by David Stone
“You believe him? This Vukov?”
“It’s the only lead we’ve got. And the Novotny Ocean logged in there twelve days ago. So it’s a good place to start.”
“Okay, boss. Work for me.”
“I have a question,” said Mandy. Levka drank some vodka, wincing as the alcohol stung his lips. “Please, miss.”
“Why are you alive, Dobri? Why didn’t Vukov kill you?”
Levka shrugged, pulled his lips down—a very Italian gesture.
“I am not knowing. I am glad. But not knowing.”
“He beat you pretty badly. What was that for?”
“He want to know about boss,” he said, looking over at Dalton and then back to Mandy. “Where he live. His work. How me and the boss got into work together. He know about Istanbul, about Mr. Galan . . . Sorry about him, boss . . . Anyway, I say I know nothing. He beat me. I pass out. He wake me up. We start again. After time, I forget who I am . . .”
“But he kept you alive,” said Dalton. “He must have needed you for something. Needed you alive, at any rate.”
“Yes,” said Mandy. “And they needed his boat.”
“Yes,” said Levka. “My boat . . .”
He fell silent, staring out at the water.
“I forget a lot while with Vukov. But it come back a little. Anybody see cell phone in that place? In Anapa? Red Motorola Krzr? MP3 player? Very nice.”
“We didn’t look that hard,” said Dalton. “But I’d say no. It wasn’t with what was left of your clothes, and they’d all been shredded to bits. We gathered what we could, but people were coming. We left in a hurry. Just got off the beach when a cop car pulled up at the back of the place.”
“No Krzr phone?”
“No.”
“Then maybe is not dream. When Russians show up—two patrol boats, sirens going—we are to stop engines and be boarded. I try to call out on ship radio but only get static. They jam the radio, I think. Boss, you remember engine room in Istanbul where we find Kissmyass, the KGB guy?”
“Yes. In the pilot’s cabin, there’s trapdoor in the deck that leads down to the engine compartment. He was hiding there.”
“Yes. He had cell phone, remember? So do I. I think, Okay, hide in engine compartment like Kissmyass, make call to Bogdan, tell him what is happening. This I do. I go down in engine room, close hatch. I making call when hatch open up. Sailors are there, Russkies. I fight. I think I drop the phone in engine room. I think may still be there.”
“Did that phone have a GPS function?” asked Dalton.
“Yes. Maybe if we—”
“More than three weeks ago,” said Mandy. “The battery would have died after a couple of days.”
“No. I set to shut down if not using. Shut-off time sixty minutes.”
“Dobri,” said Dalton, letting him down easy, “The GPS function wouldn’t work if the cell phone is turned off.”
Levka’s face went slack, and then he rallied.
“Can we turn back on? From remote?”
“It was a Krzr?” asked Dalton. “A Motorola?”
“Yes. Very fine.”
Dalton worked that through, found a trace memory.
“Motorola phones can’t be totally powered down unless you remove the battery. It’s . . . I have heard that it may be possible to download software that might . . . might . . . allow you to turn the phone back on. I know the FBI figured out how to turn a cell-phone mike on even when the unit wasn’t being used. They used that trick on the Genovese family. And I know the NSA have been refining that stunt for years. Yes. If the battery isn’t totally flat, you might be able to do that.”
“And that would tell us where the Subito is?” asked Mandy.
“As long as it’s in a covered area, down to the nearest tower.”
That was a comforting thought, and they drank to it again, then fell into a weary silence. The Lear hurtled through the deep blue, and the gentle rise and fall of the jet put them all to sleep.
They woke a while later as the Lear began a slow bank, six sunlit ovals sliding across the cabin bulkhead, the liquid in their glasses slanting a couple of degrees.
The pilot’s voice came on the radio, another soft feminine voice. Apparently, all of Poppy’s pilots were female.
“We’re beginning our approach to Ellinikon Airport in Athens, Miss Pownall,” she said with a crisp British accent. “Would your guests mind getting ready to land?”
DESCENDING in a smooth glide through the afternoon smog of coastal Athens, the Learjet touched down at Ellinikon at a few minutes after three, being redirected by Traffic Control to that part of the seaside airport reserved for private corporate jets. The Lear slowly taxied past a row of other small jets—a Gulfstream, another Lear, a Cessna. They rolled past a small, sleek number with the blue-and-white flag of Israel on her tail. Dalton took note, stiffening.
