Ivory (8 page)

‘Break it up, you two.' Sarah's broad Australian accent was as different to Danielle's as her temperament and zest for life.

Alex smiled, consoling himself privately with the thought that at least he wasn't losing both of the women in his life. Until he looked at Sarah. She hefted a rucksack over one shoulder and carried a day pack in her left hand.

‘What the . . . ?' Both these women had shared his bed last night.

‘Danni told me she was leaving. I've still got more of Africa to see and I asked if she needed a travelling companion.' She came up to Alex as Danielle stepped to one side, raised herself on tiptoes and kissed him on the mouth. ‘Bye, Captain Hook. It's been a blast.'

T
he routine of shipboard life had calmed her. She had never felt so relaxed in her life – nor so bored.

Jane ran up the companionway steps two at a time, and when she reached the monkey island, the deck around the ship's single funnel, she was perspiring and breathing hard. She turned and ran back down. In London she swam three nights a week and was a keen rower on the Thames. There was a small gym for the crew on board the
Penfold Son
, but she had never been a gym junkie. She found them smelly, claustrophobic places, and the ship's was no different.

There was very little of the cargo freighter's deck that was accessible to her as a passenger. The ship was massive, but she was confined to walking around and around the superstructure. She was beginning to feel like a caged rat. There was a small swimming pool below decks, but there wasn't really enough room to get up a good rhythm, or do laps. The stairs, as she had learned, were an unforgiving place to exercise. Twice she'd slipped during rough seas and scraped her shins bloody on the hard steel. However, now the days at sea had turned into weeks she moved easily with the rocking of the massive ship, even in the roughest conditions.

She'd finished all the books she'd brought with her and caught up on all her outstanding work. The ship's satellite email link was
her connection to the outside world, but it was painfully slow. She wiped her brow and checked her watch. George was due to call in ten minutes, along with Penfold's chief financial officer, about the South African deal.

Jane jogged downstairs again and entered the superstructure via a watertight door. In the companionway inside she turned side on to allow Ferdinand, the Filipino steward, to pass her. He smiled a greeting.

Jane breathed deep and slow so she wouldn't sound out of breath on the phone to George – not after the way he'd left her after his last, very pervy, conversation the previous night. She'd never had phone sex before, and the thought of him sitting in his plush office while talking to her that way still provoked a reaction. George, she had come to learn in a very short time, was very adventurous in bed and even more so on the telephone. Some things he'd suggested she had baulked at, telling him she'd be more open to experimentation as they got to know each other better. Much of what they had done, in the company flat in Soho and a luxury hotel suite over the course of three lunch hours, was new to her. She had enjoyed, for example, being tied to a four-poster bed with silken rope that George just happened to have stashed away in a locked cupboard in the flat. That was a first and she'd liked surrendering control to him, briefly. However, she had no desire to be spanked and he seemed to take her firm but polite ‘no thank you' with good humour, so she didn't feel she was in any danger with him as a lover. She felt her cheeks redden and concentrated on her breathing.

She barely noticed the smells and noises of the freighter now: the vague but ever-present odour of engine oil, which had initially made her queasy; the smell of food frying in the galley; the dull throb of the diesels far down below; music coming from an off-duty crewman's cabin somewhere nearby.

Inside her cabin was as drearily familiar as the rest of the ship. The endless expanse of ocean out through the portholes had ceased to be calming or awe-inspiring. It was just plain monotonous.

Jane pulled the band from her ponytail and teased out her hair, enjoying the cool of the airconditioning. The satphone was on the bedside
table and she took it to the small desk in the sitting room and opened and switched on her laptop in case she needed to make notes during the conversation. The phone rang, and she recognised George's private line on the caller-ID.

‘Hiya,' she said.

‘Tell me you're naked.'

‘Me naked, you George. Hello, Robert, if you're there. Are you nude too?'

George laughed. ‘Bench is dialling in in a couple of minutes.'

‘I noticed you came early. I hope you're not going to be like that in South Africa.'

