Authors: Charles Stross
Jennifer Morgue (18 page)
"Simple; he flew." Griffin looks as if he's sucking a lemon.
"Calling that monster a yacht is like calling a Boeing 777 a company light twin."
"How big is it?" asks Brains.
"Naval Intelligence knows." Griffin walks over to the sideboard and pulls out a bottle of tonic water. "Seeing as how it started life as a Russian Krivak-III-class frigate."
"Wheel Do you think they'd let me drive it?" Pinky's somehow slipped in under the radar. "Hey, Bob: catch!" He chucks me a key fob.
"You're telling me Billington owns a warship?" I sit down heavily.
"No, I'm telling you his yacht used to be one." Griffin fills his glass and puts the bottle down. He looks amused, for I malicious values of amusement. "A Type 113 5 guided missile frigate, to be precise, late model with ASW helicopter and vertical launch system. The Russians sold it off to the Indian Navy during a hard currency hiccup a few years ago, and they sold it in turn when they commissioned the first of their own guided missile destroyers. I'm pretty sure they took out the guns and VLS before they decommissioned it, but they left in the helideck and engines, and it can make close to forty knots when the skipper wants to go somewhere in a hurry. Billington sank a fortune into converting it, and now it's one of the largest luxury yachts in the world, with a swimming pool where the nuclear missile launchers used to be."
"Jesus." It's not as if I was planning to do the scuba-dive-and-climb-aboard thing — for starters, I know just enough about diving to realize I'd probably drown — but when Angleton mentioned a yacht I wasn't thinking in terms of battleships. "What's he use it for"
"Oh, this and that." Griffin sounds even more amused. "I hear it comes in handy for water skiing. More realistically, he can zip anywhere in the Caribbean in about twelve hours.
Chopper into Miami brief excursion out to sea, chopper into Havana, and nobody's any the wiser. Go visit his bankers in Grand Cayman, entertain visiting billionaires, hold meetings in real secrecy and we can't keep an eye on him without getting the Navy involved."
I can almost see the cards he's got stuffed up his sleeve.
"What's your point"
"My point?" He stares at me. "My point is that I happen to know a damn sight more about what's going on in my patch than all of you lot put together, or the clowns at head office for that matter. And I would appreciate it if you'd run any harebrained schemes past me before you put them into practice just in case you're about to put your foot in it.
Human Resources may have told you that I'm a garden leave case and you're reporting direct to Angleton, but you might also like to consider the possibility that Human Resources couldn't find their arse with a map, a periscope, and a tub of Vaseline."
Boris rises to the bait: "Am not possible commenting on Human Resources!"
Pinky snorts loudly.
I shrug: "Okay, I'll run any harebrained schemes I hatch past you if you give me the benefit of your advice. But if it's just as well with you, I need to go check in with my liaison."
And I still have to call Angleton — who told Griffin about his control issues? "Then I've got to pick up some clothes and go wangle myself an invitation aboard the ... What did you say the yacht was called"
"The Mabuse," Griffin repeats. His cheek twitches. "And Charlie Victor is in town. You ought to take precautions."
"Sure." If the bastard thinks he can spook me that easily he's got another thing coming. "Boris, any immediate updates"
Boris shakes his head: "Not yet."
"Okay, then I'll be going." And before Griffin can object I'm out the door.
I need to get my head together, so I start by heading for the tailor's shop they pointed me at back in Darmstadt. After half an hour of wandering among fast-food concessions, tourist traps, and free cosmetic sample stands I find it, and half an hour later I'm back in my room unwrapping — "What is this shit?" I ask myself, bemused. Whoever ordered it either didn't have a clue what I normally wear or didn't care.
There's a lightweight suit, a bunch of shirts, a choice of ties — I corral them in the wardrobe and lock it carefully, in case they sneak out and try to strangle me in the night — and the nearest thing to wearable clothing is a polo shirt and a pair of chinos. Which are not only totally un-me, they're not even black. "Shit!" I blew out of Darmstadt with nothing but the business suit and a borrowed toilet bag: it's this or nothing. I make the best of a bad job, and end up looking like a second-rate parody of my rather. I give up. I'll just have to go shopping, once I can find some cheap broadband access. Maybe Think Geek can ship me a care package by express airmail? I pick up my Treo — not the crazy mechanical phonegun but real, reliable, understandable electronics — and head down to the car park. I hunt among the pickups and sports cars until I find the Smart Fortwo. I stare at it and it stares right back at me, mockingly. It's not even a convertible.
