Wilt and I were eating dinner at a café on the quay that evening as the sun eased into the sea. We were wearing our windbreakers against the chilly breeze off the ocean. I was trying to concentrate on what he was saying, but Clarinda Day was in the back of my mind. Maybe it’s my hormones. I asked Wilt about her. He eyed me suspiciously. “She’s something, huh?”
“How did she get on your boat?”
“We needed someone who could actually sail a schooner, and somehow she showed up with two other women. Our guys have a lot of skills, but sailing isn’t one of them.” He shrugged. “I have no idea where she got the boat. I don’t think its hers and I doubt if Uncle Sugar owns it. Maybe she borrowed it.”
“Probably,” I said. I could readily believe that there were a dozen guys with yachts willing to lend theirs to Clarinda Day. Maybe it belonged to the pope, or, more likely, the president of Greece.
We were sitting where we could watch Catherine. The Russian yacht was lit up with bulbs along every rail and up to the top of the mast from bow and stern. She was ready to get her photo taken for the cover of a yachting magazine.
We poured more wine and sipped.
Automatically, I looked around at the folks eating nearby, at the strollers on the quay… then it registered. I recognized a guy who was three tables down. It was one of the Russians from the yacht that Rick O’Shea had photographed. In his mid-thirties, close-cropped haircut, clean-shaven. Yep, that was him. He was arranging his backpack in his lap.
“Do you have a gun on you?” I asked Wilt while keeping my eye on the Russian.
“No. Should I?”
Now the guy had both hands in his backpack. One of his hands was making a twisting motion.
“Let’s get the hell outta here,” I said, and jumped up.
Wilt Cogsworth didn’t need a brief. He was right with me. I shoved him out onto the quay as I looked back over my shoulder. The Russian had pulled a submachine gun out of the backpack, and it looked like it had a suppressor on the muzzle.
We crossed the quay at a dead run. Bullets spanged on the concrete and snapped past as people screamed. The only thing that saved us was that the quay wasn’t more than twenty feet wide, a distance I made in three strides.
We both swan dived into the water and surfaced alongside a fishing boat, then paddled toward the harbor. We were nearing the front of the Med-moored boat when the Russian ran into view on the quay to hose off a burst in our direction. Wilt and I both went under.
Four minutes later, three boats along, we inched our dripping heads up and surveyed the quay. People were lying on the concrete, women were still screaming, and the Russian was nowhere in sight.
The sun had set. Catherine was creeping up on her anchor. Lots of people on deck. Then the anchor came free of the water and she swung, turning the bow toward the harbor entrance. On our left, Agamemnon was still tied to the quay. Everyone was on deck, watching.
Wilt and I heaved ourselves out of the water and onto the quay. We stood, dirty water pouring off us.
Wilt started toward Agamemnon, but I held his arm. “Later. The observatory. Let’s check.”
We began to trot. Some Italian cops were moving along the quay with their pistols out, searching the crowd for the guy with a gun. Wilt and I went in the other direction, leaving wet footprints with every step.
Off the quay, we ran up the hill. Along our street. Slowed as we approached the house. The door was open.
“This ain’t good,” I said, stopped and took a good look around. Without a gun, I felt absolutely naked. This would be a bad time to blunder into an ambush. I didn’t want to meet that Russian or his submachine gun again.
Working along close to the wall, trying to see everything, we approached the house. I went in first. Rick O’Shea was lying just inside the door. He had been shot three or four times. Spent cartridges littered the floor. He still had his pistol in his hand, so I picked it up, checking to ensure it was loaded. It was. I clicked off the safety and crept into the house.
Someone had shot the shit out of the telescope and computer. The windows were full of holes. A dozen spent cartridges under foot. Fred and Tom were in the kitchen on the floor, dead as Rick O’Shea. One of them had a gun in his pocket, so I took it and passed it to Wilt, who was behind me taking it all in. I rescued my carry-on from the guest bedroom; I was going to need clean dry clothes. Then I checked out the satellite phone, which was undamaged. Somewhere here was book with the daily encryption codes. If they got that…
But they didn’t. I grabbed the book and unplugged the phone.
“Let’s get back to the boat,” Wilt said. There was nothing we could do for the three dead company guys, so I followed him outside and passed him the phone and code book.
“I gotta get my other guys,” I said. ‘’They’re at a hotel. Meet you there.”
