The Siren's Sting (28 page)

When Rice did not continue, Stevie asked, ‘But why does he want Hazard so badly? Surely he can buy his own protection?'

‘He can't buy our good reputation. Everyone trusts the Hazard name. He needs that trust.'

Stevie sensed she was not seeing the whole picture and, when Rice seemed reluctant to say any more, she prodded him again. ‘So, what happened to change things?'

‘The other day, a man came to see me—ex-SAS, until very recently he worked for STORM. He told me his name was Jim Clarke and that he wanted a job, a new job for him and his men. I turned him down straight away, saying I didn't like Krok's outfit and couldn't take on anyone who had served under him. Then Clarke told me a story.

‘Apparently his men were out in Somalia. As you can imagine, it's pretty hairy work—in some parts of the country they have a standing order to kill any Caucasian on sight. Clarke and his men wanted a pay rise; they felt Krok wasn't paying them enough for the amount of time they had to spend in that mess of a country. Krok waited and stalled, then four of the men fell ill with malaria. Krok refused them access to medication until they agreed to relinquish their demands for more money. The men caved, but two of them died anyway.'

David took a long sip of his drink. ‘Clarke is out to get even, as well as find a new post. He gave me Sacheverel as a gesture of goodwill.' He looked at Stevie. ‘It makes perfect sense now—why our ships seemed to be suffering so heavily in the attacks. Sacheverel— and STORM—were targeting them. It was his way of forcing me to sell my company.'

‘He turned the pirates on you?' Stevie shook her head. ‘How is that possible? Why would they obey him anyway?'

‘Krok and his mercenaries have been training the pirates, arming them, and using them to make deniable and untraceable assaults on all the shipping transiting the area. The sums exchanging hands are phenomenal—and that's just Somalia. Apparently STORM are branching out to the Gulf of Guinea, off Nigeria—another piracy and kidnap hotspot. They sell arms to the pirates, and take the lion's share of the ransoms and the bunkered oil.'

Stevie remembered the oil wells in the Niger Delta, shut down because of local militants. She had some sympathy with the militants, whose land and livelihood had been completely destroyed by the drilling, but it was also one of the most dangerous areas in the world. The theft of oil—bunkering—was worth billions.

‘They have recently muscled in on the drug trade. There's a triangular cocaine-smuggling route, from the Canary Islands to Cabo Verde and Madeira. The STORM-trained pirates have been attacking the drug ships and seizing cargo, killing all on board. These attacks obviously go unreported, but it's a nice little sideline for both the syndicate and Sacheverel.'

‘Hence the Medusa speedboats,' observed Stevie. ‘They could catch any vessel the drug runners might be using.'

Rice nodded. ‘It's a massive business. As far as I understand it, Sacheverel's the man handling the ransom payments for the Somali pirates in London. All the ships—not just ours. Sacheverel and Krok—there may be others—are hijacking the vessels, onselling the cargo and holding the crew for ransom. They then repaint the vessels and reregister them under a new flag of convenience; these can then be on-sold to buyers who are willing not to look too closely. Others become ghost ships, floating in international waters, untouchable by law, ferrying all sorts of illicit cargo—arms, drugs, people—around the world to points where it can be offloaded by smaller speedboats and smuggled ashore.'

‘But where does Hazard fit into this?' asked Stevie. ‘Why does Sacheverel want us?'

‘Acquiring Hazard was just part of a plan for expansion.'

Stevie waited for him to go on, but he didn't. ‘This is great!' she exclaimed. It would fix Rice's problem with the pirates, and Clémence's problem with her husband. Stevie, in her enthusiasm, chanced a hand on David's arm. ‘With Jim Clarke's evidence, surely we can get them both!' She sat back and waited, but Rice's face did not give her the reaction she was hoping for.

‘Get them,' he repeated softly, almost to himself. He started on the second drink then pushed it away, losing his thirst. ‘We are not in the business of “getting” people, Stevie. We are not the police; we are not intelligence. We protect people, we do not go after them—that's where all trouble begins, and you know that better than anyone on my staff.'

