I’m hoping the tenders take the bait, and by the fact that I can’t hear the outboard motors any longer, I feel certain they have.

At five feet below the surface I kick as hard and as fast as I can, until my lungs scream in agony, and then I let the other rock drop from my hands. The only things weighing me down now are the few items in my pack, so I rise easily to the surface.

I don’t take my head out of the water, only blow out through the snorkel and then back in, still kicking but making sure to kick in a way that doesn’t make a splash or allow my long fins to come out of the water.

God, I love breathing.

Finally, I raise my mask up to get my bearings. The marina at Rovinj is lit with streetlamps, but no one is in sight this late. It’s straight ahead, less than fifty yards away, and I cover this distance in under two minutes.

Here I climb ashore, look back out to the bay, and see a pair of little boats racing around, far to my southwest, flashlights whipping in all directions. The near constant voice of a man, shouting what sounds like both orders and admonitions, rolls over the water to me.

Removing my fins and mask, I adjust my pack on my back and start running for the warren of streets that make up the Old Town district of the small city, ready to disappear in an alleyway till the coast is clear. My plan is to call Talyssa to see where she is, then steal yet another car and pick her up.

For now, that’s where my plan ends, but I just demonstrated to myself that I’m pretty fucking good on the fly. I accomplished nothing more tonight than finding out the city where the market is being held, but it’s enough to move forward.

Still, it’s becoming more and more obvious that Talyssa and I aren’t going to be able to pull this off on our own, so my thoughts start drifting to a phone call that I really should make, but one that I really don’t want to make.

THIRTY-ONE

   The sleek Gulfstream 650 flew thirty-six thousand feet above northern Illinois, heading east from Van Nuys on its way to Venice, Italy. On board Kenneth Cage sat in the center of the cabin facing forward, and he dined on roast duck, sipping a light pinot noir along with it. He was surrounded in the aircraft by other men, seven in all, but his attention during dinner was on a notebook computer on the tray next to him: more specifically, the spreadsheet reporting this fiscal year’s revenue from merchandise trafficked from the East and into Scandinavia. Estonia was producing some excellent product these days, but the real numbers were still coming from Belarus, where the poor economy and difficult conditions made it exponentially easier to dupe young girls into heading west for more opportunity.

The economy in the Baltic had developed greatly, in contrast, and this made it tougher on an enterprise like Cage’s. The Consortium preyed on the downtrodden, those who wouldn’t be missed or, if they were, would be missed only by those without the means to come looking for them.

Still, Scandinavia was generating tens of millions of euros in revenue, and Cage was happy enough with the reporting.

He was just biting into a forkful of saffron orzo when the phone on the table next to him chirped. He picked it up without looking.

“Yeah?”

* * *

• • •

   Across from the Director of the Consortium, his chief protection agent, Sean Hall, sat facing aft, also dining on the roast duck. He regarded his boss as he chewed, then looked around the cabin at his full six-man executive protection detail, here to help him ensure Cage’s safety on this trip.

Everyone on the team drank either wine or beer, a rare occurrence when around the principal, but for the next ten hours or so they had no duties whatsoever. Once they got where they were going, however, Hall knew they’d be working as hard as any of these men had worked since they’d served in combat or in critical SWAT callouts.

Hall sipped more wine, taking advantage of the rare opportunity, but his thoughts shifted to the job ahead. They would land at Marco Polo Airport in Venice early afternoon local time, and then Cage would be taken in a motorboat out to La Primarosa, with Hall and his six men surrounding him.

And then, around eleven p.m., Cage would go to the sale of the women to shake hands with some of his clients, again at the nucleus of a large security operation.

Everything in Hall’s training told him this was a bad idea. This entire trip was Cage flexing his muscle to him and Jaco to show he wasn’t scared of this Gray Man and wouldn’t be ordered around by his subordinates.

Hall thought it to be an asinine risk just so his boss could get some tail that was on its way to him anyway.

The forty-year-old ex–Navy SEAL kept his eyes on the shorter, older American while Cage took the call, only because the two men were facing each other. But when Cage leaned back in his chair with an unmistakable look of exasperation on his face, Hall quickly tried to listen in to the one half of the conversation in his earshot.

“You’re kidding. Wait. Tell me you are kidding?” Then, “Fuck! This has gotten completely out of hand!” Cage shouted into the receiver, drawing the attention of everyone in the cabin. “What the hell am I paying you bastards for?”

Sean Hall’s roast duck was forgotten now, as was the wine. From the context of Cage’s words, and the expression on his face, he knew this would be Jaco on the line, and Jaco would be telling him that yet something else had happened somewhere along the Balkan pipeline.

This had turned into a security emergency, Hall was certain, and as the head of security he told himself he was now officially back on the clock.

He snapped his fingers at his closest man, who was just bringing his bottle of Stella Artois to his lips. Hall said, “Dude, stop drinking. Pass it along.”

Hall called the attractive flight attendant over, handed her his glass of wine, and told her to clean up the glasses and plates on his men’s trays. Hall had a bottle of vodka in his kit bag, but right now his alcoholism wasn’t a problem because he was more concerned with keeping himself and his principal alive for the next several hours.

He climbed out of his cabin chair and sat down next to his boss, who was still talking on the phone.

Cage said, “You’re damn right, I will! Just because you can’t do your job doesn’t mean I’m not going to do mine. I swear to God, Jaco, you need to get this shit handled or I’ll bring people in who can. Am I clear?”

There was another minute of talk, seemingly about one of the girls in the process of being trafficked, and then Cage slammed the phone down, thumped his head back into the leather headrest again, and closed his eyes.

Hall knew better than to speak up right now. He’d only get his head bitten off by the mercurial fifty-four-year-old.

Finally, the Director of the Consortium turned to look at his director of security. “Kostopoulos is dead. Strangled to death on his own yacht.”