Марк Грини - One Minute Out

“No. It’s not. Not right now. But since I know the name and the general size, I was able to go into Vesselfinder’s database of boats and ships and find a listing for it, along with a photograph taken off the coast of Santorini two years ago.”

“Primarosa is a girl’s name. I’ve heard it in Spain. Is it a Spanish boat?”

She shakes her head. “It’s registered in Denmark to a company based in Cyprus. It’s a shell. It only exists on paper to serve as the ownership of the yacht.”

“You can’t tell who actually owns the company?”

“That’s what makes it a shell.”

“So . . . a dead end?”

“It would be, except for one thing.” She has confidence and energy in her now that I haven’t seen before.

“What’s that?”

“Me. Maybe I can’t intimidate people or shoot people or anything else you do, but forensic accounting and banking is what I did all day, every day, until I came to the Balkans. If you keep driving north, I can work on digging into this yacht and its history. I will find us something that might help.”

“Okay. North of us is Croatia, and northwest of us is Italy. There is nowhere else in the Adriatic to go, unless they turn around and head south, so I am assuming the yacht is going to Italy.”

“Why?” she asks.

“I don’t know why it would leave Croatia only to return back to Croatia up the coast.”

“Right,” she says, but she doesn’t seem sold on my theory.

“It will take us six hours to get to the Italian border; I’ll need to know something before then about where it’s headed.”

“I can do this,” she says, then she pulls her laptop out of her bag and retrieves her phone. She sets up a Wi-Fi hotspot while I drive, and soon she’s pulled up a map and is furiously clicking keys next to me.

• • •

Twenty-seven nautical miles away, the Primarosa motored northwest through the warm predawn light at fifteen knots. Standing on the bow and looking out to sea, South African Jaco Verdoorn stood alone. His men did not come aboard with him; with twenty-three women, fifteen crew, and nine Greek mafioso on board, there simply was not enough room on the vessel for nine more men.

Verdoorn sent Loots and the rest of his shock troops north by air to scout out the security situation up there. The Primarosa had one more stop to make before its final destination on this journey, just to take on a few more pieces of merchandise, but Verdoorn wasn’t worried about Gentry showing up there. The rest of the girls would be locked up on board the yacht; the Greeks had a dozen guns on board. Kostopoulos and his men had maintained the pipeline in the Balkans for years without incident, and the South African had at least enough confidence in them that they could watch over the merchandise while in transit on open water. If the Gray Man was working alone, or virtually alone, there was little chance he was going to attack a forty-five-meter yacht that was out to sea and on the move.

He was legendary, but still, he was human.

No, if Gentry came, it would be at the final destination of this trip, so that was where Verdoorn sent his men.

As Jaco fantasized about getting Courtland Gentry’s forehead on the other side of the front sight of his pistol, he heard footsteps behind him on the foredeck. Looking back over his shoulder, he recognized the small stature and gait of Kostas Kostopoulos.

He turned away and returned his gaze to the sea.

Verdoorn relied on the old Greek and his organization, but he didn’t much care for the man, personally. He felt Kostopoulos had delusions of his own importance, was pompous and superior acting, and talked back to Verdoorn more than any of the other regionals in the Consortium. Kostopoulos knew that Verdoorn took orders from the Director, so the Greek treated the South African as a glorified errand boy.

Verdoorn would have loved to slit the old bastard’s throat right then and toss him over the side of his own luxury yacht for the fish, but Kostopoulos was right about one thing: Jaco Verdoorn did not make decisions autonomously. While he ran this operation fully, he was beholden to the little American in California, the Director.

Kostopoulos said, “They tell me you are berthing in the equipment locker. Unacceptable! I’ll happily give you my stateroom and move some product out of one of the lower-deck cabins for myself.”

Verdoorn knew Kostopoulos wouldn’t “gladly” do anything of the sort. The foppish old man would be loath to give up his massive quarters on the upper deck. He’d do it, begrudgingly, but he’d martyr himself in the process, and the South African didn’t want to be tempted to toss the Consortium’s head of Balkan operations over the side because he was tired of hearing him talk.

And, anyway, Verdoorn had lived for weeks at a time in the Namibian bush, months at a time in un-air-conditioned sandbagged emplacements in Afghanistan, years at a time in one-room apartments in a poor neighborhood in Johannesburg.

Even though he now earned millions a year for his work, he enjoyed rigor and self-denial. He felt it gave him his edge.

Denying himself luxuries from time to time helped keep strict discipline and order in his mind.

And there was something else Jaco did that he thought kept him sharp. He never sampled the merchandise. Never. He saw his job as that of an enforcer, felt he needed to be detached from the emotions of sex. Depriving himself of his sexual needs, he felt, made him a beast, made him loathe the product paraded before him, and it helped him do what he needed to do to keep strict discipline and order.

Yes, the equipment locker wasn’t as posh as Verdoorn’s condo in Venice Beach or his ranch outside Pretoria. But it was a hell of a lot better than the shitty Jo’burg flat where he grew up.

He waved the Greek’s comment away, but the old man continued.

“If I had known before you boarded that you would be joining us, I would have made proper arrangements for you.”

“Last-minute change of plans, Kostas. Since your regional network couldn’t end the threat to the shipment, I’m forced to escort it to market personally.”

The Greek let out a laugh. “Everyone . . . the Serbs, the Hungarians, the Albanians . . . everyone has taken casualties from this.”

Verdoorn turned to him. “I don’t give two shits about your casualties. I care about this shipment, and I care about the security of the pipeline. If you can’t handle either responsibility, I can—”

“You know this man, don’t you?”

Verdoorn took a breath, then turned back out to sea. “I know of him.”

Another brief chortle from the Greek. “Yes, well, I am guessing you have a very healthy respect for his abilities, and that is why you are here now. You can insinuate that my people should have done better with him . . . but you know what they were up against.”

Verdoorn let it go. The Greek was absolutely right; it was absurd to insinuate that Serbian and Albanian gangsters who had been trained as simple street thugs and knew nothing of the Gray Man should have been ready to deal with him, but the South African wasn’t going to give the Greek the pleasure of admitting this.

Instead Verdoorn turned and leaned against the railing. Looking out over the lavish opulence around him, he found something new to complain about. “I never liked the idea of using this bladdy boat. Too fuckin’ showy for a smuggling operation.”

Kostopoulos was quick to counter him here, as well. “Showy? Certainly so. But not conspicuous. This vessel sails up and down the Adriatic all the time. Navies and coastal patrol craft know it, customs and immigration know it, the other traffic out here knows it. The ports we visit are used to seeing it, and no one gives it a second glance.