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“That’s the expression. Well, it’s a hot and sunny day in paradise. You have two hours left of a four-hour charter. Talk if you wish, but the answer’s still
no
.”

“Have you ever heard of a man called Igor Komarov?”

“We get the papers here, a couple of days late, but we get ‘em. And we listen to the radio. Personally I don’t have a satellite dish, so I don’t get TV. Yes, I’ve heard of him. The coming man, isn’t he?”

“So they say. What have you heard of him?”

“He heads the right wing. Nationalist, appeals to patriotism a lot. That sort of thing. Makes a mass appeal.”

“How far right-wing would you think he is?”

Monk shrugged.

“I don’t know. Pretty much, I guess. About as far as some of those Deep South ultraconservative senators back home.”

“A bit more than that, I’m afraid. He’s so far right he’s off the map.”

“Well, Sir Nigel, that’s terribly tragic. But right now my major concern is whether I have a charter for tomorrow and whether the wahoo are running fifteen miles off Northwest Point. The politics of the unlovely Mr. Komarov do not concern me.”

“Well, they will, I fear. One day. I … we … some friends and colleagues, feel he really should be stopped. We need a man to go into Russia. Carey said you were good ... once. Said you were the best … once.”

“Yes, well, that was once.” Monk stared at Sir Nigel for several seconds in silence. “You’re saying this isn’t even official. This is not government policy, yours or mine.”

“Well done. Our two governments take the view there is nothing they can do. Officially.”

“And you think I am going to pull anchor, cross the world, and go into Russia to tangle with this yo-yo at the behest of some group of Don Quixotes who don’t even have government backing?”

He stood up, crushed the empty beer can ‘in one fist and tossed it in the trash bucket.

“I’m sorry, Sir Nigel. You really did waste your airfare. Let’s get back to the harbor. The trip’s on the house.”

He went back to the flying bridge, took the helm, and headed for the Cut. Ten minutes after they entered the lagoon the
Foxy Lady
was back at her slot on the quayside.

“You’re wrong about the trip,” said the Englishman. “I engaged you in bad faith, but you took the charter in good faith. How much is a half-day charter?”

“Three-fifty.”

“With a gratuity for your young friend.” Irvine peeled four hundred-dollar bills from a wad. “By the by, do you have an afternoon charter?”

“No, I don’t.”

 “So you’ll be going home?”

“Yep.”

“Me too. I’m afraid at my age a short nap after lunch is called for in this heat. But while you’re sitting in the shade, waiting for the heat of the day to pass, would you do something?”

“No more fishing,” warned Monk.

“Oh, Lord no.” The elderly man burrowed into the shoulder bag he had brought and produced a brown envelope.

“There is a file in here. It is not a joke. Just read it. No one else sees it, you do not let it out of your sight. It is more highly classified than anything Lysander or Orion or Delphi or Pegasus ever brought you.”

He might as well have punched Jason Monk in the solar plexus. As the former chief ambled up the dock to find his rented buggy, Monk stood with his mouth open. Finally he shook his head, stuffed the envelope beneath his shirt, and went to the Tiki Hut for a burger.

On the northern side of the chain of six islands that make up the Caicos—West, Provo, Middle, North, East, and South—the reef is close to the shore, giving speedy access to the open sea. On the south the reef is miles away, enclosing a huge thousand-square-mile shallow called the Caicos Bank.

When he came to the islands, his money was short and prices on the north shore where the tourists went and the hotels were built were high. Monk had costed out his budget and with harbor dues, fuel, maintenance costs, a business license, and a fishing permit, there was not much left. For a small rental he was able to take a timber-frame bungalow on the less fashionable Sapodilla Bay, south of the airport and facing the glittering sheet of the bank where only boats of shallow draft could venture. That and a beat-up Chevy pickup comprised his worldly assets.

He was sitting on his deck watching the sun go down to his right when a vehicle engine coughed to a halt on the sandy track behind his house. Presently the lean figure of the elderly Englishman came around the corner. This time his white Panama was complemented by a creased alpaca tropical jacket.

“They said I’d find you here,” he said cheerfully.

“Who said?”

“That nice young gal at the Banana Boat.”

