The bride-to-be lit a cigarette and exhaled into the night. ‘Aristo asked me in Monaco and I couldn’t think of a reason to say no. So I said yes.’
Stevie hid a smile. She knew enough about Marlena to know that Marlena did not do anything she did not want to do and that she therefore very much wanted to marry her young lover. Marlena suddenly seemed more human and Stevie warmed to her just a little.
‘Skorpios will be furious when he finds out, of course, as only Greeks can be,’ she added. ‘He will talk of revenge and murder and blood and the family honour. But I can survive anything, even his assassins.’
At the word ‘assassins’, John noticeably pricked up his ears. When Marlena did not elaborate, nor qualify the comment, he said quietly, ‘We’re pretty keen to get to him too . . .’
Marlena sucked her teeth and tapped her cigarette. ‘Now, now, don’t you get greedy, Johnny. We’re only offering you one treat this evening.’
‘Johnny’ fell silent. Stevie marvelled at how Marlena handled their menacing and obtuse dinner companion.
‘It’s a wedding present,’ she said to John with a smile, ‘although this one is from the bride. I can give you Krok.’ She picked up a steel shashlik kebab sword and turned it over in her manicured fingers.
‘We would need to know exactly what you have to offer,’ he countered, playing it cool. ‘We might not be interested.’
‘You’ve been after me for years, John. Don’t start playing hard to get now.’
‘We need to know what you can bring to the table,’ he repeated.
Marlena’s eyes glinted and she spread her hands on the tablecloth. ‘Well,’ she drawled, ‘you know the headlines: arms to all countries under embargo, and several groups on your terrorist list; false certificates of end user, hardware to drug runners and smugglers . . . but all this is peanuts.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘What I tell you needs to put Vaughan Krok away forever.’
John matched her stare. ‘We can guarantee that,’ he said with quiet certainty. ‘What have you got?’
‘The pirates.’ Marlena’s long slender fingers reached for her cigarette case. She removed a cigarette and put it to her lips. She took her time lighting it, drawing the string of tension between the three of them tight. ‘The pirate gangs operating off the coast of Somalia and Nigeria are involved with Krok. He trains the pirates, arms them, gives them intel. Then he takes the pirated vessels and their cargo, repaints the vessels and sells them under new flags of convenience; the crew is ransomed, the pirates are paid. Some ships simply disappear off the shipping register and become ghost ships, sailing the international waters, providing a safe haven for smugglers and pirates and anyone who wants to stay in the shadows.
‘Of course you know all that—or suspect it. Well I can prove it.’ She took a long drag on her cigarette. ‘Krok and his partners have set up what is basically a stock exchange meets syndicate that funds these pirate attacks off the coast. It’s run out of Haradheere, the pirate’s lair. Our pirates have been making tens of millions of dollars from ransom payments and the rest. I mean, it’s the corridor from Asia to Europe. They’re very well positioned. It would be naive not to take advantage of the geophysical resources.’
‘We’ve got an international naval force—’ began John, only to be cut off by Marlena.
‘Which have only driven the pirates further offshore. This is such a big business that our stock exchange now has investors from the Somali diaspora abroad, as well as everywhere else.’ She shot a glance at Stevie. ‘Including London. We have some very good clients there. Krok set up the exchange to manage the investments.’
‘How many syndicates are there?’ asked Stevie, furiously absorbing all the information. Rice would be very interested, if he made it back to work. Stevie pushed her doubts to the back of her mind.
‘We started with fifteen four months ago. We now have seventy-two. Only ten have actually been operating at sea. Think of the potential—and not just in Somalia. Nigeria, Southeast Asia, even off the coast of South America. Why not?’
‘It’s organised crime.’
‘Darling, it’s a community service. The shares are open to everyone, and anyone can help out—either out at sea or on land, providing materials, money, weapons . . . Haradheere used to be a complete hole, and now those little dusty roads are jammed with shiny new four-wheel drives and men in diamond earrings. I went to a marvellous pirate wedding the last time I was there . . .’
John’s voice could have been computer-generated for all the interest and expression in it as he added his bit: ‘The Western-backed government of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed is tied up battling hard-line Islamist rebels.’
