“Quite an achievement,” said Dr. Nassiri with admiration.
“Indeed, indeed. I regret I can’t give you the full tour today. Our security forces had a bit of a skirmish earlier, and I’m afraid I have to deal with the aftermath.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” said Dr. Nassiri.
“Just part of life on the frontier,” said Charles, waving off the concern. “Can’t live out here without weathering an occasional pirate raid.” He turned his laser-like attention back to Alexis.
“But I prefer to concentrate on the positives of Anconia Island. For instance, we grow our own food in state-of-the art greenhouses and hydroponics gardens. What few fish we can’t farm in our oceanic pens, we can capture with our small fishing fleet. It’s a little hard to get a steak around here, but I can promise you the best marlin you’ve ever had.”
Alexis smiled and a faint blush rose to her cheeks. Dr. Nassiri found himself feeling a pang of—jealousy? He couldn’t quite place it, but knew he didn’t like Charles Bettencourt now, and liked him less with every word he spoke.
“Anconia Island is perched on fully functioning deep-sea platforms,” Bettencourt continued. “We have solar panels, of course, and wind turbines built into the superstructure and the rest of our energy needs—which are substantial—we extract from natural gas in the shale deposits on the continental shelf. Total self-reliance is our overriding philosophy, and we are determined to meet our goals. I admire determination in others as well ... which brings us to our business.” He gestured toward the duffel bag. “Dr. Nassiri, what have you got for me?”
Dr. Nassiri took the duffel bag off his shoulder and placed it on Bettencourt’s desk. Unzipping it with a flourish, he reached inside and pulled out three massive blocks of euro banknotes and set them on the desk. “I trust this will be to your satisfaction,” he said.
“Start talking,” Bettencourt replied. “You have my undivided attention.”
“A small jet plane recently disappeared a few miles off the Somali coastline. My mother was aboard. I do not believe there were any survivors.” He could feel Alexis’s eyes on him as he spoke and felt that she intuitively understood his pain. “However, not long after the crash, the plane’s emergency transponder began communicating. Because of this, I have both the location of the sunken aircraft and a belief that my mother’s research, her life’s work, will have survived. She would have wanted me to recover it if at all possible; the last time we spoke she said she was close to an important discovery.”
“And her body?”
“I intend to recover it.”
“So how can I help?”
“Security. I have no intention of being captured and ransomed during this expedition.”
“Let’s start with the location,” said Bettencourt. He paused for a moment, then gestured to the money spread over his desk. “And I have to say this is an excellent start, a real show of good faith.”
Dr. Nassiri pulled his smartphone from his pocket, and pulled up a digital map showing the location of the transponder, and handed it over. “This is where we intend to dive.”
Bettencourt squinted at the map for a moment, and then placed the smartphone on the oak desk. The surface desk sprang to life, revealing that the oak pattern was just an illusion, an elaborate and convincing façade. The desk pulled the image off the smartphone—leaving a slightly uncomfortable Dr. Nassiri to wonder what other details the system had liberated from his mobile device—and displayed it on the desk, stretching the map from edge to edge. The tiny transponder signal silently blinked in the center of the display.
“Here’s the problem,” Bettencourt said. “Your signal is deep in the red zone.” He pressed the touch-sensitive screen, overlaying it with a second map, showing roughly the territory that Anconia Island controlled. “We have sea patrols,” he continued. “But the footprint is too big, and they’re not fast enough. They attract a lot of organized pirate attention, putting my men in danger of attack by overwhelming forces. The true power in this region is my helicopter fleet, but your transponder signal is out of their operational range. I can’t station a patrol with you.”
“I don’t believe you need to,” said Dr. Nassiri. “We have a fast ship and good radar.”
“So I hear,” Bettencourt said, with a knowing smile. “Even the fastest pirate skiffs can’t catch anything faster than about forty knots, and from what I understand, forty knots is just getting started for your ship.”
“Here is what I propose,” continued the doctor. “We will go into your ‘red zone’ unescorted. If we are approached, we turn tail and run towards Anconia. I want helicopters waiting for us once we’re within fuel range.”
