Deadly Impact--A Richard Mariner nautical adventure (15 page)

‘But this set-up with Duisberg seems to have one other, potentially lucrative little twist – one that's far more familiar to us at Lloyd's, though traditionally it's owners rather than insurers who try to pull it off. And it's this: the total value for
Sayonara
and her cargo being insured to date seems to be in the region of
two hundred and fifty
million dollars.'

‘But that makes no sense …' said Robin without thinking. ‘Why insure something for twice what it's worth?'

‘If anything were to happen to
Sayonara
,' said Pat gravely, ‘then Duisberg Reinsurance stands to make a hell of a lot of money. One hundred and fifty million dollars clear profit, as near as we can estimate. They've effectively set
Sayonara
up to be a coffin ship. They
want
her to sink so that they can collect huge returns on her loss.'

‘Can you prove any of this?' demanded Robin.

‘No,' said Gerry. ‘None of it at all.'

‘But we know a man who can,' added Pat. ‘Your old mate, Tristan. We're trying to contact him.'

And just as he did so, Gerry's phone began to ring discreetly. ‘Excuse me,' he said, rising. ‘This must be important. My people have orders to contact me only in the event of an emergency.'

He rose, pulling the cellphone from his pocket, and crossed to the far side of the room. Robin sat silent, her mind racing round in circles, trying to get a grip on what seemed to be happening here. Of what it might mean for Heritage Mariner. For Greenbaum International. For Richard, the
bloody man.
If only he knew. If only there was a way to warn him. But Gerry was only away for a moment. ‘We have a problem,' he said as he limped back across the room at top speed. ‘The police are here. Tristan Folgate-Lothbury has just been found floating under Blackfriars Bridge.'

‘Floating …' Robin had a vision of Tristan like an inflatable dinghy drifting down the Thames.

‘Floating,' said Gerry brutally. ‘Face down. He's been there for some time, apparently.'

‘
Tristan!
' she gasped. ‘But I had dinner with him yesterday evening.' Her stomach fluttered. Her ears rang.

‘You'll maybe want to tell the police about that,' warned Pat. ‘I'd better get your solicitor down here post haste, just in case.'

Robin saw the familiar shape of solicitor Andrew Atherton Balfour's Bentley swing in behind them as the police car turned off Newgate Street into Snow Hill. Even though she had been treated with reassuring courtesy and was seated between a female constable and the comforting bulk of Pat Toomey, it was still something of a relief to see the personalized number plate AAB1 beneath the grille of the Arnage. Pat saw it too and also seemed to relax. ‘Cavalry's arrived,' he growled.

They assembled in interview room number one of the Snow Hill police station. Or rather, Robin, Pat and Andrew did. The sergeant who had first appeared at the main door of Lloyd's waited there with Gerry Oldbury as the members of Tristan's syndicate were called.

‘This is not official,' said the young detective inspector who seemed to be running things. ‘We may want formal witness statement later, but for the time being I would be grateful if Captain Mariner could just tell us what she remembers about last night. Anything about Mr Folgate-Lothbury's demeanour. What he talked about. What sort of frame of mind he seemed to be in …'

‘I'm fine with that,' said Robin. ‘Andrew? Any problems?'

‘Not as far as I can see,' answered her solicitor briskly. ‘This is just a preliminary enquiry, Inspector?' he confirmed.

‘Absolutely,' said the inspector, nodding her long, dark head decisively. ‘We're just gathering impressions at this stage. It's what we refer to as a
soft
interview.' She glanced across at Robin with a smile. ‘Now, Captain Mariner, you and Mr Folgate-Lothbury dined together at Theo Randall's restaurant at the Intercontinental Hotel, Park Lane yesterday evening. You arrived at eleven-thirty and left just after one. Mr Folgate-Lothbury left with you. Well, at the same time as you. There is no implication—'

‘I should think not,' snapped Andrew.

‘That's OK, Andrew,' Robin soothed her overprotective friend, and caught Pat's outraged eye as well. ‘That's not quite accurate, Inspector. When I left,
Signor
Lazzaro was still there. He was the one who was most closely involved in conversation with Tristan.'

