The concierge took pains to be helpful as the two Americans came across the lobby from the elevator. Did they need their currency exchanged? he enquired in studied English. Would they like particular directions somewhere? Were there any special room-service orders they might wish to place with the staff in advance of their return?

The first man to pass his desk—Monsieur Nimec, executive suite 9—declined with a polite thank-you. The new arrival—Monsieur Scull, who had insisted on an immediate room change from suite 8 to suite 12 on check-in, stating the former was incommodious and noisy—merely shook his head in the negative and followed the other toward the entrance.

The concierge did not let the second guest’s scowl leach any of the obliging geniality from his expression. He was skilled at his job and knew how to keep his poise.

The concierge’s eyes tracked them as they strode to the hotel entrance and a doorman in a braided, epauletted uniform held open its large glass doors. Then he reached for his telephone, tapped in a number, left a brief message with the person who answered, and hung up.

With their backs to him, the smile he offered the men had fled his face.

Out front, the doorman hastened from beneath the hotel’s regal red-and-gold awning, hailed one of several waiting curbside taxis, and opened its rear door for the UpLink representatives. Then he asked their destination—again in their own tongue—was given it by the tall, narrow-jawed man who had led the way through the entrance, and helpfully communicated where they were going to the driver in his native French.

The taller of the men tipped him and climbed into the taxi. His stocky companion packed himself into the backseat next, slamming the door shut before the doorman could close it for him, albeit in what would have been a much gentler manner.

With his gratuity tucked into the pocket of his colorful uniform jacket, the doorman watched the taxi pull away down the boulevard. A moment afterward, the second in the queue of parked taxis slid up to the hotel entrance.

This time the doorman opened its front passenger door and leaned all the way inside.

“Scintillements,” he instructed the driver.

“Ce voir Gunville?”

“Ce n’est non l’affair.”

They made brief eye contact. Then a silent nod of acknowledgment from the driver, and he faced forward, his hands on the wheel. Who the Americans were meeting was truly none of their affair; it would be best for them to know only what was necessary.

The doorman straightened, pushing the door shut.

A second later, the taxi swung from the curb and slotted into the light traffic a short distance behind the vehicle carrying Nimec and Scull.

The ocean waters of Gabon are blessed with mild currents, and so the Chimera floated gently tonight above the Ogooué Fan, a wide belt of alluvial sediment sloping toward the oil-gorged offshore basins beyond land’s end. Here, four months ago, Cédric Dupain and Marius Bouchard had come to sudden death at three hundred fathoms, but the explosions and pressure that left their bodies in shredded ruin caused no visible disturbance to the surface tranquillity.