“Deal,” said Bettencourt. He pointed to the blocks of cash. “What is this? A million euro? You may be a little short.”
“One and one-half million,” said Dr. Nassiri.
“That will buy you one trip into the red zone. My helicopters aren’t cheap.”
Dr. Nassiri pursed his lips in thought and then nodded. “Agreed.”
Bettencourt sighed, sat, and leaned back in his chair, looking from Dr. Nassiri to Alexis and back. “Are you sure you want to do this? There can’t be anything on that plane worth your lives.”
“I’m well aware of the risks,” said the doctor.
The CEO flicked off the desk display, returning it to the oak pattern. He pulled open a drawer and produced a small letter opener, cutting a long slit into one of the blocks of money. He pulled out a single crisp 500-euro note and snapped it between his fingers.
“Did you know you can fit €150,000 into a cigarette box? Amazing.” A wide smile formed crinkles around his eyes. “This note has been banned in Italy and the UK due to its favor with organized crime. And for good reason. A million American weighs forty-four pounds, but look at this! A million and a half Euros weigh practically nothing! More wealth than most men could earn in a lifetime, and you carried it in here in a single duffle bag.”
“I’m pleased we’ve reached an arrangement,” Dr. Nassiri said, anxious to escape Bettencourt’s company. The way he had looked at Alexis was bad enough, but the way he looked at the money was positively grotesque.
“I’ll have my assistant send you the contact information for my chief of security, Colonel Westmoreland,” said Bettencourt. “All arrangements will go through him.”
“Thank you,” said Dr. Nassiri.
“And how about you, my beautiful Alexis?” said Charles. “We have a fabulous seafood restaurant in the southeast corner of Anconia and they serve the best mussels I have ever tasted, plucked fresh from the sea every day. A little butter and they practically melt in your mouth. I’ve set aside a very particular bottle of 1973 Red Mountain for a special occasion … rich, balanced, not too fruity and with a very nice finish. Tell me, are you the kind of girl I can meet over business in the afternoon and take to dinner that very night?”
Dr. Nassiri and Alexis sat together on the edge of a raised concrete flowerbed in the center of the Anconia Island courtyard. They’d decided to share an Ethiopian fit-fit stew on flatbread, but neither could manage to do more than pick at it. Alexis was uncharacteristically silent and contented herself to halfheartedly watching people walk from building to building.
“You can stay here, you know,” said Dr. Nassiri. “In fact, I’d like you to stay here. I never planned on your presence, and I never intended to take you with us beyond Anconia.”
“Since you haven’t ransomed me and I haven’t escaped, I guess I’m stuck,” said Alexis with a tiny smile.
“I’m serious,” said Dr. Nassiri. “You should stay here, not leave with us.”
“Do you want me to stay here?”
“It’s selfish to ask you to come, it’s simply too dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” She rolled her eyes. “If I stay here, I’ll probably have to go to dinner with Charles Bettencourt.” His heart gave a little thud, and the urge to feel her fingers twined with his swept over him, but s
he kept going. “Besides, who will run the engines? If you don’t have someone constantly adjusting for power loss, cavitation—”
“But if the pirates—”
“If the pirates catch us,” Alexis interrupted. “We deserve to be caught. Nothing can outrun the Conqueror.” She let the name of the stolen yacht hang in the air.
“We should go back to the ship,” she said. “Big day tomorrow.”
“That money, the money I gave Bettencourt,”Dr. Nassiri said. “I need you to understand that was everything to me. Everything. My father died years ago, and I mortgaged my childhood home, I sold every stick of furniture, my car, my property, my business investments. It all went into that bag. There is no backup plan. The oceanic research work was my mother’s life and the only way to do honor to her is to finish it.”
“And Jonah? How does he figure into this master plan? What if something happens to him on the dive?”
