I woke up and jumped to my feet, startled, nearly destroying the shrub where I was hiding. Something generated a rattling noise, resembling an engine working not far away. I cautiously crawled to the outer leaves and lay down, sticking my head outside.

I noticed someone on the platform where Marty Cork had ditched his containers earlier that night. There was also a small boat with an outboard engine at the shore and a bigger one a little further in the sea. It was too dark, however, to distinguish any more details. I glanced at my cell phone, shading its screen with my palm, and it read three forty-three—just half an hour after I had dropped off to sleep. Then I pulled out my night vision goggles to check what was happening.

It was obviously my dear friend again—I could tell by his gait. There was another guy with him, but he wasn’t Spit Master. The figures were near the containers and doing something very weird: Marty was taking the seals off, and his party was carrying them to the containers with no seals, putting them there using some gadget. After that, Cork quickly labeled the good stuff as wrong and vice versa, and the two men jumped onto the boat, heading to the bigger one. Just a few minutes later, it was all peaceful and quiet on the platform, just as it had been before their arrival.

I took off the goggles, puzzled. “What the hell is he doing? Is this what it’s all about?” I asked myself, still sleepy. I couldn’t believe the jerk was trying to trick Greenspace into buying some bullshit instead of ammonia. He had to be nuts to do that!

The answer to my question became apparent around six thirty—a few hours before they opened the hub. I was already up because I couldn’t sleep after the scene I had witnessed, and I noticed a vessel on the horizon quite similar to the one that had been here in the night. Twenty minutes later, it arrived at the platform, and I recognized it—Mountain Cougar. Soon, Marty popped on the deck and then jumped onto the shore, talking on his phone, after which a sleepy dockworker appeared. The latter slowly climbed up to the cabin of a crane and started loading the containers with the good stuff, which were now marked “wrong,” onto the ship’s deck. The engine of Mountain Cougar was working all the while, and when the transfer was finished, the boat beat it into the sea immediately.

By then, the first alchemists had already arrived at Ofu with their buckets, and I cautiously sneaked out of my hiding place to disappear among them. Soon, the entire wharf was full of chemical enthusiasts. A little later—around nine—they opened the trade hub, and a mobile crane came out to take the sealed containers inside because they were blocking the space in front of the facility. Nobody cared to look through the stuff because nobody had a reason to suspect anything. The containers were carried to the backside with others similar to them for further processing. Around nine-thirty, a bunch of testers came down to the fishing port for a quick morning round, issuing refusals, after which I had a variety of boatmen to pick from. By two p.m., my new Avinash had already taken me back to the harbor of Tutuila. He was more than happy to do so because it was a reimbursement for his wasted diesel fuel.

I slowly headed to my hotel, exhausted and confused at the same time. Everything was getting weirder and weirder on this damn island. “If selling ammonia is so lucrative, why aren’t the Chinese in it?” I asked myself. “After all, they are the manufacturers!” Maybe the aliens simply didn’t want to do business with so many suppliers in so many countries, or perhaps Chavez had brokered some kind of exclusive license for himself, I thought. On the other hand, if that was the case, why would Marty Cork do such a stupid thing, screwing his chances to supply in the future? He obviously couldn’t have hoped to replace Greenspace because he was nobody, and the aliens would rather deal with the Chinese than him.

Fifteen minutes later, still thinking, I reached my hotel. I was dying to get a proper sleep, but before that, I had to shower and brush my teeth. My mouth stunk of shit because of the rat meat sandwiches I had, and finding a toothbrush as soon as possible was my main priority. Unfortunately, people rarely get what they want in the moment they want it in life, and I was no exception. When I opened the hotel front door, I promptly realized someone had already rearranged my schedule this afternoon without asking me. It made me stop in the doorway, surprised.

The first thing that caught my eye was the total disorder in the lobby. It looked like a battlefield. Yellow tapes that read “crime scene” and “do not cross” were all around, and a bunch of guys with ultraviolet spectrometers in their hands crawled on the floor searching for something. Weirdly enough, there were no police cars outside, and I turned my head back to look there, confused. Unless the vehicles were invisible, the street was totally empty.

“Are you wondering how they came here?” I suddenly heard a familiar voice not far away. “They left the cruisers at the airport because we didn’t want to scare the tourists.”