The plane rocked to a stop, the hatch popped open, and they sat there for a while as the heat of Athens poured into the cabin, carrying with it the salty tang of the sea and the reek of jet fuel and diesel fumes. A customs official checked their passports, not very carefully, bored to tears, and welcomed them all to Athens. Technically, he welcomed Mandy Pownall’s breasts to Athens, since that was where he was looking as he said this. He then was gone, his boots clanking down the aluminum steps, the papers on his clipboard fluttering in a hot wind off the Aegean Sea.
Mandy and Dalton, with Levka trailing them, falling back into his role as their majordomo, insisting on carrying all the luggage, walked across the tarmac toward the cab stands. Mandy was fighting to keep her skirt under some sort of control. Dalton was staring rather intently at a small party of three that was walking more or less in the same direction: a slender, deeply tanned young man in slacks and a sports shirt, a large, bearlike man in jeans and a loud parrot-print shirt, and an attractive young woman with auburn hair, also having trouble with her skirt.
Dalton stopped, went back to Levka. He reached into his luggage and pulled out the Colt Anaconda, held it down at his side.
“Mandy,” he said, stepping in front of her, “that’s Joko Levon over there. He’s Mossad.”
Mandy looked over, saw the large man in the parrot shirt. He was now looking right at them. And the smaller man with him had stopped as well. The auburn-haired woman walked on, not yet noticing the developing confrontation. Dalton watched as Joko stepped forward. Joko seemed to be reaching into his belt. Dalton lifted the Colt. He heard someone shouting, a woman’s voice, from across the landing strip.
“Micah, no. Don’t—”
Dalton had his sight zeroed in on Joko’s belly. The younger man with him had drawn a small pistol. Joko had his arms straight out at his sides, shaking his big shaggy head. Mandy put her hand on his gun arm, pulling it gently down.
“Micah, no. That’s Nikki Turrin.”
Dalton shifted his eyes, took in the young Italian woman now rushing toward him across the tarmac, her hair flying, holding up a hand, calling to him . . . It was Nikki Turrin.
He looked back at Joko Levon over a range of fifty yards.
Joko looked back at him, dropping his arms to his sides, shaking his massive head. The young man standing beside him, holding his pistol up and aiming it at Dalton, slowly, reluctantly, let it fall away.
“Jesus Christ,” said Joko, shouting to make his voice heard over the wind, outrage in every aspect. “Jesus H. Christ, Micah. It’s me. Joko.”
Dalton, the wind rippling his suit jacket, his long blond hair flying out, walked slowly across the airstrip, stopping a few feet away. Joko stepped forward, held out his hand.
“Micah. All is forgive. You shake?”
Dalton looked at his hand and then up at Joko’s face.
“What happened to you?” he asked, shaking Joko’s hand.
Joko’s smile opened up in his bearded face, creasing his eyes.
“Ray Fyke. He broke a champagne bottle on my skull.”
“Did he?” said Dalton, grinning
back. “Well, you’re big enough. Maybe he thought you were a ship.”
“I am Daniel Roth,” said the smaller man at Joko’s side. He had an intense, hawkish face, sharp brown eyes, weathered skin, some gray in his blue-black hair. Dalton saw that he had a tooth missing right in the front: “Ray do that too?”
“Yes,” said Roth. “He owes me a tooth.”
Nikki Turrin stepped in, windblown, nervous, memorable.
“I’m Nikki Turrin, Mr. Dalton,” she said, offering her hand and a charming smile. “We’ve never met. But I know you very well.”
“Made a study, have you, dear?” said Mandy as she walked up, Levka trailing with the bags. “Come to any conclusions?”
Something passed between Nikki and Mandy that might have been the kissing hiss of steel on steel. All the men missed it completely. Nikki was thinking of a way to reply without giving too much ground when her cell phone rang, Happy to have a deflection, she picked it up.
“Ray?”
“Yeah. You get Joko?”
“I did. And I got Micah Dalton.”
“Mikey’s there? Perfect! Can I talk to him?”
Nikki handed her phone over Dalton.
