Carolyn Howorth couldn't resist. She stepped into the yawning mouth of the white tunnel and struck a sexy pose, hips cocked sharply to one side, left hand on her hip, right arm straight overhead. 'See anything you like, boys?' she asked.
Dropping her arm, she swished out of the tunnel, smiling sweetly at the cruise line security guard waiting outside.
He looked puzzled. 'Did you say something, ma'am?' he asked.
'Not really,' she said. 'Just checking to see if these things are equipped for sound.'
'No, ma'am. It just takes your picture.'
'Oh, I see. Is that all?'
She glanced up over her left shoulder. She could see the line of windows up near the ceiling of the cavernous room, the office where Charlie Dean was making nice with the Royal Sky Line security people, and wondered if he'd just gotten an eyeful. She didn't see him, however, and so she walked on down the line to the end of the conveyor, claiming her handbag, her camera, and her laptop computer. She asked the guard for a hand check on her camera. He had her remove her camera from its case and looked down into the lens, but Carolyn noticed that his eyes were watching hers, checking for nervousness or other telltale clues.
'Open the computer, please, miss,' the guard told her, setting the camera aside. 'Thank you. Now turn it on for me.'
She pressed the power switch and they waited for the machine to boot up. 'Damned Vista,' she told him. 'It tries to boot everything at once and takes forever.'
Finally, though, the screen came up. Satisfied, the guard motioned to her to close it up and put it away. 'Thank you,' he said, apparently satisfied. 'Have a nice cruise!'
'Thank you,' she told him. She was wondering if he had any idea what was possible in computer technology these days. It wouldn't be hard at all to have a working laptop exactly like this one, which booted to a full screen and yet had free space enough inside for a disassembled gun or high explosives or almost anything else she cared to smuggle onto the ship.
Presumably, they'd checked for that sort of thing when her laptop had gone through the carry-on scanner… but still.
In fact, her machine wasn't at all what it appeared to be, or not entirely, at least. The computer part did work.
Technically, Carolyn did not work for the NSA as Charlie Dean did. She was GCHQ, one of the Menwith Girls, as they were known, an employee stationed at Menwith Hill, in Yorkshire, of the highly secret British eavesdropping agency that was closely partnered with America's NSA. Carolyn had worked with Dean before, in an op targeting the Russian mafia.
Through the double glass doors and onto the dock. A gangway festooned with bunting extended up to the entry port on the Atlantis Queen's port side, where a ship's officer waited for her.
He checked the electronic pad he was holding. 'Good afternoon, Ms. Carroll,' he said with a pleasant smile. 'May I see your ticket and your passkey, please?'
'Certainly.' She fished into her handbag and produced both. For this operation, Carolyn was traveling as Judith Carroll and all of the electronic information about her in the system, save for her nationality and her gender, was completely false.
The officer swiped her card through a reader and handed it back to her. 'Here you are, Ms. Carroll. We'll keep your ticket for you in the bursar's office. Your passkey serves as your ticket and your ID during your cruise. You have your ID bracelet?'
'Oh, yes. Somewhere here.' Again she fumbled through her bag, producing a slender strip of white plastic with a small metal clasp.
'I don't need it, miss,' he told her. 'All of your information is in the ship's computer. I was just going to tell you that you should keep your passkey with you at all times during the cruise… but that if you want to go to the pool, the spa, the sauna, or any of the other shipboard facilities where you might not want to have to carry the key along, you can wear that bracelet instead.'
'But what's it all forV she asked him, giving him her best wide-eyed innocent's look.
'Security, miss. It's for your safety.' He pressed several keys on his electronic pad. 'Right, then! You're all checked in. Stateroom Six-oh-nine-one. That's straight ahead to the elevator, then up to Deck Six and follow the signs. Have a nice voyage!'
'Thank you…' She glanced at his name badge. 'Mr. Norton, is it?'
'Lieutenant Norton, miss.'
'Maybe I'll see you around the boat?'
He grinned at her. 'Could be. But it's a ship, not a boat.'
She started to reply, but he was already turning to greet the next person coming up the gangway.
Not a problem. Norton wasn't part of the security staff in any case. She needed to see if she could run into Foster, Ghailiani, or Llewellyn sometime during the course of the voyage.
In the meantime, she was going to enjoy this assignment. A four-week cruise to the eastern Mediterranean? With stops in Madeira, Greece, Turkey, and Israel? And all at the Company's expense! Now that was luxury!
She was looking forward to checking out her accommodations for the next glorious month.
Yeah, this was going to be fun.
Mohamed Ghailiani trudged up the steps leading to his flat, one flight up from the street just across the Itchen Toll Bridge from the center of Southampton. He was tired and he was worried. He'd tried phoning home earlier that morning, but Zahra hadn't answered. With all of the craziness going on at work lately…
He turned his key in the lock and stepped through the front door. 'Zahra?' he called.
There was no answer. Odd.
Pocketing his keys, he walked through to the living room. 'Zahra? I'm home!'
Mohamed Ghailiani was Moroccan, but his family had moved to England in 1973, when he'd been five. He was a Crown subject and thought of himself as British. He was not particularly religious, though he did go to mosque most Fridays. It was a formality, something that gave him a social connection with other members of Britain's Moroccan community.
He'd worked for Royal Star Line for six years, now.
Before that, he'd worked for a computer company in London, and before that he'd been an electronics technician in the British Army. He was good with computers.
He supposed that that was why Khalid had approached him two days ago.
Finding no one in the living room, he continued through to the kitchen. The men were waiting for him there.
'What are you —,' he began, but stopped when the two men pointed handguns squarely at his face.
'Shut up, you,' one of the gunmen said in heavily accented English. He pointed at one of the white-painted kitchen chairs beside the table. 'Sit down. Someone wants to talk to you.'
Trembling, Ghailiani did as he was told.
Chapter 2
'I don't like it,' dean said.
'You're not being paid to like it,' the voice of William Rubens whispered in Dean's ear. 'It's necessary.'
'Oh, yes. Necessary. And all in the sacred and most holy name of national security.'
