‘There’s a pair in the envelope. They will partly hide your eyes. But please use them. They have a capacity to help you see in the dark, a variation on infra-red vision. We don’t want people remarking on how much you look like Michael Caine. People remember such things.’

‘I’ll wear them on one condition. You tell Caine to stop imitating Ray Kenneth Waugh.’

Wombat laughed.

They both ordered double malt whiskies on the rocks. Wombat eased his chair closer to Cavalier, pulled out four photos and said, ‘We—the Five Eyes—tracked hundreds of suspects for a whole range of projected crimes, especially those making unusual purchases over the last few months That didn’t get us far.’ Wombat chuckled. ‘We noted a guy trying to buy an island in the Pacific. Another took a controlling share in an online Paris brothel. But we did see patterns. Smaller buys coalescing around a certain time. That worked better.’

‘And the dark web?’

Wombat nodded and smiled.

‘We—Australia—came across eighty-eight instances of people of interest trying to get rid of enemies: politicians, wives, husbands, even sports rivals. Half of them were scammed by fraudsters. But the main clues came from coded communications.’

‘How many were genuine suspects?’

‘Five hundred and four worldwide with all sorts of possible killing projects, some with photos, some not. Then Haut told us what Pinkerton said to him. That was the breakthrough.’

‘Follow the money?’

‘We did. A nice round figure of ten million came up three times within a week. We examined which of the suspects could have received such a lovely amount!’

‘Moved through several front companies, no doubt?’

‘Right. Apart from bank commissions and so on, the money was passed to destinations in accounts in the Bahamas. That got us down to thirty-eight possibles.’

Wombat picked up a folder and took out three photos.

‘We then cross-referenced information and photos, including your snaps from the Mekong trip. Finally, we searched airline bookings over the last few weeks.’

‘Thirty million to eliminate Al!’

‘That’s not much in the scheme of things if Conquer gains control of the billions worth of Tasmanian oil. Once we had three guys, we coordinated surveillance on them—their emails, computers, phones and so on. Patterns emerged. Destinations for planes trips were noted. Then bingo! The names “Hobart” and “Haut” came up. Twice, mind you, but it was enough.’

‘I take it they’ve bought plane tickets for Australia?’

‘Again, patterns. It was unusual for a group to be arriving at about the same time. They’re all travelling under false names.’

‘If you didn’t know their names, how …?’

‘We were supplied photos with most of the names and profiles. It was then over to old Anthony Jones to examine the photos and put real names to faces.’

‘When are they coming?’ Cavalier asked.