Hunter (7 page)

ABOARD THE YACHT FLORENCE, THE MEDITERRANEAN

The yacht swam upon the crystalline waters of the Mediterranean, rolling gently on the waves as sea breezes kissed her decks with secret whispers of ancient history. She sat five nautical miles off the east coast of Malta, due south of Sicily, along the maritime route between Valletta and Catania, her last port of call.

The significance of the island's strategic position in the center of the Mediterranean had seen Malta be a much sought-after prize throughout all the great empires, from the Phoenicians to the British, for literally thousands of years. While that was still true to some extent, its significance today as a staging point into southern Europe was equally as important to those who exploited its location for other reasons, human trafficking being the most prevalent.

Of course, those sorts of considerations were not an issue for the guests aboard the
Florence.

"I can't believe I ever let you talk me into this, you know," Charly said in her soft, playful, educated American accent. "I mean, seriously, we're still just getting to know each other and I'm not someone given to flights of fancy. You're very persuasive." She leant her body back provocatively from the upper-
deck dining table, reclining so that her magnificent curves gave their best effect upon the broad gold and white stripes of the bench seat.

"I am ... enchanted by you:' Raoul replied, openly admiring her. "How could I not wish to lavish you with luxury?"

"Well, it certainly is beautiful here. Still, why I allowed you to whisk me away from New York like that; flying me off to Rome, then Catalina, then this ..." She smiled at him, casting her eyes out across the deep blue waters twinkling under a perfect sun. "It's been an amazing week already, Raoul. I just want to thank you for taking things slowly."

"We have as much or as little time as you like, my dear:' he said. "Who knows, you may even grow to like me along the way." Again, the dazzling smile. "It is my pleasure to share time with you, Charly, away from all the madness that follows, it seems, wherever you go."

"Chaos, more like." She took another sip of the exquisite champagne, chilled to perfection, while the remnants of their lunch were being cleared away by a member of the kitchen crew.

Charly gazed across into Raoul's ice-gray eyes, contemplating how she'd allowed this stranger to entice her away like this. She had never been so calculatingly seduced, which she put down to him being older than any other man she'd dated. But the invitation had been too good to refuse; the promise of escape was intoxicating and any time away from the media spotlight was good for her. Besides, that last night at Carnegie Hall had been the final night of the tour and she now had two blissful months before she 
needed to be anywhere. And he was starting to grow on her, just a little.

"I must go and enjoy this magnificent sunshine before Malta's spring chill finds me again."

"A splendid idea, Charly," he said, his silky smooth tone looping its way around her willpower.

"Join me, and you can slip out of that shirt so I can get a proper look at you," said Charly mischievously. "You're so modest."

"I'll be down soon," he said. "I'll keep an eye on you from here."

"Have it your way," Charly replied, feigning hurt feelings. "Don't let me get too lonely down there. I may need to ask one of the crew to rub lotion on me."

Charly slid from the bench and moved over to him. She ran her slender fingers over his shoulders and through his hair as he sat obediently, looking up into her eyes. Slowly, gently, with the promise of more to come, she kissed him on the mouth. He started to respond but then she broke away. Unpretentiously, she dropped her flowing Crystal Jin cover up to the floor beside his chair, then holding his gaze, excused herself and left the upper deck with its spectacular 360-degree views of the Mediterranean.

She made her way to the forward deck where an area had been prepared especially for her to relax while avoiding the damaging effects of the sun. Deliberately exposing herself to the risk of skin cancer was something Charly was just not prepared to do, but that didn't mean she couldn't still enjoy a little paradise.

She wore a black Cia Maritima two-piece that complemented her full curves. The pitch of the costume

sat in stark contrast upon the incredible contours of her fair skin and against the volcanic effect of her lustrous red hair. Charlotte-Rose moved toward the Bedouin-like pavilion arrangement on the foredeck, complete with flanks of billowing lawn and a bed of sumptuous cushions. She conjured 1950s movie star glamor with every step and unaffected gesture.

Every crew member within view craned to watch.

Two miles south of the
Florence,
a large Zodiac rigid-hulled inflatable boat, powered by a 165-horsepower MerCruiser engine, was moving in fast from the direction of Marsaskala. At the wheel a man dressed in the navy blue uniform, baseball cap and orange life vest of the Malta Police Force Maritime Patrol was clearly visible. He was armed and focused intently upon the
Florence.

The conditions were perfect. The sea was still, visibility clear and the only merchant shipping in the area was far enough away to be beyond the range of the naked eye.

*

Charly lounged on the cushions, a sea breeze running gently across her skin. She looked up at Raoul with a smile as he watched lasciviously from the dining deck. She allowed herself to be immersed in the trinkets of rising celebrity: the luxurious yacht; the hot, breezy Mediterranean; and, of course, the swarthy European millionaire wrapped around her little finger. With a movement that said, "You'll just have to wait until I'm ready," the world-famous classical pianist nestled upon the soft carpet of cushions and allowed the calming roll of the sea to carry her off into a blissful daydream.

