THIRTY-SEVEN
PARK HYATT PARIS-VENDÔME
5 RUE DE LA PAIX
The sun started to peek over the tops of the buildings and by 0830 had risen high enough for it's light to bring Michele to wakefulness. As he listened to the steady breathing of his slumbering cyborg, he still found the idea of sharing a bed with a teenage girl an uncomfortable one. He did have to admit that the Generation Two's ability to pass for being a young adult made such arrangements easier and he had at times wondered how the Croces handled it with their pre-teen girls or Hilshire with Triela when they operated remotely.
"To think it's been only three months since we were here," Kara had noted the previous evening as they listened to the rain splatter against the windows.
"Different times," Michele had replied.
"Everything is going to change now, isn't it?"
"Yes," Michele admitted, his statement causing Kara to move closer towards him.
In the light of a new morning, Michele reflected that everything had changed when the Ricci fratello had confirmed Dante's possession of a nuclear weapon. Michele and Clayland were now operating directly under the authority – and orders – of the Prime Minister. And those orders were to find out where Dante had secured the weapon and from whom.
And then make sure they couldn't provide him with anything else.
Michele slipped out of bed and pulled a robe over his pajamas before entering the main living area. The clouds of the evening had given way to skies of crisp azure and bitterly cold temperatures as he started the fireplace to banish the chill.
Clayland and Laine joined them in the restaurant for breakfast and once done, they went to the lobby to await Coraline.
"Stepping up your game today, I see," Laine noted, taking in Kara's black long-sleeved sweater dress over a white lace camisole and knee-high dress boots in black leather. "Love the hat," she added.
Kara offered a wane smile as she pulled the white pillbox fur hat off her head. "You're looking good yourself," she added.
"Well I am in Paris," Laine in explanation of her choices of an orange sweater-poncho over a grey long-sleeve tee and black slacks tucked into black leather knee-high boots. Around her neck she wore a large silk scarf in dark grey and crème with gold banding.
A black Peugeot 308 CC pulled up to the valet and Coraline stepped out, looking stunning in a tight-fitting olive green long-sleeve turtleneck dress and brown knee-high leather boots.
"We've just been p0wned," Laine dead-panned.
In Michele's suite, Coraline pulled out a laptop and placed it on the table. Michele ran a cable to the LCD television and a map of the Mediterranean and Black Seas appeared. A red line started to trace a path back and forth between the countries along those two bodies of water.
"This is the data we've been able to collect on the Khazbiika," Coraline reported. "She's a 50m coastal freighter built in 1989 at Tuzla, which is the main Turkish shipyard just south of Istanbul. She flies a Russian flag out of Novorossiysk, but her crew is mostly from the North Caucasus."
"For a coastal freighter, this vessel certainly gets around," Clayland noted as the screen continued to fill. Soon, patterns started to emerge as they saw the vessel consistently shuttle back and forth between Southern Europe and Northern Africa and from southern Italy to Turkey.
"Significant cocaine shipments arrive by ship across the Atlantic to the Ivory Coast, Liberia and Guinea-Bissau. It's dropped off the side and taken into the mangrove swamps by smaller boats, then carried by land or air up north to countries like Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. From there it is either ferried across the Straight of Gibraltar and driven up into Europe or shipped across to ports like Galicia, Marseille, Genoa, Palermo and Gioia Tauro," Coraline explained.
"And Turkey?" Kara asked.
Coraline zoomed in on the eastern half of the Mediterranean.
"Turkey plays a central role in the heroin trade. Afghanistan is a massive producer of opium and the raw product is shipped to Turkey for processing into heroin and then smuggled into the EU via the Balkan route. Once in the EU, the Turkish Diaspora has provided plenty of conduits to distribute the product to consumers. It is currently believed that more than three-quarters of the heroin imported into the EU comes from Turkey and it looks like our friends here are not discriminatory in the drugs they ship."
"A coastal freighter is not designed for speed. For runs like Morocco to Spain or Libya to France it should be sufficient, but Algeria to Turkey or the Ukraine to Italy? That is thousands of kilometers and such a vessel would take upwards of a week," Michele noted.
"The data wizards found something interesting when they analyzed the trips," Coraline teased. "A normal coastal freighter is good for about 12 knots, which is maybe 500 kilometers a day. But this vessel appears to be able to steam at something closer to 25 knots."
"She's the naval equivalent of a bloody Q-car!" Laine exclaimed.
"Q-car?" Kara asked.
"It's a car that looks like a punter, but has the performance of a sports car," Laine replied. "Think of a Fiat Croma with a Ferrari 430 engine and gearbox installed."
"Such speed would be valuable to a smuggler," Clayland noted, earning him a nod of agreement from Michele.
"Aye. It won't outrun a patrol ship, but it can get product where it's needed quickly and look innocuous doing so," the older handler said.
"Though they don't seem to travel east of the 30th meridian," Laine noted. There were no tracks to Lebanon, Syria, Israel or the Sinai nor any to Cyprus."
"I expect they don't want to risk being boarded by the Israeli Navy," Clayland replied.
"If Dante's used this ship once, he's probably used it before," Laine noted.
"It makes sense," Clayland agreed. "They could have brought in the missile used in Venice. And the Blackhawk helicopter that extricated Dante from Venice flew in that direction."
"He could have landed it on the ship – it's wide enough of beam to put a landing pad on top of and they could refuel it to head on to another country," Laine added.
"So what's our next move?" Kara asked, feeling a bit let out of the conversation.
"Now that we know where the ship's home port is, I guess we trace it back," Michele replied.
"Know anybody in Russia?" Laine asked and when Michele nodded his head, Kara felt a knot form in her stomach.