‘
Signor
Lazzaro.' The inspector's eyes were full on Robin now. ‘I don't have any record of a
Signor
Lazzaro being there. The maître d' and the sommelier only mentioned Mr Folgate-Lothbury and yourself. You were deeply engaged in conversation, apparently. We know what you had to eat and we know that he had two bottles of red wine and you had a bottle of Prosecco which you did not finish. But there is no mention of a
Signor
Lazzaro.'

‘There must be some mistake,' said Robin, glancing across at Andrew, her forehead creasing into a frown of simple surprise.

‘The maître d' and the sommelier both saw
Signor
Lazzaro arrive and talk to Mr Folgate-Lothbury. He arrived at about a quarter to midnight and was still there when I left.'

‘Perhaps he was staying at the hotel,' suggested Andrew.

‘I'll get my people to check with hotel reception,' said the inspector, and phoned through the orders at once.

‘Now,' she said a moment later as she broke contact. ‘Returning to the subject of your conversation, Captain Mariner …'

Robin went over the main topics she had discussed with Tristan, adding Lazzaro's input without mentioning his name again. The inspector nodded and made the occasional note on a pad.

‘We'll want copies of those notes,' observed Andrew.

‘Of course,' promised the inspector.

After about twenty minutes, a constable came in and whispered to the inspector. Robin had more or less finished with what she remembered anyway, so she was happy to sit back as the constable left and the inspector frowned thoughtfully. ‘No, Captain,' she said after a moment. ‘There is no record of a
Signor
Lazzaro staying at the Intercontinental. Not that that proves anything, of course – neither you nor Mr Folgate-Lothbury were staying there either. But the maître d' and the sommelier are certain that no one else was at your table.'

Pat leaned forward suddenly. ‘Inspector,' he said, ‘have you any idea where the maître d' and sommelier originate from?'

‘Yes. They're both on work visas. We have place of birth and so forth as part of their statements. They are cousins, as a matter of fact. And they both come from a place called Seminara. It's a little village in the hills …'

‘In the hills of Calabria,' Patrick finished her sentence for her. ‘Just up the road from Gioia Taura. 'Ndrangheta country.'

In spite of the fact that it has come over the Pole and is therefore approaching Tokyo from the north, Japan Airlines flight 7080 from Schiphol via Helsinki swings east and south of Narita as it settles into its short finals. The Pitman, seated next to the window in first class, is therefore given a clear view of the facility that
Sayonara
is fifty hours away from and the bay to the south of it. ‘Hey, look at that, Harry. That's really something!'

‘What?' demands Harry sleepily.

‘Those huge honeycomb sections being tugged out into the bay. Each one big enough to hold houses, gardens, roadways, infrastructure … They've already begun clamping them together. That's where they're starting to build the floating city you were reading about online. Kujukuri. They're extending it from the mainland. And that cool-looking white and blue barge all covered in Russian writing must be the floating nuclear power station. What did Richard call it?'

‘
Zemlya
,' answers Harry, beginning to waken up, an elegant Boston accent coming and going. ‘It's one of only two afloat at the moment but there are more in the pipeline according to the IAEA PRIS.'

‘The what?' The Pitman's Dutch intonation is thick enough to sound almost Afrikaans again and matches the blonde crewcut and hard blue eyes.

‘International Atomic Energy Agency's Power Reactor Information System,' Harry explains, brown eyes blinking owlishly. ‘It's all online.' One hand thoughtlessly tries to tidy a mop of brown curls while the other straightens a severely cut grey suit jacket and open-necked shirt.

Their conversation is interrupted by an immaculate air hostess who comes to explain in person that they should prepare for landing now. It's a message repeated immediately by the captain in Japanese, Russian, American-accented English, Finnish and Dutch. All of which languages Harry and the Pitman speak with varying degrees of fluency.

Their luggage is checked through automatically for the internal connection to Asahikawa so, after they have performed the necessary procedures, Harry and the Pitman wander into
Café de Crie
to wait for their flight to be called. Although it goes against character and flint-hard reputation, the Pitman has an achingly sweet tooth and so they order their waffles American style with crisp-grilled bacon and syrup. Harry asks for the closest they can get to bacon, eggs over easy and wholewheat toast. And the blackest, bitterest coffee the café can come up with. Then the two of them settle to their long-awaited breakfast – and are for once focused on what they're eating rather than where they are and who might be coming close to them.