“I found Jonah in a prison, the type of prison for men who are meant to die incarcerated. I’m giving him another chance at life, perhaps more of a chance than even I will have once this venture is completed. I have committed resources to allow him to begin his life again. But in the meantime he’s expendable. If he doesn’t know this, he has no one to blame but himself.”
“That’s not how we treat friends where I’m from,” said Alexis.
“Jonah Blackwell will never be my friend.”
Dr. Nassiri followed Alexis as she ascended the gangplank to the Fool’s Errand. He allowed himself one momentary glance at her once they were onboard, but she did not return the look, instead staring forward, expressionless. He didn’t understand why, but whatever he’d said about Jonah bothered her, so much so that she disappeared down the main staircase towards the engine room without so much as a goodbye.
Dr. Nassiri shook his head, more in frustration with himself than her. Despite her obvious anger, she hadn’t said anything to rescind her offer to accompany the Fool’s Errand on the final leg of the mission. Whatever tomorrow brought, apparently the Texan’s code of honor went very deep.
Passing by the bar, Dr. Nassiri noticed open, half-empty liquor bottles, dirty footprints on the carpet, and several dishes on the floor. He snuck a glance behind the bar, and it looked as if an entire row of bottles had been dropped onto the tile floor, leaving shattered glass everywhere.
“Animals,” he muttered to himself. The last thing he wanted was have to babysit two grown men, men upon whom he had to depend. With dread in his step, he headed for the back deck where, sure enough, he found Youssef and Jonah exactly where he’d left them, spent cigars surrounding their sleeping forms as they baked in the African sun. Right then and there, he decided he would have to have a very serious conversation with his uncle regarding Youssef’s future as soon as they got home. Something would have to change if his cousin was to ever make anything of himself.
Charles Bettencourt stood at the corner of his office, observing but not enjoying the most spectacular view in the city. He’d summoned his chief of security more than thirty minutes ago, and he still hadn’t shown himself or reported in. Charles hated being kept waiting. There was no good reason—or for that matter, way—to disappear in a nation measuring just a few city blocks.
The elevator doors chimed in the far end of the room, and he turned as the doors slid open and out stumbled a very drunk Colonel Westmoreland. To his supreme displeasure, Charles observed that the mercenary had not bothered to remove the live grenades from his vest.
“You ever run a business?” asked Charles, disgust lacing his voice. “Was there ever a little bald-headed Colonel Westmoreland running the world’s angriest lemonade stand in suburban Topeka, or wherever the fuck you’re from?”
“I did lawns,” answered the colonel, returning the smirk.
“What?”
“Lawns,” said Westmoreland. “I mowed lawns. Pulled weeds.”
“And if some other kid came sniffing around your customers?”
“I’d beat the shit out of him.”
“Doctor Hassan Nassiri is sniffing around my business, and he doesn’t even have the respect to do it in a ship that belongs to him. If I’d been able to reach the owner of the Conquerer I’d have given him an opportunity to buy his yacht back and deal with the hijackers personally. As it is—”
“What do you want me to do?” asked the colonel.
“Kill them,” Charles said. “Preferably before the Conglomerate catches wind. If the Conglomerate thinks Anconia is compromised, they’re going to start dropping bodies.”
“How do you want it done?”
“They’re about to leave Anconia Island in an attempt to retrieve the data from Professor Fatima Nassiri’s aircraft. Put the ship and crew on the bottom. Make it look like pirates.”
CHAPTER 8
Alexis scanned the control panels of the Fool’s Errand’s engine room. Green across the board. A true rarity for an engine room so complex. The humming Purcell engines were finicky at best, demanding the same exacting attention as a fussy derby stallion. Take your eyes off them for too long, and, well, something was bound to go wrong. Even the wrong toned hum in one of the turbines could mean the system was about to throw a blade, leaving them dead in the water. But for now, all was in working order.
