“No,” said Poe. “Iboga will string the court along for years.”

Janson said, “In researching the original job of rescuing Dr. Flannigan I happened to learn quite a bit about you, sir. I admire you. You’re a practical man. You attended the London School of Economics to master English because mastery of English would help you promote the cause of Isle de Foree in a world where English speakers wielded power. And you’re a brave man. You are the kind of man that people need to serve and protect them. But there are limits to what practicality and courage can achieve in the midst of chaos. You’ll have enough on your plate without having to resist your own people’s desire to take vengeance on Iboga. And before you say it is none of my business, capturing him will make him my business.”

“All right!” said Ferdinand Poe. “Clearly you will not budge. Give him to the World Court, if you must.”

“I must.”

“Now Iset a condition: If Iboga ever manages to trick his jailors and escape from The Hague, you promise to find him again before he comes back to retake Isle de Foree.”

“Count on it,” said Janson.

FIFTEEN

37°35′20.66″ N, 0°58′59.79″ W

Cartagena, Spain

Put her on the ground, guys,��� Janson told his pilots. “Jesse’s gotta beat the doctor into Cartagena.”

Seen from six thousand feet, cutting a long V wake through a placid Mediterranean Sea, the Varna Fantasygleamed pristinely white in the morning sun.

They were standing behind the pilots, looking out the windshields over Ed’s and Mike’s shoulders as CatsPaw Associates’ Embraer 650 banked in a wide turn around the Varna Fantasyand headed for the coast. At the rocky edge of the blue-green sea they crossed over Cartagena, Spain, the Bulgarian cruise liner’s next port of call.

Janson grew uncharacteristically talkative, which indicated to Kincaid that he was about to hide something from her. Cartagena, he told her, cut an uncommonly deep and sheltered indentation in a difficult stretch of Mediterranean coast that had made it a welcome harbor for three thousand years. Phoenician navigators and merchants had anchored in its blue-green waters, as had colonists from Carthage, Roman conquerors, and Spanish warships.

“The Romans left behind stone roads, theaters, and played-out silver mines. The Spanish erected fortresses on the headlands and breakwaters below and surrounded the waterfront with freight piers, shipyards, and factories. In our more peaceful, prosperous times they built that long mole to dock cruise ships.”

“Care to tell me where you’re going?” she asked.

“Not sure, yet,” was all he would answer. He pulled disappearing acts now and then, though not as often as he used to.

As they descended toward the nearest airport, a sleepy general aviation field outside the town of Murcia, Jessica Kincaid asked Mike if she could sit in the first officer’s seat for the landing.

“Negative. Sorry, Jesse, but it’s a short runway and a nasty crosswind. I might need Ed’s reflexes.”

Kincaid elbowed Ed and said, “I have faster reflexes than this old guy.”

“Yeah, but Ed’s been practicing for thirty years. Next time. Don’t worry; you’ll get more landings.”

Her red rental Audi was waiting on the private aviation apron.

“Good luck with the doc,” Janson told her. “If he gives you any trouble, you’ve got Freddy Ramirez standing by in Madrid.”

Freddy Ramirez was a former CSID Spanish intelligence operator. He had learned his trade battling Cuba’s aggressive Directorate of Intelligence, which trafficked in cocaine and repeatedly attempted to penetrate CSID. Like Janson, Freddy had gone private. His Protocolo de Seguridad was well connected wherever Freddy Ramirez had followed the trail of Cuban coke, and Janson counted on him in Central America and Miami, Spain itself, France, and Italy.

Kincaid said, “I think I can handle one doctor. If he’s aboard.” Varna Fantasyhad sailed the night the doctor disappeared from Porto Clarence, but he was not listed on either the passenger or crew manifest filed with Isle de Foree Customs and Immigration.

* * *

THE EMBRAER WAS thundering back into the sky before Kincaid cleared the airport gate. It took off into the westerly wind and quickly swooped north and possibly east, she thought, but by then it was climbing out of sight.

Foot to the firewall brought her into Cartagena as the tugboats were easing the Varna Fantasypast the outer breakwater. Kincaid battled tourist traffic through the narrow streets of the old walled city and pulled onto the cruise ship pier after the ship had crossed the harbor and tied up. Shuttle buses were waiting and sightseers queued eagerly at the gangway, anxious to get ashore after back-to-back three-day passages from Porto Clarence to Dakar, Senegal, and from Dakar to Cartagena.

Jessica Kincaid drove around the buses and found a parking space by the yacht marina that was sheltered by the pier. She had made it just in time. The bus drivers were stubbing out cigarettes and starting their engines. The ship loomed above the dock. Passengers were leaning over the rail gawking at the city that faced the harbor with a wall of cream-colored eight- and ten-story apartment buildings. Green plazas and palm trees stood between the buildings and the water.

Kincaid heard a sharp whistle and spotted the source through her open sunroof. She had noticed the boat rigger standing at the very top of a tall sailboat mast as she drove in—an athletic race-yacht gorilla in white T-shirt and shorts, his face shaded from the fierce sun by a visor and blue-iridium polarized sunglasses. He was working alone without a belaying line, which meant that instead of another crewman winching him up, he had climbed a halyard using étriersattached to rope ascenders. Standing in the stirrup-like étriers, he was at eye level with the passengers waiting to disembark from the Varna Fantasy. He flashed teeth in a hello-blond-foreign-tourist-ladies grin. The ladies snapped his picture with their cell phones.

The passengers began trooping down the gangway.

Kincaid watched every face. It was not difficult. There were more women than men, and most of the men were older than the doctor. She presumed the crew could disembark last. And when they had all boarded the buses, she had not seen him. There was a second gangway aft, a working route that touched the pier behind a chain-link fence and led into the terminal building. That would be for the crew.

The rigger gave her a whistle as she got out of the car, legs flashing from cool linen shorts. In her role as a carefree tourist she returned a thanks-for-the-compliment wave. She walked into the terminal building and approached the Fantasy Line’s booth and engaged the women working there in a mix of English, French, and Spanish.

* * *

HADRIAN VAN PELT had been standing for hours in his Petzl rope ascenders atop the one-hundred-foot mast of the racing sloop, pretending to lubricate the masthead sheaves and change a burned-out anchor light. From this high up he could see over the cruise ship to the headlands that embraced the Spanish port, and beyond the headlands the blue-green water of the Mediterranean. Directly beneath him, beside the Real Club Nautico de Regattas, was the cruise ship pier where the passengers had trooped off the Varna Fantasyand boarded shuttle buses to the Old City.

He reasoned that ship’s crew had to wait until the passengers disembarked, but he was taking no chances the doctor might disembark with them. Van Pelt still could not figure out how he had missed Flannigan when the ship docked in Dakar. This stop in the Mediterranean was his next opportunity, and he intended to finish the job here.

Then, seconds ago, movement under him had caught his eye. From the row of cars parked beside the boat slips a slim woman had stepped out of a red Audi. She was wearing retro cat’s-eye sunglasses. The open visor that shaded her face did not cover her spiky brown hair. When he had whistled, she returned a noncommittal wave, locked her car, and hurried into the terminal.