“Ray?”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. It’s the crocodile. Mikey, your timing could not be better. Nikki tell you what we’ve been doing? We’ve been dogging Piotr Kirikoff—”
“So have I—”
“We’ve been doing a better job. He’s here, in Athens. He’s gone to ground in Piraeus. He and a guy named Milan Babic—”
“Ratko Mladic’s guy. Christ. Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. Point is, Nikki and I, we got them both in a warehouse here. Been on them since around noon. Kirikoff ’s car is parked right out front. Next to a big tanker. But then I get that . . . sick . . . feeling. So I decide, go inside the building, check it out—”
“Let me guess. The place is empty. Just a front.”
“Worse. There was a camera inside the door. I walked right into it, looked up. Flash! I’m burned. Probably Nikki’s burned. Maybe we’re all burned. Kirikoff waltzed us in and waltzed us back out. Warehouse is all shut down. And Piotr Kirikoff is in the wind.”
Gibraltar
GIBRALTAR PORT AUTHORITY, WATERGATE HOUSE, WINSTON CHURCHILL AVENUE, TEN P.M. LOCAL TIME
The Rock loomed high above them in the warm Mediterranean night, an overwhelming presence, invisible in the velvet darkness, its shark-finned bulk defined only by the blinking strobes of the radar masts and communications towers that rode along its razorlike, ridged-back spine. Through the windows of the port captain’s office, Dalton and Mandy Pownall could see the harbor and the marinas laid out in front of them, the quays and docks crowded with ships, floodlit and full of activity, even at this late hour. In the marina, the flying bridges of private yachts and the masts of barques and schooners dipped and rocked, beads of lights strung along their rigging. Beyond the harbor lights, the Atlantic Ocean was a negation, a blank nothingness, out of which came a long, withdrawing roar as the tide ebbed away. Twilight was gone, but there were no stars. Gibraltar stood at the brink of a limitless void, a single point of light, of human presence, here at the outermost edge of the Old World.
The man running the GPA, the Gibraltar Port Authority, was a leathery, windburned middle-aged man named Dugald Woodside. Clearly a sailor, he had a full head of snow-white hair, cut a little long, a trim regimental mustache, and careful blue eyes with deep creases around them. He was wearing the uniform of a Royal Navy captain, the tunic neatly hung on a wooden hanger at the side of his office.
He was smoking a pipe, a Peterson Bent, its bowl full of rich Virginia Flake. He had asked permission before lighting up and seemed delighted that both Mandy Pownall and the tall, rather grim-looking American took the opportunity to light up their Balkan Sobranies. The Brotherhood of the Habit established itself at once. Soon his wood-paneled office was hazy with smoke, which drifted through the glow of his green-shaded desk lamp. They all contemplated the clouds with obvious satisfaction until Woodside, recalling himself to the matter in front of them, tapped the printout on his desk.
“This is the Gibraltar Movement Summary for the last week. We track every commercial and private vessel that comes in and out of the GPA zone. By ‘we,’ I mean the Royal Navy, although we work in close association with the civilian authorities.”
Here, he ran a tobacco-stained fingertip down the page, stopping halfway.
“Yes. The Novotny Ocean. A yacht transporter. Length: one-sixty meters. Beam: thirty-one meters. Tonnage: nineteen thousand. Captain: Nick Maloutsis. Crew of eight, mainly Serbs and Croats . . . We get a lot of these in Gib flagged Panama. Don’t like those Panamanian registries, Miss Pownall. But we’ve seen this ship and this crew before, she’s a regular. Arrived from Athens with papers for Gibraltar, here to pick up some of our local yachts and ferry them back to the Aegean and the Adriatic for the summer season. Fifteen hundred nautical miles is a long run for these private owners. She came in empty. She’s still moored at the quayside. She’s been taking on yachts, and weighs tomorrow.”
Mandy, British gentry, with her entries in Debrett’s and Burke’s Peerage, was the natural choice to lead this inquiry, which for Dalton might not have gotten much past the commissionaire’s desk in the central hall. She leaned forward to look at the sheet.
“She came in empty, Captain Woodside? I suppose there can be no mistake?”
He shook his large head, his expression regretful.