Mabel was well into her forties. Irvine stumped up the steps and gestured to the spare rocking chair.

“Mind if I do?”

Monk grinned.

“Be my guest. Beer?”

“Not just now, thanks.”

“Make a mean daiquiri. No fruit except fresh lime.”

“Ah, much more like it.”

Monk prepared two straight-up lime daiquiris and brought them out. They sipped appreciatively.

“Manage to read it?”

“Yep.”

“And?”

“It’s sick. It’s also probably a forgery.”

Irvine nodded understandingly. The sun tipped the low hump of West Caicos across the bank. The shallow water glowed red.

“We thought that. Obvious deduction. But worth checking out. That’s what our people in Moscow reckoned. Just a quick check.”

Sir Nigel did not produce the verification report. He narrated it, stage by stage. Monk, despite himself, was interested.

“Three of them, all dead?” he said at length.

“ ‘Fraid so. It really does seem Mr. Komarov wants that file of his back. Not because it’s a forgery. He’d never have known about it if another hand had written it. It’s true. It’s what he intends to do.”

“And you think he can be terminated? With extreme prejudice? Taken out?”

“No, I said ‘stopped.’ Not the same. Terminating, to borrow your quaint CIA phraseology, would not work.”

He explained why.

“But you think he can be stopped, discredited, finished as a force?”

“Yes, actually I do.”

Irvine eyed him keenly, sideways.

“It never quite leaves you, does it? The lure of the hunt. You think it will, but it’s always there, hiding.”

Monk had been in a reverie, his mind going back many years and many miles. He jerked out of his thoughts, rose, and refilled their glasses from the pitcher.

“Nice try, Sir Nigel. Maybe you’re right. Maybe he can be stopped. But not by me. You’ll have to find yourself another boy.”

“My patrons are not ungenerous people. There’d be a fee of course. Laborer’s worthy of his hire and all that. Haifa million dollars. U.S., of course. Quite a tidy sum, even in these times.”

Monk contemplated a sum like that. Wipe out the debt on the
Foxy Lady,
buy the bungalow, a decent truck. And half left over shrewdly invested to produce ten percent per annum. He shook his head.

“I came out of that damn country, and I came out by the skin of my teeth. And I swore I’d never go back. It’s tempting, but no.”

“Ah, hum, sorry about this, but needs must. These were waiting in my keyhole back at the hotel today.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and handed over two slim white envelopes. Monk eased a single sheet of formal letterhead paper out of each.

One was from the Florida finance company. It stated that due to changes in policy, extended loan facilities in certain territories were no longer deemed acceptable risks. The loan on the
Foxy Lady
should therefore be repaid in one month, failing which foreclosure and repossession would be the company’s only choice. The language involved the usual weasel words, but the meaning was plain enough.

The other sheet bore the emblem of Her Majesty’s Governor of the Turks and Caicos Islands. It regretted that His Excellency, who was not required to give reasons, intended to terminate the residence permit and business license of one Jason Monk, U.S. citizen, with effect from one month from the date of the letter. The writer signed himself as Mr. Monk’s obedient servant.

Monk folded both letters and placed them on the table between the two rocking chairs.

“That’s dirty pool,” he said quietly.

“I’m afraid it is,” said Nigel Irvine, staring over the water. “But that’s the choice.”

“Can’t you find somebody else?” asked Monk.

“I don’t want anybody else. I want you.”

“Okay, bust me. It’s been done before. I survived. I’ll survive again. But I ain’t going back to Russia.”

Irvine sighed. He picked up the Black Manifesto.

“That’s what Carey said. He told me, he won’t go for money and he won’t go for threats. That’s what he said.”

“Well, at least Carey hasn’t turned into a fool in his old age.” Monk rose. “I can’t say it’s been a pleasure, after all. But I don’t think we have anything else to say to each other.”

Sir Nigel Irvine rose too. He looked sad.

“Suppose not. Pity, great pity. Oh, one last thing. When Komarov comes to power, he will not be alone. By his side stands his personal bodyguard and commander of the Black Guard. When the genocide starts, he will be in charge of it all, the nation’s executioner.”

