Philip Kerr - The Five Year Plan (1998)

'It's a sweet scheme, I have to admit. I got just one major problem with it.'

'What's that?'

Nudelli nodded and said, 'You. It's you, Dave. I just don't picture you for no hijacker. You ever pop anyone?'

'No, I can't say that I have.'

Nudelli said, 'There's no shame in that. But it's a fact of life that the first time is always the hardest. Ain't that so, Al?'

'The hardest. On a job like you described you wouldn't want to find yourself in a situation where you might hesitate to trigger a guy.'

Dave thought for a moment, trying to offer some guarantee for his own future ruthlessness. Pointedly, he said, 'By the way, how's Willy's eye?'

'That stupid fuck,' grunted Al. 'Maybe he'll see straight now you halved his viewing options.'

Nudelli said, 'I mean, how you handled Willy, that was impressive. Willy's no pushover. But these guys on the Russian yachts. Maybe they won't put their hands up so easy. Maybe they won't be as dumb as Willy. Maybe you'll have to take one or two of them down.'

Dave said, 'Could be.'

Al said, 'So. That's our problem. As the political analysts might say of a candidate, it's the character question.'

It was a fair question. Dave hoped that he would never have to kill anyone and felt more or less certain that he could pull off the job with the minimum of violence. But that was hardly what a character like Tony Nudelli wanted to hear. He wanted to see a convincing show of cold-bloodedness and all Dave could think of was Harry Lime. What would Harry have told this guy?

'Am I ready to take the life of another human being if I have to? I think that's a fair question,' he said with what he hoped was an amused insouciance, like Harry's. Dave stood up and walked round to the shutters and, staring out of the louvers, played a scene. He hoped that Tony and Al were not keen movie fans.

'What can I say? Except that nobody thinks in terms of human beings these days, Tony. Governments don't, so why should we? They talk of the people and the proletariat and I talk of the mugs. It's the same thing. They have their five year plans and so have I.' He turned to face them again and smiled laconically. 'The dead are happier dead. They don't miss much here, poor bastards.'

He thought he'd played it nicely. Light, amusing, ruthless, with a superficial excuse for his own behavior. If he'd started talking about how tough he was and how much of a killer he could be Nudelli just wouldn't have bought it. He was too old a hand at killing to buy anything too definite. Of course Dave was no Orson Welles.

But then Tony Nudelli wasn't exactly Joseph Cotten either. Tony was right about one thing though. Dave would have done the speech better if he'd been wearing a hat. To get properly into character. A black homburg, just like Harry's.

'I'd like to cut you in, you know,' he said, for added effect. 'I've no one left in Miami I can really trust.'

Chapter EIGHT

It was the Florida Department of Law Enforcement -- the detective branch of the State Police -- that had put Kate on the trail of the boat Rocky Envigado was probably planning to use for his next transatlantic shipment of cocaine. From its offices in Pompano Beach, the FDLE had been keeping two characters, Juan Grijalva and Whittaker McLennan, under surveillance on suspicion of involvement in an insurance fraud. They tracked one of these men to a meeting with an Irishman, Gerard Robinson, who was staying at the Breakers Hotel in Fort Lauderdale. Checking through a list of Robinson's telephone calls, the FDLE found an Isle of Man number. Since the Isle of Man is a British tax haven, the FDLE thought they were onto something and so they contacted the National Criminal Intelligence Service in London for assistance. NCIS told them that the number belonged to Keran Properties, a company in which New Scotland Yard had a long-standing interest. Keran was managed by a local firm of accountants, Pater, Hall, Green, who were themselves under surveillance following a tip-off that a notorious cannabis smuggler, now doing time in a Spanish jail, was a director of Keran. NCIS also informed the FDLE that Jeremy Pater, one of the partners in PHG, owned a house in the British Virgin Islands, as well as a share in a flourishing yacht management company, Azimuth Marine Associates. The managing director of Azimuth was Alonzo Avila. A photograph of Pater, Avila, and a third unidentified man was e-mailed to the FDLE, who contacted the FBI computer records department in Miami in an attempt to put a name to the face.

Pater, Avila, and Azimuth Marine were not known to the computer records department. But the third man was. He was Chico Diaz, Rocky Envigado's most trusted sicario leader. As soon as Kate was up to speed with the FDLE's inquiry, she went to speak to Kent Bowen.

'Jesus Christ, Kate, you wanna run all that by me again?' yawned the AS AC.

'It is a little complicated, sir,' admitted Kate.

'Complicated? It sounds like an episode of Soap. Jesus Christ, Kate.'

'Well sir, Azimuth Marine is one of the leading companies in the management and marketing of luxury yachts. Management, charter marketing, crew placement, you name it, they have representation in virtually every international yachting port of call from Fort Lauderdale to Hong Kong.'

Bowen adopted a pained expression. 'Kate? Just the bottom line, if you don't mind. I've got arteries hardening here.'

Kate felt herself coloring with irritation. Never before had she worked for an ASAC with a manner as casual as Kent Bowen. 'Just the bottom line' was not the way the Bureau worked. At the FBI Academy in Quantico, the emphasis had been on building up a complete investigative picture. An investigation was not a sheet of accounts to be summarized in a simple statement of profit or loss. And now this

patronizing asshole...

'We think we've found the boat, sir.'

'You have? Well why didn't you say so in the first place, Kate?'

'Because I assumed you'd want to know exactly what makes me believe that we've found it, sir. The intellectual and reasoning processes--'

'This is the FBI, Kate. Not MIT. Reasonable's the standard we work to here. Reasonable doubt, reasonable suspicion, reasonable this n'that. Exactly and precisely are for some schmuck in a white coat with a slide rule sticking out of his ass. In the time it takes to climb from reasonable all the way up to exactly we could lose a collar.'

'Yes sir.'

'So you reckon that this Azimuth Marine outfit have supplied Rocky Envigado with a motor yacht, is that it?'

'Yes sir.'

'Well how do you work that out?'

Biting her lip, Kate said, 'There's an offshore company called San Ferman that's registered in Grand Cayman that we've long suspected is being controlled by Rocky. About three months ago, Azimuth sold a boat to this company. We were able to trace the boat, the Britannia, to a dry dock right here in Miami, sir. It's on the river at Thirteenth Street. The boat is currently under surveillance. We have a stakeout at a room in the Harbor View Hospital from which we have an excellent view of the--'

'The harbor, right.'

'And the dry dock. But as yet we've been unable to ascertain if the drugs are already on board.'

Bowen nodded thoughtfully and asked, 'Kind of work they havin' done to the boat anyway?'

'Well, sir, since she's been in dock she's had new fuel tanks, an extended cockpit, re-routed plumbing, new air-conditioning, Naiad stabilizers, and quite a lot of hull work.' She smiled thinly and added, 'It would be reasonable to suppose that the modified fuel tanks might be where they plan to hide the cocaine.'

'The tanks, huh?'

'Well, yes. Except for one thing. You see, sir, I've done some calculations based on the size of the boat and the engines. The Britannia is 110 feet long and is equipped with twin Detroit engines each developing just over 2,000 horsepower. That would give the boat an effective cruising range of just about 2,500 miles. Which wouldn't quite get her as far as the coast of North Africa, or even the Canary Islands, which are about 3,500 miles from the coast of Florida.'