I turned around. It was Peularia, standing in the doorway to the snack bar and looking at me. Behind her, I noticed Nereidi at the counter, drinking a cocktail with a little umbrella in the glass. She had turned her head, too, smiling at me in the distance.

“And your Ferrari?” I mumbled.

“Please, come. You obviously have many things to tell me!” Gzundis invited me in without answering my question. Reluctantly, I stepped inside.

We walked to a couch—one of the few that had survived Armageddon—and sat there with the glass-topped table between us. I faced Nereidi, behind whom half of the bottles on the shelves were smashed. The air in the hall was heavy with the smell of liquor, and I was glad because it neutralized my stink to a point.

“It was you they looked for!” the inspector informed me after a while, stating the obvious. Her voice was somewhat cold, and although she didn’t look mad, she wasn’t happy with the situation at all. I could totally understand her.

“Who were they?” I asked, even though I had an idea who might have done this. The devastation of such a scale was only within the powers of Chavez or Sengupta—I just couldn’t decide between the two.

“You tell me!” Peularia kept her urging eyes on me. “You should know what you did and to whom.”

“But I have just got here!” I looked at her, pretending I was innocent. I was also careful not to gesticulate too much because I didn’t want to stir the air around me.

She glanced at her watch.

“Okay, it’s almost two-fifteen p.m., so let’s start with four o’clock this morning. Tell me everything you’ve been up to since then, and we’ll see how well your day fits in with the mess here.”

“Well, this morning at four, I think I crawled out of the shrub where I spent the night!” I smiled.

Gzundis shook her head dismally. She obviously thought I was making a stupid joke, which made me realize she didn’t deserve such treatment. Until that moment, she had been good to me and helped me a lot, even though she had every reason to kick me out of the country or even arrest me.

“No, I’m not kidding!” I quickly added. “The shrub was my only option. They don’t have many hotels in Ofu, you know.”

The inspector remained stone-faced. She wasn’t one of those people who would express their emotions readily, so I had to go on and explain myself to her without more invitations. Behind her back, Nereidi was balancing on her stool—on the verge of tipping it over—and she blew her straw to make bubbles in her glass. Since I couldn’t see the bartender around, I wondered who had made the cocktail for her.

I watched the girl for a few seconds, and when she eventually regained her balance, I looked back at Peularia. I had nothing to lose, so I decided to tell her about my latest Dick Tracy impersonations while sparing some of the most delicate details. I thought that if she wanted to arrest me, she would’ve done it already, and besides, she might even help me understand the exotic games local gangsters played here. All the while, she remained expressionless.

“So you say this Marty guy tried to trick Greenspace into buying fake ammonia? Isn’t that too cheap?” She asked me when I finished filling her in on my day, from four a.m. until I arrived back here. “He probably won’t be able to repeat the trick ever again!”

“No, I guess he won’t! And I’m still looking for the answer,” I replied. “I kind of hoped you’d tell me why ammonia is such a valuable commodity in this region. Because it’s just a chemical compound everywhere else in the world, you know.”

Peularia kept her eyes on me for a while, thinking.

“I don’t know why that is,” she said eventually. “It’s just Chavez and his business whims—I told you the last time we talked about it. What I really don’t understand, however, is your stubbornness here. Why do you keep risking your life without anyone paying you for it? You obviously have no case anymore, so what are you trying to achieve? Get yourself killed?”

I attempted to smile, but it turned out more like a sour grimace because I was too tired. Besides, my attention had shifted to Nereidi again, who chased ice cubes around her glass behind the inspector’s back. She nearly swallowed her straw while sucking at her drink, and when she noticed in the mirror on the shelf I was watching her, she turned her head to look at me naughtily.

“You’re missing a tiny but crucial detail.” I reminded Peularia when her assistant resumed the chase for ice cubes. “In Greenland, I’m a wanted man, and I just have to finish here, or else I’m as good as dead!”

“In Tutuila, you seem to be a wanted man too, Mr. Mellrow, so what’s the difference? Sengupta is a fancy person; he normally wouldn’t do such a thing like this.” She spread her hands to indicate the mess. “If you hadn’t stepped on his toes, I mean. So what did you do to make him so angry this time?”

“Why are you so sure Sengupta did this?” I asked her.

