Page 79 of One Minute Out

“I found more than that.” For the first time since I met her, Talyssa is speaking with authority in her voice. “The ship is La Primarosa. I went to Vesselfinder.com, which is a website that displays a map with real-time marine traffic, along with other voyage information, using data uploaded from the vessels’ transponders to the AIS, the—”

I interrupt, because I know what AIS is. “The Automatic Identification Service.”

“Actually, it’s the Automatic Identification System.”

“Right,” I say. “But boats and ships turn off their transponders all the time. There is no way in hell a boat full of sex trafficking victims would be broadcasting their location—”

She interrupts me. “It is mandatory for vessels over three hundred tons, but they are allowed to turn it off in certain circumstances. Security threats being one of them. Sometimes wealthy people use their status to fly under the radar, so to speak, citing a safety issue to the passengers. If you have money, all you have to do is say you are worried about piracy, and they give you some latitude to turn it off.”

“So, like I said, the Primarosa is not reporting to AIS, is it?”

“No. It’s not. Not right now. But since I know the name and the general size, I was able to go into Vesselfinder’s database of boats and ships and find a listing for it, along with a photograph taken off the coast of Santorini two years ago.”

“Primarosa is a girl’s name. I’ve heard it in Spain. Is it a Spanish boat?”

She shakes her head. “It’s registered in Denmark to a company based in Cyprus. It’s a shell. It only exists on paper to serve as the ownership of the yacht.”

“You can’t tell who actually owns the company?”

“That’s what makes it a shell.”

“So... a dead end?”

“It would be, except for one thing.” She has confidence and energy in her now that I haven’t seen before.

“What’s that?”

“Me. Maybe I can’t intimidate people or shoot people or anything else you do, but forensic accounting and banking is what I did all day, every day, until I came to the Balkans. If you keep driving north, I can work on digging into this yacht and its history. I will find us something that might help.”

“Okay. North of us is Croatia, and northwest of us is Italy. There is nowhere else in the Adriatic to go, unless they turn around and head south, so I am assuming the yacht is going to Italy.”

“Why?” she asks.

“I don’t know why it would leave Croatia only to return back to Croatia up the coast.”

“Right,” she says, but she doesn’t seem sold on my theory.

“It will take us six hours to get to the Italian border; I’ll need to know something before then about where it’s headed.”

“I can do this,” she says, then she pulls her laptop out of her bag and retrieves her phone. She sets up a Wi-Fi hotspot while I drive, and soon she’s pulled up a map and is furiously clicking keys next to me.

•••

Twenty-seven nautical miles away, the Primarosa motored northwest through the warm predawn light at fifteen knots. Standing on the bow and looking out to sea, South African Jaco Verdoorn stood alone. His men did not come aboard with him; with twenty-three women, fifteen crew, and nine Greek mafioso on board, there simply was not enough room on the vessel for nine more men.

Verdoorn sent Loots and the rest of his shock troops north by air to scout out the security situation up there. The Primarosa had one more stop to make before its final destination on this journey, just to take on a few more pieces of merchandise, but Verdoorn wasn’t worried about Gentry showing up there. The rest of the girls would be locked up on board the yacht; the Greeks had a dozen guns on board. Kostopoulos and his men had maintained the pipeline in the Balkans for years without incident, and the South African had at least enough confidence in them that they could watch over the merchandise while in transit on open water. If the Gray Man was working alone, or virtually alone, there was little chance he was going to attack a forty-five-meter yacht that was out to sea and on the move.

He was legendary, but still, he was human.

No, if Gentry came, it would be at the final destination of this trip, so that was where Verdoorn sent his men.

As Jaco fantasized about getting Courtland Gentry’s forehead on the other side of the front sight of his pistol, he heard footsteps behind him on the foredeck. Looking back over his shoulder, he recognized the small stature and gait of Kostas Kostopoulos.

He turned away and returned his gaze to the sea.

Verdoorn relied on the old Greek and his organization, but he didn’t much care for the man, personally. He felt Kostopoulos had delusions of his own importance, was pompous and superior acting, and talked back to Verdoorn more than any of the other regionals in the Consortium. Kostopoulos knew that Verdoorn took orders from the Director, so the Greek treated the South African as a glorified errand boy.

Verdoorn would have loved to slit the old bastard’s throat right then and toss him over the side of his own luxury yacht for the fish, but Kostopoulos was right about one thing: Jaco Verdoorn did not make decisions autonomously. While he ran this operation fully, he was beholden to the little American in California, the Director.

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