SKELETON GOLD: Scorpion (James Pace novels Book 3)

by Andy Lucas

  ‘That will be fine,’ he agreed. ‘But I am eager to settle matters here. I have a tight schedule and I am due back on a flight to Brussels early tomorrow morning.’

  After a shower and dinner, Lefevre was escorted around the facility by Varner. He had come a long way to be impressed but rapidly grew disappointed. Whilst Varner’s knowledge of the facility was good, the tour was lacklustre and the poor quality of technical information presented to him was surprising.

  For a company that had been negotiating with his clients for three months, and who openly admitted to needing the investment on offer, there was no effort made to rouse his excitement, exactly the opposite in fact. Lefevre was a shrewd player and he quickly got a sense that they were deliberately trying to disinterest him. But why?

  At the end of the tour, he knew his instincts were right when he was informed that his host was too busy to see him again and that he should immediately board the helicopter for the return flight. The deal was an important one but nothing was so important that he would ever allow himself to be treated with such obvious contempt. Determined to get back as quickly as possible and kill off the deal, Lefevre was in a foul temper as the helicopter lifted off from the ground.

  Josephine Roche was worried. A couple of weeks ago, she would have been fretting wildly about Lefevre’s visit and doing everything she could to make a great impression. The investment on offer was massive and represented enough cash to expand the facility and fund several new desalination plants. She was well aware of Lefevre’s reputation too, as well as the whispered understanding of his ruthlessness. But her recent discovery had made the investment unnecessary. She only went through the motions of continuing the deal so as not to rouse suspicions.

  This meeting has gone from being a lifeline, to a curse, she thought angrily to herself as she lathered up in a large, glass-enclosed shower stall. Thirty-three years old, she was pencil-slim and any secret voyeur would have cast appreciative eyes over her elegantly tall body, slender neck, small breasts and firm buttocks, poorly concealed by a layer of rose-scented lather. Her hair was auburn, straight cut into a short bob style and she viewed the world through dark eyes

  Her skin was pale, where she was careful to avoid the sun without protection. It was flawlessly smooth, broken only by a small, black-inked tattoo of a snarling, leaping snow leopard that sat at the base of her spine. Five minutes later, wrapped in a soft, white bathrobe, she sat on a stool in front of a large, dressing table mirror in her bedroom.

  The bedroom was tastefully furnished but functional. Two of the walls were comprised of inbuilt wardrobes and drawers, neatly hidden by floor-to-ceiling, sliding mirrored doors. Her ensuite bathroom was large but not particularly luxurious and the windows faced east, overlooking empty desert rather than the vast expanse of ocean to the west that would have offered much more relaxing evening viewing.

  The only luxury she insisted upon came in the form of the huge, four-poster, queen-sized mahogany bed, decked with swathes of pink and white silk that hung between the pillars of expensively carved wood, like the rigging of an ancient sailing ship. Parisian silk sheets and matching pillow cases; ivory in colour and patterned with delicate floral swirls of pure white, finished the appearance of opulence.

  Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she studied her face for a moment, noting the features. Her lips were thin but sensual and her straight teeth gleamed with white perfection as she smiled to herself. They hadn’t always looked like that, she knew.

  But then, the picture of near physical perfection that stared back at her from the glass was very different to the body she had been given at the start of her life. She owed her amazing looks to multiple visits to plastic surgeons, dentists and dermatologists, totalling two dozen procedures in the past decade. The pain had been real each time but Josephine was happy with the end result.

  She finally felt that she was the person she was always meant to be, physically desirable, feminine and powerful. Each improvement had served to increase her self-confidence to the point that she was now able to run a successful, multi-million dollar business without ever losing a night’s sleep.

  Standing up, she shrugged the robe off again and eyed her body as hungrily as if she were looking at someone else, which she was, to all intents and purposes. The surgeons had been criminally expensive but their skilled hands had left no tell-tale scars behind.

