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  Joanna breathed in the warm sea air and felt good about her life. She’d passed out from Britannia Royal Naval College three days before and been offered a commission to become a junior naval officer. She’d breezed through training. Over the last few months, she’d worked her body hard and she felt fitter and stronger than ever before. She’d learned to shoot the SA80 rifle, aced navigation (not surprising given her experience sailing since the age of nine), walked the leadership reaction course, and scored the highest in her year on the physical exam on the wilds of Dartmoor. Joanna Mason embodied exactly what the navy wanted. She never made a song and dance about things, she got her head down and completed tasks with zero bullshit, smiling and exuding a positive mental attitude, always taking time to offer encouragement to her classmates, which also made her likeable within the group. By the time she graduated, she’d been singled out as the outstanding cadet in her year, winning the coveted Queen’s Sword Award.

  When she got back to England she had to decide whether or not to accept the commission. Ordinarily, the navy would never agree to a delay; but when Joanna had asked for time to consider, given her enormous potential, they had made a rare exception. She now had a week to make up her mind. If she signed up, then it would herald the start of a minimum of three years in the navy. But she didn’t want to think about that yet. For now, she only wanted to be there on the deck of the Golden Falcon under sail in the Red Sea.

  She looked out across the horizon and thought about her father. He’d recently moved to Mozambique and she wondered what he might be doing now, a couple of thousand miles away. Thinking of him made her feel guilty all of a sudden because her decision to stay away this Easter had been born out of not wanting to deal with her mother’s sadness as much as wanting to sail again. Although her parents had broken up ‘amicably’, her father seemed to be dealing with it better than her mum. Every time she called home, her mother and Aunty Sheila seemed to be sinking another bottle of Chardonnay and moaning about the state of the men on offer in Hereford. Her mother was still a good-looking woman, and she’d find someone else. Joanna just didn’t want to be around her much until she did.

  Fortunately, the days on board the Falcon kept her mind on other things. Work began at 6 am, cleaning everything from deck to hull, removing bird shit and salt spray, wiping down dirty fingerprints from surfaces, removing evidence of anything that made the boat look less than brand new. Eight o’clock was the daily crew meeting when Ben would brief them on the route and activities for the day. As the most experienced of the deckhands, Jo was usually required to then help Ben and the first officer sail the boat; but when they were anchored, she could just as easily be asked to prepare the jet skis or help the guests with their diving equipment. She was there to do whatever the client required and she worked hard without complaint, happy to be at sea and even happier to pocket the two grand she’d earn from the fortnight’s work.

  She walked back to the bridge and stood alongside the skipper, glancing sideways, trying to judge if he was out of his funk yet, noticing how his eyes darted back and forth along the horizon. She could sense that he was still a bit edgy, probably nervous about their bearing, unhappy that the client had overruled his advice. Everyone on board had heard how angry Mr Wei had been when Ben tried to push back, and nobody liked to hear the skipper being shut down. Unfortunately, that was often the way when you were sailing someone else’s boat.

  ‘Thanks for asking me out here, Skip,’ she said.

  ‘Wanted you to see what you’d be missing,’ he said, not taking his eyes off the horizon.

  ‘The navy said I can still take time out for racing.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Ben replied.

  ‘You think I’m doing the wrong thing.’

  ‘I think you have talent.’

  Jo’s cheeks reddened a little. She wasn’t used to receiving praise, not least from Ben Warmington. ‘Thanks, Ski—’

  ‘Ssh,’ he interrupted her. ‘Here, take this.’

  He moved aside, handing her control of the wheel while he grabbed his binoculars and scanned the horizon. Jo squinted to make out what he was looking for, but there was nothing that she could see with the naked eye.

  ‘Great,’ he said, lowering the glasses again. ‘Just, fucking great.’

