With him in the car were a young Asian woman and a small, zip-up leather holdall in which were a number of plastic bags containing cocaine, marijuana and various illegal and prescription pills. On arrival at the Malibu/Lost Hills police station, his ‘female’ companion was discovered to be a nineteen-year-old Thai ladyboy. A recording of the star’s heated but barely coherent insistence that he had no idea of his companion’s true gender was online within the hour. The line, ‘I thought she was a Sheila!’ was a talkshow punchline around the world that night.

No one, anywhere, wanted to hear about terrorists in the subsequent news cycle.

Zorn repeated his warnings about the vulnerability of energy and oil installations in remarks made to a specialist blog aimed at hedge-fund managers and investors, and also in private conversations with a number of extremely wealthy individuals. None of his warnings, however, penetrated the public consciousness or had any immediate political or economic effect. So it seemed that for once in his life, Malachi Zorn had failed to make the impact he desired.


Friday, 24 June

1

The Greek island of Mykonos

Pelicans honked. That was something Samuel Carver had never known before. But there was the pelican, its feathers a pale baby-pink, like an anaemic flamingo, and it was clearly honking.

‘I’m going to take its photograph. Want to come?’

Her name was Magda, but everyone called her Ginger, for reasons made obvious by one glance at her freckled skin and fiery hair. She had wide-spaced grey-blue eyes, soft, slightly pouty lips, and a little groove at the very tip of her nose. She admitted to being ‘about forty’, but looked no more than twenty-eight, and worked, she said, in corporate finance. Carver was driving a small, hired Japanese Jeep.



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