Marlena broke in, ‘He basically controls a few streets of the capital, not much else. The administration has no influence in Haradheere—piracy pays for almost everything there: public infrastructure like hospitals and schools. The locals depend on piracy and the district gets a percentage of the ransom from ships that have been released.’
‘It’s smart,’ said Stevie. ‘If the locals depend on you, they will protect you. How much would an average person make?’
Marlena turned to Stevie. ‘I met one lady, a rather wonderful twenty-two-year-old divorcee called Sahra. There she was, lining up to get her share of the ransom from a captured tuna fishing boat. She told me she had contributed a rocket-propelled grenade for the operation, part of her ex-husband’s alimony, and that she had made seventy-five thousand dollars in a month.’
Stevie raised her eyebrows. This for a population that existed on two dollars a day. No small temptation.
John turned to Marlena. ‘But it’s Somalia,’ he drawled. ‘It’s a Spanish fishing vessel, Russian timber carriers . . .’
‘Chemical tankers, oil tankers, LPG carriers, nuclear waste, weapons—do I need to spell it out? While piracy was in the hands of Somalis, it was going to be disruptive, painful financially and hard on the unlucky sailors. But Krok is an ambitious man; he has plans.’
John’s voice sharpened. ‘What kind of plans?’
Marlena smiled. ‘Aside from controlling the pirate stock exchange, Vaughan Krok now has his own instructors on the ground, training the better pirates in maritime assaults—and they have, naturally, no end of hardware. The best. In fact, Krok is using the pirate attacks to test weapons and hardware—new GPS, ceramic guns, RPGs, you name it. All things are better tested under pressure. You get a more accurate measure of their strengths and weaknesses. His clients enjoy watching videos of their weapons in action.’ She sat back and smiled again. ‘It’s a great marketing tool.’
Stevie remembered the Oriana, the professionalism of the assault, the sophisticated weapons, Skorpios’ cool under attack . . .
Marlena stubbed out her cigarette and lit another one; Stevie suddenly understood the other woman was nervous, although she wouldn’t show it. Marlena knew that the things she was about to say—the things she had already said—had earned her a death sentence if Krok ever found out. She had crossed the Rubicon. She continued: ‘Krok is also heavily invested in shipping insurance. Combined with the ransom payments, the on-selling of the ships themselves and the goods they carry, plus the jump in demand for his weapons, he is doing rather well out of his pirates.’
John stared at her, his hard mind computing and calculating. ‘What do they do with the money?’
‘They used to use the hawala system—before the payments simply got too big.’
Stevie raised her eyebrows. Now that was clever. The hawala system was an informal Islamic set-up that had been around since before the eighth century. Hawala operated outside the international banking system: if a customer in one country wished to transfer money to another, he went to a broker with details of the person to whom the money was to be sent. This broker contacted another hawala broker in the destination country with the amount. The destination broker made the payment to the recipient and the account would be settled later. Although a simple, trust-based system, it was massive, to t
he tune of two hundred billion dollars a year. Hawala brokers didn’t ask questions, nor did they keep a detailed paper trail of individual transactions. Ideal if the people involved wished to remain anonymous . . .
Marlena stopped to take a sip of wine. ‘The payments eventually got too big and the operation had to evolve. Pretty soon, Lord Sacheverel got involved and used his connections in the City of London to organise transfers of cash from one bank account to another, then another. It was a perfect marriage.’ She smiled. ‘No one wants to touch a man with a title in England. He is above reproach.’
John nodded once then stared at Marlena. ‘What about you? What’s your role in all this?’
‘Surely you don’t think I’m going to give anything away to incriminate myself further.’
‘It doesn’t matter. We’re not that interested in your operations. We want Krok—and maybe this Sacheverel fellow. Your part in it all just helps complete the puzzle for us.’
Marlena sighed, glanced at the moon for a second as if collecting her thoughts, then explained, ‘Basically, you could call me the Pirate Queen—only I don’t mess with tankers and container ships and all that heavy industry. No, my operation is high-end, clean, and very organised. I pirate luxury yachts to order. You have no idea how long the waiting lists are on some of these massive recreational vessels—especially now that all those Russian billionaires have come into the game. And men like that, well, they’re not prepared to wait. And so they come to me. They tell me what they want and I go shopping . . .’
