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of them are going to be easy to find—you know that—but we’ve located Joyce. He’s had an interesting career since he left the Group. He worked as a mercenary for the first few years—Iraq, Afghanistan, all the usual places. That seemed to get old for him and so he switched to private security instead. There’s a company based in North Carolina called Manage Risk. Branches all over the world, hundreds of ex-forces men all around the world. They have contracts for all kinds of things, including nautical security. They get paid by the big shipping companies to sit on their freighters so they can put up a fight if pirates attack.”
    “So, he’s in America?”
    “It would be a lot easier if he was. Look at this.”
    He handed her a copy of the Times from the previous day. The above-the-fold article on the front page reported upon the hijacking of the crew of a freighter off the coast of Somalia. “What about it?”
    “He was aboard.”
    “Security?”
    “Yes. The Somalis have put skiffs out all the way up and down the coast and they’ve been trying their arm with the big freighters. It’s like pilot fish trying to take down a whale, but something must have gone wrong with the guards on this one. They got on board somehow. We don’t have any intel on that yet.”
    “What do you know?”
    “That they took the crew back to Somalia.”
    “Where?”
    “We don’t know. They’re still at sea. They’re being tracked, though. We’ll know when they make land.”
    “That’s good.”
    “Good? How?”
    “Because when they do land, I’ll know where Joyce is.”
    He smiled patiently. “He won’t be there for long.”
    She was incredulous. “They’re not going to pay the ransom?”
    “No. The ship has Americans on board: the captain, a few of the officers. It’s not the first time this has happened and the government has had enough. These boys are al Shabaab. Very militant al Qaeda. Salafist jihadism, strict sharia, all that. They make bin Laden look like a choirboy. There’s no possible way that the Americans can be seen to be dealing with them, so the administration has decided it’s time to make an example out of them. They’re going to send in the SEALs who got Osama to get the hostages back and take the pirates out.”
    “When?”
    “It won’t be long. They’ll find out where they are and plan off that. I’d guess three days, but they’re not keeping us in the loop. We have our sources, of course…”
    Beatrix was already planning how it might go down. Somalia was all the way on the other side of the continent from Marrakech. It would take a week to drive. That was obviously going to be too long. Could she fly? She could get a charter flight to somewhere nearer and then drive the rest of the way…
    “Beatrix,” Pope said, interrupting her line of thought. “Please tell me you’re not thinking about going to Somalia?”
    “If that’s where he is, that’s where I’m going. It’s been a year and that’s the first lead you’ve found for me. I can’t afford to let him get away.”
    “Let the Americans get him out. We’ll track him afterwards.”
    “What if he dies in the raid?”
    “Then he’s dead. Move on to the next one.”
    “No. It has to be at my hand. I’m going to be the last person he sees.”
    Pope protested. “The SEALs are very good, Beatrix. They’ll break him out and he’ll go back to wherever it is he’s been hiding, only now, we’ll know. I understand why you want to be the one who pulls the trigger, but if you get yourself killed, the others will get away with what they did. You’ve got to pick your moment. This isn’t it.”
    “You don’t think I can do it?”
    “I didn’t say that, but this is a big risk.”
    “Thank you, Pope. You’ve been very helpful.”
    “Would anything I say make any difference?”
    “No.”
    Because I don’t have forever to find them.
     
    BEATRIX WARMED a little to Pope as the evening drew in and, eventually, she decided