Armanti Hall and Doc Gordon were on the hotel restaurant patio lingering over dinner when they saw me come up the street. Taking in the sodden clothes and the carry-on, Armanti asked, “What happened?”
“Went for a swim. Let’s go up to your room. I’ll change while you get your stuff together. We gotta get out of here.”
In the room I stripped and threw my wet clothes into the shower stall. As I did I told the two covert operators about Wilt’s and my adventure on the quay, and about the hit on Rick, Fred, and Tom.
“Apparently Rick opened the door and the shooter started blasting, probably with a silenced submachine gun. Rick got it first, then the other two in the kitchen. Not a lot of blood—they died quickly. I got the code book and satellite phone. Get packed and let’s get out of here.”
We did. I stood watch in front of the building in my damp windbreaker while my guys paid their hotel bills with credit cards. Getting arrested for stiffing a hotel next time they were in Italy would be embarrassing, definitely not career enhancing.
We hoofed it down the hill and out the quay to Agamemnon. The night was clear, the sky full of stars. Catherine the Great was no longer in sight. Wilt was standing in the cockpit with Clarinda Day.
“Hey, trifle,” I said as I stepped aboard. Okay, I was nervous, and not about the shootings. This was too much woman.
“Hey, Tommy,” she said.
As Armanti and Doc got aboard, Clarinda began issuing orders. From somewhere below I heard the rumble of a diesel. As the lines came off she used the engine to inch ahead while the guys and gals on the bow raised the anchor. She spun the wheel, and in less time than it takes to tell, we were underway toward the entrance of the harbor, which was to the west, or perhaps slightly northwest.
“Which way did Catherine go?” I asked Wilt.
“South around the point.”
“Help me set up the sat phone.”
Grafton came on the line two minutes after I got through to Langley. It was morning there. “Yes, Tommy.”
I told him about the events of the evening. “We’re underway on this yacht, but we’ll never catch Catherine the Great.”
“I’ll get the Navy on it. Have Mr. Cogsworth take you to the LHD. We’ll get you some other transportation. And stay by the phone. I’ll call you back when I know something.”
“Yes, sir.” I hung up.
Sat on deck with my back to the little cabin and looked at the night. My hand ached, so I massaged it. I was sure I had at least one green-twig fracture.
Of course, the question of the hour was how Korjev’s thugs found out about the company observation house. Maybe Rick O’Shea and his guys did bad tradecraft. Or perhaps there was a watcher watching them that they never spotted. Or maybe someone sold us out. Maybe that someone was curious Rick.
I pulled out his pistol and checked it. A Beretta. Yep, magazine loaded and one in the chamber. Nice shooter, and it hadn’t done him any good at all. Why did he open the door to a dude with a burp gun? There was a peephole in the door. Why didn’t he look?
Treachery is so tacky, but man, the money that was floating around! Do one dirty little deal and get set up for life. Korjev would be appreciative. Buy that yacht, live on the Riviera, fuck hot young women until your dick wears out. Yeah, that would tempt a lot of guys. Maybe Rick, or Fred, or Tom. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Any way you cut it, that Russian on the quay with the bullet hose knew exactly who Wilt and I were, and someone had decided precisely what they wanted done about us. Wilt and I were damned lucky we were still breathing and not leaking blood. Yeah, that’s me, ol’ Lucky Carmellini.
The guys and gals rigged the sails and the engine died. I sat there thinking about billions of dollars… and the sight of Rick, Fred and Tom lying on the floor, full of holes, dead as men can get.
Jake Grafton had a full plate. The Washington Post had broken the real story that morning: Billions of dollars had been deposited in the Bank of Scandinavia branch in Tallinn, Estonia, and the depositors had wire-transferred the money all over the earth, according to the Post. An unknown amount had come to the United States. This banking scandal, according to the Post writers, was much larger than the Panama Papers scandal of 2016, which had involved apparent drug syndicates laundering their profits. That breach in banking ethics had involved millions—this one involved billions.
Jake Grafton read the story before he left his condo in Roslyn. He had even watched a little of the commentary from the talking heads on television, who apparently had no source but the Post. Yet.
In the office, he had a pile of telephone messages to answer. He called Reem Kiddus at the White House back first. “Where did that Post story come from?” Kiddus snapped.
“Not from here,” Grafton said. “My guess is someone at the FBI called a reporter friend and dumped the load. Does it matter?”
