The Exile

by Andrew Britton

  A 52-foot Ferretti with an open flybridge, broad sky lounge, and streamlined hull, the motor yacht rocked gently in the berthing area with other quayside luxury vessels, her interior and running lights on.

  “There’s Saduq’s boat,” Abby said, pointing out the right side of the windshield. “The Yemaja.”

  Kealey studied it from the SUV’s backseat as they approached. The name on its hull was easy to spot in the streetlights along Avenue de la Marina. A couple of dark-suited men stood near the foot of the dock, no less visible to him.

  He shifted his gaze to the glass-fronted, balconied, four-story building up the harbor, its entry spilling more brightness into the night. “Is that the hotel?”

  Abby nodded. “We believe our friend Hassan has a silent stake in its ownership—he isn’t hesitant to diversify his portfolio,” she said. “Still, we’ve managed to slip a casual employee onto its staff.”

  Kealey grunted. A short while ago Abby’s cell phone had trilled, and when she disconnected after a brief exchange with the caller, she’d reported that Saduq had arrived at the hotel to join another man in its restaurant.

  “This plant of yours…he’s sure Saduq is alone?”

  “She is, yes,” Abby said. “Or entered alone, at any rate. Danielle plays a fine piano in the dining room, has a lovely voice, and is quite observant. Unfortunately she cannot see through walls.”

  Kealey thought in silence. He was willing to bet the arms broker had bodyguards with him somewhere—besides the two at the dock. And then there was the posse Abby had said accompanied Saduq’s contact. According to her information, he’d brought at least four men into the place with him, though they had vanished into the casino once he was seated at his table.

  “Take it slow going past the boat,” Kealey told Steiner, leaning forward. “Or as slow as you can without being conspicuous.”

  Steiner nodded behind the steering wheel and moments later was driving by the yacht. Kealey hastily counted three men moving about the deck and guessed they represented close to the Yemaja’s entire staff. A boat that small, Kealey figured Saduq could take it out into the bay himself if he had a pilot’s license. But if he was going to hold an important meet aboard her, there would be a man at the helm, maybe a hand or two to assist him. You could probably add a galley steward to the crew list, since Saduq would be the type to like sailing in style. That would be about it.

  “What’s next?” Abby asked from in front.

  Kealey had been grappling with the same question. His eyes intent, he noticed a dimly lit outdoor parking lot at the end of the dock, a row of tall royal palms forming the boundary line between its far side and the hotel grounds.

  “Any idea who belongs to those vehicles?” he said, nodding toward the small number in the lot.

  “It is general marina parking,” Brun said across the backseat. “Also for the hotel’s staff.”

  “What about its guests?” Kealey asked.

  “The Bonny Bight has valets. An underground garage,” Brun said.

  Kealey was noting that quite a few of the outdoor lot’s available spaces were well back in the shadows. It gave him, if not exactly an idea, then the bare seed of one. “Okay, let’s pass the hotel so I can have a look at it,” he said. And a chance to think. “Then we’ll hurry up and make some plans.”

  Steiner nodded again and cruised by the front of the hotel. Outside were landscaped shrub islands and a circular drive that wound around to a separate drive adjacent to the resort—one Kealey assumed led to the underground garage. Cleverly recessed floodlights illuminated the elongated dome awning over the glass entrance doors, and a white-gloved doorman and valet stood talking behind them in the vestibule.

  Steiner had continued on for only a short distance before the multilane Avenue de la Marina tapered off into an undivided blacktop, its streetlamps falling away, a mix of wild saw palmettos, figs, and mangroves shagging the roadsides. Peering through the brush to his left, Kealey made out a black curve of beach in the throw of the SUV’s headlights. They’d gone far enough.

  “We’d better double back now,” he said. “Pull into that open-air lot. Find a space that’s dark.”

  Abby glanced around at him. “Are you going to share what you intend to do afterward, or will we have to guess?”

  Kealey gave her a cool look. “You asked me to lead the way on this ride,” he said. “I don’t remember hearing you lay down terms.”