‘Who are you, and what have you done with the real Jane Humphries? The prim, straitlaced corporate lawyer I know wouldn't say such things.'

‘Don't tease, George. Do you really think I'm straitlaced?'

‘Are you really naked?'

‘No.'

‘Then I fear I'm right.'

‘Don't be so rude. I'm wearing my workout gear, actually. All hot and sweaty.'

‘Be still my beating –'

They cut short the banter as a recorded voice, followed by Robert Bench saying his name, told them the chief financial officer had joined their call. ‘How's life at sea, Jane?'

‘You should try it some time, Rob,' she said.

‘That bad, eh? No, thanks. I get seasick in a bath. The South Africans have upped their price, George.'

The CFO was all business, as usual, Jane noted. She was disappointed George had spent their brief time alone being so flippant. While the thought of him – his body, and even his words – could provoke a physical reaction in her at sea half a world away, she also had regular attacks of guilt over her new-found role as the other woman. She'd been close to calling the whole thing off on several occasions, but every time she thought of picking up a phone or willed herself to go to his office, she
lost her nerve. Right or wrong, he filled a need in her that was real, however much she might fight it or hate it. From what he'd said about his deteriorating relationship with Elizabeth, Jane supposed there was the possibility that he might leave his wife for her and legitimise what they had together. Before she'd left he'd said he wanted to talk about their future when he got to South Africa. She hadn't pushed him for anything more, as they'd lain together in bed in the flat and listened to rain drumming on the window. Jane had always assumed she would get married some day, but she had been George's lover for less than a month and, as much as he fulfilled her, she was far from certain she was ready for marriage right now.

‘I thought they would,' George said. ‘It's the whole political situation with the Yanks at the Horn of Africa. The South Africans are riding high in the short term with increased exports up and down the coast of Africa, but it's a blip. I'm happy to stall them for a while. Jane, can you think of anything that might string out the negotiations?'

She leaned back in her chair. She liked working for George not just because of their physical relationship, but also for the challenges he threw at her. It kept her on her toes. ‘I must admit I hadn't thought too much about things that might slow us down. Let me check out South Africa's BEE laws. We can ask for a full list of staff in every position – onshore and at sea – and tell them we want to assure ourselves the company's kosher when it comes to staffing.'

‘BEE?' Robert asked.

‘Black economic empowerment,' Jane said.

‘Good thinking,' George butted in. ‘We'll hit them with it on the first day.'

‘Also,' Jane said, ‘Iain showed me the weekly piracy update. We can tell the South Africans we're waiting on estimates of revised insurance premiums from our brokers based on the recent upsurge in criminal activity off the coast of south-east Africa.'

‘Excellent. Although I'm less impressed with you being on first-name terms with that dour old Scottish captain, Iain MacGregor. He gave me hell as a young officer.'

Jane laughed. ‘He's got some very interesting stories about you that I'm sure Robert would like to hear, George.'

‘All well and good,' Bench said, ‘but I've got another conference call with my South African counterpart in ten minutes that I need to prepare for. If you've nothing else for me, George?'

‘No, that's fine, Robert. I'm happy Jane will put the brakes on things once we get to Cape Town. We'll make the locals sweat for a while. They'll not get a better offer from anyone other than us, but just because we're big doesn't mean we'll pay anything.'

Robert signed off from the conversation, but George's tone remained businesslike, somewhat to Jane's surprise. ‘You'll have some company tonight. Five other passengers are boarding when you get into Mombasa.'

‘Really?' Initially she'd enjoyed being the only passenger on board, but in the last few days she'd begun wishing there was someone else on board other than non-English-speaking stewards and seamen in greasy overalls. ‘Paying passengers?'

‘I'm paying them. They're a specialist security team. I've hired them to conduct an assessment of the crime problem in South Africa. It's all standard risk assessment stuff for when we take over the head office in Johannesburg.'