  Her breasts had been non-existent before so the implants had been kept small to provide her with breasts that matched her slender body and did not look false. She was very proud of her nipples, which had a small circumference but stood out several centimetres from her breasts, like dark pink bullets, when aroused.

  Ten years before, she remembered with a shudder, the image that had met her gaze whenever she stood naked in front of a mirror. And not just a less perfect female form either. No, back then, she had been a he.

  Born Joseph Roche, a tormented female spirit trapped inside a male body, her long journey of surgical relief was now over. She was finally the woman she was always meant to be.

  Anatomically, nobody could have told the difference between Josephine and any other woman from her outward appearance. Her surgery had not been driven by vanity but by a terrible sense of self-loathing and psychological misery. Fortunately, her uncle was a wealthy businessman who had been sympathetic to the twenty-two year old Joseph when he had approached him, after the death of his parents in a car accident, asking for help.

  Joseph had been working for his uncle since his sixteenth birthday and his uncle had seen the potential in him. A widower, with no children, Sigerson Roche had been successfully treated for an aggressive strain of prostate cancer in the late eighties, which had left him sterile and impotent. In Joseph, he saw a potential heir to his fortune and someone to continue building the business after he retired.

  Joseph had been unwilling to be truthful about his misery with his parents and, in a way, their untimely death had allowed him the freedom to be honest with himself, and others. He had no siblings, just his uncle. A few weeks after the funeral, and after several large whiskies, he had plucked up the courage to speak to his uncle and had been delighted with the immediate support that came his way.

  Sigerson Roche had no idea why his nephew might want to become a woman but he did not want to lose his heir. He immediately agreed to pay for as many operations as necessary, on the understanding that Joseph, or Josephine, remained with the company.

  First had come the hormone treatments. Months of oestrogen tablets, together with concoctions designed to inhibit his own production of testosterone, had served to drastically slow hair growth, raise the pitch of his voice and soften his skin.

  Painful laser treatment across his entire body had taken dozens of sittings, and nearly six months, before all traces of body hair were finally gone; never to return. Fortunately, Joseph had always been a tall, skinny boy who had remained thin into adulthood, so there was no mass of muscle, or heavy-set skeleton to try and hide.

  Surgery then followed. Breast implants, nipple grafting, cheek and chin implants, ear and nose reduction, and a dangerous but successful procedure to shave down the Adams Apple. Two ribs had been removed to create a more female profile and a succession of chemical skin peels had removed any blemishes until Josephine was transformed into a true beauty.

  Finally, after eight years, the transformation was completed by a six-hour operation to remove his male sex organs. Usually, a section of his prostate would have been used to build a clitoris but this was an imperfect solution and did not offer the true sensitivity of the real thing. Using her connections, Josephine had secretly found a female donor who wanted to be reassigned as a male and, in a ground-breaking procedure, a large percentage of their sexual organs were swapped over, as three eminent surgeons operated on both simultaneously. Experimental micro-surgery fused the nerves perfectly in both subjects and a daily tablet made sure there was never a problem with their bodies rejecting the donor tissue

&n
bsp; Joseph truly became Josephine from then on and she had lived happily as a woman ever since. She had even treated herself to a sexy little tattoo after the operation and was now as legitimately female as any other woman on the planet, with the exception of a missing womb and ovaries. Her donor female had already undergone a hysterectomy before coming to Josephine’s attention, so that had been an immediate dead end.

  Modern medicine frowned on transplants of these sacred tools of reproduction, though she continued to try, to find a donor, living or dead. She was a woman, had always been a woman, and she knew that one day she would want a child of her own. Ruthlessly determined to succeed, whatever the cost, she would make it happen.

  Her uncle had succumbed to the shadowy touch of another form of cancer; in his bowel, just before Josephine underwent her final operation but she knew he would have been proud of her.

  Pulling her robe back on, Josephine sat down on the stool and pulled open a small drawer in the dressing table. Pulling out a large sheaf of photocopies, she let her eyes wander across the first page, noting again the neat, professional handwriting of the dead submariner. She had inherited the family legend from her uncle, on his deathbed, and learned of the general areas where she needed to look but decades of previous expeditions had proven fruitless. Now though, with the more detailed directions contained within the diary pages, untold wealth, power and world influence were within her grasp.