‘But surely,’ Stevie interjected, ‘these yachts are recognisable. Surely Interpol or someone has a watch list out. It can’t be that easy to resell them.’
Marlena shot her a contemptuous look. ‘I never embark on an operation without having a buyer lined up who is fully aware of exactly what he is purchasing. He gets a small discount on the cantiere price, he also knocks eight years off his waiting time. I doubt you could tell many of these gin palaces apart—once we’ve changed the interiors, given them a few different finishes, repainted and reregistered, they’re like new.’ She smiled again. ‘It is a very profitable business.’
‘What about the passengers and crew?’ Stevie asked.
‘Well, we try never to kill anyone or hurt them too badly. It attracts unwanted attention. We are not that clumsy. But if the crew insist on fighting, we will kill them.’ She said it simply, coldly. Stevie had no doubt she meant it. ‘The Russians and the Korean crews are the worst for that. Luckily most crews are Brits and Filipinos; we usually just set them adrift in a lifeboat or maroon them on a desert island. It’s all very buccaneerish.’ She raised an eyebrow and Stevie marvelled at the cool of the woman. She had no trouble picturing her at the head of a band of professional pirates, raiding these floating money boxes in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. It would be too easy, she thought, for a woman like Marlena. The luxury behemoths would be sitting ducks.
‘Krok gets a piece of the action, of course. And in exchange, I get access to the best men and the best firepower.’
John opened his mouth to speak but Marlena cut him off again. It was almost as if she feared she would lose the words if she did not get them out of her head and onto the table.
‘Krok’s latest thing is surface-to-air missiles.’ Stevie sensed John stiffen. ‘He has Chechen clients, South American clients, now his focus is on Middle Eastern clients. Somalia is a good way of getting their attention.’
John nodded. ‘We can get him on that. Since 2004, a mandatory twenty-five-year sentence is given to anyone who conspires to sell surface-to-air missiles. Even if none of it occurs on US soil. If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, there will also be conspiracy charges: conspiracy to kill officers and employees of the United States, conspiracy to supply materials to terrorists, conspiracy to supply and use anti-aircraft missiles. We can probably get him on money laundering too. Enough to keep him locked up forever.’
‘That’s how you got Monzer al-Kassar,’ Stevie said quietly. Kassar had been one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers and it had seemed he could not be caught. Agents had set up a sting operation, and used the same charges to convict him.
‘Like with Monzer, we have years of traced calls, paperwork, everything, but so far we’ve never managed to get anyone to roll on Krok.’ He looked at Marlena. ‘What changed your mind?’
‘Never you mind,’ Marlena smiled. ‘What matters is that I have.’ She glanced at Stevie, her face unreadable in the shadows cast by the ancient fig.
There was a pause as a waiter brought more wine, then John said, ‘The fewer people who know the details the better.’ He looked pointedly at Stevie.
‘She’s the reason I’m talking to you,’ Marlena snapped, ‘so spit.’
‘I have two agents in mind. Both very experienced field agents. They’ll pose as urgent buyers for—’
‘It’ll never work.’ Marlena sighed impatiently. ‘Krok always says that whenever there’s any urgency to do something, that always means a trap.’ It would take your agents months, if not years, to earn his trust, and I’m not sure even then that they would have the skill. The man is a shark. He can smell the smallest drop of blood in the sea. The last man who tried to betray him was fed to a white pointer.’ She drained her glass, lifting her chin and exposing her throat. Her eyes glinted in the lamplight as she put the glass back down on the table. ‘The only person who can do this is me. I am already close to him. I’ll wear your wire. We’ll discuss the SAM shipments, his clients, anything else that is pressing that day—just like any other day.’
Stevie was silent. She preferred the idea of John’s agents, but she also knew Marlena was right.
‘What if he finds the wire?’ she said.
‘He won’t find it because he won’t search me. Why would he? We’ve worked together for fifteen years. He’s never had cause to doubt my loyalty. He has never searched me, and he has never hidden anything from me. He knows I am a creature like him.’
‘You were,’ Stevie said quietly.
Marlena looked straight at John with her strange eyes. ‘This is my show.’