“I just am!”

“But what makes you think so?”

She didn’t answer.

I sighed and scratched my head because it itched from all the dirt in my hair. It didn’t actually matter that much who had done this, but if it really was Sengupta, Sharon might have had something to do with it. The bitch obviously didn’t want to give up on me.

“Well, I kind of intruded on his property,” I reluctantly admitted after that. “I may have sneaked onto one of his boats, you know.”

Peularia stared at me grimly. “Are you out of your mind? And you were looking there exactly for what?”

“It’s complicated,” I sighed again. “Basically, I wanted to get my non-existent case moving.”

She rolled her eyes. “Look, Mr. Mellrow! The situation on these islands has always been hanging on the balance,” she explained tiredly. “And when I say these islands, I mean the entire region, not just here. We’ve known what Sengupta’s been up to for a very long time, but we have limited resources to stop him if any at all. It’s just that we’re too small, and mighty crime syndicates in India back him up. For the last few years, however, he has adhered to this silent truce between us, and things were relatively peaceful. Unfortunately, with your arrival, you made this place turbulent again, and I don’t like it in the least!”

“I’m sorry about that, Miss Gzundis,” I replied, and this time, I really meant what I said. “It has never been my intention to break anything, but if the guys I followed here have really joined forces with Sengupta to drive Greenspace out of business, which I think they have, then your truce was as good as dead even before my arrival. It was just a matter of time for the outcome to become obvious.”

The inspector looked at the table between us without saying anything. She knew I was right.

After a few moments, she added, “Sengupta and Chavez are natural enemies; their businesses are radically different, and there’s not enough room for both in Tutuila. Now that your friends are here, if they really try to build on DuPont’s project, there will be a third party in the equation, and things will become complicated very soon.”

“Well, at first, I thought so too,” I tried to explain the situation to her. “I presumed they were here to build, but now I’m not sure. You see, the Olosega project was obviously halted after Menelaus’ death, and it’s unlikely the construction will be resumed soon. Plus, these guys are not entrepreneurs. None of them went to see the place, and I feel they want to establish a new trade route instead, spiking Greenspace’s wheels. Unfortunately, they don’t have the resources needed—the ships and everything—and I think they’re trying to get that from Sengupta. In return, he will have Chavez out of his hair, and probably, that’s the entire deal!”

“You mentioned DuPont wanted to build a docking station on the island,” Peularia noted when I stopped talking. “But since we already have a docking station in the region, I doubt such a thing would be economically sustainable. So, there must be more to it, I guess. He must have had something different on his mind when he started his project.”

“You’re right, I suppose. If it’s just about ammonia, it will be unsustainable, but we don’t actually know the real product, do we? Maybe it was worth the risk and even something to make a second docking station a very reasonable business idea!”

Gzundis pondered my words for a while, but she didn’t comment on them. Her cell phone suddenly rang. She glanced at the display and picked up, signaling Nereidi to finish her drink. The inspector listened to someone on the line for about a minute without saying absolutely nothing—not even “okay” or “uh-huh.” Afterward, she hung up in the same reserved manner and turned her eyes back to me.

“I need to go now, Mr. Mellrow,” she informed me curtly. “It’s urgent police business. However, I’ll take the risk of repeating myself here, hoping that this time, you’ll listen: I’d advise you to leave the country immediately, and if you decide to leave the region of the South Pacific, it would be even better! No matter what’s waiting for you back in Greenland, believe me, what’s waiting for you here is worse. You just don’t know the local gangsters.”

“Of course, Miss Gzundis. I’ll do that at the first chance.” I scratched my head again because the itch was unbearable. “You can count on me.”

Peularia looked at me disappointedly. “I don’t want to count on you. It’s you who needs to count on yourself!” Then she turned around and walked to Nereidi, grabbing the girl’s hand and leading her toward the door. On their way, the Indian turned her head several times to look at me, and I merrily waved my hand goodbye. She only giggled. When they disappeared behind the doorway, I stayed in the lobby bar for a while, looking at where they had been just seconds ago. I had never seen such a weird police couple before—not even in the movies.

