Angels of Vengeance

‘I have no idea where he is now,’ she continued, ‘but he was one of those turds who would always float to the top of the bathtub. He shouldn’t be too hard to find, because he’ll be standing on top of a building somewhere, holding his little willie and shouting his name out as loudly as he possibly can.’

‘In that case, he’s probably dead already,’ Pappas said. ‘If he made it onto Cesky’s list, that is.’

‘I suppose you’re right.’ Still, she couldn’t find it within herself to feel any sympathy for the odious little bastard. Zood almost hadn’t made it onto the boat either. It was only a sports bag full of fake Faberge eggs, encrusted with real jewels, and the solemn promise to stay in his cabin with two of his porn pixies for the duration of the trip that saw him allowed on board. Well, that and the fact that Jules didn’t see him as a troublemaker in the same league as Henry Cesky. Larry Zood, the porn king, was not likely to lead a mutiny.

‘What about other crew members?’ Pappas asked. ‘And are you sure our friend Shah didn’t come into contact with Cesky at any other time?’

Jules chose a tile on the spotless white floor and stared hard in concentration. ‘God, it’s been a few years now, and you’d have to ask him yourself, I guess. But no, I can’t imagine any other occasion where their paths might’ve crossed, let alone any direct confrontation. Although, Shah was responsible for security on the day of the evacuation, of course. It was his job to make sure we didn’t have trouble from Cesky. Or any of the thousands of drunken college kids who turned up looking for a free ride after he sent those texts.’

A waitress arrived to clear away their plates and asked whether either of them wanted anything else. Pappas ordered an espresso. Jules thought about having her teapot refilled but settled on a glass of water instead. Her warm cheeks told her that she needed to hydrate. The heat and humidity were going to be murderous.

‘What about the Rhino, then?’ asked Pappas. ‘He wasn’t on shore with you when you were selecting passengers, was he? He stayed out on the boat, as I recall.’

Jules had to work hard to dredge up all the details. As she cast her mind back again to that frenetic week they’d all spent in the Mexican resort city, a warship hoved into view around East Point, a wedge-shaped promontory on the far side of the bay over which the Sirocco enjoyed such a fine outlook. She looked fast and sleek, and as she steamed west for the harbour, Jules could make out a French ensign at the stern. But the warship was still dwarfed by one of the largest yachts the Englishwoman had ever seen: painted in dark blue and white, with her own helicopter deck and runabouts, this super-yacht made the 240-foot Aussie Rules seem like a bloody canoe. Le Grande Blue and her Russian owner were the talk of the town.

She turned her attention back to the table. ‘I’m pretty sure Fifi and I hired the Rhino down at the marina, where we’d tied up the big sport fisher off the Aussie Rules. We had a hut down there that we were using as a base. You know, for gathering stores before we transferred them out to the yacht, and for taking on crew, but not passengers. As far as I recall, we took him on pretty much as soon as we saw him. He had that Coast Guard background. Made him an easy pick. So he would’ve gone straight out to the Rules and never even laid eyes on Cesky, surely. Miguel merely beat Cesky down. Rhino probably would’ve killed him.’

‘Too bad he didn’t.’

‘Yeah. Too bad.’

Pappas frowned. ‘So why send somebody all the way to Darwin to chop him?’

Jules shook her head before replying, as she watched the French frigate slicing through a gentle swell. ‘I guess he did his research. Cesky, I mean. When the police seized the Aussie Rules after we got to Sydney, the crew pretty much went their separate ways. Shah, Birendra and their lads headed for home. The bloody Aussies tossed poor Mr Lee in jail - called him an illegal immigrant and deported him for Indonesia about a week later. I haven’t heard from him since. The rest of the crew were fine, probably because they were all Europeans.’ She shook her head again, in disgust now. ‘And the Yanks, of course, the refugees, they were double- plus good because they were all rich and white, right? I think Canberra was taking in as many Americans as it could at that point, probably hoping to gather enough of them down here that they’d have first call on what was left of the US military if the shit hit the fan.’