The breakfast room was on the top floor of the hotel and opened out onto a terrace. The Caspian glittered just over a tree-lined boulevard and gulls were wheeling over the foreshore. In the half-mist of early morning, tankers moved slowly and powerfully, like elephants at the waterhole; beyond them, hovering over the shining sea, Stevie could see the skeletal platforms of the oil rigs. The room was empty, save for a sad-looking waiter in a polyester burgundy cut-away who hovered around the Bunsen burner, waiting for the stale coffee to warm up. At the sight of the mini breakfast buffet Stevie’s spirits rose. Not for long. Although several food types were represented at the buffet, there was very little actual food: the cheese plate consisted of four paper-thin slices of cheddar, three tiny slices of salami made up the meat plate. There were some cucumber slices—maybe six—and a small cup of milk sitting mysteriously apart from the rest of the food.
Stevie took two slices of cucumber and a piece of salami. The waiter, after some persuasion, found a slice of black bread and the palest egg Stevie had ever seen. She was wondering if it was perhaps a seagull egg, when in strode Marlena, in her tight suede jeans and lilac cashmere wrap, smelling of violets and taking the waiter’s breath clean away.
She sat at Stevie’s table and lit one of her cigarettes. ‘Interesting man, our John,’ she said, with a strong note of sarcasm in her voice.
‘Are they all like that?’ Stevie meant, were all the people on the other side of the law chasing Marlena that colourless? It seemed, somehow, an ill-matched game.
Marlena laughed. ‘John is particularly stiff. There are others . . .’ She drifted off with a glint in her eye that made Stevie pity the men and women who had been assigned to pin this poisonous butterfly to a board.
‘Gobustan,’ she announced, getting to her feet impatiently. ‘There are things we must discuss and we can do it there in safety.’
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They roared out in Marlena’s Toyota four-wheel drive, heading out towards the oil fields of Mordor. Stevie noticed the car had red diplomatic plates and wondered how Marlena had managed to swing that. She stared out of the window towards the far shore of the Caspian, to Turkmenistan, invisible today. After a time, she asked, ‘What is John doing in Baku?’
Marlena glanced at her with a small smile. ‘Think of the neighbours,’ she replied.
Azerbaijan’s neighbours were a feisty lot, thought Stevie: Georgia, Armenia and, of course . . . ‘Iran,’ Stevie said softly. Marlena did not reply, but Stevie knew she was right: Iran, Islamic Republic and eternal thorn in the side of the Americans. It seemed like the currents of history had crisscrossed the region forever, and they continued to do so. If the famous theory of the geographical pivot of the world had not completely lost currency, and if a navel were to be assigned, a point of stillness around which the energies of the world turned, then that centre of energy had to be Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, on the shore of the Caspian Sea.
They passed a wild Soviet mural in the confident block colours of propaganda: Atlases in overalls cleaning sturgeon for caviar, building oil rigs, marching under red flags; huge hands cupping oil, firemen, cosmonauts and factory workers—the glories of the Soviet Union now slowly being eaten by concrete cancer. A rusted tank sat in a brown field, next to a beach, complete with rusting lifeguard towers and a mural of people at play. Just off the beach, the oil rigs rose from the sea, a rusted carrier lay dying by the rocks. History, thought Stevie, had not been kind to the Azeris. She supposed it was the curse of natural resources, so well documented.
Massacred by the Turks in World War I, Azeris were then invaded by the Soviets under Lenin. Then came Stalin’s mad liquidation of Azeri ‘elites’, killing an estimated hundred and twenty thousand people out of a population of three million; home videos had Hitler taking a big bite of his Caspian-shaped birthday cake and swallowing Baku. He had set his sights firmly on the Baku oilfields during the war but got bogged down in Stalingrad on the way. Continuing the cake motif, de Gaulle stopped off there on his way to discuss the anticipated slicing up of post-war Europe with Stalin. The USSR collapsed in 1991 and the Soviets pulled out, leaving carcasses of junk metal and a beach full of the most poisonous snakes in the world, let loose by departing scientists from the nearby poisons laboratory. She remembered that only too well, and shuddered. She would never forget when she herself had been poisoned in St Moritz the previous winter; the feeling of the dark cloud of her poisoned blood closing in on her, lulling her to death, almost succeeding. But for Henning . . .
The Siren's Sting Page 27