  Three

  Pemba Port, Mozambique

  Wang Li Lan pulled her headscarf tight as she crossed the road opposite the Mosque and hurried past the Italian restaurant towards the port. Pemba felt like a town on the edge and she could sense fear everywhere. In the last week alone it seemed like the population had doubled as more and more refugees piled in from the countryside, seeking shelter and safe passage across the sea.

  She was, by some way, the slightest woman in Pemba, which combined with her fine black hair and pale alabaster skin, marked her out immediately from the rest of the locals. As she reached the harbour’s security gate, the guard moved to let her pass but she paused, as she always did to address Filipe, the old blind beggar, sitting in his usual spot, white stick between his legs, thick curly grey hair wildly protruding from under his Taqiyah.

  ‘Good morning, Filipe,’ she said, dropping a couple of centavos in his begging bowl. ‘What’s the news?’ More than once, Filipe had proven to have his ear to the ground better than the local news agencies. Foreign journalists were now banned from northern Mozambique and even the local guys daren’t venture much north of Pemba anymore.

  The old man smiled at the sound of Li Lan’s voice. The men in the port had told him a hundred times that the young woman was Chinese, but he found that hard to reconcile with the voice he heard, which was pure Kiunjuga, the Arabic Swahili that the traders from Zanzibar used. Filipe often wondered if those who had told him that weren’t having a bit of fun at his expense, pulling the old blind man’s leg.

  ‘Al-Shabaab massacred a whole village near Mucojo last night, Miss,’ he said, his face crumpled in a look of deep anguish. He shook his head solemnly. ‘Not long now before they reach Pemba.’

  Li Lan sighed. Mucojo was less than a couple of hours away. If the Islamists were already there, then she had even less time than she’d hoped. She thanked Filipe and continued through the gates, taking the path along the dockside to her office.

  She might not have looked like your average Tanzanian, but Li Lan was born and raised there, on the island of Zanzibar. Her mother had given birth to her only daughter soon after she and Li’s father moved from Shuidong in Guangdong province, Southern China in the early 1990s. Li’s father, the son of a poor fisherman, had followed his dad into the seafood industry, and when the opportunity came to move to Africa, he took it. Since then, he had grown his business into one of the largest sea cucumber exporters in the Indian Ocean region. Chinese people’s appetite for eating the slug-like animal’s flesh had exploded in the past thirty years. When Li’s two elder brothers left Zanzibar to focus on growing the customer base in Hong Kong, it had fallen on her to take over the supply side of the enterprise. Three years ago, Li Lan officially became Operations Director of Wang Trading Company and her old man had finally been able to put his feet up and enjoy his old age.

  She wasted no time in making her mark on the business, investing in sea cucumber fisheries not only in Zanzibar but also in Mozambique and Madagascar. She set up an office in Mozambique because it was undoubtedly the new growth market. The white teatfish, a variety of sea cucumber particular to Mozambique waters, could reach fifty dollars per kilo wholesale in Hong Kong, while housewives in the seafood market would pay five or ten times that depending on size.

  But everything was about to change because Pemba, the town that had long been a stronghold of the Makonde people, was facing a very uncertain future. Mozambique was almost the last African country to become independent in June 1975 after a long and bloody ten-year struggle that culminated in civil war. The victorious Marxist party had taken power of a country with few resources. That was until they discovered twenty billion barrels of gas off the coast of Cabo D
elgado. A large French multinational oil company secured drilling rights and, soon after, billions of dollars went missing while development in the region stalled. Deep resentment grew as the jobs that were promised never materialised and the people in the north realised that politicians and western corporations planned on getting rich while they saw none of the cash.

  The Islamists, calling themselves Al-Shabaab, jumped on the opportunity, highlighting the gross injustice of the deal, recruiting the region’s poor young men, who had no hope of a better life. They were offered real jobs—fighting for Al-Shabaab—and thousands took up arms to fight against the corporate overlords who they were told were robbing them of their birthright—the huge gas and mineral reserves under their feet, being plundered by international companies and corrupt politicians. Within months, an army had been raised and now the gas project was in danger of being overrun.