A moment later, I wearily stood up and moved behind the counter to grab one of the remaining whiskey bottles. I felt so miserable and disgusting! When I put it to my mouth for a sip and the liqueur slipped into my empty stomach, it spread a pleasant warmth throughout my entire system. It turned out the drink here tasted much better than what the printer in my room produced. After having another gulp, I put the bottle down and headed to the door. This hotel was becoming the next place in my life I would leave prematurely, as it seemed. Lately, I was doing just that only a day or two after checking in somewhere.

Outside the lobby, yellow police tapes still blocked the staircase and the main entrance, but the guys with the spectrometers were gone. The elevator was open, and the reception hall was empty. The entire hotel looked empty, too. I stooped under the tape and climbed the staircase toward my room. I expected a devastation there, and I wasn’t disappointed. Everything inside was ripped apart—even the mattress and the cushioned armchair. The curtains were on the bed, and my shirts were all over the floor. Whoever ransacked the room had been obviously furious for not finding what they were looking for.

“Poor jerks!” I thought while collecting my stuff in a black plastic bag since I still hadn’t bought a suitcase. “Maybe they believed I kept a big fat red folder with the word ‘calcified’ printed in bold letters across the front!” After I gathered everything, I quickly changed my clothes and stepped out because I had no time to hit the bathroom. Every second of living was a gift for me now.

A few minutes later, I was down to my Ford. I saw no cops there either, and the street seemed peaceful and sleepy—not a surprise at all, given that the temperature was already forty-five. However, I knew its tranquility was deceptive. I was targeted now and expected to see villains behind every corner, so that’s why when my cell phone suddenly rang, it scared the shit out of me. I pulled the device out with a trembling hand, looking at its screen. Then, I froze in the middle of my gesture, quickly getting into the car and quietly shutting the door.

At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought I was hallucinating due to the combined effects of sleep deprivation and starvation, but I wasn’t. The ID read Bobby Bjornson. The device indicated a video stream was available, so I turned the camera away from the hotel before picking it up.

“Hey, babe! What’s going on?” I asked cheerfully as I opened the line. “I thought you had given up on me.”

Bobby’s face appeared on the screen, and she tried to smile, but it didn’t come out like a real smile. She looked weary and exhausted. She was still beautiful but not as heavenly beautiful as I remembered her back in Greenland.

“Hey!” she answered curtly. “It’s been a while.”

“Yep, baby, it’s been a while. What took you so long?”

“They are trying to kill me, Mellrow!”

“Who are they, babe? The aliens?”

“Sharon and the moron she fucks!”

Bobby drew the device away from her face briefly, and a lonely bench on a seaside alley flashed behind her hair. Then she adjusted the camera again.

“I thought you were buddies, baby!” I sneered at her, ignoring her cry for help because she was probably messing with me. “Marty, and the bitch, and you.”

“Stop calling me baby, please!” she insisted, without much emotion in her voice.

“Okay, babe! And what do you have for me this time? Another dead body? You want me to go find it? Okay, no problem; give me the address!”

She remained still for a moment, looking at me. Her blue eyes had lost their usual sparkle and seemed grayish now, but maybe it was just the light.

“They made me do it!” Her mouth opened after a while in an attempt to explain. “My life was at stake! Let’s meet, and I’ll tell you everything.”

I quickly calculated to see if it was possible. I left DuPont’s house at around one p.m., and she gave me that phone call of betrayal at two-thirty, so Marty had about an hour and a half to find her. It was achievable but extremely tough unless Sharon had helped him. Nevertheless, I couldn’t trust Bobby anymore, and I didn’t intend to. She was as good as dead to me now.

“No, I’m not going anywhere!” I replied coldly. “You will tell me everything over the phone!”

“Look, I knew you would survive this. The setup was so lame that the police wouldn’t believe it. You have to forgive me! I had to buy some time because I was next in line after Menelaus!”

“What the hell are you talking about, Bobby? What do you think I am? An imbecile or what? If you wanted to save yourself, you would’ve disappeared in the woods of Siberia or some other godforsaken place, not coming here where your ex-boyfriend, or whatever he is to you, started his grandiose project! And don’t tell me you had no idea Marty and Sharon would follow you because it’s just stupid!”

She looked at me, uncertain, as if trying to find a good enough answer.

“I didn’t know they were aware of this, I swear! It was a secret. Besides, I know these islands very well, and there was nowhere else I could go.”

