Beirut - An Explosive Thriller (28 page)

Lentini’s
voice shrilled. ‘How many crew?’

Boutros
turned to face the big man. ‘Four. There’s myself, a cook called
Blanc and two sailors, both speak Spanish and little else.
Panamides and Martinez.’

Lentini
crossed his arms. ‘Have you been taking any precautions against
radiation? Monitoring?’

Boutros’ face
was ashen. ‘
Radiation
? What the fuck’s going on here?’

Nobody
answered him. Lynch turned in his chair. ‘Paul, I think the best
thing we can do right now is pick up the Hoffmann girl. I think we
should bring Magdy along if he’s what she’s expecting. And then I
think Gabe and his boys need to do their thing as fast as
possible.’

Tomasi opened
the door. ‘Agreed. Come on, I’ll get you a firearm
organised.’

TWENTY-ONE

The black
Lincoln pulled up under the portico of Valetta’s Grand Excelsior
Hotel. Lentini snapped instructions into his walkie-talkie. The
driver opened the door, helping Magdy Boutros step down. He was
handcuffed. Lynch waited as Paul Tomasi rounded the big car to
reach them. Tomasi waved the staff back. The Lincoln pulled away
and they waited under the portico for Lentini to finish giving
instructions to his team.

Lynch started
at the splash of red light across Boutros’ forehead. He turned to
shove the man. Boutros stiffened oddly, rooted to the spot with a
look of comical surprise on his face. A neat hole appeared in his
forehead. The beige wall behind him turned misty red. The busy
traffic outside the hotel compound masked the sound. Time stood
still for a moment. Silence reigned. Stasis.

Boutros
collapsed. Lynch cried out and reached for his gun. Lentini already
crouched with his pistol held in both hands, scanning the one
building that had a clear line of sight to them, far away by the
hotel exit. Tomasi was slower to react, his hand on his mouth,
staring.

Lynch called
to Lentini. ‘Gabe. The girl.’

The big man
nodded once and Lynch was off, sprinting along the hotel’s frontage
towards the building, gun in hand. He passed a puzzled pedestrian.
Alarm registered on the man’s face as he saw the gun. Lynch’s feet
hammered tarmac. He ran into the road, his jacket flapping. Car
horns sounded. Tyres screeched. He raced for the apartment
building, rounding the corner to its rear to come up against an
area of scrubland. Nothing moved. The fire escape door was
closed.

Lynch stood
panting, the Walther hanging useless in his hand.

Sirens
sounded as Lynch returned to the hotel. Someone had already put a
blanket over Boutros’ body, but it hadn’t stretched to covering the
dark splash on the steps or the misty stain on the wall. He strode
past into the plush hotel lobby, two soldiers in brown and green
camouflage stood to one side holding machine guns, white on black
‘Malta’ labels on their chests, an incongruity in the opulent
setting. Tomasi peeled away from the girl at the reception desk and
took Lynch’s shoulder.

‘
Come on,
it’s upstairs.’

Lynch caught
his tone. ‘She’s dead.’

‘
Yes.’ Tomasi
pressed the lift button.

They didn’t
speak as they waited in the lift. Lentini’s men greeted them as
they walked out, more camouflage and crew cuts in the corridor.
They nodded at Tomasi. ‘That way, sir.’

The door was
very broken indeed. Beyond it, Lentini stood with another soldier
who avoided looking at the bed.

Lynch turned
to it.

She had been
pretty, he had to admit. She had short cut, bleached-blonde hair,
an elfin attractiveness. In death, her pale skin had become
alabaster. She had given up the struggle to live, the peaceful look
on her face a counterpoint to the livid marks around her neck. She
had been strangled.

Lynch pulled
out a hankie and picked up a packet from the bedside table.
‘Risperdal?’

Tomasi
shrugged. Lynch opened the packet and shook out the folded wad of
thin paper. He read the fact sheet intently. Lentini murmured
instructions to his trooper, who left the room without ever looking
at the bed. A squeamish soldier, thought Lynch.
Interesting.

‘
It’s used to
treat schizophrenia.’ Lynch laughed. ‘Oh, sweet mother of Jesus,
she was a schizophrenic.’