  As the jihadists expanded their area of control, they butchered all resistance in their path. If Felipe was correct, then the port could fall to them any day, and if that happened, Li Lan’s business in Pemba was finished. She would have to flee along with everyone else.

  She unlocked the door to her office, a prefabricated single-story unit bolted onto the front of an old brick warehouse that opened directly to the loading area where Pemba’s visiting ships docked on the jetty beyond. Li Lan checked her watch. It was 7.15 am, which meant it was the middle of the afternoon in Hong Kong.

  When she got to her desk, she dialled an international number that she knew by heart. After a couple of rings, she heard a voice on the other end that she knew well enough not to feel the need to say hello.

  ‘We have to move,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not time yet,’ the voice replied.

  ‘No more delay. We could lose everything, Oo.’

  ‘The buyer don’t want a part consignment, sister.’

  She held the phone away from her ear. Her big brother, Oo, had never been good at listening to her. Five years in Hong Kong hadn’t helped with that.

  ‘There’s a ship leaving for Mombasa on Tuesday,’ she said.

  There was a pause on the end of the line. She knew her brother well enough to know that he was working out all the angles. She’d worked them out already, but she waited for him to catch up.

  ‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘We can try. I’ll call him. Be ready.’

  She hung up the phone with a heavy sigh and removed her headscarf, shaking out her jet-black hair. She reached into her bag and opened the flask of tea that she had brought from home. A cup of green tea marked the real start to the day and after she had taken a sip, she felt a little better about the situation. Her brother would come through for her. He always did. Three days should be enough to complete the order and get the goods to Pemba in time to make the Tuesday shipment. As long as his people were ready, then it was possible.

  When she’d finished her tea, she went back to the office door and locked it from the inside. She lowered the blinds and then let herself through the back door into the warehouse. To anyone else the smell of drying sea cucumber would have been unbearable, racks upon racks laid out in the gloomy hangar, releasing their pungent sour and salty aroma. But the stench no longer even registered with Li Lan and she passed by oblivious to it, concentrating instead on finding the right key from the several that she kept on her keyring. When she reached the far end of the warehouse, she unlocked a heavy metal door and pushed it open.

  Li Lan knew exactly where to find the light switch in the blackness. The small storeroom had no windows and the door she’d opened was the only way in and out. When she hit the lights, a single strip-light overhead blinked on and off a few times before settling down. She focused on the contents—two rows of large grey-white elephant tusks lay side by side on the floor. Li Lan’s eyes ran along them, counting in her head as she did so—a little over two hundred tusks in each row, less than one hundred short of a full consignment. As long as her brother’s people had been busy, she could be safely out of Pemba by the middle of next week.

  Four

  Dahlak Islands

  ‘Ooooooooooooooooh,’ Wei Lun Chow screamed out, half in agony, half delicious ecstasy, as the tip of a single feather flittered down his naked back and over his buttocks. He shivered from the sensation, pulling a little against the silk ties that tethered him face-down to the bed. Chow loved and loathed being tickled in equal measure. At that precise moment, he gave himself over to it and relished the contradiction. In doing so, he felt all the tension of the last few days ebb away.

  The main suite on the Falcon was opulent to the point of gaudy, having been personally designed by Lulu Lytle, the London socialite and designer. African rosewood panelling had been imported from Gabon, and the furniture individually sourced from Europe, nothing more recent than the sixteenth century. The bed, solid oak, had previously been that of Louis XII, while the chandeliers, customised originals from an estate in Scotland, were repurposed specifically for the Falcon’s low ceilings. The soft furnishings, produced exclusively by Soane of London for the Falcon, included thirty momme mulberry silk bed sheets embossed with the Cantonese characters —Wei Lun Chow.

