The dashboard thermometer slowly crept up as Ryker headed further and further south. What had started as a more than chilly minus eight when he’d taken the Range Rover into the Alps, ended up as a positively balmy sixteen Celsius by the time he was driving through the mountains of Andalusia. High up in the peaks, there was just a dusting of snow, a gentle reminder that even the Mediterranean experienced winters, though thousands of feet below, on the winding mountain passes, it was a warm, sunny, and calm day.
On taking the car into Switzerland, Ryker had headed straight for the border. Of course, he expected the couple he’d stolen the vehicle from would have reported the theft to the police as soon as they’d realized, but a simple car theft was unlikely to see an immediate cross-border search operation initiated, so Ryker was content to remain in the stolen car for the whole of his journey to southern Spain. Now, after an overnight rest in the inland Cuenca province, where he’d also been able to tend to his scrapes and cuts and obtain some more appropriate clothing, he was only half an hour from his destination near Marbella.
Marbella. Ryker had been before. It was an area so full of contrast. Beautiful coastal scenery, exclusive hotels, expensive restaurants, millionaires’ villas, and a port that regularly displayed some of the flashiest yachts in the world. It was also a hotbed of criminality, from low-level drugs and violence and other crimes that went hand in glove with the rowdy nightlife in the area, through to large-scale organized gangs, many of them headed by foreign nationals, and the majority of them at least in part focused on the import into the country of illegal drugs from Africa and the Middle East.
It was that criminal element that had once more drawn Ryker here. He’d had little chance to properly research the sparse lead he’d got in Switzerland. Largely because he’d had no means by which to retrieve the data on the hard drive from his now discarded laptop. He was simply working off what he could remember from Elliott’s cabin, together with the little extra he’d gleaned from basic internet searches on a newly purchased smartphone. He had a good enough place to start, at least. A name, a place.
According to Lange’s files, Mohammed Khaled was one of the dead men from the abattoir killings. Khaled was a dual Spanish and Moroccan national who had been something of a local criminal boss. Not a kingpin exactly, but someone who’d made himself wealthy through criminality. Now he was dead, killed by the same female assassin who was stalking Ryker and his colleagues from the botched operation in Doha a decade ago.
But what the hell did Khaled have to do with that?
Ryker left the Range Rover a couple of hundred yards from the villa entrance. Here, high up in the sierra, there were gigantic villas dotted about the rocky rise, though most of them were well-secluded behind trees, thick shrubs, and high walls. The home belonging to the deceased Mohammed Khaled, and his wife, Yasmin, was no different, and as Ryker approached the closed entrance gate, flanked either side by a handsome stone wall, he still hadn’t had even a glimpse of the villa that lay beyond.
He walked up to the intercom by the gates and pressed the buzzer.
‘Qué?’ a male voice answered a few seconds later.
Ryker noticed that the intercom also contained a discreet camera. He looked directly into the lens, trying his best to look… normal.
‘I’m here to speak to Mrs Khaled,’ Ryker said in plain old English, even though he could get by just fine in Spanish if he wanted.
‘She’s not here,’ the man replied.
‘When will she be back?’
‘She won’t be. You should go.’
‘You haven’t even asked who I am. Why I’m here.’
There was a click and then silence. Ryker waited for a few seconds as if there was an outside chance the gates would suddenly start to slide open.
They didn’t.
He pressed on the intercom again.
‘I told you—’
‘Please tell Mrs Khaled I’m here to talk about her husband’s murder.’
Silence.
‘Tell her I know who did it. That she killed my friends too.’
Click. Then silence again. Ryker remained rooted. Calm.
Success this time. Seconds later he heard footsteps crunching across gravel. Two sets. With a mechanical whir, the gate slowly slid open, disappearing behind the wall.
Ryker was left standing face-to-face with two men. One was tall and brutish, a snarl on his face. Muscles rippled under his T-shirt. He was grasping a pistol in his right hand.
