“Thank you. But you must understand that the timing is critical. We cannot make a move until the oil platform is in the middle of the Gulf.”
“Yes, I understand everything,” al-Naimi said impatiently. “Tell me, where you are at this moment, exactly.”
Anne Marie was puzzled. “If you want the exact latitude and longitude, I’ll have to get that from Captain Panagiotopolous. But I think we’re about one hundred kilometers off the Libyan coast, running parallel.”
“Who are your guests aboard?”
“No guests. Just my crew and bodyguards.”
“Where is Wolfhardt?”
“In Dubai,” Anne Marie said, truly alarmed now. Al-Naimi never called to simply chat. “What’s this all about?”
“You have a crew member by the name of Walter Glass.”
It was a statement, not a question, and Anne Marie had to think for a moment if such a man were indeed aboard, but then she remembered. “He’s an engineer’s mate. We took him on sometime this summer. Gunther vetted him, and he came up clean.”
“I’ve learned otherwise,” al-Naimi said. “In fact his real name is Dieter Schey and he works for the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The security division. He’s aboard your ship to spy on you.”
“Good heavens why,” she said, but then she knew not only why he’d been sent to spy on her, but why al- Naimi had called.
“There’ve been some tax dealings with a number of your German investors that have raised a red flag.”
He was talking about what were called partnership flip structures and inverted pass-through leases, in which the MG had helped fund a couple of infrastructure deals in Germany — one for the rebuilding of ten bridges along the autobahn, and the other the construction of a water treatment plant outside Munich. The construction companies were given healthy tax credits, which they used in return to shelter income gained by investing money back into the MG. Technically it meant that the German government was investing with Anne Marie, and someone smart in Frankfurt had sat up and taken notice.
“It’s not a problem,” Anne Marie said. “He couldn’t have learned anything aboard ship. And soon as we dock I’ll get rid of him.”
“There’s more to it,” al-Naimi said.
Anne Marie girded herself. “I’m listening.”
“Herr Schey is a clever man, but he’d have to be because of his excellent training with the KGB in Moscow. He is ex-Stasi.”
Stasi had been the old East German secret police, and what al-Naimi had left unsaid, the most disturbing message he’d given to her, was that Gunther, himself ex-Stasi, should have caught it. He’d dropped the ball. If it had been unintentional his worth to her was diminished. But if he’d vetted Schey on purpose, for whatever purpose, something would have to be done.
All of that passed through her thoughts in a beat. “Thank you for the information,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”
“All of it.”
“Yes,” Anne Marie said.
She poured more champagne and sat at the bar for twenty minutes thinking about her chief of security; thinking that it was nearly impossible to know someone so completely that trust was inviolable. Something like a mother’s unconditional love for her child, even if the child turned out to be a mass murderer. She’d never trusted anyone to that extent. It was another lesson she’d learned from her father. Yet she’d allowed Gunther inside her very inner circle, to such an extent that in some ways he knew more about her business dealings and associates than she did. Where the skeletons were buried.
She didn’t know whether to curse or cry, but finally she reined in her emotions and called her bodyguard, Carlos Ramirez, on the ship’s phone. “We have a crewman by the name of Walter Glass.”
“He’s an engineering mate.”
“Bring him to the main salon in ten minutes,” Anne Marie said. “And bring a flashlight, a pair of kitchen shears, and your pistol. With your silencer, I don’t necessarily want to alert the crew.”
“Will we need Willy?” Ramirez asked. William Harcourt was Anne Marie’s other bodyguard.
“No. This won’t amount to much.”
“Ten minutes.”
She finished her champagne then went forward to her stateroom where she changed into an old pair of blue jeans and a Harvard sweatshirt she wore when she worked out in the fitness room. Barefoot, she went back to the salon, and was just finishing another glass of champagne when Ramirez showed up with a wary engineer’s mate.
“Good evening, Mr. Glass,” she said.
“Ma’am,” the man said. He was of medium build with a solid square face, thinning light hair, and just a hint of worry at the corners of his mouth and in his eyes.
“Actually your name is Dieter Schey, you once worked for the Stasi, and now work for the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. What are you doing aboard my ship?”
Schey hesitated for just a second, but then he shrugged. “Investigating your business practices. It’s believed that you may have broken some German financial laws. I was asked to gather evidence.”
“Have you?” Anne Marie asked. “Gathered evidence.”
“Not yet.”
“Have you ever heard the name Gunther Wolfhardt?” she asked, watching the investigator’s eyes.
He shook his head. “No.”
So far as she could tell he’d told the truth. “Let’s go out to the after deck,” she told Ramirez.
“What are you going to do?”
“What we do with all of our trash. We throw it overboard.”
Schey started to back away, but Ramirez pulled his Glock 17. “Outside,” he said.
They went out the sliding doors from the salon and all the way to the aftermost deck from where swimmers could reach the water down a half-dozen broad stairs to the rear platform at the water’s edge.
“Take off your clothes,” Anne Marie said dispassionately. She was not in a hurry, nor did she have much of any emotion for what was about to be done to the spy. It was simply a job that needed attending to.
“The water is damned cold,” Schey protested. “And no matter what happens, as soon as my body is found it will get back to you.”
“Do as you’re told,” Ramirez said.
It was bitterly cold, a sharp wind blowing across the deck as Schey slowly removed his clothes. His body was solid with very little fat. A long scar on his right leg just above his knee looked old, as did what was probably a bullet wound in his left shoulder.
“Now you want me to jump?” Schey asked.
Anne Marie took the pistol from her bodyguard. “No,” she said. “I want you to die.”
She fired one shot into the middle of the man’s face, killing him instantly, and driving his body backward against the rail, a spray of blood going overboard and lost in the wind.
“Hold him up,” Anne Marie told Ramirez. “Head above the top of the rail. I don’t want to damage the deck.”
Ramirez did as he was told, and Anne Marie methodically fired several more shots at close range into the man’s face, destroying his features and his dental work.
“Fingertips?” Ramirez asked. This was the kind of work he understood, and he wasn’t squeamish about it. He’d never been squeamish about anything he’d been asked to do.
He eased the body on to the deck and using the kitchen shears snipped off the ends of Schey’s fingers and thumbs and tossed them overboard, making it nearly impossible for a quick identification if and when the body was ever found.
When Ramierz was finished, he lifted the body up over the rail and let it fall into the sea. “He’ll be missed by morning.”
“Have the ship searched. You saw him drunk on deck around three in the morning, and the dumb bastard