Tomasi
frowned, gesturing at the corpse. ‘Please, Gerald. Come
on.’

Lynch rounded
on him. ‘Paul, do you not see this? We are about to mount an armed
raid on a billionaire presidential hopeful’s superyacht, with
patrol boats and the air force in support. I have been chasing
around Europe like some mad fucker for a week and we’ve got a major
intelligence operation ongoing in Beirut. There’s a pan-European
manhunt on for Meier. And it’s all based on the testimony of a mad
German prostitute.’

Tomasi held
his hands up. ‘Yet you tell me the arms dump was real. And this
poor girl, Gerald, is clearly very dead and clearly very strangled.
First Boutros, then her. Someone’s clearing up.’

Lentini’s
eyebrows were raised, his walkie-talkie held near his ear as he
waited for Lynch’s verdict. Lynch’s mouth tightened.

‘
Fuck it, we
go ahead. Take the boat, Gabe.’

Lentini’s
bark into the walkie-talkie was helium-high, but it was a bark all
the same.

Lynch sat in
the car scanning the
Arabian
Princess
through field glasses, the big
boat’s lights twinkling and joining the dancing reflections across
Valetta’s Lazaretto Creek in the dusk. Two Zodiacs were to approach
from the seaward side of the boat, while the main boarding force
would move in from land. He peered through the growing
shadows.

‘
Coffee?’

Paul Tomasi
offered the tiny plastic cup and Lynch’s nose wrinkled at the
pungent drink. He took it and raised it to Tomasi.
‘Thanks.’

‘
I think we
have a little time yet, Gerald. They will be very careful to plan
everything and make sure they are perfectly set up. We don’t get
this sort of thing very often, so I know Gabe and his boys are keen
not to fuck it up. The captain, Gonsalves, has been kicking up
merry hell all afternoon about not being able to refuel,
threatening lawsuits and all sorts. Strange, you’d have thought
he’d want to keep his head down.’

Lynch nodded,
sipping at the thick coffee. ‘We go in straight after Lentini’s
boys, right?’

‘
They’ll let
us know when they’re comfortable for us to join them. You know,
this is a little more complicated than most enforcement
operations.’

Lynch cupped
the little plastic cup of hot drink in his hands, although the
Mediterranean night was warm. ‘Sure, I understand.’ He gazed across
the wharf and the water rippling in the distant moonlight. Lynch
scanned the dock again through the glasses. Something shadowy
seemed to move beside a rocky outcrop built into a wall, but he
couldn’t be sure.

Lynch
adjusted the focus of the binoculars. ‘Did you get the warrant for
Freij’s arrest?’

The silence
made Lynch turn. Tomasi’s face showed he had been dreading the
question. ‘No, Gerald. I’m sorry. There are no charges against
Freij.’

Lynch’s voice
was as tight as his hands gripping the binoculars. ‘What about
fucking murder?’

Tomasi tried
to keep his voice steady. ‘No evidence, Gerald. My prosecutor
wouldn’t touch it with yours. I got told to leave well alone. Hands
off. Official.’

Lynch jumped
at the flash to his right. Shadowy figures swarmed across the
concrete wharf like bounding rats. Muffled concussions reached them
and he hit the window button to better hear the action. Tomasi
strained for a view from the driver’s seat.

The warm
breeze bore the distant echo of shouts and the thump of smoke
grenades. Shadows flitted across the boat’s three stacked decks.
Lynch fancied he saw one stick figure swallow-dive from the bow of
the big boat. There was a brief, crackling burst of live
fire.

Lynch jumped
at Tomasi’s shout. ‘There. The signal.’

Lynch’s head
was slammed back against the headrest as Tomasi hit the
accelerator, taking them down to the dock level. They pulled to a
sharp halt. Blue lights flickered on the road above them and sirens
sounded across the sleepy docks of Manoel Island.

Lynch
sprinted up the gangplank. Lentini was waiting for him at the top,
his white teeth gleaming in his blacked-out face. He was wearing a
dark biohazard suit, a stark contrast to the bright white suits
Lynch and Tomasi wore. Their hands slammed together.

