Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(5)
Seven men, their attire ranging from designer jeans to designer suits, lounged in leather executive chairs around a huge, ornately carved ebony table. While their clothing, age, and physical appearance ran the gamut, each had one characteristic in common. They wielded an aura of authority with the same casualness they wore their clothes. A round of hails broke out as he stepped into the room, and the door at the bottom of the ramp slid shut and locked behind him.
“Manheim.”
“About damn time.”
“Bloody hell, Manheim, it’s been hours.”
“Manheim.”
Eric nodded or shrugged in response as he skirted the breadth of the imposing table. The piece’s legs were carved to resemble a Siberian tiger’s limbs—complete with paws for feet. The dark sheen of the ebony wood shimmered with satin gloss against the Persian Vase rug below it and served as a physical reminder of the critical role he and his associates played in earth’s future.
Ebony trees, and Siberian tigers . . . two of the most endangered species in the world, both protected, yet constantly available on the black market.
“I trust there were no issues boarding the Esme?” Eric asked as he slipped behind a compact bar tucked into the corner.
The staff had been occupied in the ballroom, at the opposite end of the vessel, when the helicopter had landed, and the chopper pilot had returned to Monte Carlo once his passengers disembarked. There’d been nobody to witness James Link access the secret passage from the main stateroom and lead the council belowdecks.
A chorus of negative replies circled the table before the men returned to their previous conversations. Listening to the discussion of thoroughbred racing, or the current crop of award-winning roses, one would never guess that the collective assets of the eight men in the room rivaled the combined resources of the United States, Great Britain, and most of Europe—or that the council controlled virtually every financial institution in existence, along with the bulk of the energy, pharmaceutical, and agricultural corporations.
He removed a bucket of ice from the minifreezer and grabbed a pair of tongs.
“Gentlemen, the bar is open.”
He mixed the requested drinks, passed them out, then dropped a couple of ice cubes into a crystal tumbler, filled it with water, and carried it to the head of the table.
He was a big believer in a clear head, untouched by alcohol, when conducting business. However, it never hurt to mellow one’s competition.
While the men chatting around his table weren’t exactly adversaries, they weren’t exactly friends either. They were simply men—dangerous ones—who shared a particular agenda, bought and sold lives with regularity, and wielded the kind of power that could gut the most prosperous countries and wrench them to their knees.
He couldn’t afford to trust any of them.
“You’ve gone soft, Manheim,” David Coulson announced in his habitually harsh tone that turned even a joke into a clipped accusation. He held his Waterford tumbler up to the light and glared at the amethyst ring circling the top half of the glass as though it personally affronted him. “You’ve turned sissy on us.”
Eric smiled benignly, not bothering to dig deeper into the comment for a hidden indictment. Knowing Coulson, there was bound to be one. “A gift from Esme. She appreciates a more contemporary touch.”
“Esme isn’t joining us?” Samuel Proctor asked. At the shake of Eric’s head, he reached beneath his jacket and liberated a thick cylinder of tightly rolled tobacco.
While the council was sensitive to Esme’s distaste for cigars, the instant she failed to show for a meeting, the stogies came out. Eric accepted the Gurkha Black that Proctor handed him and lifted it to his nose, breathing in the musty fermented aroma with pure appreciation. Gurkhas were one of the rarest and most expensive cigars available, and worth every pound paid for them. There were few things he missed since marrying Esme, but Gurkhas were one of them. Reluctantly he passed the cigar to James Link, on his right.
“Right on then, Manheim. What of those SEAL chaps and Dr. Ansell? Where do we stand there?” Giovanni asked, his English as clipped and perfect as the royal family, even though his native language was Italian.
It spoke to their concern that the first topic to hit the table revolved around the mess Mackenzie and his men had stirred up.
“No sign of them, but their faces are on every television and newspaper in the country. Someone is bound to recognize them and turn them in for the reward,” Eric said. He took a sip of ice water and shrugged. “We wait and move when we’re sure the intel is solid.”
From the frowns circling the table, his associates were no happier with that plan of action than he was. But then, he had no intention of waiting for random recognition to pin those bastards down.
“Mackenzie and his boys obviously have help,” Link said, staring into the amber depths of his crystal tumbler as his long fingers slowly rotated the glass. “What of the property in the Nevadas? Did you track down an owner?”
“The owner died in 1972,” Eric said. “No next of kin. No other property listed under his name.”
A moment of tense silence touched the table as the council digested that news.
“An alias?” Proctor asked, fishing a platinum cigar guillotine out of his breast pocket and clipping the tip off the Gurkha. “Mackenzie, or one of his boys? Maybe the Winchester gal?”