Bowed slightly under the weight of camera and rifle, she made her way toward the safe house on Verdun Street, as planned. The eerie wail of a muezzin calling out the adhan sounded from the loudspeaker in a spire-topped minaret nearby, calling the faithful to prayer.
"Good job, Lia," William Rubens' voice said in her ear. It startled her. She'd not realized he was in the Art Room, or that he was watching this op. At any given moment there might be as many as three separate missions being handled through the Art Room, and a Deputy Director of the NSA could not be expected to closely watch them all.
"Thank you, sir," she murmured. "It was routine and went down as planned… thank God." Just another day at the office.
"When you get back to the safe house," Rubens told her, "call in. I need you to check something for me."
"In Beirut?" she asked. She liked Lebanon, and had been wondering if she might be able to grab some time as a tourist while she was here.
To be sure, that sort of thing was not usually a good idea and Rubens would never have sanctioned it. Standard tradecraft required operators to be pulled out of a mission area as soon as the op was over, just in case there were unexpected repercussions. But this op had been a walk in the park with no hostile contact and no complications. There was almost zero chance that she'd been spotted, or that any of her covers had been blown. According to the op plan, she would be going home on a commercial flight sometime tomorrow. That would give her the evening free, at least. And if Rubens wanted her to stay on for a while…
"Negative," Rubens told her. "Ankara. There's a company jet waiting for you at Beirut International."
So much, she thought, for a free evening in exotic Beirut.
"On my way," she told him.
Sir Charles Mayhew was a vice president of Royal Sky Line, Ltd., chief operations officer, and member of the corporate board of directors. He was also the company board member nearest to hand when Thomas Mitchell and MI5 needed a high-ranking corporate officer to give him some answers.
They gathered in a small meeting room adjoining Sir Charles' office, which was located on the tenth floor of the ultra-modern green glass tower adjoining the Atlantis Queen's passenger terminal. The tower also housed a hotel and a ground-floor gallery of shops and travel agencies, but the penthouse had been reserved for Royal Sky bigwigs, most of whom weren't available at the moment.
Typical, Mitchell thought. But unimportant. Sir Charles would do just fine. Mayhew was an obese man, heavy-faced but with nervous, active eyes. He was scared, Mitchell thought, scared that his company was about to be dealt a financial body blow.
That fear could be useful.
Also present were the ship's captain, Phillips, his second in command, Staff Captain Vandergrift, a solicitor for Royal Sky Line named James Alcock, and David Llewellyn, the chief of security on board the Atlantis Queen.
"I take it," Mitchell said, placing a photograph on the table before them, "that none of you have ever seen this man before." It was a color shot of Nayim Erbakan, an eight-by-ten blow-up of the wallet-sized photo found on Chester Darrow's body.
"Sure," Llewellyn said, grinning. "A little while ago, when they arrested him. Caught him with his pants down, as it were, in the backscatter scanner."
"I know," Mitchell said dryly. "I was there, too, remember? But how about any of you? Captain?"
"Never seen him before," Captain Phillips said. "Should we have?"
"Not really… but you have to admit that there are some puzzling facts about this case." Mitchell glanced at his notebook. "A Turkish national, caught smuggling one half kilogram of cocaine onto a luxury cruise ship… bound from England to the eastern Mediterranean. That's not one of the usual smuggling routes, you" know. Erbakan has a legitimate ticket for a mid-priced stateroom, booked by a travel agency in Le Havre five days ago.
"An hour or so after Erbakan is taken into custody, your fourth officer is murdered on the dock by persons unknown," Mitchell continued. "Three shots to the chest from a handgun at point-blank range. No one hears the shots, though there are plenty of dockworkers in the area, including just inside the ship's cargo hold forty or fifty feet away. That suggests Darrow was killed by a silenced weapon, a professional hit.
"On Darrow's body, we find a small version of this photo. And in the Dumpster next to the body, right on top of the garbage as though it had just been tossed in, we find a briefcase containing thirty thousand euros. Coincidental^, that is the approximate street value of one half kilogram of cocaine… which is also, coincidentally, the amount of cocaine Erbakan was carrying. Anyone here want to connect the dots for me?"
None of the others replied. Sir Charles shifted uncomfortably in his seat, which creaked as he moved. The solicitor, Alcock, wrote something down in a small notebook. Mitchell shrugged and continued.
"I'll tell you how / see it. Erbakan was a small-time operator. Neither MI5 or Interpol has much on him. He doesn't appear to have had any organized crime connections, but he does have travel visas for half a dozen European countries, including Great Britain. I think Darrow had contacted Erbakan and arranged to buy half a kilo of coke. Erbakan gets picked up at the terminal security station. Darrow doesn't know this, and meets someone else, maybe someone pretending to be Erbakan, maybe someone claiming to work for Erbakan. Darrow takes the money for the exchange and hides it in the Dumpster before the other guy shows up… and then the other guy shows up and puts three bullets into him."
"It sounds like you have the puzzle pretty well put together, Mr. Mitchell," Sir Charles said. He tried to sound casual, and failed. "Exactly how does this affect Royal Sky Line?"
"It all fits together very neatly," Mitchell agreed. "Maybe a trifle too neatly, one might think."
"Did Erbakan tell you anything?" Llewellyn asked.
"A little. He seems to want to cooperate, but we're not sure he's telling us everything. He claims a man named Darrow met him a week ago in Le Havre, and arranged for him to smuggle the coke on board today."
"Well, then, it all rather seems open-and-shut, doesn't it?" James Alcock said. He was a sour, precise little man who worked in Royal Sky's legal department.
"Almost," Mitchell replied. "As I said, it's neat… but there are a couple of loose ends dangling, and they just don't make sense. Why did Erbakan try to board the ship when he could have simply met Darrow on the pier and not risked going through the security check? If he did get on board as a passenger, why not meet Darrow when the ship was at sea?
"And, most important, who killed Darrow?"
"The Mafia, perhaps?" Vandergrift suggested. "Or one of the other crime syndicates? They could have seen this… this transaction as competition."
"Yes. That's what we thought at first," Mitchell acknowledged. "But it's not really their style, you know. A half-kilo deal is nothing for the big guys. Chump change. They might've demanded a percentage, or broken Darrow's kneecaps as a warning, or even killed Erbakan and told Darrow he needed to buy from them in the future… but they wouldn't have just killed the guy like that. Not unless they thought Darrow was working for someone else!'
"Sir!" Phillips said, angry. "Are you suggesting that we're operating some sort of drug ring off of my ship?"
"The thought did cross our minds," Mitchell admitted. "Especially when we looked at the records of some of your passengers."
"What?" Sir Charles snapped, startled. "Since when does MI5 have the right — "
"Please, Sir Charles," Mitchell said. "There's nothing new in any of this. We have access to police records both here and abroad, and we use them. It's our job… and if you have an issue with that, take it up with Parliament the next time they pass intrusive legislation. Or the Americans with their Patriot Act.