Greed

A green inflatable dinghy, identical to the one they had trained on in Bideford, was strapped to the side of the boat. Next to it was a long hook.

'Where's the packages?' Ivan asked.

Hasikos led them down into the hold. A single battery-powered electrical light was burning in the corner, its pale light struggling to illuminate the metal interior of the vessel. Four crates were resting to the side of the stairway. Ivan told Hasikos to leave the hold for a few minutes. Matt opened the first of the boxes up. Two Bushmaster rifles and two Beretta 92 pistols. There were ten magazine cartridges for the rifles, each one holding thirty bullets. He checked the rest of the crates. Six more rifles, six more pistols, and another thirty magazine cartridges.

That made twelve hundred bullets, Matt calculated, not counting the pistols.

Should be enough to deal with six men. Two hundred each.

'How's your gear?' he said, looking across at Ivan.

Ivan had opened the first of a set of three smaller crates. Inside each one were three two-pound blocks of Semtex. He unpacked the first one, holding it in his hand. The explosive had no smell, and the consistency of children's modelling dough, but evidently Ivan had handled enough Semtex in his life to tell that in this batch the cyclonite and penaerythrite tetranitrate — the two main chemical ingredients in the explosive — had been mixed to perfection.

'It'll be fine,' he said.

Matt climbed back on to the deck. Hasikos was leaning against the railing, ash from his cigarette dropping into the sea. 'Everything is as it should be,' he said. 'I can't say for sure when we'll be taking her out. Just make sure she's ready at all times, and the tanks are full of oil.'

Hasikos nodded. Matt had no idea how much Five had already paid him, but it had to be a lot.

'She's a good craft,' Hasikos said. 'I've worked her for ten years. Try to bring her back in one piece.'

Matt grinned. 'The boat's not going down unless we do. And I'm not planning to let that happen.'

* * *

Waiting around. That was always the part of any mission that Matt hated the most. The hours dragged slowly by, the nerves gradually building in all of your muscles and the tension rising in the pit of your stomach. It preyed on your mind and grated on your nerves.

You just want to get out there and get into the thick of it.

Matt glanced out across the pool. There were a few young couples, some families with toddlers in tow, but mostly singles. There was a wet T-shirt contest down on the beach and Cooksley and Reid had gone down to take a look. Matt couldn't be bothered. He'd had his fill of women for this month. There were more important things to do than watch some podgy slapper from Sheffield tip a bucket of water over her head.

The sooner I can get out of here and get back to Gill the better.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon and the heat of the sun was starting to ebb when Matt called the group together in a quiet corner of the poolside. 'I want to make sure we're all agreed about what happens to stuff when we've taken it, and when we split up the money. We agree a plan, and we stick to it. That way, there's no room for disagreements later.'

'We need to get it to Rotterdam,' said Damien. 'That's the best place in the world for fencing gold and jewels. About half the illegal trade goes through there — gold smuggled out of Russia, diamonds from South Africa, the works. I've got a guy who'll take the lot, and give us at least a third of full market value. He pays laundered money, cash. A mixture of pounds, euros and dollars. All of it untraceable.'

'Can't we do it somewhere closer and get the cash quicker?' said Reid, tapping his cigarette lighter against the table.

Damien shook his head. 'The point is that al-Qaeda are going to be looking for us. Try fencing this stuff in any city on the Med and word will get around. A bunch of white guys trading big quantities of gold and jewels a few days after their boat got hit. They aren't stupid; they'll be on to us like a flash.' He paused, opening a can of Diet Coke. 'The market in stolen jewels in Rotterdam is so big, no one is going to notice.'

'So how do we get it to Rotterdam?' said Ivan.

'We've bought two Land Rovers,' said Damien. 'Cooksley has stripped them down, taken out the engines and the undercarriages. We're going to stash the stuff inside those, then put them on a boat to Rotterdam. There's a cargo ship that leaves in three days — we should be able to get them on that. The trip takes seven days, but it's much safer than putting it on a plane. Customs almost never bother to check an imported second-hand car, but anything of that weight on a plane will automatically make them suspicious.'

'So the gear is out of our sight for a week?' said Reid. 'I'd rather watch my stash.'

'This is the best way,' said Matt. 'We stop here for a week, drink some beer, then get on a plane to Rotterdam the night before the cargo ship arrives. We collect the stuff together, and take it together to Damien's man. We get the cash, split it up there and then, and go our separate ways. Job done.'

Reid nodded. 'Wouldn't it be better if we all went on the boat?' he said. 'I don't want it out of my sight.'

Damien shook his head. 'It's a cargo boat. It'll be perfectly safe,' he said. 'We'll all watch it go on to the ship, and we'll all watch it come off. Anyway, you can't ask for five blokes to come aboard a cargo vessel to watch their stuff. It would just create suspicion.'

Reid looked away. 'It's my gear, I want to look after it myself.' He looked to Matt. 'Maybe we should split the gear up here, and then go our separate ways.'

Matt looked around the table. 'We need to trust each other,' he said, a note of impatience in his voice. 'That's the only way this is going to work.'

* * *

The bar was heaving with bodies. It was quarter to twelve at night and the main strip running through Limassol was brightly lit, full of people streaming up and down, standing outside every doorway, all of them drunk. The boys were wearing tight T-shirts, baggy jeans and baseball caps, and the girls were in mini-skirts and high-heels, with studs sticking out of their belly-buttons.

'Get me out on the ocean,' Matt said to himself.

Somewhere I can hear myself think.

The noise of the disco next door and the people at the bar crashed against his eardrums, making it almost impossible to hold a conversation. Matt reckoned they were the oldest men in the bar by at least a decade.

'The point about bridge is you have to plan several moves ahead,' Ivan was saying in his ear. 'That's what distinguishes the great players from the ordinary players. You have to see the whole game before anyone else can see it.'

Across the bar, Matt could see Cooksley and Reid chatting to a pair of girls. No chance, boys, he decided. Way too young. They looked nineteen or twenty, sisters maybe, with brown hair and green eyes, and bodies that were pressing hard against their clothes. Both of them had Bacardi Breezers in their hands and smiles on their faces. I know that sort, thought Matt. Right now, they are cuddly and sexy. At thirty, they'll be fat.

'So how many moves do you plan ahead, Ivan?' said Matt. 'In life, not in cards.'

'Three,' replied Ivan. 'More than that, you can't see what's happening. Less, you're just being stupid.'

In the distance, Matt could see two men approaching Cooksley and Reid. Brothers, boyfriends — it was impossible to tell. They looked pissed up. Their faces were red, and their eyes were woozy, and it was written all over their body language that they were ready to kick it off. One of the girls put her hand on to Reid's back, rubbing it provocatively.