A small lift of his massive shoulders signalled Pappas’s agreement. Old news.

‘So, within a couple of days, everyone had scattered. Except for the Rhino and myself. After the cops seized the yacht, and pretty much everything on it, apart from a few trinkets and baubles I managed to stash away to pay off the Gurkhas, I was broke. The Rhino was no better off, so we talked it over and agreed to go into the … er, salvage business.’

Pappas grinned at the euphemism.

‘We’d got lucky with Greg Norman’s yacht,’ she continued, ‘and figured there might be some more easy pickings like that out there. Had to have been a couple of thousand vessels affected by the Wave, just drifting on the ocean.’

‘And how’d that work out for you?’

‘Not nearly as well as I had imagined,’ she admitted. ‘It took us a couple of weeks to organise passage back across the Pacific, and by the time we’d done that it was too late. The place was swarming with pirates who’d come up from the south. Anyway, to cut a long and dreary story short, after the Wave lifted, we decided to try our luck back on shore. That ended with us in New York, having our arses pulled out of the fire by a couple of US Army Rangers and Commando Barbie … Well, actually, we got the Rangers’ cocks off the chopping block, and they paid us back with a helicopter ride. For a slice of our profits, which turned out to be one-tenth of one-per-cent of fuck all.’

Now Pappas regarded her with a quizzical look, which may have been questioning her judgment, or even her sanity, in having gone to New York in the first place. Or maybe it was in reaction to her and Rhino having welched on a deal with a couple of heavily armed special operators. She shrugged.

‘The Rangers were cool. We ran into them about a week later. Told them what had happened. They were somewhat pissed, but then they would’ve been dead if we hadn’t stuck our noses in their business in the first place. We called it even.’

Shaking his head, as though he were having trouble keeping it all straight, Nick Pappas checked his digital recorder to make sure he still had disk space.

‘So, anyway,’ said Jules, ‘the Rhino and I had been working together for quite a while by the time Cesky made his first attempt on us, back last April or whenever it was. I guess he decided on a two-for-one deal. As somebody who’s not unfamiliar with the odd scam, I do have to give him credit for how he put it together. He played us like a pair of fools, led us by the nose all the way into New York and put us exactly where he wanted us - right in the middle of a bloody war, where he could have us slotted and nobody would even notice. Unfortunately for him, he should’ve hired a better class of goon. But then, even if he had, I don’t know that they’d have been much chop against the Bond-girl fantasy we ran into. Seriously, Nick, I don’t know that 007 himself would have stood much of a chance against her.’

The waitress returned with a single shot of coffee in a small stainless-steel cup. Pappas nodded before downing it in one swallow and turning back towards Julianne.

‘Yeah, Shah told me a little about this woman. All second-hand from you, of course. She sounds interesting.’

‘Interesting?’ she laughed. ‘I suppose so.’

‘She wasn’t special forces,’ said Pappas, sounding very sure of himself. ‘She must’ve been NIA. Or possibly Echelon. They’ve got some scary fuckers working for them, let me tell you. And they’re all grumpy as hell since the Vancouver treaty dragged them into the light of day. Yeah, it’s interesting … I wonder what she was doing there. They almost never operate in-house.’

He seemed so intrigued by the woman who had saved their lives in Manhattan, and surprisingly confident about her possible back story, that it gave Jules pause to wonder whether Nick Pappas’s own background might’ve involved a tad more skulduggery and spooking about the place than was seemly. Even for an old boy of the Special Air Service.

‘I’d very much like to visit Rhino, if I could,’ she told him. ‘Do you think that might be possible? I’ve been sick with worry.’

He thumbed off the power switch on his digital recorder and relaxed just a little, reclining back in his chair and spinning the tiny stainless-steel espresso cup on its stainless-steel saucer. A terrible affectation, in Julianne’s opinion. The stainless steel, that was. Coffee should be served in a proper cup.