Predator. Wilbur Smith

be possible,’ Weiss pointed out. ‘The state of Texas no longer allows Death Row prisoners to have any form of physical contact with anyone. The best he can do is pay his respects to your body, when you are gone.’

      ‘Well, tell him anyhow. Let him know what I’d like. Now, I can give you a power of attorney over a bank account, right, to pay for legal expenses and suchlike?’

      ‘Yes, that’s possible.’

      ‘OK, so I have an account at a private bank, Wertmuller-Maier in Geneva. I’m gonna give you the account number and all the codes you’ll need. First thing I want you to do is get someone to empty my safe-deposit box there and send it back to you, express delivery. I want the box unlocked and then sealed, with wax or some shit like that, so it can’t be tampered with. Then withdraw three million dollars from my account. Two mill’s for you, like a down payment on account. The other mill’s for D’Shonn. Give him the deposit box too; he can open it. Tell him it’s personal memorabilia, shit that means a lot to me, and I want it buried with me in my coffin. I’m talking about my coffin, ’cause I want D’Shonn to organize my funeral service and the wake afterwards, make it a real event folks ain’t ever gonna forget. Ask him from me to get all the folks from back in the day, when we was all boys in the hood, to come along and see me off, pay their respects. Tell him I’d really appreciate it. Can you do that?’

      ‘A million dollars, just for a funeral and a wake?’ Weiss asked.

      ‘Hell, yeah, I want a procession of hearses and limos, a service in, like, a cathedral or something, and a slap-up party, celebrate my time here on earth: caviar and prime ribs to eat, Cristal and Grey Goose at the bar, all that good shit. Listen, a million’s nothing. I read that geeky little mother started up Facebook spent ten mill on his wedding. Come to think of it, Shelby, make it two mill for D’Shonn. Tell him to lay it on real thick.’

      ‘If that’s what you want, sure, I can do that.’

      ‘Yeah, that’s what I want, and impress upon him that this is the wish of a dying man. That’s some serious shit, right?’

      ‘Yes it is.’

      ‘Well, you make sure he understands that.’

      ‘Absolutely.’

      ‘OK, so here’s what you’ll need to get into that account.’ Congo recited an account number, a name and then a long series of apparently random letters and numbers. Shelby Weiss wrote it down meticulously in his notebook, and then looked up.

      ‘OK, I have got all that down. Is there anything else you want to tell me?’ he asked.

      ‘Nothing else.’ Johnny shook his head. ‘Just come back when you have done everything I told you.’

      Aleutian Brown had been a gangbanger. He ran with the Maalik Angels, who liked to present themselves as warriors of Allah, though most of them would have struggled to read a comic book, let alone the Koran. But Aleutian’s kid brother D’Shonn was a very different proposition. He’d had it just as tough as Aleutian growing up, he was just as angry at the world, and was just as mean an individual. The difference was, he hid it a whole lot better and was smart enough to learn from what happened to his brother and all the homies he’d hung out with. Most of them were in jail or in the ground.

      So D’Shonn worked hard, stayed out of trouble and made it into Baylor on an academic scholarship. On graduating, he won another full scholarship to Stanford Law School, where he took a particular interest in criminal law. Having graduated with honours, and breezed through the California state bar exam, D’Shonn Brown was perfectly placed to choose a stellar career path, either as a defence attorney, or a hotshot young prosecutor in a DA’s office. But his purpose in studying the law had always been to better equip himself to break it. He saw himself as a twenty-first-century Godfather. So in public he presented himself as a rising star in the business community, with a strong interest in charitable activities: ‘I just want to give back,’ as he used to say to admiring reporters. And in private, he pursued his interests in drug-dealing, extortion, human-trafficking and prostitution.

      D’Shonn understood at once that there was a clear subtext to Johnny Congo’s message. He was certain Shelby Weiss could see it too, but there was a game to be played so that both men could deny, on oath, that their conversation had been about anything other than a condemned man’s desire for a fancy funeral. But just the way Johnny had emphasized that he wanted D’Shonn to see him and to hug him before he died, the way he’d talked about all the vehicles he wanted to be in the procession – well, you didn’t need to be an A-grade student to see what that was all about.

      Still, if Johnny Congo wanted the world to think D’Shonn’d been asked to organize a funeral and wake, well, that’s what he was going to do. Having accessed the full $2 million allocated to him from Johnny Congo’s Geneva account he decided that an event on the scale Johnny had in mind couldn’t be held in his home town of Nacogdoches. So he made enquiries at a number of Houston’s most prestigious cemeteries before securing a lakeside plot at a place called Sunset Oaks, where the grass was as immaculate as a fairway at Augusta and gently rippling waters sparkled in the sun. A fine marble headstone was ordered. Several of the city’s most prestigious and expensive florists, caterers and party venues, including a number of five-star hotels, were then presented with lavish specifications and invited to tender for contracts.

      All these enquiries were accompanied by supporting emails and phone calls. When deals were agreed, printed contracts were hand-delivered by messengers so that there could be no doubt that they reached their destinations and were received. Deposits were paid and properly accounted for. More than 200 invitations were sent. Anyone who wanted to see evidence of a genuine intention to fulfil the stated wishes of Johnny Congo would be presented with more than they could handle.

      But while all this was going on, D’Shonn was also having private, unrecorded conversations about very different matters connected to Jonnny Congo as he played rounds at the Golf Club of Houston, where he had a Junior Executive membership; lunched on flounder sashimi and jar-jar duck at Uchi; or dined on filet mignon Brazilian-style at Chama Gaúcha. Leaving no written record whatever, he handed over large amounts of cash to intermediaries who passed the thick wads of dead presidents on to the kind of men whose only interest in funerals lies in supplying the dead bodies. These individuals were then told to co-ordinate their activities via Rashad Trevain, a club-owner whose House of Rashad holding company was 30 per cent owned by the DSB Investment Trust, registered in the Cayman Islands.

      D’Shonn Brown was known to take no active part in the running of Rashad’s business. When he was photographed at the opening of yet another new joint, he’d tell reporters, ‘I’ve been tight with Rashad since we were skinny-ass little kids in first grade. When he came to me with his concepts for a new approach to upscale entertainment it was my pleasure to invest. It’s always good to help a friend, right? Turned out my man is about as good at his job as I am at mine. He’s doing great, all his customers are guaranteed a good time, and I’m getting a great return on my money. Everyone’s happy.’

      Except for anyone who crossed D’Shonn or Rashad, of course. They weren’t happy at all.

      Engines to neutral. Anchors away!’ In the Atlantic Ocean, 100 miles off the northern coast of Angola, Captain Cy Stamford brought the FPSO Bannock A to rest in 4,000 feet of water. Of all the vessels in the Bannock Oil fleet, this one had the least imaginative or evocative name, and she didn’t look any better than she sounded. A mighty supertanker may not possess the elegance of an America’s Cup racing yacht, but there is something undeniably magnificent about its awesome size and presence, something majestic about its progress across the world’s mightiest oceans. Bannock A was certainly built to supertanker scale. Her hull was long and wide enough to accommodate three stadium-sized professional soccer pitches laid end-to-end. Her tanks could hold around 100 million gallons of oil, weighing in at over 300,000 imperial tons. But she was as graceless as a hippo in a tutu.

      The day he took command, Stamford had Skyped his wife, back home in Norfolk, Virginia. ‘How long’ve I been doing this, Mary?’ he asked.

      ‘Longer than either