‘Joe, it’s Antonio. I need a favour, fast.’
‘Man, I’m only a Fed on weekdays. I’m at the park with my kid. Can’t it wait?’
‘Would I be calling if it could?’
A pause. ‘Okay, what can I do?’
‘I need you to check credit-card transactions in the name of Kevin Sykes.’ He gave Sykes’s address.
‘What am I looking for?’
‘He’s bought an airline ticket, and I need to know where he’s going.’
‘How long have I got?’
‘He’s on the way to the airport now, so not long.’
‘My wife is giving me dirty looks. I’m not going to get any tonight.’
‘Spare me the details. Just hurry, please. It’s important.’
‘I’ll phone the office now.’
Alvarez thanked him and hung up. His phone rang after eleven minutes.
‘Okay, your friend Mr Sykes used his AmEx to buy a round trip from Dulles to Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, by way of Paris and Amsterdam. Air France leaving at eleven fifteen. That’s a twentyfour-hour flight. And I figured if you wanted to know where he’s flying to, you’ll want to know where he’s going when he gets there.’
‘Yeah. Where?’
‘Some city in Tanzania, Tanga. It’s on the coast. He’s booked himself a room at a hotel there.’
‘How the hell do you know that?’
‘Same way I know about his flight. His credit card.’
‘Shit, I didn’t even think.’
‘Well, you sound tired.’
‘I am.’
‘There you go then. Plus, you never were very smart to begin with.’
A few seconds later Alvarez was calling the airport. He couldn’t risk taking the same flight as Sykes, even if the two had only met a couple of times in person. Alvarez learned that the next Air France flight left six hours later, which would give Sykes too much of a head start. He also learned that a Northwest flight leaving an hour after Sykes could get him direct to Amsterdam in time to join the same flight down to Tanzania. It was also cheaper.
Surprised but pleased, Alvarez gave his credit-card details to the operator without hesitation. If Sykes was going to Tanzania, it could be for only one reason.
He knew where the missiles were.
CHAPTER 69
Eighty Miles East of Tanga, Tanzania
Monday
12:27 EAT
Sykes squinted against the glare of the afternoon sun. He stood on the deck of the commercial salvage vessel hired by Dalweg and Wiechman. The pair were former Navy SEALs who ran their own diving-and-salvage company based a few hundred miles up the coast in Kenya. They didn’t have the greatest of service records before leaving their respective teams, Dalweg in particular. He’d left the navy with a dishonourable discharge for beating a prostitute so bad she almost died. But the retired special-forces guys had been used by the company before on deniable operations and knew how to keep their mouths shut.
The pair had arrived in Tanga the day before Sykes and had hired the boat and purchased equipment they weren’t able to bring across the border. A sizeable chunk of cash had already been wired into Dalweg and Wiechman’s company bank account. They would get the same amount again when the mission had been completed.
As Ferguson had made clear, Sykes had first informed them of the rough details of their task and had only given them a full briefing when they were on the boat.
‘That’ll increase the fee by twenty-five per cent,’ Dalweg had said.
Sykes had assured him that he would see to it when the job was done. Figuring that would happen, Sykes had only offered them half of what Ferguson was willing to pay. Even with their increased fee, Sykes would still walk away with a fat few K’s of the total in his own pocket. He was pretty pleased with his brokering skills, and it felt good to be ripping off that fucker Ferguson too.
Sykes found Dalweg and Wiechman to be typical ex-military types, particularly ex-spec ops guys. They were big built and tanned, with lined and weathered faces and stares that could curdle cream. Both were around forty and had the scars and stories that only men who had fired rifles in anger carried. Despite their penchant for expletives and bad taste in jokes, Sykes found them to be all business.
The temperature had slowly been on the increase since the boat had left port, and Sykes was sweating more than he had in years. He wore long shorts and a T-shirt that was showing dark stains under the armpits and at the centre of his chest. He would’ve taken his shirt off, but, despite his weekly gym visits, he felt very body conscious alongside the two former SEALs, who both had arms as thick as his thighs. He knew, even without their taking a look at his love handles, that they already looked down on him as a soft CIA pen pusher who had no place in the field.
They had dropped into the sea twenty minutes ago and had assured Sykes their recon dive would take no more than half an hour. With the aid of standard dive tanks, they had descended to the seabed to examine the frigate and the missiles. They would then surface and plan how best to extract them from the sunken ship. With luck they would be back at port before dark, and anything they couldn’t get today would be extracted tomorrow.
There was a big hydraulic winch fitted onto the deck, next to which was a large amount of equipment that Sykes didn’t recognize, and he didn’t want to show his ignorance by asking for it to be explained. He knew it was salvage-and-demolitions equipment, but that was the extent of his knowledge. He unscrewed the top from a bottle of water and took a long drink.
The ocean was far calmer than he expected, but Sykes was a certified land lover who much preferred a swimming pool and a deck chair to a beach and surf. He’d popped a couple of sea-sickness pills just in case, and it was almost time for some more.
Normally waiting around with nothing to do would have frustrated Sykes, but he was deep in thought. It wasn’t long ago that he was fantasizing about briefcases full of dollar bills and bank balances with lots of zeros. Not any more. The close calls and narrow escapes of the past couple of weeks, combined with the new insight into Ferguson’s plans, had left him feeling scared and regretful. If he wasn’t in so deep, Sykes would have gone straight to Procter to fess up. Ferguson’s comment about the lethal injection was never far from Sykes’s mind.
Whatever else happened, Sykes was sure of one thing: it wasn’t going to end well. Ferguson had shown himself to be a thoroughly unscrupulous and spiteful bastard who Sykes could barely trust. After the way Ferguson had made sure everyone who knew anything about his plans had met with the grim reaper, how did Sykes know he himself wouldn’t end up being a similar liability that needed silencing?
That thought had meant he’d barely slept since Ferguson had ordered him to fly to Tanzania. He put a hand to the back of his shorts and checked that the SIG was still there. He’d kept it on his person every second since landing. Dalweg and Wiechman didn’t strike him as the kind of guys who would turn hitman for a few extra bucks, but he wasn’t about to take the chance.
He knew he was probably just being paranoid. Ferguson needed him. But Sykes, who was aware of his own considerable usefulness and the irrationality of having him killed, was also perfectly aware that Ferguson had shown himself to not always be the most rational of individuals.
Until things had calmed down, Sykes would stay on guard. If anyone so much as looked at him funny, he would turn himself in. Maybe he’d be able to cut a deal, testify against Ferguson to avoid the needle. Better to spend his life behind bars than end up victim of Ferguson’s madness.
He stared off into the distance. All around was water. Endless blue sea that met the sky at the horizon. He
