Soldier of God by David Hagberg

Author:David Hagberg [Hagberg, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Forge Books
Published: 2005-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-EIGHT

McGarvey was having a late breakfast on the balcony in his suite when Salman’s secretary telephoned at nine. “The prince would like you to join him aboard the yacht this morning to continue your conversation, then perhaps take a short cruise this afternoon.”

McGarvey smiled. Salman was reacting exactly the way a man with an overinflated ego would act. “What time should I be there?”

“A car and driver are at the front door of your hotel now.”

“Tell the prince I’d be happy to join him,” McGarvey said, and he hung up the phone.

From where he sat, he could see Salman’s yacht docked at the outer pier just inside the breakwater across the bay in La Condamine. A French Alouette helicopter was parked on the ship’s afterdeck, but the distance was too great for McGarvey to make out much detail, except that the ship was very large and all her flags were flying as if the prince was celebrating something.

Which, McGarvey mused, he was if he was the terrorist Khalil.

McGarvey took his time finishing his coffee and croissants and the Herald Tribune before he took a leisurely shower and got dressed in white slacks, a soft yellow, light, V-neck sweater, and tasseled loafers without socks. He debated arming himself, but decided against it. This invitation to the yacht was too open and public a move for anything untoward to happen, unless it was an accident, for which a pistol would be no defense.

The car was a pearl-white Mercedes S500 with Spanish plates, and if the very large German driver was impatient for having been kept waiting, he did not show it as he opened the rear door.

“There was a pretty girl with the prince at the casino last night. Tall, blonde. Will she be aboard this morning?” McGarvey asked.

The driver nodded. “That would be Inge Poulsen, the prince’s social secretary.”

McGarvey snapped his fingers, as he’d forgotten something. “Give me a minute,” he said, and he walked back into the hotel.

He went to the concierge, an attractive young woman in a light blue blazer with the hotel’s crest on the breast pocket. She looked up, smiling. “Good morning, Monsieur Brewster. How may I be of service?”

“How soon can you have a dozen roses delivered to Prince Salman’s yacht?”

“How soon would you like them delivered?”

“Within fifteen minutes.”

Her smile broadened only slightly. “That won’t be a problem, sir.” She took a card from a drawer, and handed it and a pen across to McGarvey.

“They’re to be delivered in person to Mademoiselle Inge Poulsen,” McGarvey said. He wrote on the card as the concierge dialed a number. From an admirer. Kirk.

She said something into the phone, then nodded and hung up. “The flowers will be delivered to the yacht within fifteen minutes.”

McGarvey handed her the card and a one-hundred-euro note, then put on his sunglasses and went back out to the car and driver Salman had sent for him. The docks were less than one thousand meters as the crow flies, but they had to skirt the bay, and traffic was heavy, so it took nearly ten minutes to get to the yacht.

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