“Excellent.” Gunville sat quietly a moment, then glanced over at the stage. “I hope you will forgive me, but I must prepare for my next set.” He offered the men a courteous smile. “I’m certain we’ll be talking again over the next several days.”

Nimec nodded.

“You bet,” he said. “We’re very grateful for your time.”

Handshakes around the table, and then Gunville was off across the room.

Nimec saw him move toward the blond at the foot of the stage, dawdle there to speak to her.

“Hot stuff,” Scull said, following his gaze. “If I could sing like him, I’d be picking up broads left and right, too.”

“Don’t remember you having trouble on that score when you were married.”

“Which time?”

“I could probably take my pick.”

Scull shrugged.

“That was all before I lost my boyish good looks,” he said.

They were silent a bit.

“Okay,” Nimec said, and pointed his chin in the direction Gunville had gone. “Give me your impressions.”

Scull pointed to Gunville’s half-full scotch glass. “Didn’t finish his drink.”

“I noticed.”

“Sort of left me feeling he gave us the bum’s rush.”

“Yeah.”

“Meanwhile, he’s over there talking to the blond, plenty of time for her.”

“Yeah.”

Their eyes met.

“Can’t figure what it might be, but I think our fucking crooner Romeo’s got something to hide,” Scull said.

Nimec nodded.

“You and me both,” he said.

Port-Gentil. Headquarters Police Gabonaise. Forty-seven minutes past midnight. His shift long concluded, leaving him drained from overwork and nerves, the normally starch crispness of his officer’s uniform gone as limp as he felt, Commander Bertrand Kilana slouched before a computer screen behind his locked office door.

The air in the room was stale with sweat, ground out cigarette butts, and paper cups of cold, half-drunk coffee. One of the cups on his desk had begun leaking from its bottom, but Kilana had not noticed the spreading brown ring of wetness around it. Nor would he until tomorrow morning, when he returned to the office after too few hours’ sleep. By then the coffee would have partly soaked through a stack of his important case documents and the pages of a favorite investigative reference book, then dribbled down to the floor to leave a dark, permanent stain on his rug. Kilana would find the paper cup empty and curse himself for having neglected to dump it.

On Kilana’s monitor now, a live-streaming Internet surveillance video from the Rio de Gabao Hotel showed two of the Americans under observation exit an elevator that had risen to its luxury suite level and return to their separate rooms.

The commander identified them, tentatively, from his matched listing of UpLink personnel and their suite numbers. This information was stored in his computer’s encrypted database, but for the sake of convenience he’d kept a hardcopy on hand beside his keyboard. According to this printout, the men were Peter Nimec—suite 9—and Vincent Scull—suite 12.