The Siren's Sting

by Miranda Darling

  All this information, Rice could decide what to do with. She was done.

  By the time she left the restaurant, the rain had begun to pour down again and the calle was dark. With every footfall, Venice seemed to sink deeper into the sea. Stevie found a little shop among a maze of smooth stone alleys, boarded windows; the smell of rotting canal water was strong here. She went in and looked at the masks. At first tempted by the rhinestone, ribbon and pearl extravaganza in the window, in the end she chose the most understated mask she could find: a black and white Pierrette.

  A little before six, Stevie caught a water taxi to the Florian. As it docked, she thanked the captain and leapt nimbly onto the shore. The silk Missoni kaftan rippled and danced like mercury in the wind, and she wore large amber bangles on her wrists and flat leather sandals; only the uninitiated ever wore heels in Venice. The cobblestones would break your ankle if the shifting jetties didn’t first. Wellington boots might have been more appropriate, she thought, as thunder rumbled across the sky then cracked into a jagged shaft of lightning. The strange light of storm weather had turned the lagoon an opaque shade of jade green and fingers of red now shot out from an invisible setting sun. It was weather fit for the end of the world.

  She hurried into the covered arcata as the heavens opened and sluiced the city with more water. The marble floor, worn by so many millions of feet, was slippery with rain. Stevie dodged a conga line of tourists, snaking past in identical cheap plastic raincoats with pointed hoods. Tout comme les préservatifs. The phrase came to her in French, and she smiled. She brushed her hair back off her forehead and hoped her eyeliner had not run. She wanted David to see an elegant woman before him, rather than a drowned rat.

  He was waiting for her in a dim corner of the bar. Stevie felt a flush of pleasure as she closed the door behind her and moved towards his table. David stood and kissed her on both cheeks, handsome as ever, and smelling rather intoxicatingly of sandalwood shaving soap. ‘How are you, Stevie?’ he asked with genuine affection, his voice low and gravelly. Stevie would have liked to hug him but knew he would consider it unseemly. She sat opposite, drawing back her shoulders and lifting her chin ever so slightly. All presence began with good posture—her grandmother was very strict about posture—and Stevie tried hard to keep it in mind.

  ‘What will you have, Stevie?’

  ‘A Negroni,’ she answered, gesturing to his half-empty glass.

  ‘Due Negroni, per favore,’ Rice said to the hovering waiter. Despite speaking Italian with a very English accent, no one would have dared to treat Rice as a tourist. His every movement exuded suppressed power, and total control. The man was a lion.

  ‘I have quite a bit to tell you,’ Stevie said as the drinks arrived.

  ‘I rather assumed you would, Stevie.’

  Stevie took a sip of her drink: gin, Martini Rosso and Campari. It was strong and she was glad of it. ‘Clémence Krok’s husband is a madman,’ she began. It was the only way she could describe Krok. ‘He has a dictator’s sense of destiny, cunning and craving for power, coupled with the tyrant’s classic paranoia and ruthlessness. He has an added penchant for cruelty and games that tends to spice things up a bit.’

  Rice sat back. ‘Ah,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Yes, Clémence is not crazy. Although her husband is out to make people think she is. He plans to have her committed to some Austrian clinic, and she is terrified that she will never come out.’

  Rice said nothing, his lined face set in stone now and all traces of warmth gone. The grey light outside was fading; the waiter brought a candle. The soft, dancing light only exaggerated the shadows under David’s eyes, the hollows in his cheeks. He had aged; his face above the crisp white of his shirt looked tired.

  ‘David,’ Stevie started, extending her left hand towards his. He didn’t seem to hear her and her hand, losing confidence, stopped short of completing the journey. He woke abruptly from his reverie and glanced down; Stevie had gone for the single glove in the end. After all, it was a masked ball.

  ‘What happened to you on that ship?’ he said, his voice almost a whisper. He was looking at a large scratch on her wrist that even the glove could not hide. Stevie stared at him: didn’t he know? She had told him about the diving incident—though not yet, she realised, about the cliff fall. Still, that was not, she sensed, what he meant. She filled him in—rather hurriedly—on everything she had discovered about her host; David listened in silence. ‘And the glove?’ he asked finally, as if everything Stevie had told him meant nothing. ‘You have too much style to wear that for no reason,’ he added.

