“Can you explain how a guy who looks like that has women falling all over him? The purser’s wife, the flight attendant, the senator, not to mention the poor tugboat captain. And now this little knockout. Okay, she’s a hick kid, but a woman like the senator should know better, don’t you think? I mean do you find him attractive?”
“Depends upon what you mean by ‘attractive.’ ”
“Attractive enough to run off with the guy.”
“Watch how he talks to her. It’s like his eyes, his ears, every pore is with her—appreciating her. When a guy like him wants to be with a woman he’s totally there.”
“So women want concentration?”
“It’s in short supply—but there’s something else likable about Terry. Way underneath, he’s solid. And kind of sad— What?”
Paul Janson exploded into motion.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Kincaid whirled after him. Janson had moved so swiftly that he was on top of the couple in an instant, chopping with his open hand, breaking the girl’s wrist before she could stab Flannigan again with the stiletto she had pulled from the bike’s hollow handlebar.
Kincaid smashed her cheekbone below her helmet with her elbow as she raced past Janson, frantically searching for the assassin’s backup. It would be a sniper. In a tree in the gardens seven hundred meters across the lake. Or by the museum on a spit of land jutting parallel to the one they were on. Paul knew that and was dragging Terry to the ground, hauling him behind the thin cover of a bush, and shouting at nearby walkers and bikers, “Get down on the ground. Get down!”
Kincaid saw a flash on the roof of the museum—sun on a scope, nine hundred meters.
“Roof!” Pointing to the sniper’s position, diving to the grass, she rolled toward Janson. They pulled Flannigan behind the brow of a low mound. The rifle fired, unheard. A slug thunked into the mound. Earth flew in their faces.
“How many?”
“One, so far.”
Less than five seconds had passed since Janson spotted the stiletto. The assassin was trying to mount her bicycle, but she was staggering from the impact of Kincaid’s elbow and in shock from her broken wrist. The bicycle got away from her and fell over. She tried to run. Suddenly the airholes of her helmet spewed blood as a rifle bullet dissolved her skull.
Janson and Kincaid traded looks. Stabbing Flannigan would have been the killers’ plan B, if they had not intervened. Plan A would have been the girl luring Flannigan into the sniper’s sights. And now, before abandoning weapons and melting into the museum crowd, the sniper had killed the injured backup assassin so she could not talk.
Janson dialed 000.
“Ambulance. Lake Burley Griffin. Garryowen Drive. Across the lake from the National Museum. Stab wound.”
“Tell ’em not to bother,” Flannigan whispered. His face was white, his lips blue
“You’ll be fine.”
“Don’t bullshit a surgeon—she got my celiac artery. I have about two minutes.
“Listen, you gotta know this— Amber Dawnwas disguised as an OSV. They Rube Goldberged a secret exploration vessel. The people shot by the rebels weren’t roustabouts. They were petroleum explorers.”
“What did they find?”
“They threw their computers and transmitters overboard—like they were done uploading confirmation data and keeping it secret. Christ, I can’t believe this is happening to me.” He shook his head. “No way rebels accidentally did the oil company a favor, keeping the discovery secret by killing everybody. They were sentto kill ’em.”
So much, thought Janson, for Doug Case’s story about burnishing ASC’s image with pro bono exploration for downtrodden nations. ASC had been exploring solely for itself behind a scrim of independent contractors.
“That’s why I thought they’d sent you to kill me. They were afraid I knew about the discovery— Hey, little Annie?”
“Me? What, Terry?”
“Annie— What’s your name? Oh, right, Jesse. Honey, I’m gone. I wonder if I could hold your hand? No offense, Paul, but I’d rather go out with a girl.”
Jessica Kincaid took Terry Flannigan’s hand in one of hers and laid her other hand on his brow. “Take it easy, Terry. You’ll be okay. Hear the ambulance? They’re coming.”
“Good-bye, Annie.… ” His eyes closed. Sirens grew loud.
“Terry,” said Janson. “ Terry!The guy who helped Iboga board the jump jet? You thought you recognized him.”
“He led the rebel unit that attacked the boat.”
How many sides was SR on?
“Take care of yourself, Jesse.”
Kincaid laid Flannigan’s hand across his chest, took the other, which had fallen to his side, and crossed it over the first. “Jesus H, Paul, did we fuck up.”
“If it was not a random attack, how did the rebels in a speedboat locate that one small OSV fifty miles from Isle de Foree on a foggy night?”
“This poor silly bastard was on to something. And we missed it. I missed it. I missed her goddamned knife.”
“Coincidence? The first blip on their radar led them to a victim that just happened to be Amber Dawnthrowing computers overboard?”
“Terry told me at the hospital that he gave up regular practice because amputations really got him. He said he’d lie awake afterward, wondering should he have done it different.”
Janson barely heard her. “Radar alone could not guide them to precisely that one boat. Unless someone attached a tracking device before Amber Dawnsailed from Nigeria. What if they signaled Amber Dawn’s coordinates traced by the scientists’ encrypted satellite uploads?”
Kincaid rubbed her eyes. “You tell me, Mr. Machine.”
“Whoever received the uploads could have betrayed the scientists who transmitted them—an ice-blooded way to ensure that no one on the boat would reveal the discovery.”
“Doug Case lied to you about Terry Flannigan working for ASC.”
“Apparently so.”
“So how can you believe Case’s story that gunrunners told him Terry had been kidnapped?”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Rest assured, President Poe,” said Kingsman Helms. “American Synergy Corporation’s Petroleum Division doesn’t want a ‘BP’ in Isle de Foreen waters any more than you do.”
“Acting President,” Ferdinand Poe corrected him.
He was one tough old bird, Helms thought, considering that he had been tortured nearly to death only a month earlier. Helms had expected to call on a trembling old man in his hospital suite. Instead, Poe had received him in his working office adjacent to the ceremonial “throne room” in the Isle de Foree’s Presidential Palace, where President for Life Iboga used to accept ASC bribes.
“I’ve asked repeatedly,” said Poe, “for detailed contingency plans in the event of blowouts, pipeline breaks, tanker collisions, and groundings. I have received from ASC standard boilerplate responses riddled with gobbledygook pseudo-science that would embarrass even BP. In fact, one of my bright young aides informs me that parts of it appear plagiarized from discredited BP safety filings.”
Helms ran a powerful athlete’s hand through his wavy blond hair. Whoever back in Houston had prepared the latest report on Poe’s condition could consider himself fired. A perfunctory courtesy call by the president of the Petroleum Division on the president of this pissant island—a ceremonial state visit as it were—was devolving into a goddamned Spanish Inquisition.
“Mr. President—”
“Acting President!”
“Sir. You have my word that our latest, updated disaster contingency plans will be emailed to your petroleum minister by tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you. Now let’s get down to business.”
“I beg you pardon, Mr.— Sir. What business?”
“At the moment, we have an oil lease agreement—Isle de Foree and American Synergy Corporation.”
“At the moment?” Helms countered.
“The terms of our current agreement are excessively generous to American Synergy.”