Dead Centre - Andy McNab [68]
I scanned the four chalets and back along the road to the left. Still no black blob.
The sledge reached the bottom of the hill. The woman started dragging it back up. The kids scrambled behind her in the snow. She stopped in her tracks. I focused on her. She was looking up the hill. She waved. I swung the telescope to follow her gaze. A man in jeans and a red jacket was waving back to her from the veranda.
The kids came into view. They scampered past the woman and up towards the man.
I refocused on him. It was Frank.
The two pink all-in-ones were soon running onto the veranda. Big hugs and kisses followed. The white suit climbed onto the veranda and approached him. She kissed him on the mouth.
The two kids bomb-burst past them. I moved the telescope. Mr Lover Man and Genghis moved into the frame. Genghis pretended to box with them as they jumped up at him.
I now knew the other reason Frank didn’t want anyone to know about Tracy and Stefan – including his wife. I’d traipsed around enough galleries and checked out enough Russian family portraits during my culture fest to know about male primogeniture.
The State Tretyakov Gallery was the first place Anna had dragged me to. Sixty-two rooms, 150,000 works of art. That was a week I’d never get back. Most of it was a blur, but it was impossible not to notice that it was all about the boy. The first-born male was top dog, the only one that mattered. The girls could only inherit if there were no males in the way.
Stefan’s job would be to continue Frank’s newly founded dynasty. He’d be the first of a new generation of Russian billionaires who wouldn’t know a lot about the journey their dads had taken out of old Russia, just as the old American robber barons, like the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts, had drawn a veil over what they’d done to trouser their fortunes.
I watched as they disappeared into the chalet, then waited a couple of minutes, but nobody came out again. I jumped back into the Merc and pointed towards the high ground. ‘Those chalets up there – are they the rented ones?’
Jacques turned in his seat. ‘Yes. For the party. Every hotel in Courchevel is full.’
‘Let’s get back to the helicopter. But not the way we came. Through the town. Does that work for you?’
‘Yes, of course.’
He drove further into the resort.
‘By the way, Jacques, aren’t you going to ask me?’
‘I have a new rule, sir. I only speak when I’m spoken to.’
‘Go on. Just this once.’
‘Thank you, sir. So, does it have a pool?’
PART SIX
1
Monday, 21 March
15.17 hrs
THE DIN FROM the Cessna Cargomaster’s 675h.p. Pratt & Whitney engine we were almost sitting astride engulfed the cockpit. If it hadn’t been for the headphones I was wearing, I wouldn’t have been able to hear a word of Joe’s rant.
The Indian Ocean was six thousand feet below us. We had another twenty minutes of it at 125 knots before we hit Mogadishu. We’d been following the surf line of the Somali coast north. The country was only a little smaller than Texas, but it had more than three thousand kilometres of coast, about the same as the whole eastern seaboard of the USA. Plenty of space in which to park hijacked shipping, and there was enough of it below. Oil tankers and cargo ships wallowed in the swell. Skiffs were tied up alongside. Rusted wrecks lay on the beach.
The lushness of the Kenyan landscape had been left behind more than an hour ago. Almost the moment we crossed the border, the terrain had turned to dust. There was nothing but sand and rough old brush as far as the eye could see. Further west was Ethiopia, and more of the same. To the north of Somalia was the Gulf of Aden. The country had a lot of unexploited iron ore, gas and oil. So far, the clans had been too busy making money from the sea, but I was sure it was only a matter of time.
The single-prop Cessna was essentially a flight deck with a great big cargo hold up its arse. FedEx used them in this part of the world because they could handle the