The man on the flybridge of the Azimut sixty-foot yacht cut off the engine, silencing the noisy whine. The gusty wind created swells that made the boat rise and fall, and he pushed a button to lower the anchor, holding them in place. There were no other crafts nearby, and the ribbon of Montauk and the Long Island coast was just a smudge on the horizon two miles away. A seagull had followed the boat out on the water and screeched noisily at him as it perched on the railing of the upper deck. The man removed a small plastic bag from his pocket and held up a piece of hard cheese, which the gull snatched out of his hand.
“That’s all for now,” he told the bird. “But I’ll have a treat for you later.”
The man was in his mid-fifties, but his exercise regimen kept him in top shape. He ran four miles each morning, lifted weights, and swam and played tennis multiple times a week at a club in East Hampton during the nicer months. During the winters, he relocated to an estate in Costa Rica, but his athletic routine didn’t change. His six-foot frame was toned and muscular, and he had a natural grace as he moved. The ocean air across the deck was cold, but he wore a formfitting dark blue short-sleeve shirt with the top four buttons undone, plus tan shorts. His feet were bare, and his pale skin was flushed pink by the sun.
In appearance, he looked younger than he was, his face unwrinkled except for a few parallel lines across his forehead. He had high cheekbones and a mostly square face, which signified his Slavic heritage. Based on photographs, he closely resembled his father, Stefan, a man he’d met only briefly as a child and didn’t remember at all. He had short, choppy hair, still blond with no gray at all, a small, rounded nose, and prominent ears. The skin around his blue eyes had a puffy quality, which sometimes made him look bored or sleepy, but that was deceiving. He had a cold, calculating mind.
With the boat anchored, he joined his guest on the lower deck. Darrell Forster was drinking Stoli on a white sofa near the bow.
“Talk to me, Darrell,” Varak said, taking a spot near the railing, with his hands on his hips. “What’s the report from Washington?”
“Tom Blomberg is dead,” Forster replied, his mouth tight. He finished his vodka in one swallow and refilled the glass from the bottle beside him.
“It had to be done,” Varak said. “I know you disagreed.”
“Tom and I went back a long way. It was my call to bring him into the Pyramid.”
“Yes, it was. It should also be obvious to you now that he was a weak link.”
Forster said nothing. He kept drinking.
“And the woman?” Varak went on. “The journalist, Laurent? She escaped the blast.”
“Yes.”
“Unfortunate. Cain is with her, yes?”
“We assume so,” Forster replied. “Lennon’s operative was killed while attempting to execute Laurent. We think Cain was responsible.”
“Cain knows about you,” Varak pointed out. “He came to your office. He turned your cutout, this Kenna Martin. You’ve been careless, Darrell.”
“He knows about you, too,” Forster said with a note of irritation in his voice. “But so what? There’s nothing he can do with that information. Plus, he’s chasing the assassin. His focus is on Lennon, not us.”
“Don’t be so sure. Even if Cain is after Lennon, he’s a threat to the Pyramid. As is this journalist. We need to deal with both of them promptly.”
Varak sat down in a leather chair across from Forster. He studied the older man, who had a nervous, shifty look today. Forster’s fingers tapped the sofa, an impatient tic. He was drinking more than usual. His eyes kept examining the wide-open, empty ocean, as if worried about surveillance. Worry was counterproductive, the first sign of weakness. A worried man was a man prone to making mistakes, to dithering instead of acting decisively.
He’d known Forster for years. He’d been a quiet investor when the man started his public relations agency, because debts like that were useful. When the right time came, Varak had recruited Forster, mainly for his wide-ranging contacts in media, business, and government. The Pyramid needed people who could be bought, persuaded, tricked, and influenced, and Forster had been a valuable resource. But all resources, like tapped-out silver mines, eventually went dry.
The impatient seagull landed near Varak with a screech. The billionaire shook his head. “No, no more treats yet. You have to wait.”
The bird flapped its wings and took flight, circling the yacht.
Varak opened a small compartment next to his seat, from which he removed a bottle of Barbadillo Reliquia sherry. He filled a crystal tumbler, then replaced the bottle in the compartment. He lit a dark Parisian cigarette, blowing out acrid smoke that the wind quickly carried away. He studied the amenities around him. The smooth leather of the seats. The electronics and satellite hookups. The boat was new, and he was still deciding whether he liked it. This was to be his personal yacht, the dayboat he operated himself, when he wished to avoid the prying eyes of the crew. Not that any of them would dare say a word about what they saw. But still.
