Страница 53 из 75
Mimi carried her phone out to the garden, passing Pedro Menezes on his way in.
“What is GRA?” Janson asked when Isle de Foree’s ex–oil minister took his chair and addressed the remains of his omelet.
“Oh, them.” Menezes smiled. “Haven’t heard from them in years. Though why would I, stuck in London?”
“What are they?”
“Very generous.”
“What do you mean?”
“What he means,” interrupted Everest Orhii, “is that GRA paid him plenty to allow them secret access to explore deep waters south of the fields Isle de Foree was supposed to share with Nigeria.”
“There was no co
“The geology is incontrovertible. It’s the same patch.”
“The geology is as clear as the history and our sovereignty. They are our waters and our sea bottom. Not Nigeria’s!”
“It would never stand up in court.”
“It doesn’t have to, now.”
“You ripped us off.”
Janson laid a big hand on each man’s arm and said, “Gentlemen, what do the initials ‘GRA’ stand for?”
“Ground Resource Access,” answered Menezes. “I believe.”
“Believe?” snorted Everest Orhii. “You must know who gave you all that money.”
“Their business cards read: ‘Ground Resource Access.’ I never found it listed on any exchange, however, or in any professional society.”
“Ground Resource Access?” Days earlier Janson had listened to Kingsman Helms say, “The problem with the supply side of oil is a problem of accessing the resources in the ground.” Coincidence? But, as Janson had told Helms, he had heard it from other oilmen. Common nomenclature.
“Was it an American company?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Were the people you dealt with American?” he asked patiently.
“The man who called on me appeared to be American.”
“What did he look like?”
“Rather like you. Fit, like a former soldier.”
“Could he have been a soldier?” asked Janson, thinking perhaps GRA was a front company for a U.S. covert service.
Menezes shrugged.
“Do you recall whether his card read ‘Limited’ or ‘Incorporated’?”
“ ‘Inc.’ He was American. No doubt about that.”
“And when was this?”
“Four years ago.”
Someone was taking the long view of Kingsman Helms’s assertion that “a purely logistic problem becomes a political problem when governments claim access.”
Mimi returned. Janson gave her a shadow of a nod. Time to move along. He had learned all he could here. CatsPaw’s freelancers could research the name.
“Finish your breakfast, my friends,” said Mimi. “Thank you so much for coming.”
In minutes she had them firmly out the door. “They weren’t much help, were they?”
“Every bit helps. Thank you.” He glanced at his watch.
“Don’t rush off,” said Mimi.
“I have a full schedule.”
“But I have another guest for you.”
“Who?”
“An angry policeman.”
Janson stifled the impulse to leave. Mimi was gaming him, but with a smile that suggested she had something special in mind. “What do you mean?”
“He is a Frenchman. He held a very high position in security. He ran afoul of the French president, who was not known for treating his officers kindly. He was demoted, unfairly.”
“Are you thinking he knows something about Sécurite Referral?”
“No— I mean for all I know he might, but that’s not why I telephoned him.”
“Then what?”
“Guess where he held his high-security post?”
“Princess!”
“Corsica.”
Janson smiled back at her beaming face. “Bless you, Mimi.”
“He’ll be here in an hour. Would you like a shower or something? You’ve been on a plane all night.”
“A shower would be terrific.”
* * *
DOMINIQUE ONDINE HAD served most of his career on the island of Corsica, a French province, where he had battled national separatists, Union Corse mafia, and the contentious clans that warred over slights, insults, and long-simmering feuds. He was a pale-ski
“My life I give my country. My life is snatched from me by a politician.”
It was still not noon, but Dominque Ondine had had several cognacs by the smell of him. Mimi poured him another, which he gripped tightly in a thick fist with scarred knuckles. Janson nursed his as they spoke across Mimi’s table, which was now laden with a hamper’s worth of cheese, bread, and sausages that the nearby Harrods Food Hall had wheeled to her house in a pram.
“Madam Princess informs me that you are traveling to Corsica.”
“Yes, I’m meeting up with an associate there.”
“I hope for your sake you are not in the business of developing property.”
“Why is that?”
“Corsica teeters on the brink of anarchy. The nationalist movement protests ever more vehemently against ‘colonization’ by rich tourists. They hate developers seizing beachfront property for hotels.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. I’m a corporate security consultant.”
Ondine raised a bushy eyebrow, blinked through a haze of cognac, and gave Paul Janson a closer look. Shaved, showered, and wearing a crisp blue dress shirt borrowed from Mimi’s collection, the American with the pleasant demeanor had struck the Frenchman as a banker, physician, or lawyer on a London vacation. Now Ondine wondered.
“Arson and dynamite,” he told Janson, “are the Corsican’s weapons of choice. Vendetta his ‘court of law.’ Corsicans are a people who look in, not out. Such an attitude complicates the task of guaranteeing security for outsiders who a
Janson answered casually, although with earlier Iboga sightings neither as credible nor as current as the ex-SEAL Daniel’s, he was already working up a legend to cover an operation on the island. Jessica Kincaid was there already, doing recon and feeding information back to CatsPaw. Freddy Ramirez’s Protocolo de Seguridad was recruiting an exfiltration force. Quintisha Upchurch was marshaling intermediaries to lease helicopters, boats, and a freighter.
“Fortunately,” Janson told Dominique Ondine, “we have contracted only to guarantee the legitimacy of foreign investors. Their physical safety falls to others.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your government, the French government, desires not to run afoul of EU laws against money laundering. It is my job to vet potential investors in development projects that have French government support. In other words, if a drug smuggler wants to put his illegal profits into a Corsican beachfront hotel he will fail to pass scrutiny and his money will not be allowed into the project.”
“Ah. You’re more of an accountant.”
“Precisely,” said Janson, putting on his wire-rimmed glasses.
“I repeat: Corsica teeters on the brink. If the separatists attack and you happen to be among those sipping champagne in a millionaire’s holiday palace at Punta d’Oro, angry Corsicans may not honor the distinction.”
“Thank you for the warning.” Janson raised his glass and inclined it toward Ondine. “I will avoid the bubbly and stick to honest cognac.”
Ondine smiled at last.
“Tell me,” Janson asked. “In your experience, which Princess Mimi assures me is broad and deep, have you come upon an organization named Securité Referral?”
“Non.”Ondine cut a length of sausage, slapped it on a chunk of bread, and chewed mightily. Janson noticed Mimi’s bright eyes zero in on the Frenchman. He’s lying, Janson thought.
“Does the name Emil Bloch ring a bell? Possibly one of their people.”
“There was a mercenary named Bloch,” said Ondine. “A former Legio
“But you’ve not heard his name in co
“Non!”
“Another I have heard mentioned in co
“Merde.”Ondine looked like he would spit on the floor if he weren’t in Mimi’s kitchen.