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K urt sat at a table opposite Darmawan Hurek in the bright new office space.

The view of the ocean was incredible, but he’d rather be looking at Rowena.

Parker had set up cameras to record proceedings that were being beamed via secure satellites along classified channels—not owned or operated by Interstellar—straight to SIOC where the FBI director and AG were watching as the US drew a net around Gilder’s tropical paradise.

The documents from the AG had come through. Hurek sat reading them, then took the pen off the table to sign it.

“You agree to waive your right to legal counsel?” Montana asked.

“As long as you stick to the agreement.” Hurek crossed his arms and raised his nose as if he were superior. Hard to do when you wore the pants you’d pissed yourself in.

They didn’t have time to wait for a lawyer, which might come up at a later date, but by that time Hurek would hopefully be in a high-security facility or extradited to the United Kingdom or Indonesia for crimes committed.

Kurt had agreed to not press charges for kidnapping him, etc.

, etc. What Hurek failed to understand was that the DOJ could independently press charges for the attack on a federal agent, and the Brits could prosecute him for what had been done to Rowena.

Then there was what he’d done to Darby O’Roarke.

Quentin. Haley. The Alexanders. Not to mention the coup he’d tried to initiate in Indonesia.

And maybe Kurt was letting him off easy. Maybe he should have shot him and dumped him overboard while he’d had the chance. But he wanted Gilder and Spartan and whoever else had murdered hundreds of innocents just to try to shut Kurt up.

He wanted them exposed for the diseased minds they really were.

“Talk me through what happened.”

Mallory brought Hurek a cup of coffee and placed it in front of him. He took it without thanks. Just another woman serving his needs.

Kurt and Mal exchanged a silent glance as she sat beside him. Alex stood near the door. Off camera but very much guarding his wife from any potential threat.

“After I left Indonesia last August, I made my way to the DRC, where I had some friends. Last October, I was made aware that certain intelligence services might have spotted me in the town, and I decided to head to my next refuge.”

So Hurek had left the DRC before they’d even arrived. At least the intel had been good at the time.

“Who warned you?”

Hurek glanced at the camera. Swallowed. “Leo Spartan.”

“Zimbabwe’s UN ambassador?”

“Yes.” He sipped his coffee.

“Where did you go next?”

“The container ship called Mudik . I’d bought it several years prior via a shell company in my grandfather’s name. The crew were men faithful to me after I left the Indonesian Army.”

“Deserters.”

Hurek’s lips thinned. “I was their General. They stayed loyal to me.”

And loyalty was everything to dictators .

“Did your friends Nolan Gilder and Leo Spartan know where you were?”

“Not at that time. Leo told me to go to one of his houses in Namibia, but our friendship had been strained since the FBI attacked my island. Leo and Nolan thought I was becoming a liability.”

Kurt didn’t call him out on his bullshit even though the FBI hadn’t attacked a damned thing. He was giving the guy enough rope to hang himself.

“I didn’t trust Nolan and Leo not to dispose of me the same way they disposed of another friend of ours years ago when they had a lot less to lose.”

“We’ll get to that. How did you contact them?”

“We communicate via Tor.”

The Onion Routing network enabled anonymous communications and internet use—a place where the dark web thrived.

Alex brought a laptop over. “Sign in.”

Hurek hesitated. “What if Gilder tracks us?”

“He won’t,” Alex stated baldly. “Firstly, he and his people simply aren’t that good.

Secondly, all his companies and operations have been shut down.

Thirdly, he probably knows Haley Cramer owns this island, and if he has any way of organizing or directing hired guns—which he doesn’t, but if he did—the best way to make sure it’s not worth his while is to expose all of his secrets as quickly as possible. Sign in.”

Hurek did, and Alex got to work.

Kurt took a quick look. All the messages were there.

The pissed-off note from Leo after Bjorn Anders had given Kurt Dougie Cavanagh’s name that night back in January that felt like a thousand years ago now.

The decision to blow up his plane and arrangements to get rid of Jordan Krychek in case Kurt had been able to relay any information during their brief phone call.

The fact Bjorn had lied and betrayed him made him feel sad.

“Print it all out. Let’s get a hard copy. ”

“So Leo ordered the bombing of the aircraft. How long after it took off did you realize I wasn’t on board?”

“I had nothing to do with it, but within a few hours they noticed your cell signal was moving in the opposite direction. He sent mercenaries after you.” He tapped his short grimy nails on the tabletop as if the people who’d died in the crash were of no consequence.

“I put the word out that I’d pay more for you alive than anyone else would pay for you dead. I saved you.”

“Marty Sinclair?”

“One of Leo’s.”

Sonofabitch . He glanced at the monitor and saw the FBI Director writing a note, presumably arranging for Sinclair’s arrest.

“Leo knew I had more contacts in Mozambique than he did, and I could operate more freely there than he could. When you called Mr. Sinclair to arrange for an extraction, he called Leo, and Leo contacted me on our server—as you can see. They expected me to kill you on sight.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Hurek smiled. “I find people often have their uses. The FBI had already proven they’d go to a lot of effort to get their people back, and I thought I could possibly use you as a bargaining chip or as a shield. Then I saw Rowena Smith wearing that watch, and I realized immediately who she was.”

“Gilder’s daughter.”

Shock rippled around the room.

“Talk me through that.”

Hurek looked uncomfortable for a moment. “I told you already.”

Kurt ignored his discomfort. “On the record.”

Hurek went through the disgusting attack on Allie Smith again, Kurt pulling out details that mattered.