  ‘Someone tried to kill me in Bonifacio,’ Stevie said quietly. ‘Someone tried to push me off the cliffs. I’m pretty sure of it.’ She watched his face. ‘The glove is to hide my rather mangled nails.’ She described what had happened, eating three olives, one after the other, as she did. To her surprise and horror, she saw his eyes moisten with tears. Instantly she forgot her own fears and feelings— something had to be horribly wrong if David was tearing up. Then the liquid shine disappeared and the steel returned to Rice’s gaze.

  ‘This time it was my fault and that is unforgivable. I knew Krok was dangerous but I never thought he would go after you.’ He glanced up at her. ‘How did he know?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘That you were not what you seemed to be—just a friend of his wife.’

  Stevie had wondered about this. She had decided that it was unlikely that Krok had found out her secret. It wasn’t his style to say nothing, and Clémence would have warned her if he had. Possibly his paranoia had driven him to unfocused suspicions about her, but there really was no satisfactory answer to this. If he had thought that she was an enemy or someone dangerous to him, he would have killed her, certainly. But he would not have failed, and certainly not twice. A bullet to the head while she was sleeping was all it would have taken. Burn the pillow and sink the body. Easy. No, the attempts on her life had been too subtle for a man like Vaughan Krok.

  ‘There was no one else on board who would care what I do—or am . . .’ She took another sip of her drink. ‘His security men would hardly have acted without explicit orders. And he doesn’t look like he would make a mistake, let alone two. Something doesn’t feel right. Or so it seems to me, anyway.’ Stevie turned her glass in her hands. ‘So, what’s tonight about?’

  Rice gave her a long, searching look then drained his glass. ‘Lord Sacheverel is having a party at his palazzo for some Biennale bigwigs from the States. I believe Angelina Dracoulis will perform.’

  ‘Ah, La Dracoulis. She’s rather magnificent. Have you ever seen her?’

  When David ignored the question, Stevie, suspicious now, asked, ‘So, who is this Lord Sacheverel? A friend?’ She raised a careful eyebrow.

  David glared at a point somewhere over Stevie’s shoulder and clenched his jaw. ‘Sacheverel was an admiral in the Royal Navy, a man of not insignificant independent means, Maltese mother, superior to the point of arrogance and with a serious sadistic streak. He lives in London, with offices in an old submarine moored on the Thames. He has connections to all sorts of unsavoury people, mainly organised crime syndicates. MI5 tell me he was behind the syndicate that left all those illegal cockle pickers to drown on the sand bar in Cornwall.’

  ‘So,’ Stevie said cautiously, ‘if he’s such a vile man, why are we going to his party?’ Rice was silent. ‘I deserve to know, David, don’t you think?’

  Rice ordered two more drinks and waited until they arrived before he replied. ‘I’m not expecting any trouble, Stevie, or I’d never have agreed to take you with me.’ When Stevie didn’t comment, Rice went on. ‘Sacheverel has been trying to buy Hazard for some time now. I have refused repeatedly, despite the financial and logistical pressure we are under from the pirate attacks on our ships. I have no intention of selling up, and if I did, it would certainly not be to a man like Sacheverel.’

  When Rice did not continue, Stevie asked, ‘But why does he want Hazard
so badly? Surely he can buy his own protection?’

  ‘He can’t buy our good reputation. Everyone trusts the Hazard name. He needs that trust.’

  Stevie sensed she was not seeing the whole picture and, when Rice seemed reluctant to say any more, she prodded him again. ‘So, what happened to change things?’

  ‘The other day, a man came to see me—ex-SAS, until very recently he worked for STORM. He told me his name was Jim Clarke and that he wanted a job, a new job for him and his men. I turned him down straight away, saying I didn’t like Krok’s outfit and couldn’t take on anyone who had served under him. Then Clarke told me a story.

