around the world on his fleet of jets, and Hastings-Clarke who footed the bill for her bodyguards. The two men who accompanied them to the Caribbean were employed by a private security firm in London. Before leaving Gustavia, they had subjected the Aurora and its crew to only a cursory inspection. Of the man called Colin Hernandez, they asked a single question: “What are we having for lunch?”
At the request of the former princess, it was a light buffet, though neither she nor her companions seemed terribly interested in it. They drank a great deal that afternoon, roasting their bodies in the harsh sun of the foredeck, until a rainstorm drove them laughing to their staterooms. They remained there until nine that evening, when they emerged dressed and groomed as though for a garden party in Somerset. They had cocktails and canapés on the afterdeck and then repaired to the main salon for dinner: salad with truffle-infused vinaigrette, followed by lobster risotto and rack of lamb with artichoke, lemon forte, courgette, and piment d’argile. The former princess and her companions declared the meal magnificent and demanded an appearance by the chef. When finally he appeared, they serenaded him with childlike applause.
“What will you make us tomorrow night?” asked the former princess.
“It’s a surprise,” he replied in his peculiar accent.
“Oh, good,” she said, fixing him with the same smile he had seen on countless magazine covers. “I do like surprises.”
They were a small crew, eight in all, and it was the responsibility of the chef and his assistant to see to the china, the stemware, the silver, the pots and pans, and the cooking utensils. They stood side by side at the basin long after the former princess and her companions had turned in, their hands occasionally touching beneath the warm soapy water, her bony hip pressing against his thigh. And once, as they squeezed past one another in the linen cabinet, her firm nipples traced two lines across his back, sending a charge of electricity and blood to his groin. They retired to their cabins alone, but a few minutes later he heard a butterfly tap at his door. She took him without a sound. It was like performing the act of love with a mute.
“Maybe this was a mistake,” she whispered into his ear when they had finished.
“Why would you say that?”
“Because we’re going to be working together for a long time.”
“Not so long.”
“You’re not planning to stay?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
He said nothing more. She laid her head on his chest and closed her eyes.
“You can’t stay here,” he said.
“I know,” she answered drowsily. “Just for a little while.”
He lay motionless for a long time after, Amelia List sleeping on his chest, the Aurora rising and falling beneath him, his mind working through the details of what was to come. Finally, at three o’clock, he eased from the berth and padded naked across the cabin to the cupboard. Soundlessly, he dressed in black trousers, a woolen sweater, and a dark waterproof coat. Then he removed the wrapper from the parcel—the parcel measuring twelve inches by twenty and weighing sixteen pounds precisely—and engaged the power source and the timer on the detonator. He returned the parcel to the cupboard and was reaching for the Stechkin pistol when he heard the girl stir behind him. He turned slowly and stared at her in the darkness.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Go back to sleep.”
“I saw a red light.”
“It was my radio.”
“Why are you listening to the radio at three in the morning?”
Before he could answer, the bedside lamp flared. Her eyes flashed across his dark clothing before settling on the silenced gun that was still in his hand. She opened her mouth to scream, but he placed his palm heavily across her face before any sound could escape. As she struggled to free herself from his grasp, he whispered soothingly into her ear. “Don’t worry, my love,” he was saying. “It will only hurt a little.”
Her eyes widened in terror. Then he twisted her head violently to the left, severing her spinal cord, and held her gently as she died.
It was not the custom of Reginald Ogilvy to stand the lonely hours of the middle watch, but concern for the safety of his famous passenger drove him to the bridge of the Aurora early that morning. He was checking the weather forecast on an onboard computer, a fresh cup of coffee in his hand, when the man called Colin Hernandez appeared at the top of the companionway, dressed entirely in black. Ogilvy looked up sharply and asked, “What are you doing here?” But he received no reply other than two rounds from the silenced Stechkin that pierced the front of his uniform and mauled his heart.
The coffee cup clattered loudly to the floor; Ogilvy, instantly dead, thudded heavily next to it. His killer moved calmly to the console, made a slight adjustment to the ship’s heading, and retreated down the companionway. The main deck was deserted, no other crew members on duty. He lowered one of the Zodiac dinghies into the black sea, clambered aboard, and released the line.
Adrift, he bobbed beneath a canopy of diamond-white stars, watching the Aurora slicing eastward toward the shipping lanes of the Atlantic, pilotless, a ghost ship. He checked the luminous face of his wristwatch. Then, when the dial read zero, he looked up again. Fifteen additional seconds elapsed, enough time for him to consider the remote possibility that the bomb was somehow defective. Finally, there was a flash on the horizon—the blinding white flash of the high explosive, followed by the orange-yellow of the secondary explosions and fire.
The sound was like the rumble of distant thunder. Afterward, there was only the sea beating against the side of the Zodiac, and the wind. With the press of a button, he fired the outboard and watched as the Aurora started her journey to the bottom. Then he turned the Zodiac to the west and opened the throttle.
THE FIRST INDICATION OF TROUBLE came when Pegasus Global Charters of Nassau reported that a routine message to one of its vessels, the 154-foot luxury motor yacht Aurora, had received no reply. The Pegasus operations center immediately requested assistance from all commercial ships and pleasure craft in the vicinity of the Leeward Islands, and within minutes the crew of a Liberian-registered oil tanker reported that they had seen an unusual flash of light in the area at approximately 3:45 that morning. Shortly thereafter the crew of a container ship spotted one of the Aurora’s dinghies floating empty and adrift approximately one hundred miles south-southeast of Gustavia. Simultaneously, a private sailing vessel encountered life preservers and other floating debris a few miles to the west. Fearing the worst, Pegasus management phoned the British High Commission
