The Bancroft Strategy

  The situation is hopeless but not serious: something Jared Rinehart liked to say. Remembering Jared’s voice caused something close to physical pain, like regurgitating lye. It could not be true. It had to be true. It could not be true. It had to be true. A spinning solenoid of doubt and conviction—an alternating current of recognition and denial—was consuming his ebbing powers of concentration.

  Why was he even here? For the past nine days he had been consumed with the mission of rescuing Jared Rinehart—or avenging him. He had been propelled by a certainty that had perished the previous evening. Now the Hound was chasing after something else, something hard, inviolable, essential. He was chasing after the truth.

  Andrea’s voice: Tell me where it is safe.

  A shadowland that encompasses the globe.

  Nowhere was safe. Nowhere would be safe. Not until Belknap had made it so. Or was killed in the attempt.

  The sun was brilliant—noon in the Mediterranean, the sky that inimitable Mediterranean azure—and yet it could all have been inky blackness. Belknap prided himself on seeing through deceptions, yet he had spent much of his life as a victim of one. His belly clutched and cramped. Maybe it was time to admit the futility of his efforts. And let Genesis have his way?

  Out of the pain came a renewed sense of determination. Stavros’s estate was ultra-secure. But it surely had at least one weakness. Swirling mists gave way to crystalline clarity, and another line of Jared’s: When there’s no way in, try the front door.

  Half an hour later, Belknap drove up to the estate in a rented Land Rover; to a pebbly-faced man at the outermost gate he passed on a message that was relayed to another, and another. He and his vehicle were searched, and then waved on through. He parked as directed, on a shaded graveled lot, as tidy and carefully raked as a Japanese sand garden. At the front door, he repeated his message to a manservant in formal attire. It was simple, and it was powerful: “Tell Mr. Stavros that Genesis sent me.”

  Once again it proved its efficacy. The manservant, a gaunt man in his sixties with a slightly jaundiced complexion and hollows beneath his brown eyes, did not offer Belknap a drink or issue any other pleasantries. He spoke English with a vaguely Levantine accent, but his movements were stiff and proper, almost prissy—another residue, perhaps, of the island’s colonial past. The foyer had elaborate coffered ceilings of mahogany; intricate wainscoting adorned the coral-hued walls.

  “He will see you in the library,” the manservant told him. As the man turned, Belknap caught a fleeting glimpse of a small blued-steel Luger inside his black jacket. He knew he had been meant to see it.

  The library had more oak paneling than bookshelves; overhead, an intricate crystal chandelier looked as if it were taken from a Venetian palazzo, and probably had been. So far, the place was very much as Belknap had envisaged it, from the Regency period furniture to the minor Old Master paintings.

  Nikos Stavros, however, was not. Belknap had expected a barrel-chested man, a strong jaw, and piercing gaze, and beefy grip—the familiar type of the Greek shipping magnate, the sort who had grown to appreciate the finer things while not shying from the rough-and-tumble of the shipyard when necessary.

  The man who scrambled to his feet and took his hand in a clammy, limp handshake was, on the contrary, an unimpressive specimen. His gaze was watery and distracted. He was slight of build: sunkenchested, with narrow wrists and the spindly calves of a boy. His thinning, almost colorless hair was gathered in stringy clumps that lay flat against his scalp, sweat-pasted in place.

  “Nikos Stavros?” Belknap scrutinized him closely.

  Stavros dug into one ear with a long-nailed small finger. “You can leave us, Caius,” he called to the gaunt man. “We’ll be talking in private here. Everything’s fine.” His tone belied his words. The man was obviously frightened.

  “So, how can I help you?” Stavros asked Belknap. “I sound like a shopgirl, don’t I?” The man emitted a short dry laugh and licked his lips nervously. “But seriously. My whole career has been based on cooperation.” He clasped his hands together in an effort to stop them from trembling.

  Belknap turned around and saw that the manservant remained standing on the threshold to the library.

  The door closed quietly; the interior surface was upholstered with stud-tufted leather in the Jacobean style.

  Belknap took a long step toward Stavros, who seemed to cower in his presence.