  ‘Apparently his men were out in Somalia. As you can imagine, it’s pretty hairy work—in some parts of the country they have a standing order to kill any Caucasian on sight. Clarke and his men wanted a pay rise; they felt Krok wasn’t paying them enough for the amount of time they had to spend in that mess of a country. Krok waited and stalled, then four of the men fell ill with malaria. Krok refused them access to medication until they agreed to relinquish their demands for more money. The men caved, but two of them died anyway.’

  David took a long sip of his drink. ‘Clarke is out to get even, as well as find a new post. He gave me Sacheverel as a gesture of goodwill.’ He looked at Stevie. ‘It makes perfect sense now—why our ships seemed to be suffering so heavily in the attacks. Sacheverel— and STORM—were targeting them. It was his way of forcing me to sell my company.’

  ‘He turned the pirates on you?’ Stevie shook her head. ‘How is that possible? Why would they obey him anyway?’

  ‘Krok and his mercenaries have been training the pirates, arming them, and using them to make deniable and untraceable assaults on all the shipping transiting the area. The sums exchanging hands are phenomenal—and that’s just Somalia. Apparently STORM are branching out to the Gulf of Guinea, off Nigeria—another piracy and kidnap hotspot. They sell arms to the pirates, and take the lion’s share of the ransoms and the bunkered oil.’

  Stevie remembered the oil wells in the Niger Delta, shut down because of local militants. She had some sympathy with the militants, whose land and livelihood had been completely destroyed by the drilling, but it was also one of the most dangerous areas in the world. The theft of oil—bunkering—was worth billions.

  ‘They have recently muscled in on the drug trade. There’s a triangular cocaine-smuggling route, from the Canary Islands to Cabo Verde and Madeira. The STORM-trained pirates have been attacking the drug ships and seizing cargo, killing all on board. These attacks obviously go unreported, but it’s a nice little sideline for both the syndicate and Sacheverel.’

  ‘Hence the Medusa speedboats,’ observed Stevie. ‘They could catch any vessel the drug runners might be using.’

  Rice nodded. ‘It’s a massive business. As far as I understand it, Sacheverel’s the man handling the ransom payments for the Somali pirates in London. All the ships—not just ours. Sacheverel and Krok—there may be others—are hijacking the vessels, onselling the cargo and holding the crew for ransom. They then repaint the vessels and reregister them under a new flag of convenience; these can then be on-sold to buyers who are willing not to look too closely. Others become ghost ships, floating in international waters, untouchable by law, ferrying all sorts of illicit cargo—arms, drugs, people—around the world to points where it can be offloaded by smaller speedboats and smuggled ashore.’

  ‘But where does Hazard fit into this?’ asked Stevie. ‘Why does Sacheverel want us?’

  ‘Acquiring Hazard was just part of a plan for expansion.’

  Stevie waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. ‘This is great!’ she exclaimed. It would fix Rice’s problem with the pirates, and Clémence’s problem with her husband. Stevie, in her enthusiasm, chanced a hand on David’s arm. ‘With Jim Clarke’s evidence, surely we can get them both!’ She sat back and waited, but Rice’s face did not give her the reaction she was hoping for.

  ‘Get them,’ he repeated softly, almost to himself. He started on the second drink then pushed it away, losing his thirst. ‘We are not in the business of “getting” people, Stevie. We are not the police; we are not intelligence. We protect people, we do not go after them—that’s where all trouble begins, and you know that better than anyone on my staff.’

  The point stung but it was fair. Stevie had been reckless before and she had sworn to her boss that she would not be so again, on pain of losing her place at Hazard. She took a breath and tried again, slowly, calmly. ‘I understand. But we have a real chance of stopping a whole swathe of these pirate attacks.’ There was a long silence from the other side of the table—too long. Stevie’s ears were filled with the sounds of pigeons and Polish drifting in from the crowds outside.

  ‘And . . .’ Her argument died on her lips. Rice was right. She knew that, but still she persisted. ‘Surely, when one can see the full picture— David, can’t we do something, or at least tell someone who can?’