*

Aboard the Zodiac, a black tarpaulin was thrown back to reveal four heavily armed men crouching low behind the rounded flanks of the vessel. Unlike the policeman at the helm, they were dressed in scruffy, ragtag clothes, with long hair and beards, brandishing an assortment of weapons from Kalashnikov assault rifles to FN Herstal shotguns to Makarov pistols. The Zodiac was now 100 yards from the
Florence;
close enough for the four hostile silhouettes to be seen from the mega-yacht.

*

"Everybody get below decks, right fucking now!"

The voice, full of tension and insistence, roused Charly like a slap to the face.

Wrenched from siesta, she awoke to the terrifying sight of a man brandishing a large gun on the decks above her, yelling at those aboard to get below. Charly sat bolt upright, heart racing furiously beneath her breast.

Get below? Why? What was happening? Who was he?

She tried to call out in distress, but couldn't make a sound. Her eyes darted left and right, searching anxiously through the billowing white curtains for the source of the turmoil. She reached for her cover up but realized she didn't have it. She could only hear the voices of the crew yelling and the unmistakable voice of the man with the gun barking at everybody. Why had nobody come for her? Where was 
Raoul? Through the noise on board and the frightened volume of her own breathing, Charly heard the sound of an approaching engine. She grabbed a large towel and wrapped it defensively around her vulnerable, near-naked body. She rushed from the marquee, calling for Raoul, calling for somebody,
anybody
to come for her, to tell her what was happening, to protect her.

"What's going on?" she yelled. But now there was no one to answer her call; no one at all.

A long burst of automatic gunfire erupted from the stern. Charly screamed. There was more, this time from the port side. There came another loud burst, and another. Within seconds an exchange was underway between security men onboard the
Florence
and the ragged figures aboard the rapidly approaching Zodiac.

Oh my God!
Charly fell to the deck in fetal-like self-preservation. Gingerly, she inched to the edge of the deck and peered out. Down the port side toward the stern, the Zodiac was powering across the dead-calm sea toward the
Florence.
A security man, who Charly now recognized to be the same man with the gun who'd been yelling at everybody to get below, was at the stern of the yacht shooting ferociously at the Zodiac. With every deafening staccato burst, Charly's heart skipped and her knuckles clenched, but she could not avert her eyes from the mayhem.
This is not happening,
she thought.
This is not happening!

As another hail of bullets exploded close by, she saw him beneath her, on the portside. Raoul had a gun and was shooting at the Zodiac. Overwhelmed, Charly staggered to her knees and then to her feet, on the verge of shocked collapse, grasping for rails, anything, to steady her as she looked frantically for shelter.

The Zodiac was closing fast and the shooting intensified from both sides. The security man at the back of the
Florence
was hit by a full burst from an AKM. The 7.62mm ammunition tore through his body and launched him over the side. He fell face down upon the surface of the water, dead.

Flattening herself against the deck, Charly cowered, not wanting to draw any attention. Terrifyingly, a recent CNN story on piracy flickered strobe-like through her thoughts.

Soon the firing had all but stopped and she could hear brutal yelling, lots of it, at the back of the boat. It sounded as bad as it could get. Dread filled Charly's heart.
Raoul!

Charly was close to a lifeboat so she crawled under it, squeezing her body into the tiny space beneath the hull. Crying quietly and scared out of her mind, she summoned her survival instincts and laid still. There was a splash, as though someone had been thrown overboard, and screams from the crew. Voices drew closer, toward the front of the boat, toward her.
No! No!
A burst of gunfire was followed by more screaming from the crew. Then she heard footsteps racing heavily on the decks. In a panicked moment, she clamped her eyes shut tight and pulled the towel over her head, just as
she
had done with the bed covers as a little girl when the thunder and lightning coming across Puget Sound became too much.

Thinking of her father, Charly prayed through silent tears that the attackers wouldn't find her.

INTREPID HQ, BROADWAY, LONDON

"Major Morgan is here, sir."

"Thank you, Mrs Jolley," replied Davenport from his desk. "Send him in. Oh, and rustle up some coffee, please? We're going to need it."

"On the way," she said.

Margaret Jolley, the general's devoted personal assistant, withdrew from the doorway connecting her office to the chief's inner sanctum and ushered Morgan across the threshold.

"Pull up a pew; I won't be a moment," Davenport said to Morgan.

