the map. Our task is this. We are to assassinate eight extremely wealthy and influential people exactly one month from now. They will all be in one place at one time, which provides us with the ideal opportunity. It has been left to us to decide on the method.”
Zeljan Kurst had been the head of the police force in Yugoslavia during the 1980s and had been famous for his love of classical music—particularly Mozart—and extreme violence. It was said that he would interrogate prisoners with either an opera or a symphony playing in the background and that those who survived the ordeal would never be able to listen to that piece of music again.
But he had seen the breakup of his country on the horizon and had decided to quit before he was out of a job.
And so he had changed sides. He had no family, no friends, and nowhere he could call home. He needed work, and he knew that Scorpia would pay him extremely well.
His eyes flickered around the table, waiting for a response. “You will have read in the newspapers,” he continued, “that the G8 summit is taking place in Rome this November. This is a meeting of the eight most powerful
heads of government, and as usual they will talk a great deal, have their photographs taken, consume a lot of expensive food and wine . . . and do absolutely nothing.
They are of no interest to us. They are, in effect, irrelevant.
“However, at the same time, another meeting will be taking place on the other side of the world. It has been arranged in direct competition with the G8 summit, and you might say that the timing is something of a publicity stunt. Nonetheless, it has already attracted much more attention than G8. Indeed, the politicians have almost been forgotten. Instead, the eyes of the world are on Reef Island, just off the coast of northwest Australia in the Timor Sea.
“The press have given this alternative summit a name: Reef Encounter. A group of eight people will be coming together, and their names will be known to you. One of them is a pop singer named Rob Goldman. He has apparently raised millions for charity with concerts all over the world. One is a billionaire, among the top-ten richest men on the planet. He created a huge property empire, but he is now giving his fortune away to developing countries. There is an ex-president of the United States. A famous Hollywood actress—Eve Taylor. She actually owns the island. And so on.” Kurst didn’t even try to keep the contempt out of his voice. “They are amateurs, do- gooders . . . but they are also powerful and popular, which makes them dangerous.
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S N A K E H E A D
“Their aim, as they put it, is ‘to make poverty history.’
In order to achieve this, they have made certain demands, including the cancellation of world debt. They want millions of dollars to be sent to Africa to fight AIDS and malaria. They have called for an end to war in the Middle East. It will come as no surprise to those of us in this room that there are many governments and business interests who do not agree with these aims. After all, it is not possible to give to the poor without taking from the rich, and anyway, poverty has its uses. It keeps people in their place. It also helps to hold prices down.
“A representative of one of the governments has been in contact with us. He has decided that the Reef Encounter should end the moment it begins—certainly before any of these meddlers begin to address the television cameras of the world—and that is our assignment.
Disrupting the conference is not enough. All eight of them are to be killed. The fact that they will all be in one place at one time makes it easier for us. Not one of them must leave Reef Island alive.”
One of the other men leaned forward. His name was Levi Kroll. He was an Israeli and about fifty years old.
Very little of his face could be seen. Most of it was covered by a beard, and there was a patch covering the eye that he had once, by accident, shot out. “It is a simple matter,” he rasped. “I could go out this afternoon and hire an Apache helicopter gunship. Let us say two thousand rounds of 30-millimeter cannon fire and a few Hellfire air- to-
ground laser-guided missiles and this conference would no longer exist.”
“Unfortunately, it isn’t quite as straightforward as that,” Kurst replied. “As I said in my opening remarks, this is a particularly challenging assignment. Why? Because our client does not wish the Reef Island eight to become martyrs. If they were seen to be assassinated, it would only add weight to their cause. And so he has spec-ified that the deaths must seem accidental. In fact, this is critical. There cannot be even the tiniest amount of doubt or suspicion.”
There was a soft murmur around the table as the other members of Scorpia took this new information on board.
To kill one person in a way that would arouse no suspicion was simple. But to do the same for eight people on a remote island that would doubtless have a tight security system . . . that was quite another matter.
“There are certain chemical nerve agents . . . ,” someone muttered. He was French, exquisitely dressed with a black silk handkerchief poking out of his top pocket. His voice was matter-of-fact.
“How about R-5?” Mr. Mikato suggested. He was a Japanese man with a diamond set in his tooth and—it was rumored—Yakuza tattoos all over his body. “It’s the virus that we supplied to Herod Sayle. Perhaps we could feed it into the island’s water supply . . .”
“Gentlemen, both of these methods would be effective but still might show up in the subsequent investigation.”
S N A K E H E A D
Kurst shook his head. “What we require is a natural disaster, but one that we control. We need to eliminate the entire island with everybody on it, but in such a way that no questions will ever be asked.”
He paused, then turned to the man sitting at the end of the table opposite him. “Major Yu?” he asked. “Have you given the matter your consideration?”
“Absolutely . . .”
