“I did not order you to kill them.”

“Yes, you did. You said to kill the oil boat crew and sink the boat.”

“I did not.”

“Douglas. Brother. Comrade. I heard you with my own ears on the radio.”

“Liar. I never spoke to you on the radio.”

“I heard you say it to Sergeant Major Van Pelt: ‘Shoot them. Sink the boat.’ ”

“You have ruined everything my father worked for. All of you!” Douglas shouted. He strode from tree to tree, waving his gun in their faces. “My father planned to bargain with the oil company to free and rebuild our ruined nation. And what did you do? You killed the oil workers.”

“You gave Sergeant Major Van Pelt the crew list.”

“I did not.”

“He told me you did.”

Douglas Poe cocked his pistol, pressed the barrel to the sergeant’s temple, and jerked the trigger. Then Poe hurried from tree to tree and shot the rest. It was over in thirty seconds. Terry Flannigan watched from the mouth of the cave, sickened and terrified. He wondered if he was strong enough to run for it like the South African?

Isle de Foree was thirty miles long and twenty wide. Six hundred square miles. The insurgents held the highlands in the middle, and held it tightly if the scores of heavy machine guns Flannigan had seen mounted in treetops and the burned-out wreckage of Iboga’s helicopters was any indication. The dictator controlled the lowlands that descended to the Atlantic Ocean, which seemed a very long way away. In between, where it was hotter and wetter, the forest thickened into lush jungle. Above the plantations. On the way up that had appeared to be no-man’s-land. The insurgents had been cautious moving through it.

Should he run for it?

He was in lousy shape. He hadn’t worked out in years and he drank too much. He was no soldier, no jungle fighter. They would catch him and kill him if he didn’t get a long lead. Problem was, if the old man died they’d kill him anyway. He resolved to make a run for it, the sooner the better. A boy tugged at his arm, one of the kids who acted as orderlies. The only thing Flannigan liked about FFM was that they did not employ child soldiers. These were orphans kept safe in the camp running errands and bringing food and water. “He awakes.”

“What?”

“Minister Ferdinand awakes.” Ferdinard Poe had been foreign minister before Iboga seized power. They called him Minister.

Flannigan hurried to Poe’s cot.

Ferdinand Poe was staring at him, peering through the drug like an ancient mariner piercing the fog. He had a strong voice that seemed appropriate to the strong jaw and the double chin and the round cheeks. The voice of a man who believed in himself. “Who are you?”

“I’m your doctor,” said Flannigan, with a sinking heart. He wasn’t going anywhere. “How are you feeling, sir?”

FIVE

Janson’s diggers discovered that among the gunrunners supplying the Free Foree Movement was a tight-knit team of Angolans and South Africans. That explained their success in repeatedly breaking an island blockade. Tenacious Angolans had been fighting civil wars since the days of competing superpowers. Rebel diamonds and government oil had paid for tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets and they knew weapons and escape and evasion tactics like no one on the African continent. With the possible exception of the South Africans whose experience with advanced weaponry made them the mercenaries of choice.

The actual transporters were a young, recklessly brave pair—Agostinho Kiluanji and Augustus Heinz—nicknamed the Double As, of whom little was known, though Kiluanji was probably a nom de guerre taken from a heroic sixteenth-century defender against the invading Portuguese. Janson knew the type, poor but ambitious men putting their lives on the line to earn the money to become full-fledged weapons dealers. Money would talk.

But before the Embraer landed in Nigeria, the word came back on the sat phone that the Double As were not interested in ferrying two covert operators into the rebel camp.

“Increase the offer,” Janson ordered.

His negotiator in Luanda did and reported back that they still weren’t interested. “They’re afraid it’s a sting.”

“Offer them the Starstreak missiles.”

When his negotiator called back he sounded anxious. “What’s wrong?” said Janson.

“They turned down the Starstreaks.”

“And?”

“They say they’ll kill me if I ask again.”

“I like these guys,” said Janson.

“What?”

“They’re not greedy. Catch the next plane out of Angola. I’ll deal with it.”

Kruger in Zurich revealed the name of a Lebanese arms dealer, Dr. Hagopian, who supplied Augustus Heinz and Agostinho Kiluanji the weapons they delivered to FFM. Janson was surprised. Business must be tough. Selling contraband to warring Africans, while profitable, was one-shot bottom-feeding. Hagopian had been a key player since the days of arming Saddam Hussein against Iran on behalf of the United States. Maybe Dr. Hagopian was betting that FFM would win and become a sovereign client, where the steady money was. Maybe he needed the dough. Janson recalled a lavish estate on the Mediterranean and a mansion in Paris, elaborate security for both, and an equally costly wife.

His past dealings with Hagopian had left both of them satisfied. Now Janson instructed his eyes and ears in Europe to check Hagopian out, seeking leverage, some new chink in his armor that had not been known before. He, of course, had cultivated excellent contacts among U.S. intelligence, which allowed him to operate relatively openly, and no legitimate regime had him on its arrest list. And yet weapons was a slippery, fast-changing world. Word came back that Hagopian had acquired a chink, a deep one. Of his two sons, one was in the business with him; the other, Illyich, was reported to be a “troublemaker.”

“Troublemaker?” Janson asked. “How does an arms merchant’s son make trouble: join the clergy?”

“No,” answered the humorless Frenchman on the telephone. “The son has fallen in with thieves.”

* * *

JANSON PRIED SOME details out of the Frenchman, then polled a few others in Europe. Then he telephoned a beneficiary of the Phoenix Foundation and told him he needed his help.

All Phoenix “graduates” had telephones fitted with an encryption chip that made conversations with Janson impenetrable to surveillance. Not all beneficiaries knew that Paul Janson was behind the foundation, but Micky Ripster, like Doug Case, was an old friend.

“Why me?”

“I need it done immediately in London and you’re in London.”

“Well, that’s not very flattering, is it? Geography trumps talent.”

“It’s my good fortune you’re on-site. No one else could pull this off.”

“But you forget that you paid me to retire.”

“I am paying for your rehabilitation, not your retirement. Don’t worry; it’s for a good cause.”

“And now you expect my help killing for ‘a good cause’? Isn’t that how we got into trouble in the first place? What’s different about killing for your causes?”

“The difference is that now we play by Janson Rules.”

“Which are?”

“No torture. No civilian casualties. No killing anyone who doesn’t try to kill us.”

“No torture?” Micky Ripster repeated. “No civilian casualties? No killing anyone who doesn’t try to kill us? Don’t be put off by that strangling noise you hear on the telephone. It is not the encoder chip. It is merely me smothering my laughter.”

“You owe me,” Janson said in a voice suddenly cold. “I’m collecting, now.”

There was a long pause. “So, uh, what Janson gives Janson takes back?”

“What Phoenixgrants Phoenix retrieves to pass on to the next guy.”

Ripster sighed. “All right, Paul. Who do you want killed?”

“No one.”

“I thought—”

“It’s not a killing job. It’s a gamesman job and I never met a better gamesman than you. Syrian intelligence still believes that Israeli bombs destroyed their Dayr az-Zwar plutonium collection.”