“Two opposition senators are already on television accusing the administration of a cover-up. They want the attorney general to send this to the special counsel to add to his Russian-influence investigation.”
Grafton took a deep breath before he spoke. “Reem, you knew this was coming. The only question was when. The appropriate arms of the government are investigating. When they have some facts, not rumors, they will be announced at the proper time. Call Levy and give him hell for leaks from his organization.”
Kiddus broke the connection without saying goodbye. A few minutes later, Tommy Carmellini called on a secure satellite link and Grafton learned about the shootings in Capri and the sailing of Korjev’s yacht, Catherine the Great. After he finished talking to Tommy, he called the agency op center and learned that they were already talking with the Navy, which knew immediately of Catherine’s departure from Capri. Other departments reported. The State Department was talking to the Italian authorities about the murder of American nationals in Capri. Their police had just discovered the bodies. The Catherine’s encrypted messages were being attacked by both Navy and NRA crypto-analysts. Dossiers of Korjev’s contacts for the last few years, and people photographed in his company or coming and going from his yacht, were being compiled. Already intelligence analysts had a tentative list of names that was growing by the hour.
A staff meeting in the director’s conference room brainstormed about stopping Catherine on the high seas. “Korjev probably knew or could guess that we intended to make a surprise raid on his yacht in Capri harbor,” Grafton told them. “If he has tossed his computer and all his records overboard, there is nothing there now to be found.”
A senior woman shook her head. “He’s using that computer to encrypt messages and burping out a steady stream of them. If we grab the boat while that computer is still aboard, we might be able to snatch it.”
Grafton wasn’t so sure. “The computers we really want are at the Russian banks that sent money to Estonia. Have we identified them?”
“Yes. The server at the branch bank in Estonia had those.”
“So can we or NSA hack into those bank records, or do we need to think about a surprise raid?”
“The National Command Authority will have to approve of any operations in Russia,” someone pointed out. Superfluously, Jake thought, although he didn’t say it. He suspected that the mood at the White House this morning meant that he could get authorization for anything short of nuclear war. The real question was, did he want it?
He wondered aloud about how the Russians were responding to this morning’s Post revelations, and the specialists in the Op Center soon gave him an answer. The Russian government denied it had any role whatsoever in bank fraud. If any governments thought some Russians did, international agencies should give the Russian government their evidence, and decisions would be made about whether the evidence was sufficient to prosecute.
“Putin’s a hoot, isn’t he?” Jack Norris, the vice director, remarked.
When the department heads left, Jake and Norris put their heads together. “If Yegan Korjev is our guy,” Jake said, “we have to tie him to this some way. Just knowing who he has been talking to won’t get us anywhere.”
“We can sweat anyone we can identify, or the FBI can.”
Grafton didn’t want to wait. He wanted to seize the offensive and make Korjev play defense. And he wanted to put the fear in anyone who had purchased Korjev’s brand of financial shenanigans. He said as much to Jack Norris.
“Stop the yacht on the high seas on some pretext or other and search it from stem to stern,” Norris suggested. “The Russian government will squawk, but so what?”
“Will they? They’ve been capturing Ukranian ships on the high seas. Maybe they have a full plate.”
“If they don’t squawk,” Norris shot back, “we can leak it. Make damn sure the press gets it. Get rumors started. If your source is right, Korjev is dirty, and the fact that we are after him will cause things to happen.”
“What if he’s being set up?”
“By whom?”
“The Russian government, possibly. Korjev could be a dangle.”
“Jake, this bank thing is going thermonuclear. There’s no way on earth to put a cork in it.”
“What will happen when it does?” Grafton mused.
“Man, if we knew that we wouldn’t have to snatch Korjev.”
If Reem Kiddus thought he had big troubles this morning, Jake thought, wait until tomorrow’s troubles come bursting through the White House door.
The director mulled it for at least a minute, weighing the pros and cons. Then he called Reem Kiddus and explained what he wanted to do. Kiddus said he would get back to him.
Grafton and Norris went to the Op Center and looked at the position of Catherine the Great. She was steaming southeast toward the Strait of Messina at eighteen knots. The position of the LPH and its task force was also there on the map, south of Capri. Catherine and the LPH were only a hundred miles apart now.
“If she gets through the Strait of Messina before we get authorization, we will need our Navy near the tip of Greece. Get them there before Catherine gets there. Find out how long it will take.”