She tiptoed over to the main door and checked the access hallway. Empty. She pulled the door shut, hurried to the nearest computer terminal, and pulled up a hidden subroutine, her way of tapping into the internal security system to keep an eye on her new shipmates. Though she’d long known about the vulnerability, she’d never had a reason to exploit it before. She’d buried her new code under half a dozen unrelated protocols, even masked the signal by passing it through a data conduit normally reserved for air quality analysis. Too bad she didn’t think to do a little investigating on the suspiciously quiet day before she found out she’d been stolen along with the Conqueror. Even so, Jonah seemed like a pretty sharp guy. She didn’t know what he’d do if he found out. Best to keep it secret. Maybe he’d shrug and wander off without saying another word. Maybe he wouldn’t. She’d seen his scarred-over knuckles, the residual hardening around his eye socket and jaw. This was a man who knew violence intimately, a man capable of inflicting it as well.
She sat back in her chair and folded her legs up underneath her. So far, being kidnapped hadn’t changed much except that she was in charge of the engine room now and there was no dress code. She wore a pair of cutoff jean shorts and yoga tank top that would have been expressly verboten under the no-nonsense chief engineer of the Conqueror. The outfit didn’t exactly go with her steel-toed workboots, but who cared? Dr. Nassiri certainly wasn’t paying attention, not since their awkward little moment on Anconia Island. Or maybe he was paying attention, just in the sense that he went out of his way to avoid even crossing her path.
Dr. Nassiri. She needed to flat-out stop thinking about him, stop hoping she’d run into him on her way to the bridge, the kitchen, her bunk, or hell, even the head. She wasn’t about to go full circle back to her upbringing in Amarillo, Texas, a town where the general consensus was that big hair and long legs would get a girl a lot further than what was between the ears. Still, she did wonder about him. For instance, she genuinely couldn’t grasp his need to rename the ship Fool’s Errand of all possible new names, especially since going after his mother’s body and recovering her research didn’t sound very foolish. It seemed noble, somehow. Not a fool’s errand at all. And although she realized a stolen ship would need a new name, to her, it was and always would be the Conquerer.
Men, she thought. Her dad would tell her to forget about them, that her job was to look after herself and keep the engines purring. Her mother would find the whole thing hilarious—well, not the kidnapping and pirate stuff—but that Alexis was worried about what some Moroccan doctor thought of her. They’d always been the kind of parents who went their own way, that gave a tomboy the latitude she needed to pursue whatever interested her. And here she was, an eng
ineer on a beautiful ship in a dangerous part of the world, occupying herself with thoughts of a moonlit evening on the high seas with Dr. Tall Dark and Handsome. Jeesh.
The surveillance system blinked to life on her screen. Alexis hopped up and took one last look down the hall to make sure nobody was coming to check on her. Paranoid much? Probably, but she liked her life like she liked her engine room, with as few loose bolts lurking around as possible.
The screen flicked over to the bridge. Dr. Nassiri stood lone watch, binoculars in hand. How old was he, maybe early to mid-thirties? A bit older than she was, but not ridiculously so. He certainly wore it well—smooth skin, high cheekbones, intelligent, dark eyes. She’d already recognized the initial fluttering of attraction, and had told herself, in no uncertain terms, to get real. Maybe this was what Stockholm syndrome felt like, but she doubted it. Sometimes a handsome doctor was just a handsome doctor, even if he did inadvertently kidnap you.
The screen flipped over to the galley.
Hellooooo Jonah.
Jonah Blackwell stood in the center of the dining area completely naked, his collection of diving gear spread across the floor in neat, squared-off little piles, wetsuit carefully folded on one side. Alexis hit the stop button almost unconsciously, preventing the camera from switching away from the voyeuristic view.
He stood without moving, gaunt, tanned muscles glistening, even in the grainy display of the surveillance system. She watched as he gathered the folded wetsuit in his hands and stepped into it. Her friends at home would be swooning at his lean body, broad shoulders, and fuck-all-y’all attitude, but Alexis felt something entirely different when she looked at him. Danger—a trait she found very unattractive.
Leaning in closer to the screen, she caught a brief glimpse of stitching under his left ribs as he pulled the wetsuit up his abdomen and over his shoulders. Holy shit, it looked like someone had stuck a knife in him, and recently.
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