• • •
It was quiet on the waterfront, water lapping against the breakwater, music playing from somewhere, cooking smells. The boat was a forty-foot cruiser festooned with nets, as Carter had indicated. Two men in knitted caps and reefer coats worked on deck forward of the wheelhouse.
“I know it doesn’t look much, but she can do twenty-five knots,” he said, and called, “Only me,” and added to Hannah, “I’ve two more with me, but they’re ashore at the moment. This way.”
He went down the companionway and into the main saloon. There were a couple of charts spread across the table.
“Here you are,” he said. “Salinas, and there’s the villa to the east. I’ve circled it in red.”
They all leaned over the table, and Riley found that he was sweating and felt a distinct need to throw up. It was Hannah who broke the tension.
“Nothing more for me here, so I’ll go back to the English Café, book a room, then I’ll phone Ferguson on my mobile just to bring him up to date.”
She went up the companionway, the others following. When they reached the deck, Dillon said, “Grand legs you’ve got on you, girl, and well shaped. Must come from pounding the beat when you were a constable.”
“Mind your manners, Dillon,” she said severely, but put a hand on his arm. “Try and stay in one piece. You’re a bastard, but for some reason I can never fathom, I like you.”
“You mean there’s still a chance for me?”
“Oh, go to hell,” she said and walked away along the jetty.
“We’d better go and have a look at that chart again,” Carter said and led the way below. Dermot followed, his heart pounding, for he knew this must be it.
Dillon leaned over the table, and Carter said, “By the way, are you carrying, Mr. Dillon?”
“Of course.”
“Your usual Walther?”
It was then, as some instinct, the product of twenty years of the wrong kind of living, told Dillon he was in very bad trouble indeed, that Carter produced a Browning.
“Hands on head, old chap, nothing silly.” He felt in Dillon’s pockets and found the Walther in one of them. “There we are. Hands behind your back.”
Dillon did as he was told, and Carter took some handcuffs from the table drawer and handed them to Riley. “Cuff him.”
Dillon shook his head. “Naughty, Dermot, very naughty.”
“Arnold, get down here,” Carter called in Hebrew.
Dillon, having once worked for Israeli intelligence, recognized the language at once. It was not one of his best, but he knew enough to get by.
One of the seamen appeared in the entrance. “I’m here, Aaron. You’ve got him, then?”
“What does it look like? You and Raphael make ready for sea. I’ve got to go after the woman.”
“Will you kill her?”
“Of course not. We need her to communicate to Ferguson in London. Go on, get moving.” He turned to Riley. “You stay here and watch him.”
“What about my money?” Riley asked thickly.
“You’ll get it when we get there.”
“Get where?”
“Just shut up and do as you’re told,” and he went up the companionway.
• • •
Dillon said, “You might as well tell me, Dermot.”
Which Riley did in finest detail, Brown and the visit to Wandsworth, details of the plot as it had been put to him—everything.
“So good old Hakim isn’t up the coast at his villa?”
“I wouldn’t know. I never even heard of him till Brown told me his name.” He shook his head. “You’ve got to realize, Sean, it was Brown who came up with everything, the false ASU arms dump in London, this bloody Hakim fella.”
“And you never communicated with him once after leaving Wandsworth?”
“He said there was no need; that he’d always be on my case.”
“So how did he know we were coming?”
“I asked him about that. He said directional microphones were a wonderful invention. He said you could be in the street and still hear what went on in a house.”
“The BT van in the mews,” Dillon said. “The clever bastards.”
“I’m sorry, Sean, but you’ve got to see it from my point of view. All those years facing me in prison. Brown’s offer was something I couldn’t refuse.”