with interest, and that was the end of that. Of course, there were people who got in his way. There were protesters. The police launched an inquiry. And do you know what? They were all murdered. You only had to sneeze at Drevin and someone would call round at your house with a machine gun. Kill you. Kill your family. Kill everyone who knew you. It was easier to keep quiet and, believe me, after a while, people did just that.
“So Drevin is in with the mafiya. He’s in with the yakuza. And he’s in with the triads. And of course, once these people know him, they’re not going to leave him alone. Not that Drevin cares. He’s got as much money as anyone could possibly want; but the funny thing is, people like that—they always want more. So he keeps working with them. He becomes, if you like, the banker for half the criminal organizations in the world. The yakuza are selling Russian energetics weapons to terrorist groups; the triads are running drugs out of Burma and Afghanistan; the mafiya are moving into drugs and prostitution throughout the West: Drevin provides the cash flow. I would say that around the world there are hundreds of dirty deals done every day and Drevin’s money is behind just about all of them.”
“If you know so much about him, why don’t you arrest him?” Alex asked. His head was spinning. He had just spent almost a week living with this man and he was trying to marry what Byrne was saying with what he had himself observed. He had guessed that Drevin was no saint; but he had never suspected anything like this.
“We’re going to arrest him,” Byrne replied. “I told you. We’ve been investigating him for over a year. But when you’re dealing with the really big criminals, Alex, it’s not as easy as you might think. I mean, look at Al Capone. He was one of America’s worst gangsters. Nobody knows how many people he had killed. But despite all the work of the FBI, in the end all they could get him for was fiddling his income tax. It’s the same with Drevin.
“He’s clever; he’s covered his back. A deal here, a deal there—he leaves no trace. We get whispers and hints that he’s involved, but it’s like trying to build a castle out of individual grains of sand. Witnesses are too scared to talk. Anyone who comes forward gets killed. Even so, slowly but surely, we’ve been building a case against him. The State Department has collected over two thousand documents. There are transcripts, tape and video recordings, photographs. There’s been a team of thirty people working round the clock for months; there still is. And they’ve all had to be protected. From the start, we’ve been afraid that Drevin might try to get to them. He might even send people in to destroy the evidence. Mercenaries. Suicide bombers. I wouldn’t put anything past him. So we’ve stored it all somewhere really safe.”
“Where?”
“That’s why I was interested just now when you mentioned Washington. The case against Drevin is lodged in probably the safest place in the United States. Inside the Pentagon.” Byrne got up and helped himself to a bottle of water. All the talking had made him look more exhausted than ever.
“We plan to arrest Drevin one week from today. I hardly need tell you that this information is highly classified. The real problem is Ark Angel. The British government’s invested billions in the space station, and when we arrest Drevin, the whole project could collapse. That’s why we’ve had to wait. We’ve had to be absolutely sure that we’ve tied up all the loose ends before we make our move.
“Of course, MI6 know what we’re doing. There’s no way we could stop them finding out. We’ve shown them the evidence but they don’t want to believe it. They can’t afford to believe it. When Drevin goes down, there’s going to be a scandal that’ll rip the whole financial market apart. But that’s too bad. The man is a crook; he belongs in jail.”
“So why do you need me?” Alex asked.
Byrne sat down again. “Because something’s happened,” he admitted. “Something we don’t understand—
and you seem to be in the middle of it.”
“Force Three.”
“Exactly. Here’s a group of people who call themselves eco-warriors and who seem to have picked a fight with Drevin, supposedly because he wiped out a few bird species on Flamingo Bay. But we don’t know where they came from. We don’t know who they are. We even wonder if Drevin himself isn’t using them as some sort of diversion to distract us from our investigation. Your Mrs Jones is trying to get to the bottom of it right now—but we’re running out of time. I’m worried Drevin is going to pull some kind of stunt in the next seven days and slip through our fingers. Maybe he’s going to disappear. He could head off to South America, or there are parts of Australia where we’d never find him. A man with his connections wouldn’t find it difficult to build himself a new identity. We need to know if he’s planning to leave and, if so, where he might be going. That’s where you come in.
I’ve already got one agent inside his organization, but that’s not enough. Drevin’s too careful. He’s not giving anything away. But you’re different. You’re right in the middle of the family. You’re buddies with Paul Drevin. And the best thing is, they don’t know anything about you. You’re above suspicion. They certainly don’t know about your connection with us.
“Tomorrow they’re going to take you with them to Flamingo Bay. It’s like Skeleton Key all over again. We can’t get anyone in there. He’s got the rocket base on the south of the island and the whole place is protected by his own private security force. It’s not even American soil. The island is ten miles off the coast of Barbados and it just happens to belong to the British. Drevin leased it from your government when he built his space centre there. So we can’t go storming in.
“All I’m asking is for you to hang in there for one more week and report back if you see anything going on.
It’ll just be a vacation as far as you’re concerned. You’re Drevin’s guest—”
“I was Drevin’s guest,” Alex cut in. “I told you. I’m leaving.”
“Why?”
Alex shrugged. “What you’ve told me about him—I didn’t much like him anyway. And now I don’t want to go anywhere near him.”
“You won’t be in any danger.”
“That’s what you said last time, Mr Byrne. And I nearly got killed. Two of your agents did get killed.”
“And if you hadn’t helped us, thousands more people would have died too.” Byrne looked genuinely puzzled. “What’s the matter, Alex? Are you scared? Is it because of what happened with the sniper?” Alex felt a twinge of pain in his chest. It happened every time anyone reminded him of his bullet wound.
Perhaps it always would. “I’m not scared,” he said. “I just don’t like being used.”
“We only use you because you’re so damn good,” Byrne replied. “And this time I’m not lying to you. You’re not working for MI6 and you’re not working for us. I just want you to continue with your vacation and if you see Drevin packing his suitcases or if a submarine turns up in the middle of the night, give us a call.
I’ve already told you, I’ve got an agent on the island and there’ll be a back-up team just ten miles away on