  Yet he had let him in. Why? Because he felt he had had no choice, obviously. He did not dare incur the wrath of Genesis.

  “Cooperation is one thing,” Belknap said gruffly. “Collaboration is another.”

  “I quite see,” said Stavros, who obviously did not. Here was an immensely wealthy man, yet he was practically quivering with fear. Belknap was amazed. “I’m always game for collaboration.”

  “Collaboration.” The operative’s eyes narrowed. “With our adversaries.”

  “No!” Stavros yelped. “Not that. Never that.”

  “Decisions have been made on the strategic level. As to which operations to acquire. Which subsidiaries to spin off. Which partnerships to shut down.” Belknap’s references were veiled, vague, threatening; his aim was both to confuse and to connect.

  Stavros nodded vigorously. “Tough calls, I bet.”

  Belknap ignored him. “Let’s talk about Estotek,” he said. Though he was feeling his way through the part, he could betray no hint of uncertainty or hesitancy. He would bear down, ask what he needed to ask, and improvise if necessary.

  “Estotek,” Stavros repeated, swallowing hard. “Sounds like a birth control pill.” A strangled chortle. Once more, the magnate licked his lips nervously. They look chapped. Spittle had gathered in the left corner of his mouth. This was someone under stress.

  Belknap took another menacing step closer to the Cypriot shipper. “Do you think you’re funny? Do you think I’m here for an ice-cream social?” Belknap reached out and grabbed the magnate’s white silk shirt, jerking him closer to him in a gesture that hinted of bottomless reserves of violent fury.

  “I’m sorry,” Stavros said. “Now, what was the question again?”

  “Would you like to live out the remainder of your existence in a wholly immobilized state of unbearable pain and nauseating disfigurement?”

  “Let me think—no?” Stavros started coughing wildly. His face was flushed when he turned to face Belknap again. “Estotek. It’s a shell company, isn’t it? A storefront, basically. It’s how we do business. But you know that.”

  “What’s at issue isn’t my knowledge. It’s your conduct.”

  “Quite. I quite understand.” Stavros turned to a small cluster of liquor bottles and, with shaking hands, poured a drink for himself. “Where are my manners?” he said. “I should have offered you one. Here, take this.” He handed the heavy-bottomed tumbler to Belknap.

  Belknap took it and immediately threw its contents in Stavros’s face. The alcohol stung the Cypriot’s eyes, and he blinked tears away. The behavior was outrageous; but Belknap intuitively knew that it was crucial for him to test the limits of such outrage. Only someone backed by extraordinary power would dare abuse the magnate like this.

  “What did you do that for?” the Cypriot mewled.

  “Shut the hell up, you goddamn shit sausage,” Belknap growled. “You’re becoming a greater liability than an asset.”

  Stavros blinked. “You’re from…”

  “Just came from Lanham.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “An alliance was formed. An acquisition was made. You’re part of us now.”

  Stavros opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  “Don’t lie to me,” Belknap rumbled. “You did wrong. You sailed too close to the wind.”

  “Please, I didn’t tell them a goddamn thing! You’ve got to believe me!”

  Now he was getting somewhere. “Who?”

  “Those investigators got zip. I gave them nothing.”

  “Tell me
more.”

  “Nothing to tell.”

  “What are you hiding, goddammit?”

  “I’m telling you. They got nowhere, those Washington bastards in those brown suits. The lawyer that Lugner recommended was with me. John McTaggart, right? You guys can ask him. Those Kirk Commission drones made all kinds of noises, like you’d think. But we stonewalled all the way.”

  “Except that wasn’t your only meeting with them, was it?”

  “It certainly was!” A squawk of fear and indignation. “You’ve got to believe me.”

  “Now you’re telling us what we have to do?”

  “No! I didn’t mean it that way! Don’t misunderstand me.”

  “Again with the orders.” Keep him off-balance.

  “Please. I don’t know how the Kirk Commission learned what it learned but I do know I wasn’t the source. Why the hell would I have leaked? What sense does that make? It’s my ass that’s in a sling. They were talking about deregistering my fleet if I were found in contempt of the U.S. Congress. Like that. I reminded them I’m a Cypriot national! They kept going on about one of my American subsidiaries. They were way out of line. And I told them so.”

