The Siren's Sting (35 page)

The water was steaming hot
and plentiful. No trouble in Baku, where fire burnt just beneath the earth. Stevie felt the scalding shower cascade over her shoulders, releasing the knots. She turned the taps to icy cold, suppressing a squeal as her skin tingled in protest, then jumped out and towelled herself vigorously dry. The hotel had thoughtfully provided a thick-toothed wooden comb. Stevie picked it up and read the inscription:
Greetings from Siberia
. Wondering if it was convict labour or Siberian birch—or both— that the comb was advertising, she smoothed her mop of hair and applied her Louis Widmer moisturiser; there was no need to eschew the beauty essentials just because the situation was tense. Indeed, Napoleon, on the morning before Waterloo, said to his manservant: ‘Dress me slowly for I am in a hurry.' Not that she liked to think of what happened to Napoleon at Waterloo . . .

Stevie glanced at the bed, with its deep red terry-cloth spread with gold border, its black leather pillows, and hoped that sleep would be possible in a bed like that. Someone had left the television on and, in the far corner of the room, Peter Andre was singing. When she looked back, the programme had changed: a man appeared to be strapping explosives to the belly of a female suicide bomber. Stevie hoped it was not an omen. She lined her eyes in black and strapped her knife to her calf. Then she pulled on a pair of dark grey jeans, black leather ankle boots with deceptively good grip and a flat heel, a T-shirt covered in indigo sequins and her navy safari jacket. Finally, she wrapped a pale grey scarf in raw silk loosely around her neck. She was ready.

Marlena's caravanserai was in the
old town. Originally built as a rest house for travellers taking the Silk Road, the camel stables in the ancient stone courtyard had been converted to private dining nooks, decorated with carpets and flags—Nigerian, Venezuelan and Georgian—and having the great advantage that you could not be overheard. A gnarled fig tree grew at the centre of the courtyard, probably since the beginning of the world. It was bedecked with oil lanterns. Azeri musicians played in one of the alcoves and the scene was charming. The restaurant was, however, deserted. Marlena ordered caviar to start, shashlik to follow, and several bottles of wine.

Marlena's companion was a little more talkative within the privacy of the stone walls. His name, he claimed, was John. It may well have been. He was an American, probably. He ate with his hands, suggesting that he had spent time with the Bedouin. He also spoke Azeri, but not to the waiter, to whom he spoke Russian. Speaking Azeri would draw attention to himself here.

Stevie looked at Marlena. Was this man the key to the problem? Where did they go to from here?

Marlena's expression betrayed nothing. She took a sip from one of the goblets that served as wine glasses, then smiled slyly and reached for her onyx cigarette case. ‘I'm getting married.'

Stevie started. Her first reaction—which she was fortunately able to quash in time—was to ask, ‘To whom?' Instead, ‘That's wonderful,' Stevie managed cautiously. Who knew what Marlena would say or do next?

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 the 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.