The other man was shorter, plainer, a little more smartly dressed in linen trousers and a partly buttoned-up shirt. He had no weapon in his hand, but he was the one Ryker focused on.
‘Are you armed?’ the shorter man said.
‘No,’ Ryker replied.
He did have a knife, though he’d left it in the Range Rover. He had nothing on him at all here. No phone, no wallet. Just his clothes and the key fob for the car.
The shorter man stepped forward and patted Ryker up and down while his friend with the gun stood watch.
‘My name’s James Ryker. What’s yours?’
No answer to the question.
‘You work for Mrs Khaled?’
Nothing.
‘Okay, come this way,’ the guy said when he’d finished what he was doing.
Ryker headed off behind him. The man with the gun waited a couple of seconds then moved in tow. He pressed the barrel of the gun into Ryker’s back. Ryker rolled his eyes. Perhaps these two thought they were doing a decent job of security here. They weren’t. It might put off an everyday Joe, but it would take seconds for Ryker to put them both on the ground if he wanted.
The most interesting thing was that they were here at all. Ryker took in the gorgeous villa as they approached. The Khaleds certainly weren’t shy of a few euros. The two men escorted Ryker into the home, through an airy hallway, into a back room, and out through the wide-open bifold doors onto a patio. Beyond the patio was a sprawling lawn with a glistening pool at the far end. To his right was an outdoor dining table and six chairs. One of the chairs was taken by a woman.
The shell of a woman, at least. Dressed in a pink velvety tracksuit, she was sunken into the chair. Her features were similarly sunken, her eyes bloodshot, her cheeks droopy, her light, dyed hair mussy. Her skin was ashen.
She fixed a weary gaze on Ryker.
‘What do you want?’
Her English was good. Better than the guy’s was.
‘To talk to you about the woman who killed your husband.’
Yasmin Khaled glared at Ryker for a few seconds. ‘You know who she is?’
The way she said it suggested she didn’t.
‘I know that she killed my friends too,’ Ryker said. ‘And she’s trying to kill me.’
Yasmin kept her eyes on Ryker though didn’t say a word for a while. ‘Sit down.’
Ryker did so. The short guy went over to Yasmin and they had a hushed exchange. Then the two guys moved off, over to the pool area, where they remained lurking, watching, though out of earshot. Ryker noticed there was a crate by the pool filled with various toys and inflatables. No sign of the kids here today though.
‘So?’ Yasmin said.
‘I’m sorry for what happened,’ Ryker said.
‘Did you know Mo?’
Ryker shook his head.
‘And you don’t know me. So how can you be sorry?’
‘The woman who killed—’
‘The woman who killed my husband came to my home. She tied me up. She threatened to kill me. She tied wire around my arm and nearly sliced it right off my body.’
She lifted the sleeve of her tracksuit top to reveal the circular gouge in the skin on her wrist. Ryker clenched his teeth.
‘Why would she do that?’ Ryker said.
Yasmin didn’t answer.
‘Did you know her?’ he asked.
‘I’d never seen her before.’
‘Do you know anything about her at all? Her name? Why?’
Yasmin’s eyes narrowed a little now. ‘I hoped that was why you were here. To help me. If not, then why have you come?’
‘I will help. I want to find her, and I want to stop her. Anything you can tell me will help me with that.’
Yasmin said nothing for a good while. Ryker looked around the grounds. To the pool, to the two men who weren’t being discreet in the slightest with their eyes constantly on him.
His eyes settled back on the villa. Yasmin’s arm was outstretched as she played with the purple flowers of the vines that rose up all along this portion of the back of the house.
‘Do you like this?’ Yasmin said.
‘Yeah,’ Ryker said. ‘Bougainvillea.’
She nodded. ‘Pretty, isn’t it?’
‘It is.’
‘But it’s also full of thorns. Every time I try to take the dead flowers out I get spiked and scratched all over my hands and wrists.’
She carried on twiddling, Ryker’s gaze focused on the grim scar on her wrist.
‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘What is?’