  “Your ass was in a sling, all right,” Belknap said. “That’s how those Washington aliens gave you an anal probe. Come clean. It’ll be better this way. We just need to hear it from you.”

  “You got the wrong idea. I squeezed my cheeks hard. Hey, I’m a Cypriot, we know what you gotta do. Nothing got through, nothing came out. I was like a drum. Please—McTaggart will vouch for me. You have to…please trust me on this.”

  Belknap was quiet for a long moment. “At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether I trust you.” He dropped his voice to a hushed tone. “What matters is whether Genesis trusts you.”

  As he said the word, the shipping magnate blanched visibly.

  Belknap was proceeding on instinct, taking advantage of a basic mechanism of paranoia. As the corpulent princeling in Oman had made clear, much of Genesis’s power stemmed from the fact that nobody knew precisely who he was or who might secretly be in his employ.

  “Please,” the Cypriot whimpered. His eyes darted restlessly. “I need to go to the bathroom,” he stammered. “I’ll be right back.” He darted to an adjoining room, and then through a small door.

  What was he up to? Not summoning backup; he could have alerted his armed manservant with the press of a button. Something else, then.

  Suddenly Belknap knew. He’s calling his partner in Tallinn.

  When Stavros returned a minute later, he looked at Belknap strangely; a host of small doubts had sprouted, it seemed, like plant life in a desert after a rain. “Richard Lugner is—”

  “Dead,” Belknap said. “That’s right. See, he tried to renegotiate terms with Genesis. Let that be a lesson to you.”

  Stavros’s veal-white face paled even further. He stood there stiffly, his silk shirt stained with Scotch, but also darkened by sweat around his underarms and shoulders. He shuddered as Belknap held his gaze. “He—he…”

  “Was lucky. It was quick for him. It won’t be for you. Y’all have a good day now.” Belknap gave him a look of smoldering contempt as he left, shutting the heavy door behind him. The sense of triumph was fleeting, dissolved by a maelstrom of uncertainties—and, as well, by the recognition of a certain truth: Wounded animals were always the most dangerous.

  As Belknap drove his Land Rover down the sandy escarpment and along the coastal road, he found his mind spinning. The meeting with Stavros had proved informative in ways that Stavros would not have been able to appreciate—but Belknap himself hadn’t yet fully parsed its content. One fact was surely significant: To Stavros, Genesis was a feared enemy—an enemy that needed to be placated and appeased, but an enemy all the same. Lugner had not been an agent of Genesis, but an adversary. That was a surprise. Would there be a way to play one entity against the other?

  He admitted to himself, if reluctantly, that he welcomed Andrea’s help, her expertise…maybe even needed it. But not just her help. Her—what? Her keen intellect. Her perspective. Her capacity to consider and explore contradictory ideas. But there was still more to it, wasn’t there? As strenuously as he had sought to discourage her from coming, he had been secretly grateful when she had persisted. He had planned to join her at the Livadhiotis Hotel Apartments, on Nikolaou Rossou. She would be arriving there within the hour if her plane were on schedule.

  In his rearview mirror he saw another car leaving the narrow hilly road that led only to Stavros’s estate. Was it Stavros himself? The car veered off into the large marina, and, maintaining a careful distance, Belknap now followed. Through a line of scrubby pines, he saw someone—not Stavros—get out of the car and walk toward the waterfront with powerful, confident steps. Belknap moved closer.

  The man was tall and slim but moved with coiled strength, like a mountain cat. He was talking to the man in a booth by the parking lot, and when he turned and gestured toward his sedan, Belknap felt his stomach plunge.

  No, it couldn’t be!

  Short brown hair, elegantly elongated limbs, eyes concealed behind sunglasses—but Belknap knew those eyes, knew their soulful gray-green gaze, because he knew this man.

  Jared Rinehart.

  His friend. His enemy. Which was it? He had to know.

  Belknap had leaped from his car, was on his feet and running—racing, sprinting—before he realized what he was doing.

  “Jared!” he called out. “Jar-ed!”

