The Cobra

"Can you help me buy two?"

"Not Staplehurst, we do insurance, but of course we know everyone in the market worldwide. I'm going to put you alongside my managing director, Paul Agate. Young, but smart as paint."

He rose and offered his card.

"Drop by the office tomorrow. Paul will see you right. Best advice in the City. On the house. Thanks for lunch, Barry. Give my regards to the chief."

And so they descended to the street and parted. JUAN CORTEZ finished work and emerged from the entrails of the 4,000-ton tramp steamer on which he had worked his magic. After the darkness of the lower hold, the autumn sun was brilliant. So bright he was tempted to reach for his black-fronted welder's helmet. Instead he pulled on dark glasses and let his pupils adjust to the light.

His grimy overalls clung to him, pasted by sweat onto his near-naked body. Beneath the fabric, he wore only undershorts. The heat down there had been ferocious.

There was no need to wait. The men who had commissioned the work would come in the morning. He would show them what he had done and how to work the secret access door. The cavity behind the plating of the i

His business was to put clothes on the back of his faithful wife, Irina, food on the table and school books in the satchel of his boy, Pedro. He stowed his kit in the allocated locker and made his way to the modest Ford Pinto that was his automobile. In the neat bungalow, a real credit to a workingman, in the smart private estate beneath the hill called Cerro de La Popa, there would be a long, bracing shower, a kiss from Irina, a hug from Pedro, a filling meal and a few beers in front of the plasma-screen TV. And so, a happy man, the best welder in Cartagena drove home. CAL DEXTER knew London but not well, and that trading hub simply called the "City" or the "Square Mile" not at all. But a black cab, driven by a Cockney born and raised a mile east of Aldgate, had no trouble. He was dropped outside the door of the maritime insurance broker in a narrow backwater playing host to a monastery dating back to Shakespeare at five minutes before eleven o'clock. A smiling secretary showed him up to the second floor.

Paul Agate occupied a small office piled with files; framed prints of cargo ships adorned the walls. It was hard to imagine the millions of pounds' worth of insurance business that came and went out of this cubbyhole. Only the screen of a state-of-the-art computer proved that Charles Dickens had not just moved out.

Later, Dexter would realize how deceptive London's centuries-old money-market center was, where tens of billions in sales, purchases and commissions were generated each day. Agate was around forty, shirtsleeved, open-necked and friendly. He had been briefed by Sir Abhay Varma, but only just so far. The American, he was told, represented a new venture-capital company seeking to buy two dry-bulk carriers, probably surplus-to-requirement grain ships. What they would be used for he had not been told. Need-to-know. What Staplehurst would do was offer him advice, guidance and some contacts in the shipping world. The American was a friend of a friend of Sir Abhay. There would be no invoice.

"Dry bulk?" said Agate. "Ex-grain ships. You're in the market at the right time. What, with the state of the world economy, there is quite a margin of surplus to

"No," said Dexter. "Who can you recommend?"

"Well, it's a quite a tight world, we all know each other. Within half a mile, there's Clarkson, Braemar Seascope, Galbraith or Gibson's. They all do sales, purchases, charters. For a fee, of course."

"Of course." An encrypted message from Washington had told him of a new account opened in the British Cha

"On the other hand, a good broker will probably save a ship buyer more than the fee. I have a good friend at Parkside and Company. He would see you right. Shall I give him a call?"

"Please do."

Agate was on the phone for five minutes.

"Simon Linley's your man," he said, and wrote an address on a scrap of paper. "It's only five hundred yards. Out of here, turn left. At Aldgate, left again. Follow your nose for five minutes, and ask. Jupiter House. Anyone will tell you. Good luck."

Dexter finished his coffee, shook hands and left. The directions were perfect. He was there in fifteen minutes. Jupiter House was the opposite of the Staplehurst office: ultra-modern, steel and glass. Silent elevators. Parkside was on the eleventh floor, with picture windows that showed the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral on its hill two miles to the west. Linley met him at the elevator doors and took him to a small conference room. Coffee and gingersnaps appeared.

"You wish to buy two bulk-carrier ships, probably grain carriers?" asked Linley.

"My patrons do," corrected Dexter. "They are based in the Middle East. They wish for extreme discretion. Hence, a front company headed by me."

"Of course." Linley was not in the slightest fazed. Some Arab businessmen had skimmed the local sheikh and did not want to end up in a very unpleasant Gulf jail. It happened all the time.

"How big would your clients wish these ships to be?"

Dexter knew little of marine to

"About twenty thousand tons gross, or twenty-eight thousand deadweight tons," said Linley. He began to tap into a computer keyboard. The large screen was at the end of the conference table where both men could see it. A range of options began to appear. Fremantle, Australia. St. Lawrence Seaway, Canada. Singapore. Chesapeake Bay, USA.

"The biggest repertoire would seem to be with COSCO. China Ocean Shipping Company, based in Shanghai, but we use the Hong Kong office."

"Communists?" asked Dexter, who had killed rather a lot of them in the Iron Triangle.

"Oh, we don't bother about that anymore," said Linley. "Nowadays they're the world's sharpest capitalists. But very meticulous. If they say they'll deliver, they deliver. And here we have Eagle Bulk in New York. Closer to home for you. Not that it matters. Or does it matter?"

"My clients want discretion only as to true ownership," said Dexter, "and both ships would be taken to a discreet yard for refit and renovation."

Linley thought but did not say: A bunch of crooks who probably want to move some extremely dodgy cargoes, so they will want the ships reconfigured, renamed with new paperwork and put to sea unrecognizable. So what? The Far East is full of them; times are hard, and money is money.

What he did say: "Of course. There are some very skilled and highly discreet shipyards in southern India. We have contacts there through our man in Mumbai. If we are to act for you, we shall have to have a memorandum of agreement, with an advance against commission. Once the ships are purchased, I suggest you put both on the books of a management company called Thame in Singapore. At that point, and with new names, they will disappear. Thame never talk to anyone about their clients. Where can I get hold of you, Mr. Dexter?"

The message from Devereaux had also included the address, phone number and e-mail of a newly acquired safe house in Fairfax, Virginia, which would act as mail drop and message taker. Being a Devereaux creation, it was untraceable and could close down in sixty seconds. Dexter gave it. Within forty-eight hours, the memorandum was signed and returned. Fairfax began their hunt. It would take two months, but before the end of the year two grain ships were handed over.