Van Pelt clamped his gloves around the wire forestay and kicked out of his rope ascenders. He launched himself into the air, plummeted in a controlled slide down the slanting forestay, and landed as lightly as a much smaller man would. Then he vaulted off the sailboat onto the concrete pier and headed for the woman’s car.

He had last seen her in Porto Clarence, Isle de Foree. American, he had figured, judging by the I-own-the-world thrust of her shoulders. She had been sitting in a café, in animated conversation with the old woman who owned Isle de Foree’s priciest whorehouse.

Hadrian Van Pelt could wonder if it was a big coincidence. Or he could wonder whether she, too, had tracked Dr. Terry Flannigan to Cartagena, Spain, the Varna Fantasy’s next port of call after Dakar. But why wonder when he could ask her?

He knelt beside the Audi as if to tighten a running-shoe lace, opened his tool pouch, activated an electronic scanner that read key codes—a Czech-built instrument that cost more than the car—and popped her door locks. He climbed in like he owned it, looked to ensure that no one was watching, and squeezed himself onto the floor of the backseat.

Van Pelt did not doubt that a professional with her wits about her would spot him in the back as she opened the door. But a professional would also recognize the snub nose of the bullpup-configured Micro TAR-21 assault rifle protruding from his tool pouch. She would see that she had no choice but to obey his order to get in and drive before he drilled a hole in her head with the silenced weapon.

* * *

AFTER ATTEMPTING TO answer Jessica Kincaid’s questions and accepting small bribes sufficient to treat themselves to a nice lunch—an amount that Janson had taught her could buy a lot of information—the women at the Fantasy Lines counter began glancing at the clock.

Kincaid thanked them for their time and stepped out into the sun again.

“Fuck!” she muttered under her breath.

There was no Dr. Terrence Flannigan aboard the ship, she had learned. The women had actually telephoned the ship for her and confirmed that. The ship’s doctor was a Senegalese, enjoying a free cruise vacation, which meant that somehow Terry Flannigan had given Kincaid the slip at Dakar. Or had never been on the damned boat in the first place.

Now what?

The pier was deserted. All the buses were gone. Midday, midweek, the sailboats crammed side by side in the marina were empty. Nothing moved but indicators tracking the wind on their mastheads and some generator turbines spinning lazily. The blue-green water was barely riffled by the weak remnants of the morning breeze. Across the harbor, smoke rose straight from a distant chimney. The fortresses on the rocky promontories that guarded the narrow mouth to the sea baked in the sun.

It appeared that the only people left working in the Spanish city were waiters serving lunch to the rest. Even the good-looking rigger had called it a morning and abandoned his perch on the mast.

Lunch. Then out of here.

She hurried to her car.

SIXTEEN

Jessica Kincaid stopped six feet from the Audi and opened her handbag. She took out a Marlboro box, opened it, shook her head in disgust, crumbled it in her hand, turned on her heel, and walked back to the terminal building, pausing at the door to drop the crumpled box in a trash receptacle.

The terminal was air-conditioned, pleasantly cool, encouraging passengers to linger at the many shops. Like the Fantasy Line desk, most of the shops had closed for lunch. Those open were virtually empty today, but for bored clerks.

Kincaid headed for the ladies’ room. She heard a hand drier roaring inside. Good. No need to go in. She veered across the echoing lobby into the drugstore and bought a box of Marlboros and a cigarette lighter, then asked the woman at the checkout register for an instant cold pack. She found it among the ACE bandages and braces for sprained wrists and paid for the cold pack and a Spanish newspaper. Then she went to the ladies’ room. The woman who had been drying her hands was just leaving.

���Perdón.”

“No hay problema.”

Kincaid checked that all the stalls were empty and that she was alone, wadded a piece of newsprint into the sink drain to act as a stopper, and filled the sink halfway with cold water. Ignoring the instructions not to open the cold pack, printed in five languages, she tore it apart and poured its ammonium nitrate crystals into the water to dissolve them. She soaked a sheet of newspaper in the solution, let the excess drip, and held it in front of the hand drier. The wet paper tore easily, so the drier blew it apart in her hands. She tried again, got the trick of it standing farther back from the warm air flow, and dried it completely. Dry, it was even more fragile, threatening to crumble in her fingers. To prevent that, she laid it on a sheet of dry newsprint and then she folded them tightly into a rectangle a foot long, an inch wide, and half an inch thick.

She put it in her bag, strode quickly from the ladies’ room, across the lobby and out to the pier. She walked slowly to her car, while looking around like a tourist, opening the Marlboro box, pocketing the sealing string of cellophane, tamping the tobacco down on her free hand, pocketing the inner foil, and tapping loose a cigarette.

She saw no one watching from any of the boats in the slips. None of the parked cars seemed to have an occupant. No one seemed to be peering down at her from the ship, though they could be.

She scoped the area as she would if she were installing Lambda Team. She would put marksmen in the palm trees nearest the center, marksmen on the roofs of the buildings behind them, a marksman in a stalled truck on the overpass. For her own position she would take the lighthouse that marked the channel around the outer breakwater. A long shot with the water effects and sea breeze to adjust for, but the hit would be hers.

If there were snipers, she would be dead by now. If there were snipers, there would be no heavy guy hiding in her car, making it sit a hair lower on its springs.

She was a woman; he could be a scum rapist. But damned few rapists could break into a locked Audi without setting off the alarm. And the fact that the Audi was still where she had parked it confirmed that whoever was inside was not trying to steal it. He was waiting for her.

She had noticed something else, subconsciously, as she walked out of the terminal, a discrepancy that hadn’t fully registered but had heightened her awareness: The rigger who had been atop the sailboat mast had left his rope ascenders attached to the halyard he had climbed. To retrieve them he would have to climb back up with another set, which made no sense unless he’d had a reason to come down real quick, such as to break into her car.

It had to be about the doctor. Dr. Flannigan was the only reason she was in Cartagena. The guy in her Audi had to be an operator who had come to meet the Varna Fantasyfor the same reason. Somehow he must have connected her to the doctor.

Woman or not, she could not call the cops. Janson Rules: no innocents in the cross fire. She had to assume that the operator was a professional. The poor cops would never know what hit them.

She stepped closer to the car, put the cigarette between her lips, shielded the lighter by turning her back to the wind, still looking for the guy’s partners. If he had them, they were invisible. The marina was thick with boats. They could be watching from inside one of the cabins.

She gazed around the marina like a visitor reluctant to leave a pretty place. Still holding the lighter, she pretended a lazy drag on the Marlboro and walked along the edge of the pier, gazing down into the cockpits of several sailboats as if admiring the polished chrome and varnished brightwork or dreaming of sailing away. She hadn’t had a cigarette since she was sixteen and the hardest part was not coughing on the toxins.