They drove to the airport in an armored Land Rover, DeMarco at the wheel, Wade beside him, Nimec and Scull in the backseat. There were several reasons the group was headed out, their wish to shore up security for Roger Gordian’s arrival the next day top among them, though all they’d felt free to discuss at the Rio de Gabao was their intention to direct a force buildup at their transit warehouse as a precaution arising from the Sette Cama ambush—provisionally labeled an attempted hijack, though they understood the book on that was a far cry from closed.

Another very pressing reason for their drive was one they would not under any circumstances have discussed in the open.

Scull had something he needed to show Nimec. A crucial document he’d extracted from a series of memorandums and correspondences his man Fred Sherman had been tipped to by an inside source at Nautel, and then had pried out of the company’s hands after separately informing three of its highest-ranking executives that UpLink would consider their withholding it from him a flat-out breach of trust and cause for summary abrogation of their as-yet-unsigned outsourcing agreement.

Those statements were no empty threats. The letter had widened Scull’s eyes when it came onto his computer screen at the cyber café, and only now in the protective confines of the vehicle—his laptop in a docking station that had swung out from behind its front seat at the touch of a button, the hard copy generated by a color printer integrated into his armrest—was he even moderately comfortable with the idea of pulling it off his hard drive.

“Here you go.” Scull took the sheet of paper from the printer’s output slot and gave it to Nimec. “A few casts of his line, and Fred got evidence that a mutual pal of ours, identity to be revealed, committed a serious foul.”

Nimec put the document on his lap. He felt totally out of sorts—his head cloudy, his stitched eyebrow tugging under its bandages, his ears still ringing from the combustive blast that had almost finished him just twenty-four hours earlier.

“So what do you think?” Scull said.

Nimec shot him an irritable glance. “Give me more than thirty seconds to look this over and I’ll tell you.”

Vince frowned but didn’t say anything.

Nimec went back to reading what he’d been handed, a scanned copy of a letter written on the executive stationary of Etienne Begela, Port-Gentil’s minister of economic development and the official who had fêted Nimec’s advance team on their arrival. It was addressed to someone named John Greeves II, professional title Principal Claims Investigator, who was with the Risk and Emergency Management Division of a company called The Fowler Group, Ltd.

Nimec looked over at Scull. “Fowler . . . that’s a commercial insurer, right?”

Scull nodded.

“One of the ultra-biggies,” he said. “Networked with Lloyd’s of London.”

Nimec grunted and continued down to the text of the letter:

Dear Mr. Greeves,