  “I didn’t,” she said. “But I wasn’t expecting to follow you blindly—”

  “Nobody said you would.” Kealey’s tone was as controlled as his expression. “I need to figure some things out in a hurry. I also need a pair of binoculars if we’ve got them. I’ll tell you what I’m thinking when we reach the lot.”

  As Abby reached into a dash compartment for the binocs, Steiner swung the SUV around in reverse, his cargo hatch pushing into the brush at the verge of the road. Then he was driving back toward the harbor.

  The glasses to his eyes, Kealey looked out at the Yemaja through the SUV’s tinted windows. Three crewmen had stepped onto the deck. One was lowering the yacht’s sea stairs; another stood over the anchor winch toward the stern. The third, its pilot, was up on the flying bridge. They were preparing to set sail…and it appeared they’d be ready as soon as she was boarded.

  Passing the hotel now, Steiner turned into the parking lot and rolled into one of its open spaces near the entrance, his front end facing the yacht on Kealey’s instructions. Then he cut his engine and lights.

  “We’re going to hijack her,” Kealey said after a moment, his binoculars lowered.

  Four pairs of eyes stared at him in utter surprise.

  “What?” Abby said. She looked as if she hadn’t comprehended him.

  “There are too many moving pieces,” Kealey said. “We have to simplify our part of things.”

  They all continued to sit with their attention fixed on Kealey.

  “I still don’t know what you mean,” Abby said.

  “Then think about it,” Kealey said. “We can’t just grab Saduq on the dock and risk his friend bolting off on us. If we’re going to be sure exactly what’s going on here, we need both of them.”

  “No, Kealey. You’re wrong,” said Abby. “Saduq is our link to Ismail Mirghani. And Mirghani to whoever might have—”

  “You told me yourself you can’t prove anything when it comes to Saduq and the Russian arms deal,” Kealey replied. “What exactly is it you figure to do? Wave your Interpol badge in his face and politely ask him to fess up?”

  “We can do more than that,” Martin said beside him.

  “I’ll ask it again. What? You can’t arrest him without a warrant.”

  “But we can bring him in for questioning,” Abby said.

  Kealey’s grin was scathingly harsh. “I hope that was a joke. You don’t really believe he’ll talk without serious motivation.”

  “Such as?” Abby asked.

  “Leave that to me.”

  “Kealey, we can’t just break the law and abduct those men,” Abby insisted. “They’re the bloody thieves and bandits—”

  “And this is our chance to get them rolling in the mud together,” Kealey said. “There’s nowhere on the boat they can run that can take them too far.”

  She was shaking her head. “Say we go along with your idea. There are only five of us. We don’t know how many guards Saduq has back at the hotel. The same applies for the man he’s come here to meet.”

  “That’s what I meant by moving parts,” Kealey said. “We take the yacht, it cuts some of those parts out of the equation. My guess is those two won’t have much company. It’s obvious they want to put distance between themselves and any possible surveillance. But their business is happening where it is to keep eyewitnesses to a minimum—and I’m betting that includes their own men.”

  Abby regarded him for a long moment. “Kealey, this is absolute madness.”

  “Maybe so. But call it what you want. I’m her
e to get the job done.” Kealey shifted in his seat to look out the rear windshield, snapped his head back around toward Abby. “It’s push time, Abby. You asked me to lead you—I didn’t offer. So do we move or head back to Yaoundé for more of your custard?”

  Abby was silent. She’d also glanced out the rear and seen the men leaving the hotel. After a moment she inhaled, formed a spout with her lips, expelled a stream of air. “All right. Tell us what you have in mind,” she said finally.

  Leaving the Hotel Bonny Bight together, Saduq and his companion turned right, strode by the parking lot, and then walked along the edge of the quay on the Avenue de la Marina. They would have to pass six or seven other craft before they reached the Yemaja.

  In the BMW’s backseat, Kealey adjusted the MP9 carbine’s concealed black carry pouch on his waist and then zipped the front of his jacket shut over its spare magazine rig.

  “Ready?” he asked Abby.

  She looked around from making her own preparations, nodded.

