“I’m pleased we’ve reached an arrangement,” Dr. Nassiri said, anxious to escape Bettencourt’s company. The way he had looked at Alexis was bad enough, but the way he looked at the money was positively grotesque.
“I’ll have my assistant send you the contact information for my chief of security, Colonel Westmoreland,” said Bettencourt. “All arrangements will go through him.”
“Thank you,” said Dr. Nassiri.
“And how about you, my beautiful Alexis?” said Charles. “We have a fabulous seafood restaurant in the southeast corner of Anconia and they serve the best mussels I have ever tasted, plucked fresh from the sea every day. A little butter and they practically melt in your mouth. I’ve set aside a very particular bottle of 1973 Red Mountain for a special occasion… rich, balanced, not too fruity and with a very nice finish. Tell me, are you the kind of girl I can meet over business in the afternoon and take to dinner that very night?”
Dr. Nassiri and Alexis sat together on the edge of a raised concrete flowerbed in the center of the Anconia Island courtyard. They’d decided to share an Ethiopian fit-fit stew on flatbread, but neither could manage to do more than pick at it. Alexis was uncharacteristically silent and contented herself to halfheartedly watching people walk from building to building.
“You can stay here, you know,” said Dr. Nassiri. “In fact, I’d like you to stay here. I never planned on your presence, and I never intended to take you with us beyond Anconia.”
“Since you haven’t ransomed me and I haven’t escaped, I guess I’m stuck,” said Alexis with a tiny smile.
“I’m serious,” said Dr. Nassiri. “You should stay here, not leave with us.”
“Do you want me to stay here?”
“It’s selfish to ask you to come, it’s simply too dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” She rolled her eyes. “If I stay here, I’ll probably have to go to dinner with Charles Bettencourt.” His heart gave a little thud, and the urge to feel her fingers twined with his swept over him, but she kept going. “Besides, who will run the engines? If you don’t have someone constantly adjusting for power loss, cavitation—”
“But if the pirates—”
“If the pirates catch us,” Alexis interrupted. “We deserve to be caught. Nothing can outrun the Conqueror.” She let the name of the stolen yacht hang in the air.
“We should go back to the ship,” she said. “Big day tomorrow.”
“That money, the money I gave Bettencourt,”Dr. Nassiri said. “I need you to understand that was everything to me. Everything. My father died years ago, and I mortgaged my childhood home, I sold every stick of furniture, my car, my property, my business investments. It all went into that bag. There is no backup plan. The oceanic research work was my mother’s life and the only way to do honor to her is to finish it.”
“And Jonah? How does he figure into this master plan? What if something happens to him on the dive?”
“I found Jonah in a prison, the type of prison for men who are meant to die incarcerated. I’m giving him another chance at life, perhaps more of a chance than even I will have once this venture is completed. I have committed resources to allow him to begin his life again. But in the meantime he’s expendable. If he doesn’t know this, he has no one to blame but himself.”
“That’s not how we treat friends where I’m from,” said Alexis.
“Jonah Blackwell will never be my friend.”
Dr. Nassiri followed Alexis as she ascended the gangplank to the Fool’s Errand. He allowed himself one momentary glance at her once they were onboard, but she did not return the look, instead staring forward, expressionless. He didn’t understand why, but whatever he’d said about Jonah bothered her, so much so that she disappeared down the main staircase towards the engine room without so much as a goodbye.
Dr. Nassiri shook his head, more in frustration with himself than her. Despite her obvious anger, she hadn’t said anything to rescind her offer to accompany the Fool’s Errand on the final leg of the mission. Whatever tomorrow brought, apparently the Texan’s code of honor went very deep.
Passing by the bar, Dr. Nassiri noticed open, half-empty liquor bottles, dirty footprints on the carpet, and several dishes on the floor. He snuck a glance behind the bar, and it looked as if an entire row of bottles had been dropped onto the tile floor, leaving shattered glass everywhere.
“Animals,” he muttered to himself. The last thing he wanted was have to babysit two grown men, men upon whom he had to depend. With dread in his step, he headed for the back deck where, sure enough, he found Youssef and Jonah exactly where he’d left them, spent cigars surrounding their sleeping forms as they baked in the African sun. Right then and there, he decided he would have to have a very serious conversation with his uncle regarding Youssef’s future as soon as they got home. Something would have to change if his cousin was to ever make anything of himself.
Charles Bettencourt stood at the corner of his office, observing but not enjoying the most spectacular view in the city. He’d summoned his chief of security more than thirty minutes ago, and he still hadn’t shown himself or reported in. Charles hated being kept waiting. There was no good reason — or for that matter, way — to disappear in a nation measuring just a few city blocks.
The elevator doors chimed in the far end of the room, and he turned as the doors slid open and out stumbled a very drunk Colonel Westmoreland. To his supreme displeasure, Charles observed that the mercenary had not bothered to remove the live grenades from his vest.
“You ever run a business?” asked Charles, disgust lacing his voice. “Was there ever a little bald-headed Colonel Westmoreland running the world’s angriest lemonade stand in suburban Topeka, or wherever the fuck you’re from?”
“I did lawns,” answered the colonel, returning the smirk.
“What?”
“Lawns,” said Westmoreland. “I mowed lawns. Pulled weeds.”
“And if some other kid came sniffing around your customers?”
“I’d beat the shit out of him.”
“Doctor Hassan Nassiri is sniffing around my business, and he doesn’t even have the respect to do it in a ship that belongs to him. If I’d been able to reach the owner of the Conquerer I’d have given him an opportunity to buy his yacht back and deal with the hijackers personally. As it is—”
“What do you want me to do?” asked the colonel.
“Kill them,” Charles said. “Preferably before the Conglomerate catches wind. If the Conglomerate thinks Anconia is compromised, they’re going to start dropping bodies.”
“How do you want it done?”
“They’re about to leave Anconia Island in an attempt to retrieve the data from Professor Fatima Nassiri’s aircraft. Put the ship and crew on the bottom. Make it look like pirates.”
CHAPTER 8
Alexis scanned the control panels of the Fool’s Errand’s engine room. Green across the board. A true rarity for an engine room so complex. The humming Purcell engines were finicky at best, demanding the same exacting attention as a fussy derby stallion. Take your eyes off them for too long, and, well, something was bound to go wrong. Even the wrong toned hum in one of the turbines could mean the system was about to throw a blade, leaving them dead in the water. But for now, all was in working order.