  Sitting astride Chow in the middle of the French king’s old bed, was one of his guests, Mae Yin, a nineteen-year-old woman from the southern region of Guangzhou. Mae Yin moved to Shenzhen three years previously to pursue a career in modelling, but had found greater economic success working as an exclusive escort for Chow. She and her three colleagues lived together in an apartment in Hong Kong, at his expense, where they were free to spend their time (and Chow’s money) as long as they remained on standby 24/7 to accompany him when and where he chose—any time, anywhere, any way.

  ‘A-Rest-O-Mo-Men-Tum,’ Chow cried out, his voice slightly muffled by the pillow in his face. Mae Yin knew very well what this command meant, having heard it many times before, and she dutifully tickled Chow with the feather again, only slower this time, giggling with faux delight over his renewed cries for mercy. He was paying her handsomely to indulge this fantasy and she was more than happy to oblige. It made a pleasant change from the things her previous client had expected from her.

  Chow had explained at some length why that particular feather was very precious to him. It was the actual peacock feather used by Professor Gilderoy Lockhart, played by Sir Kenneth Branagh in the movie Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. A movie she hadn’t seen. Chow had recounted how he’d acquired the prop (anonymously) for a considerable sum, through a specialist auction house in Los Angeles, along with various other Potter memorabilia.

  He had purchased these things because he had very specific sexual needs, which he liked to call for in the form of Harry Potter spells, all of which he knew by heart. He’d watched every single one of the movies several times because magic excited his obsessional tendencies.

  The Chinese billionaire had very specific obsessions. Harry Potter came a close second to boats. He’d been fascinated with everything maritime since he was a child when his father had been a ferryman on the Star Ferry, carrying passengers across the Victoria Bay, from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon. That was before Chow got rich and bought his parents a luxury penthouse on the waterfront in Tsim Sha Tsui, from where his dad could watch his old ferry crossing the water back and forth to Wan Chai Pier.

  Money had changed everything for the Chow family. Chow had left Kowloon for the mainland with precious little of it at sixteen. He found work at Freight Tech, one of China’s largest shipping companies, working in the warehouse. At night, he’d studied, teaching himself how to code, eventually well enough to land an intern job with Huawei in Shenzhen. Ten years of hard graft at China’s foremost tech company had eventually led to a promotion into the Huawei AI development team. A couple of years after that, he’d spotted an opportunity that he knew was too good to share with his employer.

  Chow’s lightbulb moment came when he realised how AI could save the shipping industry a lot of time and money. He quit Huawei, secured seed
funding from a Taiwanese investor, now his business partner, and worked day and night to develop a neural network-based screening tool that allowed major shipping lines to detect suspicious cargo. He called the product SinoCheck, AI software that could scan keywords in booking documentation and cross-reference them against international regulations to identify dangerous shipments of everything from arms to drugs. Today, Sino-Check monitors more than half of the world’s shipping cargo every day. In the process, it made Wei Lun Chow a very, very rich man.

  Mae Yin moved back as Chow pushed his buttocks back and up into the air and cast another spell, ‘A-Kwa-Ee-Ruck-To.’ She knew this drill well. This was her cue and she reached around to give him his final relief. Chow slumped forward onto his belly with a satisfied moan. The diminutive tycoon lay flat on the silk sheets while the other three women appeared with tubs of warm soapy water and together set about meticulously cleaning his whole body. When they were done, he would take a nap while the Falcon completed the journey to the Zubair Group for some scuba diving later in the afternoon.

  Chow’s most recent obsession was a fascination with exploring life below the sea. Over the past couple of years, he’d dived most of the world’s greatest dive sites including Sipadan and the Palau Islands, the Yongala and Thistlegorm wrecks and the Blue Hole of Belize. Now he wanted to take things further, to visit sites that nobody had dived before. Top of his list was Zubair. As the epicentre of two decades of war, it was thought that reefs around Zubair could be the most unspoilt in the whole world. In a couple of hours, Chow would become the first person since the 1990s to see if that was true.