  Rice shook his grizzled head wearily. ‘We could tell people, but we no longer have the witness. Jim Clarke is dead.’ Rice ejected the last word from his mouth like an olive pit. ‘A fatal car accident while on leave in Paris.’

  Stevie waited for a few respectful moments, struggling with her frustration and rising anger, then said, ‘David, the monsoon season ends soon in Somalia. There’ll be a new rash of pirate attacks.’

  Something in Rice’s eyes flickered. Suddenly Stevie knew— she felt, she guessed—David was saying all this to stop her getting involved: he had a plan, it just didn’t include her. That stung even more. She made a strategic decision not to pursue it, to let David think the matter was resolved in her mind. He would be less guarded that way.

  ‘Well,’ she said archly, ‘sounds like this party could be fun.’

  They arrived together by water taxi, Stevie’s arm linked through David’s. She looked up as they swooshed through the canal. There was a figure at the lighted window of the piano nobile, the silhouette of an elegant man, smoking a cigarette and looking down onto the water traffic below. Above his head, Stevie could see the exposed beams of the ceiling, the sparsely furnished room, so elegant. In another universe, on a night like this in Venice, she and David might have been lovers. She let the word linger in her mind a moment, soften and melt. Glancing up at David’s face, she clearly saw that no such thoughts were on the warrior’s mind: his expression was all steely resolve. He released his arm from hers and placed his mask— a black velvet band—over his eyes. Stevie did the same, but added a smile for effect. It was, after all, a party.

  The vast wooden double doors of the water entrance were wide open, two footmen in velvet knickerbockers and white powdered wigs grabbed the painter and held the taxi fast while Stevie and Rice alighted. A wild wind blew in unpredictable gusts, pressing the silk tight to Stevie’s lithe frame. She closed her eyes for a moment and felt the damp air on her face, breathed it in; for an instant she was far away from all this, deep inside her head. Then she opened her eyes and looked up at the palazzo. It was painted oxblood red with pale grey Moorish detailing around the windows and balconies; a lush garden bordered by huge oleanders and a high, spiked wrought-iron fence spilt out onto the canal on the left; to the right, another canal disappeared from view.

  The taxi pulled away from the mooring and a beautiful old Riva, this one with turquoise leather upholstery, took its place. A masked figure in a dinner jacket was seated in the back. Something about him was familiar, but the mask covered all except the mouth, a purplish plaster cast with a cartoonishly large nose—a Renaissance villain. David followed her gaze, stared at the figure, then turned back.

  ‘Shall we?’ he suggested, and they went inside. Climbing the vast marble staircase that hugged the left wall, they saw that all four walls were covered in the most extraordinary frescoes. On the one closest to them, a wonderfully voluptuous woman was being carried over a river by a centaur. It was enough to stop Stevie in her tracks. The figures of the woman and myt
hical beast were dark, obscured by the dim light and four hundred years of candle smoke, much of the walls pitted with damp and water damage, peeling, but this only made the figures seem more alive. Stevie turned to the wall ahead: here the centaur was trying to rape the woman, but a large arrow was sticking out of his chest, blood pouring from the wound. The right-hand wall showed the same woman, horror on her face as she stared at a smoking pool of blood on the floor of her bedroom. Deianeira, thought Stevie, at the moment in which she realised that the blood of Nessus the centaur was poison. When her husband Heracles had shot him for trying to rape his wife, Nessus, with his dying breath, maliciously told Deianeira that his blood would make Heracles true to her forever. When Deianeira feared Heracles was straying, she daubed his shirt in the centaur’s blood. Too late she realised the terrible trick. Stevie turned, and there on the wall behind her was Heracles, three metres tall, burning to death. A chandelier covered in dripping candles was the only lighting in the space, and its unsteady flame made the tortured figure dance.

  David and Stevie entered the reception rooms on the piano nobile in time to see the masked guests moving to one end of the room. Double doors gave onto a stone balcony that overhung the canal. It was lit with hundreds of candles, and on the balcony stood the glorious figure of La Dracoulis. She wore black, a white gardenia in her hair, held there by the famous tortoiseshell comb, and her eyes were cast down.