The next morning, de Payns was kept away from the VIPs. As he served breakfast to the ten escorts who’d been helicoptered in from Monaco, he mulled over what he’d learned the night before. He was on the boat with two Wagner Group commanders—Boris and Lenny—and General Haftar’s nephew, Faisal al-Mismari. The latter had uttered the word ‘Vulcan’ and referred to it as a false flag, before Jamal had cut him off. What did it mean? De Payns knew he needed more.
After breakfast, Susan assigned him to cleaning cabins with Gretel, a permanent crew member.
‘You start on the cinema, and I’ll do the stateroom,’ she said, but de Payns told her, ‘Susan said I should go with you to the stateroom, so you can show me what to do.’
Gretel was a no-nonsense Austrian in her late thirties and she didn’t like the change to her routine, but she shrugged and led the way. De Payns was put to work in the marble bathroom of stateroom three while Gretel did the bedroom. After a few minutes he heard her saying something and stuck his head out of the bathroom to ask what she’d said.
‘I’m just taking these to the laundry,’ she said, gesturing with her chin to the armful of sheets she was holding.
‘Sure.’
Alone in the bedroom, he checked the windows to see if anyone was outside and saw a glass door opening onto a small promenade deck.
No one was around, so he began a hurried search through the bags and the drawers. He came up empty. He turned to the walk-in wardrobe. Inside was a small hotel-style safe, and a burnished aluminium Zero Halliburton briefcase was lying flat on the high shelf where the iron was kept. Among the clothes on the coat hangers he spotted a deep red shirt and a dark sports jacket: he was in Boris’s stateroom.
Pulling down the smooth metal case, he tried opening it, but the latch was locked with a three-wheel combination. He turned the case towards the light and looked closely: the three nickel wheels had black number inlays. He slid the release bar sideways, and the case stayed locked. He took note of the random numbers of the wheels—0-8-5—because for many people in military and intelligence, the ‘locked’ numbers on a combination lock were not random at all; they were their own code and could be a handy indicator of someone trying to get into their case.
He focused on breathing through his nose and calming himself, listening for the sounds of people approaching. He could hear Gretel’s voice; she must be talking with someone in the passageway on her way to the laundry. From his pocket, he pulled a key ring which held a miniature black flashlight. The knob on the end of it could be clicked to produce a torch for looking around in a car. But de Payns held the knob down for three seconds and the device emitted a laser light. Shining the red beam sideways through the first wheel of the combination lock until he could see the locking mechanism, he slowly turned the wheel, waiting for the gap to appear that would signal the correct number. He found it at 7. He had turned the case around to begin the same procedure on the opposite wheel when he heard a noise by the stateroom door. He froze, his pulse loud in his head, then replaced the briefcase on the top shelf of the wardrobe and tiptoed from the bedroom back into the bathroom and from there entered the living area, where Ahmed was speaking to Gretel.
‘It’s our French chambermaid,’ said Ahmed, smiling. ‘Susan needs Gretel for a few minutes. You need to be shown how to use a vacuum cleaner, or do you Frenchies have a natural feel for it?’
‘I can handle it,’ said de Payns.
As the security man and Gretel walked away, he realised he’d been holding his breath. He’d infiltrated boats before, but always as a guest or a contractor of some sort. Working in the bowels of a yacht and being treated like a serf by angry sociopaths was unnerving, not least because his hosts had already found one ‘spy’ and de Payns had no doubt that the young roue was either in a cell being worked over, or he’d already been disposed of. He slowed his breathing to calm himself and returned to the wardrobe. He felt slightly guilty about putting the listening device in Jacques’ bag when he realised he wouldn’t have a chance to place it. It was an act of self-preservation, but it came with a price-tag of guilt and he had to consciously remove the feeling from his mind and get back to work.
He wiped his sweaty hands on his pants then lifted the Zero case from the shelf and set it on the carpet. Turning on his laser light, he found the correct angle and turned the wheel until the gap lined up with the first wheel he’d cracked, listening for footsteps all the while. Now he turned his attention to the inside wheel, which was harder to gain an angle on. He turned the inside wheel one click and tried the locking slide; nothing. He moved the wheel forward by one click three more times without success, but on the fourth click the slide moved all the way to the right and he opened the case, revealing a black MacBook. Pulling the USB stick that Ahmed had tested the night before from his right pocket, he plugged it directly into the laptop. He double-clicked a tiny button in the stick and a small red light emanated for twenty-eight seconds, before it went off again, indicating a full download. Pulling out the USB stick, he shoved it in his pocket, returned the MacBook to the aluminium case and rolled the three combination wheels back to 0-8-5, before replacing the case on the top shelf. He emerged into the bedroom and grabbed the vacuum cleaner beside the bed, hitting the power as Gretel walked into the room.
‘You’re slow,’ she said in French, dumping clean linens on the bed. ‘Did you take a nap?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve been quite busy.’
Together they finished the stateroom and moved on to the cinema. Gretel finally released him an hour later, and de Payns headed off to lunch in the crew mess, carrying the contents of Boris’s MacBook in his pocket.