“Where?”
“Corsica. Where I live.”
“What, he’s just walking around Corsica?”
“No, he’s holed up with a crew on Capo Corso. Up north. I seen him last week at Bastia, where the ferries come in from Nice and Marseille.”
“If you didn’t get a good look, how do you know his teeth are sharpened?”
“A guy who was closer told me. They got off a yacht, piled into SUVs, and convoyed north.”
“Why are you saying they’re holed up?”
“The locals were saying they were like a crew hiding out or setting up a job. The locals are into that shit, so they keep track of the competition. Corsica’s a wild place.”
“Tell me again what you’re doing there?”
“I’m down in Porto-Vecchio, way down south. Other end of the island.”
“Mind me asking what you’re setting up?”
“Nothing. I got a dive shop for the tourists.”
“Really?” asked Ian. “Was that expensive, to set up a dive shop?”
“No big deal. I always saved my money. No way I was going to get treated like garbage and come out of it poor. Hey, you should come down sometime. I got room in my house. Beautiful water. Beautiful fish. Beautiful girls. Nice people, Corsicans, long as you don’t piss ’em off. Don’t fuck with them and they’ll give you the shirt off their back.”
“Excuse me, young man,” said a small voice.
The two big men looked down at a tiny white-haired woman carrying a handbag on her arm.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Is this where we get the bus to Exeter?”
“No, ma’am,” said Daniel. “It’s back there in the restaurant, where they’re serving your lunch.”
* * *
QUINTISHA UPCHURCH ANSWERED her “graduates’” line, the phone number that was given to the growing flock of Janson’s saved. Calls came in for help and to help. She could tell by the tone of the voice which it would be. This was a “to help” call, and she recognized the British Midland accent as belonging to a boy named Ian.
“Ms. Upchurch, if you were in communication with Mr. Janson, you might mention that a certain former president for life was spotted in Corsica. Up north on Capo Corso.”
Quintisha Upchurch promised to pass it on.
The professional qualities that had convinced Paul Janson that she was the woman to administer CatsPaw and Phoenix included a habit of discretion grounded on innate reticence. She would never dream of mentioning that Daniel, the rough American with whom Ian had been discussing Iboga in a Cornwall nursing home, had telephoned her minutes earlier with the same message. Or that since similar messages were flooding in from widely scattered parts of the globe, she would first shunt them through the research person assigned to collate and vet before they were passed to the boss.
* * *
IN THE PRIVACY of a First Class sleeping pod, Paul Janson worked the airline phone. His first priority was to drastically reduce his flying time to Sydney. He called a general in the Royal Thai Air Force. Their conversation got off to a bad start.
“I recall that you were against me,” said the general, a fighter pilot who had risen quickly in the ranks thanks to excellent connections and ordinary skills enhanced by extraordinary bravery.
“You recall,” Janson replied bluntly, “that I determined you were the lesser of two evils.”
“What do you want?”
“Recompense for that action.”
“Why?”
“You profited by it. You’re an active serving general. The other guy is dead.”
Thai Chinese, like all overseas Chinese, were not the sort to pontificate about honor and respect. They weren’t like Pakistanis and Afghans, proud of “honor killings,” or Italian Mafia clinging to their secret societies and omertà. But these children of the Chinese diaspora who peopled the merchant class of Southeast Asia practiced a code of honor no less strong for their reserve. As strangers in strange lands, they divided the world into two categories. Strangers were by definition enemies. People they knew were friends. What Janson had always admired most was the fluidity—once they knew you, once you had done business or traded favors or shared a kindness or taken their side, you were a friend.
After a long silence, the general asked, “What do you need?”
“The fastest jet in Bangkok capable of flying four thousand, six hundred, and eighty-five miles to Sydney ahead of my commercial connection.”
“That’s all?”
Janson could not tell whether the general was being sarcastic. But they both knew he could have asked for so much more than a fast long-haul jet. Janson thanked him warmly. The debt was settled. That which was needed most was most valuable.
Janson left urgent messages with a contact in Sydney who worked undercover for the Australian Crime Commission, thinking he could look out for Jessica at the airport. While Janson waited for a response, he followed up on the SR names. Bloch, the French mercenary, was believed to be in a Congo jail. Dimon, the Serbian computer wizard, was reported active in the Ukraine. Viorets, the Russian, was currently on leave from the SVR, and the Corsican Andria Giudicelli had been seen days earlier in Rome. Van Pelt, Janson already knew, was headed for Sydney.
Iboga, who had supposedly left a trail through Russia, the Ukraine, Romania, and Croatia, had now been seen simultaneously on the French island of Corsica and in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, which were six thousand miles apart.
Janson closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He was wondering what light, if any, the doctor might shed on ASC and Kingsman Helms’s schemes in Isle de Foree. He was really no closer to Iboga than when he took the job from Poe. He hadlearned SR existed and must have fielded the Harrier jump jet, but not enough more to do anyone any good. He knew nothing yet about who had launched the Reaper attack. And so far he hadn’t added a single dollar to the Phoenix Foundation’s treasury. Five percent of zip recovered loot was zip.
He gave up on sleep and telephoned the forensic accountant leading the Iboga money hunt. They’d had some success, some indications of accounts in Switzerland and Croatia. “These days,” the accountant warned Janson, “Zagreb’s a tougher nut than Zurich.”
“Can we get to the dough?”
“At this point,” she said, “we’re still in locating mode.”
When the airliner began its descent into Bangkok, Janson dialed Quintisha Upchurch. “Have you heard from Ms. Kincaid?”
“No, Mr. Janson. I’ve left messages.”
Janson heard a familiar loud noise in the background and smiled despite his concern. The blatting roar of a compression-release “Jake” brake slowing a forty-ton eighteen-wheel Peterbilt 379EXHD told him that Quintisha was in CatsPaw’s rolling “home office,” a Brinks armored tractor-trailer driven by her husband.
Jessica had named Quintisha’s husband “the single scariest dude I have ever laid eyes on.” A former Force Recon Marine officer and a deeply troubled vet until he married Quintisha, Rick Rice drove the interstates delivering Brinks bulk shipments of credit cards, precious metals, and casino tokens. The tractor’s cab was bulletproofed and fitted with gun ports, but as Jessica had noted, “When the driver looks like he’s hopingyou’ll try to rob him, folks tend to go rob something else.”
Guarded by her husband and always on the move as they crisscrossed the United States, Quintisha administered CatsPaw and Phoenix from the phones and computers in the Peterbilt’s stand-up sleeper. On Sundays, they parked the truck in VFW lots. Rick would hoist some beers with the vets while Quintisha, an ordained deacon, would take herself to the nearest African Methodist Episcopal church and sing in the choir, teach Bible study, or preach a sermon. Sunday supper would be at the home of some local police chief or a highway patrolman who had served under Rick in the Gulf War, Iraq, or Afghanistan.
“I was about to telephone you, Mr. Janson. A couple of your young men report sighting Iboga in Corsica.”
“Who? Daniel?”
“Yes. And Ian, in England.”
Janson called Protocolo de Seguridad’s HQ in Madrid. “Freddy, can you tap any Coriscans?”