So it comes as more of a shock than a surprise when an enormous man wearing a single-breasted, elegantly tailored, mid-grey gabardine suit, a white cotton shirt and a gold silk tie sits down beside them unannounced and uninvited. Harry looks across at his smiling face and frowns with amazement.

But when the Pitman looks up, squinting a little to see beyond the massive stranger, there behind him, standing tall in a black business suit that looks like Chanel, with a sable wrap carelessly open over the top of it, stands a woman whose simple beauty takes the Pitman's breath away. It is a moment before the Dutch mercenary registers the identity of the stunning vision. Then the little half-smile, familiar from hundreds of news clips and photographs gives it away. That and the ID badge beneath the sable and the rope upon rope of black pearls:
Mme Anastasia Asov, Chief Executive Officer, Bashnev Oil and Power.

The seated giant runs his hand over his shaven scalp as he leans forward. ‘We have some bad news and some good news. What do you want first?'

‘The bad news,' says Pitman through a mouthful of waffles and syrup.

‘The bad news is that Richard's in deeper shit than he realizes,' Ivan announces. ‘I've just received word that some Eskimo fisherman has pulled half-a-dozen dead bodies out of Rat Island Pass. It seems that the recently deceased are a team hired by Tristan Folgate-Lothbury of Lloyd's of London to test the security systems on board
Sayonara
. The Folgate-Lothbury syndicate apparently gave them all the access codes and whatnot in order to make this as severe a test as possible. But precisely what they were given is hard to be certain of because this Tristan Folgate-Lothbury has apparently been found floating face-down under a bridge in London. And it may be that he was pushed rather than that he jumped. The news services are going wild. And it is only reasonable to assume …'

‘To assume that whoever killed the men have taken the codes and gone aboard in their place; and may, indeed, be associated with whoever pushed Tristan Folgate-Lothbury,' continues Anastasia Asov smoothly as she eases herself into the fourth and last seat at the table and signals a hovering attendant. ‘The dead men's kit has been found on Hawadax Island. All their dummy guns and so forth. It seems only reasonable to assume that the men who have replaced them do not have dummy guns.'

‘They have the real thing,' Pitman calculates.

‘And then some, in all probability,' adds Harry thoughtfully. ‘They certainly seem to have state-of-the-art signal jammers.'

‘Coffee,' Nastia orders as the waitress approaches. ‘The same as they have. Two cups. No sugar. No cream.' She rejoins the conversation, locking her eyes with the Pitman's. ‘We assume they have state of the art everything. We don't yet know for sure what their overall plan is, but Robin Mariner's been in touch. The 'Ndrangheta connection you already know about may have widened into setting
Sayonara
up to sink as part of an insurance fraud. All we know for certain, though, is that their men seem to have gone aboard at Rat Island Pass fifty hours ago and
Sayonara
is due at the NIPEX facility in fifty hours' time – unless they have managed to reprogramme the control computers. Which is, of course, a strong possibility because they've shut the remote control team at NIPEX out and seem to have screwed the communications system communicating with NIPEX and HM altogether, though I understand there are still locator signals coming through from the automatic black box system. That's only supposed to stop if the ship goes down.'

The coffee arrives and a short silence falls as Nastia and Ivan pour themselves a cup each and sip thoughtfully. ‘Could these pirate guys have done that?' Ivan asks Harry. ‘Reprogrammed the engine and navigation computers so that they have control of the ship then blocked almost everything else so we only know where the ship is and where she's heading but not what's happening on board?'

‘Hard to say,' Harry shrugs. ‘Robin sent me everything available about the systems the last time we were in contact and I have it all on my Apple's hard drive. I went through some of it last night as we were coming over the Pole. The systems are so complex, with so many checks and balances, information streams and cut-outs that it would be a tough job to re-programme the whole lot. But I guess if they were careful, they could tinker with the edges. Maybe vary the speed and heading. Fool the engine monitoring system and even the GPS. I mean, I know GPS has come on leaps and bounds since the early days, but we all remember stories about cars being sent the wrong way down one-way streets, trucks being guided into municipal parks instead of car parks, or being trapped at the end of dead-end streets they couldn't turn round in or reverse out of. It's still got built-in room for error. And on top of everything else, there are GPS jammers easily available over the internet.'