the thin nylon seat. She watched him but George was too thick-skinned to read her disdain. He went as far as to buckle it up for her.
‘I’ve never seen a strap tighten that small before,’ he said, raising his eyebrows and grinning.
Her look froze even further.
George stood up and took a step back. He walked around the mini-sub where Stratton was checking the boxes for the equipment they contained. ‘Does she always look like that?’
Stratton glanced over at her. ‘Yes,’ he said.
George took it to mean nothing but then was unsure. He moved away to prepare the chopper for lift-off.
Stratton lifted a silenced H&K sub-machine gun out of a box to inspect it. The helicopter shuddered as it ascended. He looked through a porthole at the shrinking old compound. They’d done it. Now how the hell were they going to get to the coast, never mind get into the water?
8
The sumptuous penthouse offices of Arcom Oil looked out on a partially constructed cityscape: a forest of cranes and beyond them a sea of sand. Inside the spacious suite furnished with an unsubtle blend of expensive Arabian and Western fixtures sat four men, two of them Arab, two Eastern European.
The two Russians were both large and overweight, one of them was bald. One of the Arabs wore traditional if rather expensive Bedouin garb. His skinny companion wore a fine-quality Western suit. All four men were sunk into deep, comfortable leather chairs. The Arabs had cups of tea on small tables in front of them. The Russians had large glasses partially filled with ice on a single table between them, on which also rested an ice bucket that had a bottle of vodka pressed into the snowy shavings.
Two beautiful and busty young women in revealing evening wear sat on high stools at a bar at the far end of the room. They were talking quietly and comparing their nails.
The bald Russian looked at the face of the gold and diamondstudded watch he wore. But he seemed neither bored nor restless despite the lack of conversation. He leaned his heavy frame forward, reached for the bottle of vodka and filled a glass. He said something quietly in his native tongue to his colleague who nodded. The bald Russian filled his colleague’s glass. They took a stiff drink under blank but somehow still disapproving gazes from the two Arabs and sat back, exhaling deeply with the effort.
A door opened and a well-groomed Arab in a smart Western suit walked in. It was Mr Kaan, Arcom’s crisis manager, carrying a phone, which he held in front of him as if it were a chalice filled with God’s blood. The skinny Arab snapped his fingers several times in the direction of the girls. After several sharp ‘tsks’ from the man the girls stopped talking, slid off their chairs and sashayed out of the room. Kaan placed the phone in a cradle on a desk, adjusted a speaker box attached to it, and touched a button. ‘You can go ahead,’ he said loudly. ‘Say what you have to say.’
‘The people from MI16 are on their way to the Morpheus,’ a man’s voice crackled.
The men remained expressionless. One of the Russians whispered something to his associate. The two Arabs exchanged a whisper as if in retaliation. The bald Russian gestured with his hands to the Arab opposite in a manner that asked if he had anything to say to the phone. The man produced a polite smile and shook his head. The Russian indicated to Kaan that they were finished with him.
Kaan disconnected the phone from the speaker, walked out of the room and closed the door behind him.
The four men looked at each other, waiting for one of the others to begin. The suited Arab spoke. ‘We have reached the point where we must decide if we are to see this through, or abort.’
‘We have not yet reached the point of no return,’ one of the Russians pointed out.
The skinny Arab had not made himself clear. ‘If we proceed to the next stage there may be no turning back.’
‘He’s right,’ the other Russian agreed.
They all thought about it for a moment.
‘Shall we vote on it?’ the fat Arab asked.
‘We didn’t vote on the last decision,’ the Russian who still had his hair pointed out.
‘That’s because we all agreed beforehand and a vote wasn’t needed,’ the Arab reminded him.
‘What do we do if one of us votes differently from the others?’ the bald Russian asked.