Carpenter hated ships. He hated the cramped rooms, the constant motion, the never-ending distant throb of massive engines. Bonnie had been nagging him for years to take her on a luxury cruise, but he’d steadfastly refused. There was a certain irony in the fact that the safest place for him had turned out to be a tanker prowling around the Atlantic.

His place there had been arranged by Carlos Rodriguez, a Colombian with whom Carpenter had dealt for more than a decade. The Rodriguez cartel had links to the Colombian government and was one of the country’s biggest and most successful cocaine and heroin dealers. The tanker had been Rodriguez’s idea, a floating warehouse that went into port twice a year for maintenance, and only when it was empty. It was a quarter of a mile long with facilities for two dozen men. Drugs were flown out from South America and dropped into the sea where they were picked up by small speedboats sent out from the tanker, then taken aboard and kept in compartments at the bottom of the hold. In the event of a raid, the compartments could be emptied, sending the drugs to the bottom of the ocean, far out of reach.

The tanker had once been owned by a Greek shipping magnate but now sailed under a Panamanian flag. Buyers, only people known to Rodriguez, paid offshore and collected from the tanker in their own boats. Rodriguez shipped drugs worth more than a quarter of a billion dollars a year through it. It was a perfect system. Usually there were only two dozen men on the vessel, a crew of ten and fourteen armed guards, and Rodriguez had vetted them all personally. It was equipped with state-of-the-art radar and sonar so that a surprise attack by the DEA or Customs was virtually impossible. But Rodriguez had more than enough law-enforcement officials on his payroll to ensure that no one took him by surprise. He was untouchable, and as long as Carpenter remained on the tanker, so was he. He was arranging for a new passport to be sent out from the UK, based on a whole new identity. The paperwork would be faultless, reflecting the premium price he was paying. Once he had it he would go to Brazil for extensive facial surgery. When his new identity was in place, he’d set about removing the old one from the Police National Computer in the UK. It would cost an arm and a leg, but it would be money well spent. Without his prints on file, he’d be able to disappear for ever.