  It was very clear to her what had to be done. A telephone sat on the dressing table. She picked up the receiver and immediately a female voice clicked into life on the other end.

  ‘What can I do for you, Miss Roche?’

  ‘Fiona,’ she ordered. ‘Follow the plan.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure?’

  ‘Just make it look like a tragic accident,’ Josephine sighed. ‘There must be no trail back to me.’

  ‘I understand. I promise that they will never be found.’

  ‘Good. And the informer in England, the one who so helpfully provided the diary?’

  ‘Yes, I know the man.’

  ‘I have no further use for him.’

  ‘Of course, Miss Roche.’

  ‘Try to recover any fee that he was paid too,’ she added, with a girly giggle. ‘Whatever you are able to recover can be considered as your bonus.’

  ‘You are very generous,’ said Fiona. ‘It will be done.’

  An hour later, as Josephine writhed deeper into her bed, bathed in a thin sheath of post-orgasmic sweat, a telephone next to her bed jangled for attention. Picking it up, she listened for a second, smiled to herself, and hung up the receiver. Resting her hands lightly on her damp abdomen, she resolved to act just as ruthlessly to get what she wanted physically. She dialled a number and the female voice answered again.

  ‘That other plan we talked about.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Roche, I know the one.’

  ‘I have decided that we should put it into action at once.’

  ‘Very good. I will start the search for someone appropriate right away.’

  ‘What would I do without you, Fiona?’ It was a rhetorical question. ‘Thank you again for your earlier work.’

  ‘It was my pleasure,’ she replied easily, before hanging up and getting to work.

  Seventy-five miles away, just off the coast, Josephine’s decision had very real consequences for three unfortunate men, leaving the once vibrant helicopter lying shattered and lifeless beneath the rolling waves. Pin-sized explosive charges, fitted at crucial points within the aircraft’s engine, had sent it to a watery grave. The pilot had wrestled desperately with the controls but his auto-rotate facility had also been cleverly sabotaged so the descent from a thousand feet had been wild and uncontrolled.

  Varner broke both legs, lower spine and neck when the helicopter hit the water, as did the pilot. Both men expired mercifully instantly. Malcolm Lefevre was not so lucky. Somehow shielded from the full impact by the position of his seat, he suffered a crushed pelvis, a broken leg and multiple compound fractures in both arms.

  Despite already being miles offshore, the water was shallow enough at the crash site for him to feel the remains of the helicopter come to rest on the seabed while he was still conscious, settling with a soft bump just as the rising water in the cabin swallowed his head with an icy finality.

  In unspeakable agony, Lefevre immediately felt an underwater current tugging his shattered body from the confines of the shattered aircraft but it would not save him. Unable to move his limbs, the gentle pull only succeeded in extricating him from the fuselage and depositing him, on his back, on the sandy bottom a few feet away. Looking directly up, Lefevre saw the shimmering light of the surface, barely thirty feet above, and it served as his final sight; taunting and sneering down at him. So near, yet unattainable.

  Knowing there was nothing he could do to save himself, he finally succumbed to the irresistible urge to breath and went to his watery grave a very bitter man. His final, indignant thought was of the sheer injustice of it all. His plan for a long healthy life, funded by millions sitting in various bank accounts, was now over, cruelly dashed.

  Unwittingly believing his fate to be a tragic accident, he died.

  6

  The water lapped gently around his calves as he dangled his feet in the circular, seven-foot diameter pool. Revelling at the cooling sensation, he stretched out on his back; a soft towel separating his skin from the teak decking planks. High above him, the sun burned so fiercely that he avoided looking directly at it, even through the protection of his expensive, UV-filtering sunglasses. The panorama of light blue was otherwise unbroken and empty.