‘
It’s fine,’
said Lentini. ‘A walk in the park. She’s ours.’

Lynch rasped
urgently. ‘The cargo? The pool space?’

Lentini’s
radio spat a series of urgent voices. ‘We didn’t open it yet. But
there’s no radiation reading at all from the counters. You want to
go there first?’

‘
Sure,’ Lynch
said.

Lentini led
the way to the pool on the afterdeck. Four of his men rolled back
the heavy panelling covering it. Two freestanding floodlights had
been set up and, together with the boat’s own lighting, the whole
area was bathed in brightness. The brass fittings glittered, the
wooden decking faded into the shadows.

They peered
as one into the brightly lit area that should have been a swimming
pool and the extra space created below it by the unpaid workers at
Luxe Marine. Lentini gave a low whistle.

‘
Oh, fuck,’
Lynch whispered.

The modified
pool space was very deep indeed, a yawning chasm stretching at
least four metres down, its depths shadowed despite the lights
Lentini’s men had erected.

It was
empty.

TWENTY-TWO

Lynch cast
his eye over the butterscotch marble floors and red-carpeted
staircases of the Hotel Grand Excelsior’s lobby. ‘It feels like I’m
in the damn Gulf,’ he complained to Paul Tomasi, who sipped his
morning espresso.

He broke off
as Gabe Lentini’s bulk wove towards them through the clusters of
tables and chairs scattered in the lobby lounge. Lynch pushed
himself out of the dark wooden chair to stand and slap palms with
Lentini.

‘
Gabe. Great
job last night.’

Lentini threw
his rucksack down and sat. ‘Thanks. But we didn’t get what we were
looking for, did we?’

‘
No.’ Lynch
shook his head. ‘We have to keep that very, very quiet. London’s in
a massive panic about it. At least we know the boat’s going
nowhere.’

Tomasi
cleared his throat and reached for his water glass. ‘Well, not
right now, Gerald. We can only hold the crew for forty-eight
hours.’

Lynch turned
incredulously. ‘They’re a bunch of damned pirates, for God’s
sake.’

‘
Gerald,
they’ve done nothing wrong. Without the cargo you were expecting,
they’re clean.’

‘
What about
kidnapping Elli Hoffmann? What about Boutros saying the captain
tried to rape her?’

Tomasi
fidgeted. ‘There’s a problem. The Hoffmann girl’s medical history
means she wouldn’t have stood as a reliable witness. She was
travelling on Hoffmann’s yacht on her way to meet her father,
according to Gonsalves, the captain. He says Boutros was hired as a
nurse to look after her properly and he was a troublesome and
disaffected employee who left the boat in Valetta in a huff. They
were to meet Hoffmann here at Valetta and he claims not to know
Hoffmann was dead. The boat is registered in Freij’s name, there’s
a valid contract of transfer, the papers are all in order. The
public prosecutor has advised that he doesn’t believe we have a
case to bring charges. To be frank, he told me to drop it like a
stone. We’ve nothing to link any of them to Elli Hoffmann’s murder.
In fact, they have an impeccable alibi – we had them under close
surveillance all day. We have to let Gonsalves and his crew go,
Gerald. There are no legal grounds to hold the
Arabian Princess
.’

Lynch tried
to keep his face impassive while he struggled to digest the
information and map it to the events playing out around him. Now
doubt was making him feel sick. If those warheads weren’t on the
yacht, where were they? Lynch found himself back in the damp of a
cold war bunker talking to Branko Liberec, the huge doors that had
guarded the missiles, the tyre tracks and churned up forest floor
around the loading entrance, damp leaf mould and urgent voices. Men
and women in white coveralls moving in taped-off zones.

Lynch gazed
across to the hotel’s reception area with sightless eyes, lost in
thought. A figure standing there brought him back to reality. A
tall figure, suited with a tiny gold tie stud. Wealthy. A goatee
beard and brushed back hair. Michel Freij was laughing with the
reception clerk. A portly man in his fifties next to Freij followed
him from the reception desk to sit in the front area of the lobby.
Lynch tried to rein in his racing mind, his heart thumping with the
surge of adrenalin, the need to act coursing through his
veins.