Jane twirled a strand of blonde hair in her fingers. ‘Harvey's already done the OH and S and security report for Jo'burg, George. I've seen it.'

Penfold coughed. ‘Well, I've asked for another one. Also, there's the offshore crime element to contend with . . . I mean, assess.'

She'd rarely, in all the time she'd worked for George Penfold, heard him stumble over a word or sentence. ‘By offshore crime, I take it you mean piracy?'

‘I don't like that term. It trivialises what is actually theft, assault, kidnap, ransom and murder on the high seas.'

‘You said “contend with”, George. Are these men a bunch of suits who'll be assessing traffic accident statistics and burglary rates in downtown Johannesburg, or are they bodyguards?'

‘Security consultants.'

‘Why aren't they flying to Johannesburg, then?' She felt a tightness in her chest, a sure symptom of rising anger. ‘I hope you're not sending out a bunch of thugs to protect me, George.'

‘Protect you? Of course not. This is business, Jane. Look, I've got to go. I'll try and call later.'

Jane ended the call and put the phone down on her bedside table. She stripped off her exercise clothes, walked into the ensuite bathroom and turned on the shower taps. She had the distinct impression that George wasn't telling her everything about these strange men who would soon be joining her on the ship.

 

George Penfold's intercom buzzed. ‘Yes Gillian?'

‘Harvey and a Mister Van Zyl, to see you.'

‘Show them in.' It was no coincidence that the leader of the men who would be joining Jane on board the
Penfold Son
had been waiting in his anteroom while he had been talking to her. He had wanted to gauge her reaction to the arrival of the men on the ship, and see if she could guess the real reason for their imminent arrival. She had.

‘Mister Van Zyl,' George said, rising and extending a hand. ‘Take a seat.'

‘Call me Piet, please.'

‘Really, not the “grim reaper”? Isn't that what your men called you when you served with the South African Recce Commandos in Angola?'

Penfold watched the man's face for a reaction. There was none. The pale blue eyes bored into him. With his snow-white crew cut and expensive suit he could have passed for a rock star, but George knew Piet van Zyl's fame – or infamy – was limited to a closed circle.

‘You've done your research, I see,' the South African said.

Harvey Reynolds had known who his employer was talking about as soon as George had mentioned the recent incident in the Niger Delta which had featured in the International Maritime Bureau's weekly
piracy report. Reynolds was ex-SAS and had worked as a mercenary officer in Sierra Leone and in a management role for a security firm in Iraq, prior to being recruited to head Penfold's security arm. While the oil company in Nigeria was keeping the names of those involved a secret, despite threats of legal action from the Hague, word had already spread informally amongst those in the know. Harvey had crossed paths, though fortunately not swords, with Piet van Zyl in Iraq. He'd briefed George on why the South African had had to leave the Middle East in a hurry. George wanted to hear it from the man himself, so he asked him: ‘Tell me what went wrong in Baghdad.'

‘Nothing.'

‘But you and your men were deported, and the security firm for which you worked, Corporate Solutions, lost all its contracts and had to leave the country.'

‘Our work was finished there. We did what we had to do.'

‘Which was?'

Van Zyl shrugged and fixed George again with his piercing stare. Penfold had faced down and fought plenty of tough guys at sea and in dockside bars around the world. He didn't flinch.

‘You read that my men and I shot up a car that was passing too close to a convoy we were guarding?'

‘Yes, and there was an Iraqi army colonel and his two bodyguards in that vehicle. It caused a hell of a stink. I remember the news reports here in the UK. You picked the wrong car to use for target practice.'

Van Zyl smiled. ‘We picked the
right
car, Mister Penfold. What the
media
,' he made the word sound like a euphemism for excrement, ‘didn't report was that Colonel Hussein – no relation to Saddam – was a middleman for funds from al-Qaeda. He was equipping terrorists with arms meant for the Iraqi armed forces, and tipping off the terrs about major coalition operations. Of course, none of this could be proved, so . . .'

‘So the CIA paid you to assassinate him.'