  The rays felt as if they were burning his skin and he was glad that he’d smothered himself in a high factor sun lotion. It wasn’t quite a beach holiday, but it felt pretty damned good. Next to him, sprawled contentedly on her front, lay Sarah. Wearing a pure white bikini, she was as desperate as he was to soak up some sunshine and work on her tan.

  The pair of them were enjoying a few hours off, after complaining bitterly to the captain of McEntire’s luxurious private motor-yacht that they had been at sea for days, and not stopped once. Named Sea Otter, a sleek, modern vessel of gleaming white steel and black glass, she was a floating hotel.

  ‘Are you going to go for that all-over tan yet, or are you opting for the two-tone look?’ he joked easily.

  ‘I was just wondering the same thing,’ she smiled, grateful that he had broached the subject first. ‘Normally, I would,’ she admitted. ‘I just don’t want to distract the crew from their work.’

  ‘Sensible,’ he grinned. ‘You are enough of a distraction covered up. Heaven knows what would happen if you went topless.’

  Sarah rolled over onto her back, keeping her bikini top firmly in place. ‘I’ll save that just for you,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ said Pace, eyeing her appreciatively from behind his shades.

  ‘I’m going to get a bit more comfortable,’ she said. ‘The deck’s too hard for me. Coming?’

  ‘In a minute,’ Pace agreed. ‘I just need time to summon my strength.’ She laughed and walked back towards the stern of the yacht. She stopped as she reached a raised deck area that was just large enough to accommodate two heavily-padded sun loungers. Flopping down onto one of them, she worked the mechanical arm adjuster and lowered the upright chair into a horizontal position. A few moments later, Pace joined her on the adjacent lounger. Sarah took a moment to smother both their fronts with a liberal handful of sun lotion before they both promptly dozed off.

  When Pace came to, a little over an hour later, the sun had sunk almost to the horizon, and the breeze felt a little chilly against his face. Next to him, Sarah still slept soundly. At some point, a thoughtful crewmember had covered both of them with large towels, to prevent them from burning. Warm beneath the towel, he smiled to himself and stretched slowly, sucking in a deep breath of fresh sea air to wake himself up.

  Rising from the lounger, being careful not t
o wake Sarah, he reset it into its original upright position. Throwing the towel over one shoulder, he then stepped over to the chest-high metal railings that ran around the entire deck of the huge motor yacht. Staring idly at the foaming trail the boat left in its wake, he allowed his mind to wander. Unbidden, it latched onto the dead submariner’s diary and Pace decided it was the perfect time to review what few facts they knew.

  Leaving Sarah to sleep, he made his way inside and down a set of richly carpeted beige steps, which brought him down into a similarly carpeted corridor, running the entire length of the vessel. The boat had four main decks and an upper deck that rose up in the form of a stubby tower from the very centre of the main deck.

  The lowest level housed the engine room, fuel tanks, mechanical stores and extremely well-appointed crew quarters. There were fifteen permanent crew, all of whom lived and worked aboard the McEntire vessel, year around. Added to that, the captain had a large suite all to himself, nestled behind the bridge, on the upper deck. The third deck comprised two huge kitchens and vast food storage areas.

  The first and second decks belonged exclusively to the guests. The second deck housed an impressive fifty-seat cinema, small swimming pool, jacuzzi, sauna and other spa facilities, library, communications room and a small, teak-panelled office, complete with satellite–based internet access.

  When a guest walked down a couple of steps from the outer deck, down onto the first deck, a huge saloon and lounge area met their eyes. Moving through, up towards the bow, a modern dining room was situated amidships, with five impressive staterooms lying in the bow section beyond. The entire vessel was opulent and a perfect, miniature version of the luxurious cruise liners that plied their trade across the world’s exotic sea lanes. It was called a yacht but actually matched a small freighter in size.

  Making his way down to their stateroom, right up at the raking bow, he retrieved the sheaf of photocopies from a desk drawer and returned to the saloon. Flopping himself down onto a designer, grey leather armchair, he pulled a small lever at the side to release the reclining footrest. Once settled, he began at the first page and read through the chronological entries very carefully. None of it was new to him.