, but the shots went wide, chugging into the wall and the ceiling of the corridor as the magazine emptied.
Marc pushed forward with all his remaining impetus and brought up his knee into the gunman’s crotch, forcing him back. Blinded and flailing, the shooter struck out with the MP9 and used it to club him in the head.
Marc’s ears rang and he lost his momentum, almost stumbling over Novakovich, who lay choking on the richly carpeted floor.
With a grunt, the gunman ripped off the goggles and fumbled for the hilt of a wicked-looking combat knife, swearing under his breath. Marc remembered the moment on the tower block roof in London, but this time there would be no mystery shot, no intervention from out of the darkness.
He felt no doubt as he brought up the Glock and fired twice, putting both rounds through the other man’s sternum at close range. In the close confines of the corridor, the sound of the gun’s discharge was sharp and high, like firecrackers. The gunman went down and was still.
At his feet, Novakovich drooled dark arterial blood, his body shaking as it went into shock. His eyes lost focus as Marc crouched beside him. The broker’s labored breaths became wet, strangled; and then silent.
He had to wrench the hard drive from the dead man’s grip, and he took off running toward the bow as footsteps clattered down the stairwell behind him. Marc pointed the Glock backward and fired blindly, sending more shots into the dark. He shouldered open the door to the Jade’s garage and kicked it shut behind him. Sparks flared at the gap as more silenced rounds came back in return.
Marc’s heart hammered as he pushed past a small motorboat hanging from its rig and found the sloped hatch in the wall of the starboard hull. A T-shaped switch that was set in a recess, colored bright hazard-orange, with a panel of text next to it that said Do Not Open At Sea in five different languages. He wrenched it downward and the wall creased, big metal slats retreating away like folding sheets of paper. The hard drive went into the drawstring bag as he cast around, every second of delay screaming at him to move.
Novakovich’s jet-skis sat on aluminum rails designed to act as slipways. Marc spent another bullet blowing open the locker on the wall holding the starter keys and then rushed back to the nearest wet bike, ripping off the bungee cords holding it in place.
Another spray of automatic fire rattled against the metal hatch and he knew that the shooters would be on him any moment. Marc vaulted into the saddle and shoved the jet-ski forward with his body weight. He felt it start to move as he jammed the starter key home, yanked the choke and thumbed the ignition. If the engine didn’t turn over, then he was most certainly dead.
Mercifully, the Kawasaki grumbled into life as it slid down the rail, and there was a brief, stomach-turning lurch before the jet-ski hit the water and a surge of low surf slapped into Marc’s chest. He landed badly and almost fell out of the saddle right there, but one hand gripped the throttle tight and the Kawasaki bounced back up to the surface of the waves, nose pointing away from the Jade. Leaning low over the handlebars, Marc gunned the motor and the jet-ski shot away. For a second time, he blind-fired over his shoulder, waving the Glock in the direction of the open hatchway. The throttle vibrated under his fingers and he leaned into a series of S-turns back in the direction of the shoreline.
He heard the buzz of bullets cutting the air around him, but then the noise was lost in the hiss of the waves and the roar of the Kawasaki’s engine. Marc hugged the machine, willing it to go faster.
* * *
Ellis let the MP9’s muzzle drop and swore as he ejected a spent magazine and tossed it into the water, mechanically replacing it with a fresh reload from the pouches on his tactical vest.
Cruz came up behind him, an eternally blank expression visible across the Brazilian’s swarthy features. “Hayes killed the primary, but Hayes is dead.”
“Who the fuck was that?” Ellis demanded, ignoring the other man’s words. “Every bugger on this boat was accounted for, who was this doos?” His native Afrikaner accent always grew thick whenever he lost his temper. He slapped at the radio tab on his neck. “Teape? Bring this thing around. We got a runner.”
There was a momentary pause before the American answered. “Did you hit him?” The walkie-talkie’s scrambler made the channel tinny. “This boat doesn’t exactly turn on a dime. He’ll be ashore before we catch up. Did you hit the runner, over?”
“I don’t reckon.” Ellis ground out the words, irritated by the admission that he had burned through a mag with nothing to show for it. “Who was . .?”
