The Devil's Handshake

26

London – Present Day

For what seemed like ten minutes when in fact it was just a minute, Rebecca sat in numb shock at the screen of her computer staring at the face of the man who had killed Chris as the steaming coffee continued to drip over her desk from the cup she dropped.

Hearing the coffee cascading off her desk and shaking herself free of Wasir’s image, on autopilot Rebecca got up and cleaned up her desk with her emotions in turmoil.

“It’s the Captain!” she said out loud, a fact she later confirmed when she had read the notes from the team in Nice.

“Interior Minister of Adwalland, Wasir Osman Hassan boarding The Libertine,” it had said.

Composing herself, she sat back down to gather her emotions.

When the Kenyans had told her that Christopher had been found dead over the border in Somalia she just couldn’t believe it. He would have never crossed the border.

“He an experienced aid worker, I don’t believe it,” she had said to her counterpart in the NSIS, the Kenyan Intelligence service.

“Cathy, I am extremely sorry,” was all he had said.

Because he was found murdered over the border she had no choice but to tell Michael that Chris was aware of her true identity because they just became engaged.

His response was immediate. He lifted her out that day, thereby rendering her powerless to question or make her own enquiries into his death allowing the official report to stand.

“Although he was foolhardy crossing the border to assess the situation in Ras Kamboni, his death was not because of kidnapping but instead tragically because his Toyota hit a landmine,” the report had read.

No mention was made of him illegally smuggling medical supplies across the border because neither Kenya nor the Red Cross wanted the embarrassment.

In her heart, Rebecca had always known it was the Pirate Captain who had killed him and stole the medical supplies.

Despite many attempts and enquires since his death, from the reading of prisoner transcripts to intelligence reports supplied from the Somali’s NSS nobody could find the Captain she had met in Luma named Wasir. Until now! When out of the blue when he appears on the yacht of a billionaire she was investigating.

Over the years out of a sense of loyalty whilst continuing to contain her emotions by throwing herself into her work, she had kept an eye on his elderly parents, who only knew her as Cathy Benson. It was the only time she had grieved as she stood by his parents and buried him in their small village in Hampshire and vowed.

“I will find your killer, my darling! God punishes! Man takes revenge!” she had said in Yiddish, her Jewish upbringing spurring her to act and finally, God had answered her and was going to allow the opportunity for her to do so.