"Someone's going to regret this," I mutter as I strap it on.
Then it's the moment of truth: time for me to go check out a dream of a ghost of a memory, to see if someone's waiting for Marc the doorman to deliver a body to North Bay.
It's already getting hot, the sun burning through the deep blue vault of sky that arches overhead. I fumble my way out of Maho Bay and onto the road that winds towards the northern end of the island. Motoring here is just about as different from the autobahn experience as it's possible to get and still be on wheels, for which I'm fervently grateful. The road is narrow, barely graded and marked, and winds around the landscape as it climbs the picturesque but steep slopes of Mount Paradis. I pass numerous signs for tourist beaches, brightly painted shop fronts and restaurants ... it's resort central. I crawl along behind a gaggle of taxis and a tourist 4x4 for about half an hour, then we're over the top of the island. The road more or less comes to a dead end in a depression between two hills, and I pull over beside a road sign to take a look. The sign says: ANSE MARCEL. There's a scattering of shops and hotels alongside the road, shaded by palm trees. On the downhill slope, I can see the sea in the distance, out across a brilliant white expanse of beach dotted with sunbathing tourists. Off to one side a hundred meters away, a clump of masts huddle together in a small marina. Looks like it's time to get out and walk.
I get out, feeling horribly overdressed: most of the punters hereabouts are wearing clothes that go well with thongs and sandals. Idyllic tropical beach paradise, with added ultraviolet burns and sand itch. And they're all so buff! I'm your typical pallid cube-maggot, and the six-pack is a high-cost luxury extra on that model. I shuffle down the street towards the marina, feeling about six centimeters tall, hoping that I'm wrong: that nobody's there, and I can go back to the hotel and write it all off as a bad dream brought on by vodka and jet lag.
The marina is little more than three piers with sailboats tied up on either side; two larger motorboats belonging to tour companies bob at the outer edge. A couple of guys are working on one of these, so I head up the pier until I can get a better view.
"Bonjour." One of the boatmen is watching me. "You want something"
"Possibly." I glance out to sea. A distinctly dead-looking seagull sits on a bollard nearby, watching me stonily.
Watching me watching you ... it suddenly occurs to me that coming out here on my own might be a bad idea if Billington is serious about his privacy and is also, as Angleton put it, a player. "Does a boat from the Mabuse call here"
"I think you want to find somewhere else to hang out."
He smiles at me but the expression doesn't reach his eyes.
He's holding a mallet and a big chisel.
"Why? They friends of yours?" I feel an itching in my fingertips and a distinct taste of blue — my wards are responding to something nearby. Mr. Mallet glares at me. He's about my age, but built like a brick outhouse and tanned to the color of old oak. "Or maybe they aren't"
"Non." He turns his head and spits across the side of the pier.
"Pierre — " The other guy lets loose a stream of rapid-fire, heavily accented French that I can't hope to follow. He's in late middle-age, receding hair, salt-and-pepper beard: the picturesque Old Salt hanging out on the jetty, image only slightly spoiled by his Mickey Mouse tee shirt and blue plastic sandals. Pierre — Mr. Mallet — stares at me suspiciously.
Then he turns and looks out across the sapphire sea.
I follow his gaze. There's a warship in the distance, a kilometer offshore: long, low, and lean, with a sharply raked superstructure. It takes me a few seconds to realize that it's the wrong color, gleaming white rather than the drab gray most navies paint their tubs.
I glance back at the pier. The goddamn seagull is staring at me, its eyes white and milky like — Goddamn.
"Do you know a guy called Marc, from Maho Beach?" I ask.
A palpable hit: Pierre's head whips round towards me. He raises the chisel warningly as the seagull opens its beak. I pull out my Treo. "Smile for the camera, birdie."
The seagull stares at my smartphone accusingly, then topples off its perch and falls into the water like a dead weight.
Which, in fact, is exactly what it is now that I've zapped it with my patent undead garbage collector.
"We've got about two minutes before they send another watcher," I say conversationally. "If they're awake, of course.