  “Okay,” Kealey said. “The rest of you sit tight. And stay alert.”

  He grabbed his door handle and exited the SUV, then moved to the front passenger door and opened it. Abby slipped her arm through his as she got out.

  “You’re too tense,” he said in a hushed voice.

  She shot him a look. “What do you expect?”

  “For you to pay attention,” Kealey said. “Now loosen up so those guards don’t make us on sight.” He waited a second, felt her body relax against him. Better. “Come on, let’s walk.”

  They left the parking lot and then turned up the street, strolling toward the yacht about 10 yards behind Saduq and the pirate. The press of her hip and shoulder made Kealey think of Naomi Kharmai—he would have guessed they were about the same height and weight, Abby perhaps a bit slighter. It was a reminder he neither wanted nor needed.

  They continued walking along the lip of the quay. After about thirty seconds he saw Saduq ever so slightly hesitate, cast an unobtrusive glance around, then resume his steady pace beside the other man without giving them another look.

  Kealey drew Abby closer and appeared to nuzzle her cheek, brushing her ear with his lips. He could feel the small bulk of his ammunition rig between them. “You see him check us out?” he murmured without slowing down.

  She nodded. “What do you think?”

  “We’re fine,” he said, giving her a lover’s gentle and affectionate smile.

  “So, Yasir, I trust all is quiet on the waterfront?” Saduq asked one of the two guards on the quay in Arabic.

  Puffing on a Djarum Black, the guard gave an affirmative nod. “Na’am, sayyidi,” he replied. Behind him the yacht’s sea stairs had been firmly secured to its starboard side and lowered to the dock.

  Saduq stood in the warm breeze drifting off the bay, the spicy aroma of the clove cigarette mingling with the salt air. “A beautiful night is always to be savored,” he said and tilted his head toward the man and woman strolling up the street behind them. “Too bad the best of it is reserved for young lovers rather than men of our restless ambition, eh, Nicolas?”

  Nicolas Barre glanced in their direction. “I hadn’t noticed them behind us.”

  “Perhaps it’s because your thoughts have lingered on the blond songstress—we’re not immune to romantic impulses, after all,” Saduq said with a laugh. “Come…. Let’s get aboard before you’re irresistibly drawn back to the hotel and her vocal charms.”

  Barre turned from the couple. Saduq motioned for Barre to precede him onto the quay, and he did so, climbing the sea stairs to the deck of the Yemaja. A moment later Saduq followed, leaving only the strollers and his guards behind in the dimness along the dock.

  As Saduq and his companion mounted the sea stairs, Kealey gave Abby’s arm a soft tug, pausing under the pale silver glow of the half-moon to motion toward the bay. A casual observer might have thought he was pointing out a harbor beacon in the near distance, or possibly one of the constellations visible above the low horizon, its stars spilling across the sky as countless tiny sequins of light.

  “You’ve killed before,” he whispered. It was not so much a question as confirmation.

  She stood looking out over the water, her features becoming almost imperceptibly tighter. “Yes.”

  Kealey couldn’t have articulated how he’d known. To say it was something he’d seen in her eyes was oversimplistic, although that was part of it, and he paid close attention to what he intuited. But he supposed another part was realizing she wouldn’t have gone along with his plan if she hadn’t, because killing was essential to its success. He decided to leave it alone.

  “Those guards on the dock will be armed,” he said. “I can take them. But I’ll need you to distract the one with the cigarette.”

  She nodded her head. “Okay, let’s get on with it.”

  Arm in arm, they walked the rest of the way up the dock, past the bobbing recreational boats, to the Yemaja.

  “Excuse me,” Abby said. “Might I trouble you for a cig?”

  Saduq’s guards had been aware of the couple even before their employer and Barre turned to board the yacht, but their attention had turned up a notch as they’d come within a yard or two of the berthing area.

  His Djarum between his lips, Yasir looked at her in stony silence. He had understood her question perfectly but was interested only in seeing the pair move on.