  The tall man turned to look at him, and what Belknap saw in his eyes was plain and undisguised: fear.

  Jared broke into a run, fleeing as if afraid for his life.

  “Please, stop!” Belknap called out. “We need to talk!”

  It was a nearly comical understatement. But so much emotion surged into Belknap’s chest—not least the hope against hope that Rinehart could explain everything to him, could help his life make sense again, anneal the hairline cracks by the clarity and logic and sanity that seemed his natural element. Please, stop. Yet Rinehart was charging across the marina as if Belknap posed a mortal danger. He swept down the long wharf with remarkable speed, his feet ghosting along the planked surface. Belknap was gulping air as he gave chase. He let himself slow down a little. A pier, projecting into the water. Where could Pollux go, for God’s sakes?

  A stupid question that was answered moments later, when Jared leaped onto a motorboat that was docked nearby. The key was in the ignition, in compliance with marina rules, and, seconds later, Rinehart had sped off into the green waters of Larnaca Bay.

  No! He had spent the past two hundred hours searching for this man. Now that he was in his sight, he would not give up.

  Acting on unthinking impulse, he leaped onto a small runabout—a Riva Aquarama, elegant as a high-end sports car, with a helm of polished dark wood and chrome, a hull of fiberglass. Belknap released the ropes that trussed it to the wharf-side posts, pushed up the hatch over the engine, and twisted the key. The motor turned over and then rumbled.

  The helm console, too, looked like the dashboard of a vintage sports car: large round dials, light-blue lettering against black, set in glossy dark wood; a ridged steering wheel of white and powder blue, with chrome spokes. Now he pushed the throttle. The rumble became a roar, matched by a splashing sound as the propellers churned away. The orange needle in the oil-pressure gauge moved up in jerky increments; the amperes gauge swung all the way forward. As the motor surged, the boat lurched higher in the waves. But where was Rinehart?

  He peered through spume and spray and the glare of sun against the ocean; it was like peering through a heat scope at someone lighting a cigarette. Too much flare. The waters had looked deceptively placid from the shore; in fact, the waves were powerful, heaving like a leviathan struggling for breath, rising higher the further out he got. Ahead of him and to his right, above a bermlike swelling of the waters, he caught a glimpse of Pollux, his lithe frame protruding above the helm. Spume from bow a
nd stern thrusters told Belknap that he was turning, preparing for some maneuver. Belknap kept the throttle at full speed. It was physics at this point. Rinehart was on a larger boat, a Galia, with oversize propellers that left a wide foamy wake. It was a bigger boat and a more powerful one: but not a faster one. It was the difference between a sedan and an eighteen-wheeler. Another upheaval of water occluded Belknap’s view. He was now perhaps a mile and a half from the shore, and Rinehart was turning his Galia in an arc that actually was helping Belknap to gain on him.

  Belknap’s hands cramped around the boat’s controls; his heart pummeled his chest. He was getting closer, closer.

  He could see Rinehart in partial profile now, see his high cheekbones and the shadows beneath them.

  Don’t run from me!

  “Jared!” he bellowed.

  The other man did not reply or even turn around. Had he heard him over the drone of the motor, the churning water?

  “Jared! Please!”

  Yet Rinehart remained erect and immobile, his gaze fixed on some unseen destination.

  “Why, Jared? Why?” The words spilled from Belknap in a roar like that of the ocean itself.

  The drone of the Galia grew louder, and then disappeared into another, enveloping sound: the bass blare of a freighter’s horn.

  At the same time, Jared did something with Galia’s controls and the boat thrust upward, and then surged forward, swiftly widening the distance between them.

  The large ship had been coming in along the sea lane from Akrotiri Bay, to the west. A vast black-hulled vessel flying a Liberian flag, it was one of those behemoths that seem impossible to miss, but at any distance are easily overlooked on the full-horizon vista of the open seas. Now Pollux maneuvered his Galia over to the bow end of the freighter. Madness! He was coming suicidally close to its bow. As a high wave blocked Belknap’s view, he wondered whether suicide was, indeed, Jared’s intention. After the wave crested, Belknap realized Rinehart’s game.