Morgan moved familiarly over to the old circular mahogany coffee table and, unbuttoning his jacket, dropped into a beautifully aged Chesterfield. Comfortable in the way men find firm, studded leather chairs comfortable, he waited dutifully as General Davenport made a final few taps on his computer keyboard. On the table he noticed a file with the title DEFENDER: 091012/43. "Defender" was the official Interpol designator for all Intrepid operations, and 091012 was the number allocated to the hunt for Drago. The numerals 43, pronounced four-three, were Morgan's official identifier and indicated that he was the agent leading the operation.

"Right, that's done," said Davenport, stepping from 
behind his desk, contemplatively gazing about the oak-paneled, volume-lined walls of his "war room". Framed parchments, awards, presentations and mementos adorned the room from which Davenport would launch his agents across the world. It was a room within which Morgan felt at ease. "I'm still interested in this informant, Lazarevic," Davenport said. "There's something not quite right there. Something I can't put my finger on."

"Anything I can help with?"

"No, you've got enough on your plate for now. And your appraisal of him, along with the video interview Mr Tappin conducted, has been most helpful. No, I'll get to the bottom of it. In fact, I have our new man, Hauptmann Braunschweiger, working on it for me. I want to give him a chance to fly his kite."

Mrs Jolley returned with a tray containing cups and a pot of strong coffee.

"Thank you, my dear. Very kind," said Davenport, somewhat absently. "Oh, would you ask Ms Haddad to hunt down my old case files from Bosnia? Archived among my personal files somewhere. I'd like to see her once she has them."

"Of course." She gave them both a warm smile and left without another word, closing the door quietly behind her.

"More developments, sir?" Morgan asked, pouring coffee for them both. Following the assassination of Judge de Villepin, he and Davenport had taken the first flight out of New York and spent the entire flight back to London working through the dozens of theories and various scenarios that could be ahead of them. By the time they'd landed, Interpol had already 
confirmed via the joint Ryerson/Tappin interrogation of Lazarevic that Drago was behind the de Villepin murder and that there would almost certainly be more to come. Exactly what would happen next was unknown. One thing was certain though: the hunt for Drago was on. Morgan was already packed and ready to head to France - his bags were in his office. But somehow, by the look on Davenport's face, he guessed the situation had changed.

"Yes, but not what you're thinking, I'm afraid." Morgan watched as his chief, hands in pockets, strolled to the far corner of the office and removed a framed photograph from a shelf. In a private moment of reflection, Davenport looked at the photo for some time before joining Morgan at the circular table. He handed the frame to Morgan and picked up a coffee. "See any familiar faces?"

"Well, the tall one there on the left is you, sir," Morgan said, appreciating the camaraderie evident in the picture. It was in black and white and showed two men, a younger, clean-shaven Davenport and a comrade, not quite as tall as Davenport but more solidly built, smiling at the camera with shoulder slung Heckler & Koch MP5s, clad in the iconic black garb of the SAS counter-terrorist squadron circa the early 1980s. It was a rare photo, a candid moment, intended only for private display. "Where and when?"

"We'd not long been done at Princes Gate," Davenport began quietly, reflectively. Morgan knew the general was referring to the Iranian Embassy siege in London in May 1980. The regiment's action to retrieve hostages taken at the embassy was televised live around the world. It was the first time anybody out
side of select circles had ever heard of the SAS. "We were at Regents Park Barracks for the post-op debrief and beer. Maggie Thatcher was even there to thank us. That chap with me, Peter Fleming, was one of my closest friends. We were the only two officers involved in the assault. Sadly, he was killed not so long ago, during a task in Central America. Two thousand and six, from memory."

"I'm sorry to hear that, sir," Morgan said.

"Anyway," Davenport replied gruffly, shrugging off the reverie and retrieving the frame from Morgan. "The reason I raise all this with you is that Peter was married to Madeline Clancy."

"I see
."

"Peter was a good man," Davenport said, looking again at the photograph. "He could have commanded the Special Air Service Regiment. In fact, many thought it inevitable that he would. But an opportunity too good to refuse was offered to Madeline back in the United States. So, Peter left the British Army to enable Madeline to focus on her judicial career. They left England and moved back to America. Madeline became a judge and Peter a much in demand, very highly paid security consultant. Of course, he was still able to be useful from time to time when the British Government needed an experienced pair of hands in the Americas."

"Was the Central America business one of those tasks, sir?"

Davenport nodded.

Morgan now understood the familiarity and loyalty he'd sensed between Davenport and the judge. The two had almost managed to suppress their personal 
connection among the others present at the meeting in New York, but not well enough for Morgan to miss it.

Davenport reached for his well-worn brown leather satchel and rummaged through it, extracting a CD cover. He handed it to Morgan. "Recognize her?"

"Who wouldn't? Charlotte-Rose," Morgan answered, a little perplexed. "I have a couple of her CDs, including this one. She's incredible - and stunning, which makes listening to some of her heavier pieces less taxing."