‘That something so beautiful can also cause so much pain.’
Ryker held Yasmin’s eye for a second. What was she getting at?
‘You mean the killer?’ he said.
‘Have you met her?’
Ryker shook his head. ‘But I know she killed my friends. Three so far.’
He cringed just a little each time he referred to his ex-colleagues as friends, but it was simply a more easy-to-understand term for Yasmin than any more realistic alternative.
‘She’s certainly beautiful,’ Yasmin said. ‘But deadly too. The worst possible combination.’
Ryker said nothing.
‘Do you know the story of bougainvillea?’
‘I don’t,’ he said, a little confused now.
‘It was named after a famous explorer. Louis-Antoine de Bougainville. He sailed all around the globe.’
Ryker nodded. ‘Actually, I’ve come across that name.’
‘But you probably never realized he named this flower after himself?’
‘No.’
‘Typical man.’
‘Typical in what way?’
‘The thing is, he didn’t even discover this flower. He had a botanist on board his ship. Philibert Commerçon.’
‘So it should be called Commerçon.’
Yasmin’s features lifted a little. Not a smile, but something resembling life at least.
‘Doesn’t sound right at all, does it?’ she said as she looked at the flowers.
‘Not really.’
‘So the famous explorer trumped his botanist and named the flower after himself. An age-old story about the big man taking the glory from the little man.’
‘I’ve definitely heard that one before.’
‘Except that isn’t all.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘Some people believe it wasn’t even the botanist who discovered the flower, but his lover. I don’t even remember her name, she was so inconsequential, the poor thing. Nobody cared about her at all. Did you know at those times women weren’t even allowed to travel on these ships? It was bad luck to have women on board. She was likely only on the expedition because she sneaked on disguised as a man.’
‘Interesting story, but I have to admit you’ve lost me a little.’
‘Well,’ she said, finally taking her hand off the flowers. ‘Think of Mo like our dear old botanist.’
Ryker nodded now. He got it.
‘And you’re his lover,’ he said. ‘In the background, because women aren’t supposed to be at the forefront of… whatever it is you and your husband… did.’
‘Exactly.’
Was she basically admitting that she was the master behind her late husband’s criminal empire?
‘Yet you’ve still no idea why this woman came after you?’
‘And that’s where this story gets… complicated. Because I know Mo, and I know our business. But I have no idea why this woman targeted us. Mo got involved in something I knew nothing about. Something I still know nothing about. Do you know how frustrating that is? How agonizing? I want to miss him, I do miss him, but I’m also so fucking angry with him.’
Ryker nodded but said nothing.
‘What you have to realize is, I also understand where we are in the order. Mo and I… Neither of us was the big one, you see, neither of us was Louis-Antoine de Bougainville.’
‘So who is?’
‘I think you’ll figure that out yourself soon enough.’
A strange answer.
‘You won’t tell me?’
‘You’ve given me nothing, so I don’t see why I should.’
A fair point, in a way.
‘I still don’t understand why she came after you,’ Ryker said.
‘Because my husband betrayed her. She wanted money that he owed her.’
‘And did she get it? Is that why you’re still alive?’
‘No. I’m alive because of my guardian angels.’
She looked up to the sky as she said this.
‘Your guardian angels?’
‘I’ll be very honest with you now. I have tried to find out who they are, just as I tried to find out about her, and I found absolutely nothing. A helicopter arrived here when she was with me. That’s why I’m alive. Not because I was spared. They saved me. They took her away. That’s the last I saw of her.’
Now Ryker was seriously confused.
‘But you’ve no idea who they were? The people who saved you?’
She shook her head. ‘I hoped they’d killed her, but…’
‘No. She’s not dead. Not yet.’
‘Then I was mistaken. Perhaps they weren’t my angels after all.’
No. And Ryker really had no clue what he was stumbling over here. He looked at that mass of purple flowers as his brain whirred. Then he got to his feet.
‘Thanks for your time.’
He turned to leave.