“None at all, Miss Pownall. Ships are tracked by radar in the approaches, and we have Royal Navy ships out in Gibraltar roads all the time. She radioed in from a hundred miles out and was logged into the arrivals process right away. She declared herself empty and was confirmed to be when she came under the Rock. This boat she was carrying . . . ?”
“The Blue Nile. A Riva. White-over-blue. Sixty feet.”
“The Blue Nile. Absent any bills of lading, it’s quite possible that the Novotny Ocean put in at some other port. Anywhere along the Med, possibly quite legitimately, possibly not. But with a submersible hull, they could have heaved to practically anywhere in the western Med, even out in open water. Filled the tanks, lowered the deck underwater. As soon as your boat floated off the supports, she’d back out of the gate, and, from there, merrily off into the deep blue Mediterranean.”
“How many private craft of that size would clear Gib on the average day?”
Woodside leaned back with a creak in his leather chair, tapped his bowl on its arm, looking into the middle distance while he worked out his estimate.
“Now, in the beginning of the cruising season . . . I imagine you’d see upward of a hundred a day . . . potting back and forth between the Pillars. This is very popular cruising ground . . . ports like Cádiz, the Algarve, Tangier—”
“No way to track them, sir?” put in Dalton, who here was simply Dylan Castle, Mandy Pownall’s American friend. No mention had been made of Nikki Turrin, Ray Fyke, Dobri Levka, and the two Mossad agents, all of whom were currently dining at a seaside café that Dalton could see from the captain’s office window.
Woodside, idly wondering where this interesting young American had acquired what looked very much like a bullet wound on his cheekbone, sucked on his pipe and shook his head once more. “There are some ways. Is the matter so urgent?”
“Not urgent,” said Mandy with an engaging smile. “Just a minor mystery. The boat was stolen by some port rowdies in Yalta. My father, who has mining interests in the area, was asked to help in the search. Since I was at liberty, he asked me to see if it had turned up in Gib.”
“There was some reason to believe it was on the Novotny Ocean, then?”
“Nothing solid. Poppy looked into the shipping records, and there was some indication that the Novotny Ocean had been in the vicinity of Yalta around the time the yacht was stolen. It’s just as likely—even more so—that the boat was sailed over to the Russian side and sold on the black market. Th
at happens all the time.”
“Do you suspect Captain Maloutsis of complicity in this?”
“Not at all. We’re told that any boat taken aboard a transport has only to show her ownership and insurance papers. Since these papers were on the boat when it was stolen, there’s no reason for Captain—Maloutsis?—to be under any suspicion.”
Mandy leaned back, conveying careless resignation.
“No, Captain, it was just a whim. Dylan and I were in Athens. The Novotny had docked there a few days before, then departed for Gib. Poppy loaned us the Lear, and we flew out here. More of a lark, really. A touch of intrigue in our dull lives.”
Captain Woodside thought but did not say that there was a lot more to all of this than this lovely woman was suggesting, but Alistair Pownall, Mandy’s poppy, a man of some influence at the Admiralty, was not unknown to him.
He decided to push things just a touch more.
“Miss Pownall, you and Mr. Castle asked about means of tracing private hulls. Most motor cruisers of the size you describe would have been equipped with an embedded GPS identifier. By that, I don’t mean simply the EPIRB beacon, which activates only when it comes in contact with water. The maker you cite, Riva, does this sort of thing as a matter of course. The GPS beacon is buried deep in the hull, runs on a long-life battery that has to be changed only every couple of years. These beacons are usually put in locations known to the ship’s owner alone. I take it the Blue Nile was not fitted with such a device? Or was it deactivated? And if it was deactivated, its silence should have been a warning signal to Captain Maloutsis, since the entire idea of such a device is to prevent the very kind of theft you describe. Does your father have information that such a device was not present?”
Mandy was not rattled.
“Our understanding is that the embedded GPS was somehow switched off. Would Captain Maloutsis have realized this?”
“Certainly. I imagine he would scan every yacht he takes on, if only for his insurance people, to make sure it carried a working GPS identifier. If he actually did bring this boat, the Blue Nile, into the western Med under the circumstances you have proposed, then as a matter of course and in line with my duties as port captain of Gibraltar I could discuss the matter with him. In fact, I think I should. Would you like me to?”