"I'm sure," replied Davenport. "The Grace Kelly of our time, that girl."

"Well, you're showing your vintage, now, sir. But yeah, I guess she is."

Morgan's gaze remained fixed on the crystal blue eyes staring straight back at him from the photo on the CD cover. Her fine features exuded elegance, yet were underwritten by a natural beauty that most men, including Morgan, found hard to resist. Her trademark red hair was pulled back in an elegant yet tousled style.

"She strikes me as a cross between Scarlett Johansson and ..." Morgan was thinking aloud, "Christina Hendricks. Don't you think?"

"How the bloody hell should I know?"

"She's certainly a spectacular creature," Morgan said, almost to himself.

"You're right there," Davenport agreed. "Very beautiful girl."

"So, what's she got to do with us?" Morgan asked, placing the CD onto the table. "Celebrities aren't really our thing."

"This one is very much our thing, I'm afraid. Apart from being an internationally renowned pianist, she is also Peter and Madeline's only child and, as it happens, my goddaughter," the general said gravely, "and she disappeared earlier today, off the coast of Malta."

"Jesus!" Of course, Charlotte-Rose
Fleming,
Morgan realized. He sat up in his chair and leant forward. "I recall you and the judge mentioning a daughter at our meeting in New York. I heard Judge Clancy say that she was a musician but she referred to her only as Charly and, I guess, the judge uses her own maiden name. I didn't make the connection. Weren't the FBI supposed to be checking up on Charly's security arrangements?"

"They didn't have time. She'd already headed off on holiday with a gentleman friend, Raoul Demaci, who I understand is also missing. I've asked for details on him. So far, all we know is that he's a wealthy European businessman. They were aboard a luxury yacht a few miles off the Maltese coast. Malta Police Force detectives claim it's the work of pirates?'

Morgan gathered his thoughts, considering the impact of Charly's disappearance upon their hunt for Drago and, importantly, upon his chief and mentor, Davenport. "Well, kidnapping is standard practice for pirates these days. And hitting luxury yachts or cruise ships in search of cash and jewelry or ransoms is their bread and butter. But that mostly occurs off the east coast of Africa, usually by Somalis on the payroll of the warlords. It's rare for the Mediterranean."

"Rare, but not implausible:' remarked Davenport. "Thoughts?"

"In the Mediterranean, I'd have to say Algerians, most likely, or Libyans - even a combination. There are some well-organized criminal cartels operating out of North Africa. They have established pipelines in and out of southern Europe and traditionally traffic weapons, drugs, gold or people. Maybe somebody recognized her before they set off, or the paparazzi tracked her down and word filtered through to one of these local outfits. They'd be falling all over themselves to get hold of her. A ransom would be astronomical. Do we know where she set off from?"

"Catania, Sicily. They flew in from New York, via Rome and were picked up by the yacht,
Florence,
at a private marina."

Morgan read his chief's expression. "But you don't think she's been taken by opportunists."

"No, I do not. We can let the locals think that, if they like, but as you say, if she'd been sailing in East African waters then it may be a consideration. Lazarevic confirmed that Drago was behind the assassination of Judge de Villepin and warned that we should expect more action against the ICTY. So, for now, we'll approach this on the basis that Charlotte is the daughter of the ICTY's Presiding Judge."

"So, locals were engaged to conduct the kidnapping, and now she'll be passed along the pipeline to whoever paid for the abduction."

"Correct. It's sure to bring further pressure to bear upon the tribunal. There is a real danger that using such a personal leverage upon a judge could corrupt and undermine the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at what can only be described as a critical juncture. All of Interpol's 
outstanding Red Notice fugitives have been captured and are on trial or awaiting trial in The Hague. All bar one: Drago Obrenovic. If he can orchestrate the kidnapping of Charlotte-Rose and then threaten her safety and wellbeing, there's no doubt it will weigh heavily upon Madeline and her colleagues on the tribunal and impact directly upon their objectivity. The whole thing could be disastrous."

"So, my objective is to get Charlotte-Rose back before she disappears into the pipeline completely."

General Davenport looked across at his agent. He knew that of all of them, Morgan was the one who would act ruthlessly and relentlessly to achieve any mission objectives Davenport set for him, no matter what the personal cost.

"Alex, you know I have spent all of my adult life defending the lives of others and upholding the rule of international law. But, for the first time in all those years, the very fabric of international justice is hanging in the balance with, of all people, an appalling creature like Dragoslav Obrenovic picking away at its already fraying edges. I can't allow that to go any further. If they manage to get Charlotte-Rose into Serbia, she'll be lost for good. I owe it to her father to ensure that doesn't happen."

Alex Morgan remained silent, primed and ready as his chief issued his final orders.

"The safety catch is off. Return that girl to her family and drag those bastards back to justice. Dead or alive, it makes no difference to me."