So. Do you know Marc"
"What's it worth?" He lowers the chisel, looking at me as if I've sprouted a second head.
I pull out two fifty-euro notes. "This."
"Yeah, I know Marc."
"Describe him."
"Oily bastard. Works out at the gym down the back of Rue de Hollande in Marigot, fills in on the door of the Casino Royale as a doorman and bouncer. He's the one you're asking about"
I pull out two more notes. "Tell me everything you know."
The old guy glares at him, mutters something, gets up, and goes aboard the boat.
"I'll take those." Pierre puts down the chisel and I hand him the notes. "Marc is a piece of shit. He hits on
tourist women and takes them for everything they've got. Nearly got himself arrested a year ago but they couldn't prove anything — or find the woman. Sometimes — " Pierre glances over his shoulder " — you see him in the early morning with some broad, going out on his boat. That one, there." He nods at a dinghy with a mounting for an outboard engine.
"Meeting up with another boat. The women don't come back."
I have A heavy, sick feeling. "Would this other boat happen to be from the Mabuse?" I ask.
He looks at me sidelong. "I didn't say anything," he says.
I nod. 'Thanks for your time."
"Thank you for taking out the trash." He gestures at the bollard where the bird was watching. "Now get out of here and please don t come back."
7: NIGHTMARE BEACH
I'M TWO KILOMETERS DOWN THE ROAD TO GRAND Case and the coastal route to Marigot when I realize I'm being tailed. I'm crap at this private eye stuff, but it's not exactly rocket science on Saint Martin — the roads are only two lanes wide. There's a Suzuki SUV about a quarter-kilometer behind me. I speed up, it speeds up. I slow down, it slows down. So I pull over and park at a tourist spot and watch it tool past. Just before the next bend in the road it pulls over. How tedious, I think. Then I get on the ethereal blower.
''Ramona? You busy?''
''Powdering my nose. What's up?'' I stare at the car ahead of me, trying to visualize it well enough to shove it at her as a concrete image. ''I've got company. The unwelcome kind.''
''Surprise!'' I can feel her chuckle. ''What did you do to annoy them?''
''Oh, this 'n' that.'' I'm not about to go into my snooping activities just yet. ''Billington's yacht is anchored off North Point, and some of the locals aren't too happy about if ''Surprise indeed. So what's with the car?''
''They've been tailing me!'' I sound a bit peevish to myself — petulant, even. ''And Billington's got the marina under surveillance. He's using seagulls as watchers. That makes me nervous.'' I couldn't care less about the flying sea-rats, but I'm not terribly happy about the fact that someone aboard that yacht has got the nous to run the Invocation of Al-Harijoun on them, not to mention having enough spare eyeballs to monitor the surveillance take from several hundred zombie seagulls.
''So why don't you lose them?'' I take a deep breath. ''That would entail breaking the traffic regulations, you know? I'm not supposed to do that.
It's called drawing undue attention to yourself. Besides, there's a whole stack of documents to file, starting with a form A-19/B, or they'll throw the book at me. I could lose my license!''
''What, your license to kill?''
''No, my license to drive!'' I thump the steering wheel in frustration. ''This isn't some kind of spy farce: I'm just a civil servant. I don't have a license to kill, or authorization to poke my nose into random corners of the world and meet interesting people and hurt them. Capisce?'' For a moment I feel dizzy. I pinch the bridge of my nose and take a deep breath: my vision fades out for a scary moment, then comes back with this weird sense that I'm looking through two sets of eyes at once. ''What the fuck?''
''It's me, Bob. I can't keep this up for long ... Look, you see that SUV parked ahead?''
''Yeah?'' I'm looking at it but it doesn't register.
''The guy who just got out of it and is walking toward you is carrying a gun. And he doesn't look particularly friendly. Now I know you're hung-up on the speed limit and stuff, but can I suggest you — '' There is one good thing about driving a Smart car: it has a turning circle tighter than Ramona's hips. I hit the gas and yank the wheel and make the tires squeal, rocking from side to side so badly that for a moment I'm afraid the tiny car is about to topple over. The bad guy raises his pistol slowly but I've floored the accelerator and it's not that slow in a straight line. My wards are prickling and tickling like a sandstorm and there's a faint blue aura crawling over the dash.
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