He savored the cold ocean air on his bare arms and legs. Poor Forster looked like he was freezing in his heavy sweater. Varak didn’t respect men who couldn’t abide the cold. That was part of the toughness of his upbringing in rural Iceland, where you learned to love the winters even when your house had almost no heat. Back then, he’d thought he was no more than an impoverished child with no future ahead of him, and so he’d learned to rely on himself. Later, he realized that was part of the plan. Inver Brass and his father had wanted him brought up with no advantages, to know that nothing in life came without hard work and an educated mind. They’d been right. That was the kind of man who could work for the new Inver Brass, the way his father had done before him.
“I’m also worried about Saira Kohli,” Varak said.
Forster shrugged. “She’s useful to us. No one doubts her credentials or objectivity. Having her associated with the institute enhances our credibility. Plus, it tends to blunt any objections that our group is just another billionaire plaything bought and paid for by a Bezos, Soros, or Musk.”
“So you said when you recruited her. You’ll recall others of us were against it. Genesis was against it.”
“Saira can’t be corrupted, it’s true. But that’s what makes her valuable.”
“She’s asking questions,” Varak said.
“It’s of no consequence. She suspects nothing. She expressed some curiosity about Frankfurt recently, and I put her mind at ease. That was the end of it.”
Varak sighed at the man’s foolishness.
He opened the compartment again and removed a small recording device, which he placed next to his glass of sherry. Forster looked at it curiously. When Varak pushed a button, a recorded conversation boomed across the deck, not from the device itself, but from speakers built into the boat around them.
Two voices. The first voice belonged to Saira Kohli and the second to a man with a hard-edged, military manner.
“I was wondering if you’d had a chance to make inquiries about that matter I mentioned.”
“The Deborah Mueller murder? I’m still looking into it.”
Varak let the entire conversation play out on the speakers, and he watched Darrell Forster’s unusually tanned face grow paler as it went on. When it was done, Varak shut off the device and replaced it neatly out of sight.
“I had Dr. Kohli’s Georgetown office phone tapped,” he said. “You see, I didn’t share your confidence that her suspicions were so easily put to rest. As it is, her inquiries are proving dangerous.”
“I had—I had no idea,” Forster blustered. “Still, there’s nothing she can learn about Louisa.”
“Isn’t there? I’m not convinced.”
“What would you like me to do? How would you like me to deal with it?”
Varak waved his hand dismissively. “It’s no longer your concern, Darrell. I’ll take the appropriate steps. The bigger issue now is the lapses in judgment you’ve demonstrated. First Iceland was exposed, leaving us vulnerable to this operative Cain. And now your recruits are proving to be serious liabilities, putting the entire Pyramid operation at risk.”
“I don’t think that’s fair. None of this was my fault.”
“Leaders take responsibility, Darrell.”
Forster nodded. He was sweating, and he swigged his vodka again. “Yes. Yes, of course, you’re right. Ultimately, I’m to blame. This is on me. What can I do to regain your confidence?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Varak replied.
He opened the compartment next to him again and reached inside.
“Unfortunately, Darrell, I’m afraid that confidence, once lost, is impossible to restore. Even improved performance comes with doubts, and in our operation, we can’t tolerate even the slightest doubt. I’m sure you understand that.”
Varak removed his hand from the compartment. He now held a compact Ruger EC9s semiautomatic pistol. He extended his arm across the short space in front of him, and before Darrell Forster even had a chance to open his mouth in horror, Varak fired a single shot perfectly into the middle of the man’s forehead. The bullet went into Forster’s brain without exiting the back of his skull and causing a mess on the rich white leather.
Dead, Forster slid off the sofa onto the varnished deck of the yacht.
Varak casually flipped the gun into the ocean water, where it sank under the whitecaps. Then he removed a phone from the pocket of his shorts and dialed.
“It’s me. Forster has been dealt with. But given the reports from Washington, I’m afraid that things are getting out of control. We need to move swiftly to remove the others, so I suggest you involve our friend once again. He should be receptive, given that it’s an opportunity to deal with Cain once and for all.”
He hung up the phone, which he also tossed into the choppy waves surrounding the boat. Then he snapped his fingers, and the seagull landed near him on the railing, screeching wildly and flapping its wings.
“As promised,” he told the bird. “Another treat.”
The gull swooped down on the body of Darrell Forster, and with the sharp end of its beak, the bird began plucking out the dead man’s eyes.