John Carr. James Deegan

black hair, wavy and greasy, held back by a pair of Oakleys pushed up on his forehead.

      Dark eyes.

      Kind of a cruel mouth.

      Lopsided walk.

      And that big, pink hole in his right leg.

      Once inside Carr’s head it would never leave. He had an uncanny knack for remembering stuff like this – the skill had been honed during his near-two decades in the Special Air Service, and it had often proved invaluable on ops.

      He looked over his right shoulder at the group the guy had been eyeballing.

      Four young couples were in the process of laying out their towels, paperbacks, and iPads.

      Their pale skin, Boden and Crew kit and beach cricket gear, would have marked them out as members of the British middle class, even if their accents had not confirmed it.

      ‘For goodness’ sake, Jemima,’ one of the young men was saying, ‘I thought you were bringing the Kindle.’

      ‘Oh piss off, Thomas,’ said Jemima. ‘You’re really getting on my nerves today.’

      ‘Yeah, Tom,’ said one of the others, good-naturedly. ‘Take a day off, why don’t you? What are you reading, anyway? Fifty Shades of Grey?’ There was a ripple of mocking laughter and jeers. ‘Right, who’s coming in?’

      The second speaker pulled off his T-shirt and headed for the water, followed by three of the girls.

      Very tidy, thought Carr. Especially the tall brunette, and the blonde girl in the shocking pink bikini.

      He could see why the guy with the gammy leg had been gawping at them.

      But it wasn’t worth the aggro, not with Alice by his side and George running his gob, so he turned his head and looked conspicuously in the opposite direction.

      Way off at the top of the beach, unnoticed by Carr or anyone else, a young man in cut-off denim shorts and a Manchester United replica shirt hung around under a palm tree, and made a phone call.

      As he did so, he watched the new arrivals keenly – though he took care not to show it.

      The call was answered a hundred metres away, by the man with the dark eyes and the cruel mouth.

      He was by now standing on the deck of a powerful white yacht, moored up in the marina at the extreme western edge of the Puerto Banús beach, at the end of Calle Ribera.

      The open sea a matter of metres away.

      ‘Yes,’ said Dark Eyes. ‘Keep watching them, and await further instructions.’

      He killed the call, stood up, pulled his Oakleys down from his forehead, and stuck a Marlboro Light in his mouth.

      The dark-eyed man did indeed look like a member of the wealthy, leisured Eurotrash, who idled their summers away sailing around the Med, their winters in Klosters and Courchevel 1850, and the rest of the year drinking pink champagne at 38,000 feet.

      But the flashy gold Rolex was fake, and the linen trousers stolen, and John Carr was quite correct about the damage to his leg – it had been caused by a piece of red-hot Hazara shrapnel at Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan, in 1997.

      He was actually a Chechen, called Argun Shishani, and he was not the owner of the boat, the Mistral 55 class Lucky Lady.

      He was merely borrowing it from someone – someone who, admittedly, would never need it again.

      He had chosen this particular boat because its twin 7,400hp Codag engines made it capable of more than fifty knots – 52kts, to be precise, or 96kph, or a shade under 60mph.

      And because it had a mooring ticket at Puerto Banús.

      Argun Shishani threw his half-smoked cigarette into the water.

      Watched in amusement for a moment or two as a dozen silver sardines flashed in and fought over it.

      Then looked up at the endless blue sky, smiled, and went below to make the final preparations.

10.

      CARLO ABANDONATO HAD taken time to walk around the sun deck, and all looked in order.

      About half of the Windsor Castle’s passengers had gone ashore, and those who had remained were sipping cocktails, splashing in the pool, or slowly giving themselves skin cancer in the roasting sun.

      It was a mid-range boat, so they were mostly families and a few pensioners – the bulk of them British with a few Americans, Canadians and Europeans thrown in.

      A young woman waylaid him as he walked by, and Abandonato stopped to crouch down by her sun lounger.

      She was a Londoner, he thought, and not unattractive, and she was flirting furiously; her husband was taken up with their toddler, and either didn’t notice or was used to it.

      ‘So how do I go about getting an invitation for dinner at the Captain’s table?’ the young woman was saying, looking at him over her sunglasses.

      ‘It’s a big mystery,’ said Abandonato, smiling. He was a handsome man, and he knew it, but he seemed to exert a particularly hypnotic effect on English women which he had never really understood. ‘The maître d’ has his ways, but I’m afraid I leave it to him.’

      ‘Well, tell him Becky in 414 on deck four would like to come,’ she said, with a conspiratorial grin. ‘Just me, my husband will be busy with our daughter.’

      ‘Oi, oi,’ said the husband, distractedly.

      ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Abandonato, standing up. ‘Everything else is okay for you?’

      ‘Wonderful,’ said Becky, looking him up and down. ‘The view especially.’

      Carlo Abandonato chuckled and walked on, heading to the elevator.

      He’d travel a deck down, to two of the ship’s three restaurants, to make sure the lunch service was going well.

      After that, he’d book himself off for an hour, go back to his cabin, and call his wife via the sat-link.

      Then back to the bridge, go through the departure checks ready for 17:00hrs, when they were due to weigh anchor and be on their way.

      He smiled to himself as the elevator doors closed and he started sinking.

      There were worse jobs in the world.

11.

      EIGHTY FEET BENEATH him, below the waterline, in the belly of the Windsor Castle, Farouk Ebrahim stood in the humming, throbbing engine room of the huge ship, looked at the wall clock, and spoke to the first engineer.

      ‘Excuse me, boss,’ he said, wiping his hands on a rag. ‘Is okay if I go toilet?’

      The first engineer – an experienced ex-Royal Navy man called Phil Clarke – glanced at Ebrahim over his clipboard.

      ‘Again, Farouk?’ he said. ‘That must be the fifth time today.’

      ‘Sorry, boss,’ said the young Filipino motorman, putting the rag into the pocket of his red overalls. ‘I have a problem in my stomach.’

      Clarke scratched his head. There wasn’t much doing – the engines were only running to generate power – and Farouk seemed like a good kid.

      Not long on the crew, but eager to learn, and well aware of his place in the scheme of things.

      ‘Okay,’ said Clarke. ‘But don’t take all day, yeah?’

      Ebrahim nodded and hurried from the engine room, and up and out to the tender station on deck three.

      He