Page 94 of One Minute Out

These girls are being escorted around the deck, just like the first group, obviously as a form of exercise.

Shit. I can’t go anywhere right now.

Eventually these ladies are taken back belowdecks, and six more come up. They travel the same slow, monotonous route around the deck.

I’ve looked at every single woman, and none of them look like Roxana.

After the last group goes down, the engines of La Primarosa begin to slow more, then it sounds as if they are being powered back to neutral. Boat crew and armed men in suits walk around in the saloon, so I’m still stuck where I am.

Soon I hear the voices of crew members over a walkie-talkie at the stern, and I imagine men standing back there, lowering the tender into the water.

Almost on cue, the tender’s outboards start up and I hear it rumble around to the port side.

I worry that they are going to start loading up the women to take them to shore, but instead I see a tall bald-headed Caucasian man in dark clothing coming down the stairs, with three armed men at his heels. All three head out the port-side saloon hatch.

A minute later I hear the tender leaving the yacht, and then the quiet returns.

The women have been given exercise and then they were taken back below, so the only thing I can assume is that the men who boarded the tender are heading to land to pick up supplies, or perhaps even more women.

I decide to wait here another few minutes, and then to make my way for the stairs.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Kostas Kostopoulos had readied his quarters, showered and dressed himself, taken his pills, and sprayed on copious amounts of cologne.

He put on a red silk robe, leaving it open enough to reveal a hairy chest and a thin gold chain. He fingered the rings he kept on six of his fingers, and he slicked back his thin silver mane.

And when he heard the tender rumble away from the port side of his megayacht, he looked in the mirror and pronounced himself ready.

He walked over to the little built-in nightstand next to his king-sized bed and pressed a button on a console, and the lock in the door to the upper-deck passageway clicked open. He called out to his bodyguard.

“Anton. Come.”

A muscular, bearded Greek stepped up to the open doorway from where he’d been positioned at the top of the stairs. “Sir?”

“The product being held alone in VIP stateroom number four. Bring it to me.”

The younger man masked a smile. “Right away, sir.”

Now the seventy-two-year-old reached into a drawer and retrieved a fistful of silk scarves of different colors. He tossed them around on the bed and on the floor haphazardly, then picked a few back up and placed them more methodically around the room.

Jaco Verdoorn had told Kostopoulos that Riesling wanted him to take one of the women from below into his bed. He did this with regularity—it was the only reason he traveled personally with the merchandise to market—but tonight was the first time he’d been asked to defile one of the special-handling items.

Kostas was reluctant at first; he knew the Director himself would be on the yacht in just hours, and he did not want to do anything to bring on the powerful man’s ire. But when Verdoorn explained they’d been having trouble with Maja, and the psychologist on board felt she’d get through to her more easily if she managed to form a bond with her after helping her cope with true trauma, then the Greek saw this as his one opportunity to sample the wares going directly to the man in charge of the entire Consortium himself.

And even though the past several days had been some of the most difficult in the Balkan pipeline with the attacks by the American assassin known as the Gray Man, now that he was out on the water, away from the Balkans, Kostopoulos felt a reversal of fortunes coming his way. As he waited in his master stateroom for the most beautiful and desirable woman in this or perhaps any other shipment to come up and fulfill all his prurient desires, he found himself amazed that he’d managed to get so fucking lucky in life.

•••

I stretch my hamstrings and then my IT bands behind the bar. The cold of the water, even with my wetsuit on, tightens my muscles and lessens my ability for explosive movement, but the stretching helps me counter this somewhat.

And it’s not like I have much else to do. I’ve been back here for a half hour now; the tender motored off ten minutes ago, and even though it is a thousand yards or so to the marina in Rovinj, I can’t be sure the rigid-hulled rubber inflatable boat won’t return soon.

I tell myself I’ve got to get on with it.

But as I prepare to move, I see yet another figure in the saloon. This time it’s a muscular, bald-headed man with a beard, wearing a polo and a Brügger and Thomet submachine gun over his shoulder, descending the circular stairs. He arrives on the main deck and immediately continues down to the lower deck.

Something tells me to wait, and I do, but only for a minute. Then I see a woman ascend from below, followed by the bearded man, who holds a hand on her shoulder from behind.

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