The point stung but it was fair. Stevie had been reckless before and she had sworn to her boss that she would not be so again, on pain of losing her place at Hazard. She took a breath and tried again, slowly, calmly. ‘I understand. But we have a real chance of stopping a whole swathe of these pirate attacks.' There was a long silence from the other side of the table—too long. Stevie's ears were filled with the sounds of pigeons and Polish drifting in from the crowds outside.

‘And . . .' Her argument died on her lips. Rice was right. She knew that, but still she persisted. ‘Surely, when one can see the full picture— David, can't we do something, or at least tell someone who can?'

Rice shook his grizzled head wearily. ‘We could tell people, but we no longer have the witness. Jim Clarke is dead.' Rice ejected the last word from his mouth like an olive pit. ‘A fatal car accident while on leave in Paris.'

Stevie waited for a few respectful moments, struggling with her frustration and rising anger, then said, ‘David, the monsoon season ends soon in Somalia. There'll be a new rash of pirate attacks.'

Something in Rice's eyes flickered. Suddenly Stevie knew— she felt, she guessed—David was saying all this to stop her getting involved: he had a plan, it just didn't include her. That stung even more. She made a strategic decision not to pursue it, to let David think the matter was resolved in her mind. He would be less guarded that way.

‘Well,' she said archly, ‘sounds like this party could be fun.'

They arrived together by water
taxi, Stevie's arm linked through David's. She looked up as they swooshed through the canal. There was a figure at the lighted window of the
piano nobile
, the silhouette of an elegant man, smoking a cigarette and looking down onto the water traffic below. Above his head, Stevie could see the exposed beams of the ceiling, the sparsely furnished room, so elegant. In another universe, on a night like this in Venice, she and David might have been lovers. She let the word linger in her mind a moment, soften and melt. Glancing up at David's face, she clearly saw that no such thoughts were on the warrior's mind: his expression was all steely resolve. He released his arm from hers and placed his mask— a black velvet band—over his eyes. Stevie did the same, but added a smile for effect. It was, after all, a party.

The vast wooden double doors of the water entrance were wide open, two footmen in velvet knickerbockers and white powdered wigs grabbed the painter and held the taxi fast while Stevie and Rice alighted. A wild wind blew in unpredictable gusts, pressing the silk tight to Stevie's lithe frame. She closed her eyes for a moment and felt the damp air on her face, breathed it in; for an instant she was far away from all this, deep inside her head. Then she opened her eyes and looked up at the
palazzo
. It was painted oxblood red with pale grey Moorish detailing around the windows and balconies; a lush garden bordered by huge oleanders and a high, spiked wrought-iron fence spilt out onto the canal on the left; to the right, another canal disappeared from view.

The taxi pulled away from the mooring and a beautiful old Riva, this one with turquoise leather upholstery, took its place. A masked figure in a dinner jacket was seated in the back. Something about him was familiar, but the mask covered all except the mouth, a purplish plaster cast with a cartoonishly large nose—a Renaissance villain. David followed her gaze, stared at the figure, then turned back.

‘Shall we?' he suggested, and they went inside. Climbing the vast marble staircase that hugged the left wall, they saw that all four walls were covered in the most extraordinary frescoes. On the one closest to them, a wonderfully voluptuous woman was being carried over a river by a centaur. It was enough to stop Stevie in her tracks. The figures of the woman and mythical beast were dark, obscured by the dim light and four hundred years of candle smoke, much of the walls pitted with damp and water damage, peeling, but this only made the figures seem more alive. Stevie turned to the wall ahead: here the centaur was trying to rape the woman, but a large arrow was sticking out of his chest, blood pouring from the wound. The right-hand wall showed the same woman, horror on her face as she stared at a smoking pool of blood on the floor of her bedroom. Deianeira, thought Stevie, at the moment in which she realised that the blood of Nessus the centaur was poison. When her husband Heracles had shot him for trying to rape his wife, Nessus, with his dying breath, maliciously told Deianeira that his blood would make Heracles true to her forever. When Deianeira feared Heracles was straying, she daubed his shirt in the centaur's blood. Too late she realised the terrible trick. Stevie turned, and there on the wall behind her was Heracles, three metres tall, burning to death. A chandelier covered in dripping candles was the only lighting in the space, and its unsteady flame made the tortured figure dance.

