Shadow Tyrants

FORTY-THREE

On the dock beside the Colossus 5, Xavier Carlton slowly walked around his Bugatti Chiron, which had been brought from his estate in the mountains outside of Larnaca. The two-toned red and black sports car shimmered in the setting sun. Worth more than three million dollars, the sleek roadster boasted a fifteen-hundred-horsepower engine and a top speed north of two hundred and fifty miles per hour.

He had pulled the car from his A380 mere minutes before it took off for its hijacking to Jhootha Island. There had been no sense in stranding one of his favorite cars on the tropical island. He had intended to give it back to his son Adam upon his safe return, but after he died on the flight Carlton decided to keep it for himself.

“Do you see any blemishes?” asked Natalie Taylor, who walked slowly beside him.

“No, they’ve taken good care of it in my absence.” As they should, given what he’d do if there was so much as a ding in the paint.

“Why are you taking it to Australia?”

“I want to see what it will do on the wide-open roads down there. The roads on Cyprus are too constricted.” He was looking forward to blasting through the Outback at top speed, a just reward for all his hard work and sacrifice over the last few years.

As he opened the rear cover to gaze at the sixteen-cylinder monster of an engine, Taylor said, “We can’t keep Gupta here forever. It will start to look strange if he stays with us and doesn’t contact his company back in Canada.”

“I had an idea,” Carlton said. “We’ve been keeping a lid on the deaths of the other Nine at the Library, but it’s starting to become difficult to contain. There are stories going around about some of the missing CEOs, and eventually the path will lead back to India.”

“What are you proposing?”

“On our way to Sydney, we’ll make a stop in India. I want you to take Gupta and return him to the Library. You’ll shoot him there and make it look like he survived the Novichok attack only to succumb to his gunshot wound days later.”

“How will that help us?”

“You’ll get him to record a confession before he dies. If he resists, tell him we’ll execute his family. Get him to place the blame on Mallik for the deaths of the other Nine. Once we’ve finally killed Mallik, we’ll anonymously reveal the existence of the Library and the secret society of the Nine Unknown Men, and the authorities will find the bodies with a ready-made story to go with them.”

“But that only adds up to eight people. Won’t that invite speculation about who the ninth member is?”

Carlton pointed at the ship behind him. “Colossus will be able to plant evidence implicating another person in place of me. I’m thinking another Indian billionaire would make more sense than me. Remember, it was my plane that was stolen and my son who was killed. I’m the victim in all this.”

“When do you want to take off?” Taylor asked.

Taylor had already been working on updated disguises to go with the fake passports she had at her disposal, so returning to the country under a new name wouldn’t be a problem.

“We’ll leave tomorrow morning after the Colossus 5 has set sail.” Carlton saw a truck hauling a bright green trailer pass through the security gate. “And this must be my other present that we’ll be taking with us.”

The truck pulled up next to them. Carlton was excited to see its contents. Because of everything else that was dominating his time, he was happy to have another small distraction.

“Have you had a chance to see this yet?” asked Natalie Taylor.

“No,” he said. “I bought it sight unseen. But my appraisers said it’s in excellent condition.”

The two men in the truck got out, unlocked and rolled up the rear door, and extended a ramp from the container. Then they put on white gloves and went inside. Carlton heard the growl of a big-block V-8 engine firing up, and with a roar exhaust blew through the rear doors.

One of the men walked out backward, his hands in the air slowly motioning to the other man still inside. He was followed by a chrome bumper and a couple of the tallest tail fins ever put on a production car. Its Kensington Green paint glinted in the setting sun. The car was a convertible, and the top was already down, revealing a white leather interior with custom-made front bucket seats that were original to the car. It kept coming and coming, all nineteen feet of it, until the driver stopped on the pavement.

“That may be the biggest car I’ve ever seen,” Taylor said.

“A 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible. One of the few that was ever shipped to Europe. I found it in Malta.”

The driver handed Carlton the keys. He went around to the driver’s door and said to Taylor, “Get in.”

He took it for a spin around the dockyard, his security team watching as the car roared along the length of the ship.

When he stopped back at the trailer where the Bugatti was already being loaded, he said, “What do you think?”

“They certainly don’t make cars like this anymore,” Taylor said as she stepped out. “You’ve got yourself a real prize.”

“It’s the only one of its kind anywhere,” he noted with pride. “Make sure it arrives safely.”

“Absolutely, sir.”

He told the truck driver to keep the cars in the safety of the dockyard until they were ready to be loaded onto the plane the next day.

The short drive had put him in a good mood, and for the first time in days he felt optimistic about his plans. The AI was going to be activated on schedule, and the threat of the Vajra satellite launch would be over. Carlton would be able to do whatever he wanted, and there was one thing he wanted to do more than anything else.

He walked back to the ship with a spring in his step as he imagined all the ways he could use Colossus to kill Romir Mallik.