Gayle found Addison by the Eisenhower’s stern. Sean had found himself a good vantage point to watch the brilliant sunset. Black water rushed by the hull thirty below them, the wake glowed with a soft phosphorescence behind them. Sean held a half drunken glass flask in his right hand. He acknowledged Gayle’s presence with another tip of the bottle.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Sean pointed at the fire of gold and red in the sky. “And we made it.” He took another drink. “No, you made it, with the twist of a key.”
“You’re drunk.”
Sean shook his head. “Wish I was.”
“Gayle made to leave. “I’m sorry. This was a mistake.”
“What?”
“Hunting you down like this. I guess each of you have different ways of doing things after a mission.”
Sean chuckled low and dark. “You’re kidding me right? He pointed at the still-vibrant sunset. “I’m fucked up over that. I couldn’t care less I slotted a few people. That’s just my job.” He felt the bulge of bandage round his right bicep. “Hell, it’s not like they didn’t have a go at me.” He offered her the bottle.
Gayle shook her head. “I don’t like Scotch.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Are you always such an asshole, Addison?”
Sean smiled round the lip of the flask. “Pretty much. Not that it’ll matter anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
He finished the flask with one last pull and tucked it into his pants. “I’ve got one last thing to take care of and then I’ll be leaving the regiment and the Army.”
“You? Retire? What could a man like you possibly do with yourself in retirement?”
“Oh, I’ll be all right. My mum and dad left me a fair chunk of cash when they died. I think I’ll go and see some of the world without a gun in my hand.”
“Well, I just came down here to thank you for everything you did. You and Harris.”
“No thanks required, Captain. We were on the clock.”
EPILOGUE
Andrew Verkatt was a bachelor as much by choice as by circumstance. Most women found him overbearing and repugnant. He cared little of what any woman thought. Money took care of untoward feelings they might have about his needs. He kept a regular routine of fashionable call girls in and out of his estate. The Korean affair had been a rushed and tiring job, involving his own personal hand in matters he normally left to skilled underlings. For the first time in quite a while he had to take charge at the ground level. As a reward, he had given himself the last three days as a rest cure, gearing himself up for what was to be a promising year of even greater wealth in the many new markets of the world now available to his country’s arms industry. It didn’t matter who ran the country. Money was, after all, more important than political power. Verkatt would outlast the current leader as he had so many others. As it was, tonight he lay restless and alone under expensive sheets. Something had dragged him from slumber, most likely one of those damn dogs. All was quiet now though. There was an almost silent cough in the hall outside his bedroom door, followed by a long sliding thud.
A galvanizing bolt of fear shot down his spine. The Koreans were covering their tracks, the double crossing bastards. He rolled off the bed, the 9mm Berretta he kept under his pillow just in case of such an emergency in his right hand. Using his bed as a shield from the door, he steadied his aim. The door burst in, kicked open. Verkatt loosed a volley of rounds through the opening into the hall beyond. Seconds crept by. Had he hit them? Were they dead or dying in the hall? Two dark cylinders arced through the shattered doorway into the center of the room. Verkatt watched the grenades land on his perfect Persian rug, four feet from his face. He was trying to scrabble back when his world disintegrated into terrible light, noise and pain.
Addison hauled the huddled, unconscious Verkatt off the carpet and onto the rumpled bed. The South African’s hands were secured behind his back with a plastic cable tie. He was dropped unceremoniously onto a chair beside the bed.
Sean slapped Verkatt around the face with slow deliberate strokes until he came to. Verkatt’s eyes snapped open and then widened as he realized his predicament, but he said nothing. Sean got another chair, pulled it in front of the bound man and sat down. When Sean spoke, his tone was mocking.
“Very disappointed in you, Andrew. A little bird tells me you have been up to all sorts of nasty doings. Things not in everyone’s best interest.” Sean sat back and opened his arms. “So, now you and I are going to have a little chat.” Sean’s voice went cold and flat, “and you are going to tell me everything about your little foray into business with the North Koreans.”
Verkatt had played this game before, from Sean’s side. His answer was equally cold and flat. “I don’t have the faintest idea of what you are talking about.”
The rifle butt of Sean’s silenced MP5-SD3 SMG came down quick as a snake on Verkatt’s left kneecap. Verkatt doubled over in pain. Sean pulled him back upright by his hair. He pressed his face close to the sweating South African’s. “Any other time, mate, I would be more than happy to spar with you. But right now, I don’t have the time or the patience.” He pushed Verkatt back hard in his chair. Verkatt sat there, glaring and defiant.
“I still don’t know what you are talking about.”
Sean shook his head. “Why don’t I tell you what I do know.” Sean leveled his weapon at Verkatt’s chest. “You were approached by North Korea about procuring three nuclear devices. Preferably those fitted to SCUD-C rockets. You were able to steal these from a base located in the Republic of Georgia from a Soviet Mobile Rocket Forces base at the cost of three Soviet officers’ lives and one ex-citizen of East Germany. The units were transported by boat to the Turkish port of Carasamba. From there, you flew them to Cape Town, where you personally delivered them to a North Korean cover operation and where they were subsequently loaded onboard a freighter of North Korean registry. The warheads were then transferred off the coast of Madagascar to a submarine, which then destroyed said freighter. The warheads were successfully and with loss of life on both sides taken to the North Korean port of Chanjon. And if you follow the news, my bigoted friend, you know that there was a nuclear accident of undisclosed origin there.” Sean tapped Verkatt on the knee again with the butt of his SMG just to make sure he had the man’s attention. It brought a welcome grimace. Sean continued. “We have pictures, we have tape and we have your driver. More than enough to put you away for the rest of your life. Your little escapade in greed has caused a lot of misery. So tell me all that you know or I will shoot off the toes of your left foot one at a time.”
A light went on in Verkatt’s eyes. “You’re English.” His laugh was full of contempt. “It is not in your nature to torture.”
Sean did not deny or confirm Verkatt’s statement. He placed the barrel of his MP5 on Verkatt’s left big toe. “Shall we test my resolve?” He flicked his fire select switch to single shot with a snap. Verkatt twitched. “Thought as much.” Sean checked his watch purposely. “You don’t talk, ten seconds from now your rug gets a new dye job.” Sean looked at his watch again. “Five seconds, Andrew, and then this little piggy goes to market.”
Verkatt saw Sean’s trigger finger begin to tighten. Sweat popped out on his forehead. The smell of Verkatt’s fear washed off him in waves. He did a quick mental calculation. Client confidentiality aside, this had never been in the Korean contract.
It took thirty minutes for him to relay everything. His initial meeting with the deputy director’s assistant Sung in the Congo, the next surprise meeting at their Cape Town operation and his use of the Georgian drug dealer Smirnoff to speed his own and the Koreans’ ends. By the time he got to the final loading of the warheads on the Nung Il, Yeung he was spent man. Sean pressured Verkatt to reveal more, but it was obvious that the Koreans had compartmentalized. Verkatt was just the delivery boy.