  Abby slipped her arm out from Kealey’s and mimed holding a smoke to her lips. “Cigarette?” she said, tilting her head back in the direction of the Bonny Bight. “I must have left mine back there in the lounge.” She sniffed the breeze. “Did you know clove cigarettes were banned in the States? It’s been a problem since I moved there….”

  Yasir continued to ignore her with visibly growing impatience. Kealey could see a concealed weapon bunching the fabric on the right side of his sport jacket and, while looking at him peripherally, noted how his partner’s jacket fell over a holster in the small of his back. Having the weapon in that spot would add at least a fraction of a second to his draw time.

  Kealey turned to face the second guard, keeping his hand loose near his hip. “Sorry if we’ve bothered you, but—”

  The Muela combat knife came out from under Kealey’s Windbreaker in a blur, his right fist around its lightweight rubber grip even as he grabbed the man’s wrist with his free hand, locking his fingers around it, pulling him forward and off balance an instant before he tried reaching back for his firearm. The black blade plunged deep into the man’s throat, Kealey giving it a sudden twist, dragging it through the flesh as bright, warm carotid blood came out in a spurt. Then he shoved the man back hard with his forearm, plunging him into the dark water between the yacht and quay.

  A pulse beat later Kealey spun toward the one with the cigarette, the MP9 appearing from under his jacket. He jammed the forward end of its cylindrical sound suppressor between the second man’s ribs and then moved between him and Abby and squeezed the trigger. The flump of the discharging weapon was louder than Kealey would have wanted, its removable tube not nearly as effective as what an integrated can would have done, and he knew the sound would echo across the water. But there was the slap of the current and the soft creaking of wooden planks and the openness around him—and, most of all, an element of surprise, which he hoped would buy him the small amount of time he needed.

  The lighted cigarette spinning out of his hand, the guard went limp and collapsed around the barrel of the gun as the 9-mil round’s kinetic energy burst his heart in his chest. Kealey bodied into him with his entire weight, pushing hard, forcing him off the dock and into the bay seconds after the first man had toppled into it with a dull splash.

  Soft, swift footsteps came now from the direction of the parking area—Etienne Brun sprinting light-footedly toward him as they’d arranged, a B&T MP9 identical to Kealey’s against his thigh.

  Kealey made eye contact with him, sheathed his knife, glanced around to see Abby staring down at the water,
her hair blowing about her face. Her posture was wooden, the tendons of her neck bulging out in tight, strained cords.

  “Come on, let’s move!” he said, placing his hand firmly around her arm to snap her out of it.

  She took a breath, nodded. And then the three of them were bounding off the dock and up the sea stairs onto the deck of Hassan al-Saduq’s yacht.

  “Hell, look,” Martin said in the SUV’s backseat.

  Steiner saw him motion toward the Bonny Bight, flicked his eyes toward his window, and instantly spotted three large men trotting toward the dock through the tall, columnar trunks of the royal palms. Hurrying along Avenue de la Marina, they ran abreast with furious purpose…and there was no mistaking them for ordinary guests of the hotel.

  “You think they’re with Saduq or the pirate?” Martin asked.

  “I don’t know—but it’s only important that we stop them.” Steiner slapped a clip into his submachine gun with the ball of his palm and heard Martin doing the same, his magazine locking into place with a metallic click. Then he set the gun down beside him on his seat and keyed the ignition. “Hang on!”

  He stepped on the gas, shot out of the parking space with a jolt, then swung the steering wheel to the right and pulled from the lot onto the pavement, his front end facing the curb. Gripping his door handle, he braked to a sudden stop between the men and the dock, grabbed his compact assault rifle, and lunged out of the SUV, keeping its armored body between himself and the trio. He had his ID holder in one hand, the rifle in the other.

  “Halt! Halte!” He waved the ID holder at them. “Europol!”

  The men held in their tracks, one slightly ahead of his comrades. Steiner kept his identification in clear view as Martin exited the right side of the vehicle. Using his partially open door as a shield, Martin angled his weapon at them over the top of its laminar glass window.

  “What do you want from us?” one of the men said in English. “Let us through—”