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we’re going to stick it up their ass by cleaning up the mess for them.
    “And, two, because the woman who owns the plane, Ingrid Karlsson, is a friend of mine. She’s been an aide to me and this agency on numerous occasions. She’s asked me for a favor and I don’t want to disappoint her.”
    Storm looked for telltale signs of artifice from Jones, even though the man was too cagey to give them with any frequency. Still, Storm knew Jones didn’t do favors without the promise of a significant return. Storm wondered what it was this time—or if he’d ever find out.
    There was never just one layer with the Head of Internal Division Enforcement.
    “Okay,” Storm said. “And I’m guessing you have a plan for me beyond waltzing into an NTSB-secured crash site and asking them to show me their underwear?”
    “Of course,” Jones said. “Follow me.”
     

CHAPTER 4
    THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA, South of France
    T
    he rug was from the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire, a perfect and near-priceless specimen restored to a glory not seen since Suleiman I himself last walked on it. Resting on top of it was a desk made from rare, Cuban mahogany, harvested from an old-growth rain forest and hand-carved by a master artisan who toiled for a year on its intricacies. Perched on that was a ringing phone, connected to a network of satellites that guaranteed users global coverage, from the peaks of Antarctica to the icy reaches of the North Pole.
    The woman answering it was Ingrid Karlsson, who might have been fifty—only her birth certificate knew for sure—and who might have been the world’s richest woman. Much as with her age, she would neither confirm nor deny speculation.
    “Yes?” she said, and then listened to several minutes of excited jabbering on the other end of the line.
    When the voice stopped, Karlsson said, “She’s dead? Are…are you sure? There is no mistake?”
    She waited for the reply, then said only “thank you” before ending the call.
    She sat perfectly still for a moment. Her gray-blue eyes stared straight ahead. Her near-black hair, which was chopped in straight bangs across her forehead, fell in shimmering strands down to her shoulders. Swedish by birth, a resident of Monaco for tax reasons, she had written a book—half memoir, half polemic—entitled Citizen of the World . Nevertheless, she retained the trademark stoicism of her homeland in the face of tragic news.
    She pressed a button on the desk. In Swedish, she said, “Tilda, come in here, please.”
    A statuesque redhead, dressed in brief shorts and a form-fitting knit top, appeared in the door.
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “One of our planes has crashed in the United States,” she said. “Brigitte is dead.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “We must make a video. We will share it with the press and on the Internet.”
    Tilda’s head tilted as she hesitated. While once a common request, this was now unusual. But she recovered with, “Yes, ma’am. Right away.”
    Tilda disappeared. Karlsson bowed her head, thinking of Brigitte, thinking of all they had achieved together. Ingrid Karlsson was the only child of a man who bequeathed her a modestly successful Swedish shipping company when she was in her twenties. Over the ensuing three decades, Ingrid had taken it and—one ambitiously leveraged acquisition at a time—turned it into the world’s largest privately held logistics company, an empire that included a massive fleet of container ships, planes, trucks, and railroad cars. All told, Karlsson Logistics had a presence in sixty-two countries and on four continents.
    The press had taken to calling her “Xena: Warrior Princess,” for her aggressive business style, Amazonian stature, and more-than-passing resemblance to the 1990s cult television icon. She detested the nickname at first, then warmed to it when she realized it was meant as a sign of respect, a symbol of her strength and success.
    And the success had been considerable. Her estimated wealth,