David and Stevie entered the reception rooms on the
piano
nobile
in time to see the masked guests moving to one end of the room. Double doors gave onto a stone balcony that overhung the canal. It was lit with hundreds of candles, and on the balcony stood the glorious figure of La Dracoulis. She wore black, a white gardenia in her hair, held there by the famous tortoiseshell comb, and her eyes were cast down.

The music from the orchestra stopped; Angelina seemed to be moving into herself, retreating from the party, gathering herself in readiness to sing. Stevie and Rice joined the guests at the windows and waited for the diva to begin. Stevie, from force of habit more than anything, scanned the crowd. She spotted Clémence and Stéphane, behind elaborate sequinned creations; Krok was nowhere to be seen. Then her eyes bounced off a familiar cut of shoulder, an old dinner jacket in midnight blue with the smallest moth hole, a familiar silk shirt the colour of milk . . . her heart gave a tiny leap.
Henning
. It gave another leap as she took in the willowy blonde on his arm. Even with a mask, Stevie could tell the woman was beautiful. She carried herself that way, and her shoulders were perfect. Stevie was surprised to find that a tiny flame of jealousy had ignited inside her and was threatening to blaze. She glanced quickly away and up at David. His eyes, too, were searching the room, but they did not seem interested in willowy blondes.

Rice's gaze came to rest on a man who stood right at the front, to the side, in a velvet dinner jacket, his thick white hair standing out against his dark skin, and combed back on either side of a distinctive widow's peak. He had, thought Stevie, the face of a hawk: sharp curved nose, thin lips, eyes hidden behind a red satin band—a predator. He wore his trousers an inch too short, showing his red socks and a pair of velvet slippers embroidered with a skull and crossbones. It could only be Sacheverel. The man certainly had a sense of theatre, Stevie deduced, and went to a deal of trouble to produce the right effect; he was a man who had the money and leisure to do it properly.

La Dracoulis breathed and raised her eyes; the crowd immediately fell silent. And she began to sing, low notes hovering in the warm air like an uncertain hummingbird, before gathering strength and conviction and soaring to celestial heights. Stevie felt the hairs on her arms raise as Angelina sang of Euridice and the price of love, here in this pirate's lair on the canal. Stevie noticed the man in the purple mask again, close to the front; she saw the signet ring with the golden scorpion and realised why she knew him: Skorpios. Of course. Half-hidden behind another mask, all white, was Dado Falcone.

A tray of drinks passed by, held high by another powdered footman. Rice took a glass of champagne for Stevie but refused anything for himself. Then, without warning, Henning was upon them. He smiled at Stevie and kissed her cheeks before she could say anything, then he turned and shook Rice's hand. Neither man hid his suspicion of the other. Stevie was introduced to the blonde—Anastasia— and was glad her mask hid her eyes. A smile was easier to fake than a gaze.

‘What are you doing here, Henning?' Stevie asked lightly. ‘I thought you were going to Athens.'

Henning gestured towards the crowd and Stevie caught sight of Iris' unmistakable silhouette. ‘My mother can be quite persuasive, as you know.'

Stevie did not reply.

Sacheverel was heading towards them and Henning, sensing he was not wanted, elegantly removed himself and his Anastasia. Stevie made a concerted effort not to turn and look after the sinuous blonde.

‘Rice,' announced Sacheverel.

David nodded but the two men, Stevie noticed, did not shake hands. They were the same height and had a similar build, although Sacheverel had grown a small prosperous paunch that David had not. Rice did not introduce Stevie.

‘Drink?' Sacheverel gestured towards a passing waiter carrying a tray of flutes.

‘Thanks,' David replied curtly, ‘I'll wait until I can get a whisky.'

Sacheverel nodded to the waiter who went off in search of a bottle.

‘So, what was so important you had to see me, Sacheverel?'

‘You know exactly what or you would not have come all the way down here.'

Both men spoke cautiously, verbally circling each other, wary as cobras. Stevie noticed Sacheverel wore a large signet ring with a red city seal, unusual in a man of his class. Rice glared. Stevie wondered that the other man did not quail in the face of it. But Sacheverel was no shrinking violet, she remembered; he had served as an admiral in the navy. He met Rice's stare head on.