That answer he soon had. Thirty hours, unless Catherine sped up, then less. There was a carrier task force in the eastern Med. Helicopters and Ospreys could transfer people back and forth.
Jake took one last look at the positions on the map. There was no doubt in his mind that if the Americans dithered, Catherine was going through the Strait of Messina, around the Peloponnesus into the Aegean, then north through the Dardanelles into the Sea of Marmara, through the Bosporus into the Black Sea, and on to a Russian port.
Jake Grafton could feel Korjev’s panic. Only a panicked man would have shot those Americans on Capri. He should have pulled Catherine’s hook and sailed away without a word. Maybe the shootings were Korjev’s first mistake.
Yet perhaps Korjev had been as surprised as Tommy Carmellini. Perhaps he was being set up. After all, Ilin had merely pointed at an obvious suspect, Putin’s money wizard. The Americans would have gotten around to Korjev before long. If Korjev was being set up, he was skedaddling in the wrong direction—that is, if he were still alive.
Grafton asked the Op Center staff how much fuel Catherine had aboard. When and where did she last fill her bunkers? Could she make a Russian port without a port call? He had the answers in twenty minutes. Catherine had topped her tanks in Naples before calling at Capri, and yes, with full tanks she could sail half-way around the world at thirteen knots. At eighteen knots, any port in the Mediterranean or Black Sea was within range.
He and Norris went back to the office to write messages to the Navy authorities in the Med: “Get ready to stop Catherine.”
The television was on. After the executive assistants had departed with the messages, he flipped channels. All the news shows were concentrating on the Post story, politicians were in front of cameras, and ignorant experts were pontificating.
Grafton killed the sound, then called Reem Kiddus on the secure line.
He quickly briefed the White House chief of staff on the shooting in Capri. “I want to stop that yacht and search it. Interrogate Korjev.”
Kiddus said, “You’re going too fast.”
“We’re not going fast enough,” Jake shot back. “We are either going to get ahead and stay ahead of this story or we’ll be road kill. Why do you think that kid was snatched in Estonia?”
“To shut the parents up.”
“No. The kidnappers took a photo of the little girl, killed her, and threw her body in a canal. They knew it was just a matter of time before someone found the body, then the parents would talk. That is what they wanted to happen.”
Kiddus sounded puzzled. “You’re saying that someone wanted the branch bank’s money river uncovered.”
“Someone.”
“Who?” Kiddus was plainly puzzled.
“Guesses are three for a quarter. Probably the same someone who killed three CIA officers a few hours ago in Capri and took some shots at another on the quay at the harbor, in full view of Korjev’s yacht. Korjev immediately weighed anchor and cleared out. One possible reason is that he realized he was being made a fall guy. Every tale needs a villain.”
“Maybe Korjev ordered the Capri hits.”
“If he did he’s a fool. He may be a lot of things, but I doubt that description applies.”
Kiddus took an audible deep breath. “So you want to talk to Korjev.”
“I think he’s panicked. He knows the game is getting bloody and he may be next. He might just talk. I want to be there to talk to him.”
“So how do we do this?”
“We need a request from the Italian government to stop that yacht, and we need it as quickly as we can get it. Like within a few hours.”
“I’ll get on it,” Reem Kiddus said.
About an hour after I talked to Grafton, Clarinda Day came forward and sat down on the deck beside me, with our backs to the cabin. I confess, I had been thinking about her, and had put off going below to pee so I wouldn’t have to pass her and converse. Isn’t that a hell of a way to be?
“Nice boat,” I said to her.
“I borrowed it from a Greek friend of mine.”
“He needs to spend some money on maintenance.”
“He’s not rich. He inherited it.”
I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I could feel her presence, her feminine essence. I thought maybe she was a witch.
She inspected the sails as the breeze played with her hair. “So how is your life going, Tommy?”
“They keep me busy.”
We sat in silence watching the jib pull. There was just enough light from the masthead and running lights to see the sails, taut and rigid against the sky full of stars. My windbreaker was dry now and felt good. The Beretta in my hip pocket was lumpy, but I liked the feel of it.
“I once thought,” she began, “that you and I…”
“I did too,” I said. “Years ago.”
We sat there for another five minutes in silence. I could feel the heat of her presence. Finally, she arose and went back to the cockpit. I followed her, peed in the little marine head, then went back on deck and sat down beside the satellite phone.
The Agamemnon ran on under the stars, pitching gently, riding the back of the sea.