“Is Novakovich dead?” Teape cut him off before he could go on.
“Primary is dead,” repeated Cruz. “Hayes too.”
There was a dismissive tutting noise. “Put Hayes in the zodiac, then prep the charges below the waterline. Ellis, get his camera and bring it up here.”
* * *
Teape locked the Jade’s helm on automatic and snatched up a pair of binoculars from a storage bin at the side of the flying bridge. He looked across the stern and the bulky optics brought the Bay of Taormina into sharp focus. It was difficult to pick out the jet-ski’s wake among all the light pollution spilling from the town, even at this hour. If he’d had a sniper rifle and a targeting steer, it might have been possible to kill the man before he made it to the island, but none of the team had anything larger than a submachine gun.
Fortunately, Teape’s employers had planned ahead. They had an option for just such a problem. He replaced the binoculars and fished a burner cell phone from a pocket, dialing a number from memory. The call connected on the second ring.
“Si?”
“Problem,” he explained. “Can you find something for me?”
The voice on the other end of the line switched to English. “Where?”
“Coming ashore in the bay, any moment now.” Teape glanced up as Ellis came up the ramp to the flying bridge. “Probably based somewhere local. I’ll get you a picture.”
“Okay.” The call ended, and Teape weighed the phone in his hand.
Ellis offered a collection of cables and components to the other man. One device was a commercial digital video player. A cable ran from it to a compact brick of black impact-resistant plastic that sported a gimbal-mounted digital camera at one end. No larger than a double-A battery, the low-light camera was small enough to fit in the pocket of a tactical vest and the memory pack could record hours of footage. Each member of the kill team had a similar unit on them, to keep them honest.
Ellis was also carrying something that looked like a portable fan. “Found this lying on the sun deck,” he explained. “That’s how the bugger got out here.”
Teape said nothing, using the tablet to access the camera, spinning through the killer’s-eye view until he came to the moment when Hayes had almost collided with Novakovich. He watched Hayes dispatch the broker, but it took two back-and-forth replays for him to isolate a frame of video showing the face of the man who had shot dead the other operative.
“This him?” He showed a gray-green low light image of a washed-out face framed by light-colored hair, ca
ught in the middle of grim exertion.
“Could be.” Ellis was sullen. He didn’t like being party to mistakes. “Ja.”
Teape captured the image, then slipped the cable into a port on the phone. Within moments, the picture was sent to two distinct destinations. The first was Faso, the watcher he had left on the island. The second was the first link in a chain of blind digital relays that would eventually channel the still to someone who could put a name to the face.
* * *
Marc ditched the jet-ski on the pebbled beach and threw the key into the surf. The faint notes of soft piano music filtering down from the terraces of the San Domenico Palace hotel up above were a stark counterpoint to the drumming of his heart in his ears. He ran toward the steep path leading up the cliffside and into the town.
A short way up, beneath the thin trees clinging to the rocks, he dragged the dark tracksuit out of his waterproof bag and pulled it on over his wet swim gear. Swallowed up by the warm night, Marc looked back over the bay and out to sea. There was nothing to indicate that the Jade had ever been there.
The hard drive was bulky and awkward on his back, and he felt hyper-conscious of its weight and the potential of the data it contained. As an afterthought, he opened the neck of the drawstring bag and fished out the dead man’s cell phone, crackling open the casing. Marc pulled the device’s battery so it couldn’t be used to track him, and tossed it back in.
He couldn’t make out anyone following him, so Marc made the ascent up the long and winding path, moderating his pace so he wouldn’t be winded by the time he reached the narrow road at the top of the cliff. Deliberately, he took a long, roundabout route, going away from the Monte Tauro hotel, up toward the Corso Umberto, the main thoroughfare through the town. The medieval streets came in close and offered plenty of shady alcoves. Marc picked his way along them, diverting down cobbled alleyways as he cut back in a loop, in the direction of the parkland at the Villa Comunale. Finally, he followed a group of boisterous German tourists making their way back to the hotel and slipped in behind them, crossing the Tauro’s foyer while they dithered and chatted.
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