He held out a single photograph. Monk stared at the cold face of a man about five years older than he. The Englishman was walking up the sand track to where he had left his buggy behind the house.

“Who the hell’s he?” Monk called after him. The old spymaster’s voice came back through the deepening dusk.

“Oh, him. That is Colonel Anatoli Grishin.”

¯

PROVIDENCIALES Airport is not the world’s greatest aviation terminal but it is a pleasant place to arrive and depart, being small enough to process passengers without much delay. The following day Sir Nigel Irvine had checked his single suitcase, was nodded through passport control, and sauntered into the departure area. The American Airlines plane for Miami was waiting in the sun.

Because of the heat, most of the buildings are open sided and only a chain-link fence separates them from the open tarmac beyond. Someone had wandered around the building and was standing beside the chain-link looking in. Irvine walked over. At that moment boarding was called and the passengers began to stream toward the airplane.

“All right,” said Jason Monk through the wire. “When and where?”

Irvine drew an airline ticket from his breast pocket and pushed it through the wire.

“Providenciales-Miami-London. First class of course. Five days from now. Time to clear things up here. Be away about three months. If the January elections take place, we’re too late. If you’re on the plane at Heathrow, you’ll be met.”

“By you?”

“Doubt it. By someone.”

“How will they know me?”

“They’ll know you.”

A ground crew attendant, a young woman, tugged at his jacket.

“Passenger Irvine, please, boarding now.” He turned to head for the plane.

“By the way, the dollar offer still stands.” Monk produced two formal letters and held them up.

“What about these?”

“Oh, burn them, dear boy. The file wasn’t forged but they were. Didn’t want a chap who folds, don’t you see.” He was halfway to the aircraft with the attendant trotting beside him when they heard, a shout from behind.

“You, sir, are a cunning old bastard.”

The woman looked up at him, startled. He smiled down.

“One does hope so,” he said.

¯

ON his return to London Sir Nigel Irvine threw himself into a week of extremely high-pressure activity.

With Jason Monk, he had liked what he had seen, and the narration of his former boss Carey Jordan had been impressive. But ten years is a long time to be out of the game.

Things were very different now. Russia had changed out of all recognition from the old USSR that Monk had briefly known and duped. Technology had changed, almost every place name had reverted from its Communist designation to its old pre-Revolutionary name. Dumped into modern Moscow without the most intensive briefing, Monk could become bewildered by the transformation. There could be no question of his contacting either the British or American embassies to seek help. These were out of bounds. Yet he would need some place to hide, some friend in need.

Other things in Russia remained much the same. The country still had its huge internal security service, the FSB, inheritor of the mantle of the KGB’s old Second Chief Directorate. Anatoli Grishin might have left the service, but he would assuredly have maintained contacts within it.

Even that was not the principal hazard. Worst was the pandemic level of corruption. With virtually limitless funds, which Komarov and therefore Grishin seemed to have from the Dolgoruki mafia that underpinned their drive for power, there was no level of cooperation from the organs of state that they could not simply buy by bribery.

The plain fact was, hyperinflation had driven every employee of the central government into moonlighting for the highest bidder. Enough money could buy complete cooperation from any state security organization, or a private army of Special Forces soldiers.

Add to that Grishin’s own Black Guard and the thousands of fanatical Young Combatants, plus the invisible street army of the underworld itself, and Komarov’s henchman would have an army out to track down the man who had come to challenge him.

Of one thing the old spymaster was certain: Anatoli Grishin would not long be ignorant of the return of Jason Monk to his private turf, and he would not be pleased.

The first thing Irvine did was to assemble a small but trustworthy and thoroughly professional team of former soldiers from Britain’s own Special Forces.

After decades fighting IRA terrorism within the United Kingdom, declared wars in the Falklands and the Gulf, a score of undeclared wars from Borneo to Oman, from Africa to Colombia, and deep-penetration missions into a dozen other “denied territories,” Britain had produced a labor pool of some of the most experienced undercover men in the world.

Many of these had left the army, or whatever other service they had been with, and parlayed their strange talents into a livelihood. The natural areas in which one could find them were bodyguard work, asset protection, industrial counter-espionage, and security consultancy.