convergence of the roiling Atlantic with the almost tideless Mediterranean, in that narrow channel where Africa stared down Europe, created strange and unpredictable currents, and local weather conditions could make that much worse.
The cold Mistral, blowing down from the Rhone Alps, could quickly turn a warm summer’s day such as this a bitter, wintry grey, and when the Levanter blew across from the Balearics it often brought with it a sudden summer fog.
Worst of all was the Sirocco, which whipped up heavy seas and hurled sand from the distant Sahara at you in a blinding fury.
But today the water was duckpond flat, the wind no more than a warm breath, and the radar was set fair for the next few days.
Good news for Captain Abandonato, good news for the crew, and good news for the five hundred passengers who were currently drinking, eating, and sunbathing on the six decks behind and beneath him, or enjoying lunch ashore in one of Málaga’s many excellent restaurants.
He was looking forward to getting to Southampton; from there he would head up to Heathrow to fly home on leave to Civitavecchia.
His wife was expecting their second child – a son, the doctors had said – and was due to give birth the day after he arrived home.
Abandonato had booked a whole month off to spend time with Maria and their children.
He was looking forward to it so much it hurt.
It was always a wrench to leave, but at least it paid the bills: Maria was under an excellent but cripplingly expensive obstetrician, they were looking to move to a bigger house inland, near the lake at Bracciano, and their daughter was down for one of Roma’s best private nursery schools.
Such things did not come cheap.
He finished his coffee and looked at his watch.
Shortly after 13:00hrs.
He turned to his Norwegian staff captain, the second-in-command and the man who really drove the boat.
‘I’m going to freshen up and then have a walk round and see how the passengers are, Nils,’ he said. ‘Let’s have dinner together later?’
‘Sure,’ said Nils.
Abandonato pulled on his cap, straightened the epaulettes on his crisp, white shirt, and left the bridge.
A GUY WITH dark eyes came out of nowhere and walked in front of John Carr.
There he stopped, temporarily blocking Carr’s view of the sea.
Flip-flops in hand, white three-quarter length linen trousers, billowing ivory shirt.
Flashy gold watch, which stood out on his tanned wrist.
Another Eurotrash millionaire, thought Carr.
The place was crawling with them.
Carr thought at first that the guy was staring at him, and Carr didn’t like being stared at, but then he realised that the man’s eyes had swept on, and that he was looking past him at another bunch of people.
Five seconds he stared, and then he carried on walking.
At which point Carr looked closer, his eye drawn by the guy’s odd, limping gait, and the deep scar on his right calf, where something had taken a big bite out of the muscle.
It looked to Carr like shrapnel damage, something he’d seen plenty of.
As the guy moved away, almost unconsciously, from force of habit, Carr stored his image in the vast filing cabinet in his head.
Longish black hair, wavy and greasy, held back by a pair of Oakleys pushed up on his forehead.
Dark eyes.
Kind of a cruel mouth.
Lopsided walk.
And that big, pink hole in his right leg.
Once inside Carr’s head it would never leave. He had an uncanny knack for remembering stuff like this – the skill had been honed during his near-two decades in the Special Air Service, and it had often proved invaluable on ops.
He looked over his right shoulder at the group the guy had been eyeballing.
Four young couples were in the process of laying out their towels, paperbacks, and iPads.
Their pale skin, Boden and Crew kit and beach cricket gear, would have marked them out as members of the British middle class, even if their accents had not confirmed it.
‘For goodness’ sake, Jemima,’ one of the young men was saying, ‘I thought you were bringing the Kindle.’
‘Oh piss off, Thomas,’ said Jemima. ‘You’re really getting on my nerves today.’
‘Yeah, Tom,’ said one of the others, good-naturedly. ‘Take a day off, why don’t you? What are you reading, anyway? Fifty Shades of Grey?’ There was a ripple of mocking laughter and jeers. ‘Right, who’s coming in?’
The second speaker pulled off his T-shirt and headed for the water, followed by three of the girls.
Very tidy, thought Carr. Especially the tall brunette, and the blonde girl in the shocking pink bikini.
He could see why the guy with the gammy leg had been gawping at them.
But it wasn’t worth the aggro, not with Alice by his side and George running his gob, so he turned his head and looked conspicuously in the opposite direction.
Way off at the top of the beach, unnoticed by Carr or anyone else, a young man in cut-off denim shorts and a Manchester United replica shirt hung around under a palm tree, and made a phone call.
As he did so, he watched the new arrivals keenly – though he took care not to show it.
The call was answered a hundred metres away, by the man with the dark eyes and the cruel mouth.
He was by now standing on the deck of a powerful white yacht, moored up in the marina at the extreme western edge of the Puerto Banús beach, at the end of Calle Ribera.
The open sea a matter of metres away.
‘Yes,’ said Dark Eyes. ‘Keep watching them, and await further instructions.’
He killed the call, stood up, pulled his Oakleys down from his forehead, and stuck a Marlboro Light in his mouth.
The dark-eyed man did indeed look like a member of the wealthy, leisured Eurotrash, who idled their summers away sailing around the Med, their winters in Klosters and Courchevel 1850, and the rest of the year drinking pink champagne at 38,000 feet.
But the flashy gold Rolex was fake, and the linen trousers stolen, and John Carr was quite correct about the damage to his leg – it had been caused by a piece of red-hot Hazara shrapnel at Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan, in 1997.
He was actually a Chechen, called Argun Shishani, and he was not the owner of the boat, the Mistral 55 class Lucky Lady.
He was merely borrowing it from someone – someone who, admittedly, would never need it again.
He had chosen this particular boat because its twin 7,400hp Codag engines made it capable of more than fifty knots – 52kts, to be precise, or 96kph, or a shade under 60mph.
And because it had a mooring ticket at Puerto Banús.
Argun Shishani threw his half-smoked cigarette into the water.
Watched in amusement for a moment or two as a dozen silver sardines flashed in and fought over it.
Then looked up at the endless blue sky, smiled, and went below to make the final preparations.