“And when Dougie Cavanagh began to suspect what had happened to the woman he had feelings for—what his friends might have done to her…”

“He thought he was in love.” Hurek dismissed the notion with a swipe of his hand. “The fool was writing to her. It was only a matter of time until he went to see her, and she’d have told him what happened.” He bit his fingernail. “Then…”

“What?”

“Something happened at the mine.”

“What mine?”

Mallory handed him a bottle of water, and Kurt cracked it open. He felt rock solid. He had this sonofabitch exactly where he wanted him now. Sweating. Scared.

Hurek looked away. “The mine the four of us owned together under another shell company.”

“Tell me about what happened at the mine.”

“It was a very profitable endeavor, and we all became very rich from it very quickly.”

“Was it legal?”

“Strictly speaking, although, of course, Nolan had bribed certain people to buy the rights for a song.”

“Why such a big secret if you weren’t running blood diamonds?”

“Blood diamonds.” Hurek spat his derision. “Most diamonds are blood diamonds.”

“What happened at the mine?”

“The workers. They kept demanding better pay and working conditions. That’s what Dougie was dealing with the night Nolan…persuaded Allie Smith into his bed.”

It was rape, but Hurek had already confessed to that on the record. And perhaps it wasn’t prosecutable at this stage, but it set the stage as to exactly what these men were.

Evil.

“Allie left the next morning. And the mine foreman was killed by one of the miners. Nolan went crazy. He took some of our security people and a machine gun, and he went to confront the workers.” Hurek looked sober.

“He opened fire and killed every one of them. Every last one. Even the children.” Hurek looked off to the side.

“That was the first time I understood who my friend really was.”

“But you stayed in business together. You stayed friends.”

“What was the alternative?”

“Go to the authorities.”

Hurek shrugged. “They’d have killed me if they found out.”

“So you doubled down,” Kurt guessed.

“They killed everyone at the mining camp. Women and children. Dragged the bodies to the mine and then flooded the whole system. Nolan put the blame on a local warlord. Bribed some of the officials, and no one ever asked any questions. They’re still there, the bodies.

I have the original deeds in a Swiss bank box along with some photographs I took without Leo or Nolan knowing at the time. ”

“What happened next?”

“I headed back to Indonesia. I was independently wealthy now and saw what might happen if Nolan ever decided to turn against me. He knew I had some documents, and I told him even back then that they were secure but if anything should happen to me, I couldn’t guarantee they wouldn’t make their way to various news outlets. ”

“How did Dougie Cavanagh react to everything that happened?”

“He was away the day of the massacre. He’d taken himself off to a town twenty miles away and drunk himself into a stupor. By the time he came back, Nolan had fabricated this whole story about the warlords that he seemed even to believe himself.”

Despots had a habit of drinking their own Kool-Aid.

“We went our separate ways for a short time, and then we all met up again in South Africa after Nolan’s parents died a few months later.

He got drunk and was pissed about that watch.

Blamed Allie Smith for taking it. I mean, she had stolen it, but Dougie defended her, and they got into a huge fight.

It came out that Dougie had been writing to her, and after he went to bed, Nolan said they both had to go.

Allie had been taking photographs all over the camp and at the mine.

They were both loose ends that threatened us.

After she died, Nolan had someone go through her belongings while her family was at the funeral.

They removed all the photos they found in her room that might be compromising. ”

But Kurt suspected he hadn’t taken the negatives. Rowena’s friend John had those.

“After Dougie died?—”

“How did he die?” Kurt asked with light curiosity as if murder were only vaguely important.

“Leo arranged for someone to kill him. A bar fight in the middle of nowhere. Looked like an accident. Then he had your friend Anders pack up his belongings and send anything except papers or photos back to his parents in Scotland along with a hefty check.”

Bjorn had kept one photograph secret all these years. Had he used it as a form of blackmail the same way Hurek had? Kurt doubted he’d ever know.

“Once Dougie was gone, we drifted apart, although we kept in contact via secure means.” Hurek gripped his fingers. “If it wasn’t for the FBI arriving on my island last year, we’d have likely carried on like that forever.”

“Then perhaps you shouldn’t have attacked that conference and kidnapped a federal agent.” Kurt scratched his beard.

Hurek shrugged again. “I saved them.”

“Why d’you kidnap Darby O’Roarke? Same reason you took Rowena to start with, right? A body to keep your men happy.”

Hurek kept his mouth closed. Perhaps he was smarter than he looked. He wasn’t admitting to more than he had to.

“We need the information for the Swiss lock box.” Kurt pushed a piece of paper across the desk. “Write it down. If whatever is inside corroborates your story, we’ll talk about next steps.”

Alex and Mallory put Hurek back in cuffs and escorted him to his overnight accommodations.

Kurt turned to the AG and FBI Director on the monitor. “Do we have enough evidence to prove Spartan and Gilder conspired to blow up the commercial airplane?”

They’d discussed his suspicions earlier, and Kurt had discovered the FBI had already figured out the crash hadn’t been an accident.

“We have video footage that potentially ties Spartan’s security team to the bomb.

Gilder was staying with him at the time.

We believe they conspired to murder Bjorn Anders and to prevent you from contacting your colleagues and getting back to the US using any means possible.

Combined with Hurek’s testimony and those messages on the dark web, it should be enough to convince the Zimbabwean authorities that Spartan is acting against the best interests of their country. ”

“Is it enough for a warrant to approach Gilder’s island and apprehend him?”

“As he’s been actively trying to harm federal agents and use his satellites to eavesdrop on classified information, we have more than enough for a warrant. Good work, SSA Montana. Great to have you back.”

He nodded impatiently. Time for them to take that sonofabitch down. Time for him to find Rowena.