“Oh, come on!” I snapped, irritated. “You’re a terrible liar! You slept with me while you were still sleeping with DuPont. You played behind both of our backs! Why did you do it, huh? Did you also buy time, or did you just try to buy my trust and make sure I would fall into the trap later?”

“I had no ulterior motive when I slept with you!” Bobby insisted. She seemed confused and desperate, but I didn’t believe her. “I liked you!”

“Yeah, tell me about it! You also liked Menelaus, right? But that didn’t stop you from helping Sharon and Marty kill him. You express your love in unusual and very bizarre ways, my darling! You know that?”

“Menelaus was aware of them from the very beginning,” she sobbed. “But he wanted them to believe he didn’t because he used Marty to lay his hands on Sharon. He had no idea things would go that far!

“Okay, let’s unpack everything, then! Shall we?” I suggested. “Help me understand the bigger picture! The guy had plans to drive Greenspace out of the ammonia business and hired you as a consultant. Right? Then one thing led to another, and you became his mistress. But I really don’t care about that anymore, okay? So he needed you because of your education in pharmacy and background experience in the region. But I really don’t understand why he needed the entire bullshit at the Red Dragon! Why did he make you hire a fool to go there and shoot a bunch of useless photos?”

Bobby hesitated for a second, but then she decided she had nothing to lose.

“It was a delicate situation,” she explained. “The Couloongs had enough suppliers already. Menelaus needed to kick someone out of the pool to take their place because otherwise, his project here would be unsustainable. At the same time, he had to be careful not to involve the aliens and compromise the deal.”

“Oh, come on now, Bobby. Don’t do that again!” I shook my head to stop her. “Don’t tell me it’s all about ammonia because I’m completely fed up with your lies. Honestly!”

She kept looking at me without answering right away. Her face was taut. She obviously struggled to find a way to make me believe her, although she knew it was nearly impossible now.

“This entire thing may not seem like a big deal to you, but it’s huge enough. Believe me! It’s not like anything else so far,” Bobby went on after a while. “About a year ago, the aliens suddenly started buying up all kinds of chemical compounds on a large scale. Ammonia is among the most profitable, but you can make crazy money from almost anything else. It literally changed the rules of business worldwide!”

I said nothing and just thought about the docking station on Olosega. DuPont really must have intended to export bulk goods because there was no other reasonable explanation for why he would start such a project there. He had a lot of spaceships, of course, but the logistics would have been insanely complicated and devastatingly expensive without this facility.

“Menelaus needed something very unpleasant to involve Greenspace in, but it had to be unrelated to the Couloongs,” Bobby kept explaining. “Since Greenland’s on the main smuggling route from Africa and the Chinese regularly met Chavez in Nuuk to arrange deals with endangered animals and exotic foods, the Red Dragon scheme was a convenient solution to the problem. The idea was to make the aliens withdraw from the current arrangement here.”

“You want to tell me DuPont didn’t think starting his construction so close to Greenspace’s hub was risky?” I asked tartly. “It just doesn’t add up!”

“Why would that matter?” Bobby shrugged. “They would have been forced to retreat soon. If he had succeeded, and he believed he would, the hub here would have been abandoned, and they wouldn’t be a problem anymore. Besides, there was another angle. Aliens were using the docking station on Swains anyway and didn’t want to change their logistics significantly. Last but not least—the volcano on Ololega: Menelaus needed huge amounts of electricity because of the specific technology he would use to obtain ammonia.”

“You mean the specific technology you advised him to use?”

She didn’t answer.

“Okay, let’s move on then.” I continued unfolding the story. “So you hired the fool and fed him with bullshit; he was expected to risk his life and do the dirty work for your boyfriend. But why was it so essential for your plans to ruin his life after that, sending him to jail or even leaving him for the Chinese to kill him?”

“Don’t say that! We didn’t want you to die. You accepted the job, and you knew it would be risky!” Bobby raised her voice, making an effort to defend herself. “And technically, it wasn’t bullshit. The Chinese really smuggled rhino horns and other stuff, and you were only supposed to deliver the pictures and nothing else. Then, the Couloongs would back out of the deal with Chavez to avoid diplomatic complications. That was all of it!”

“You always sound like you’re so innocent, Bobby! It’s like you never worked with Sharon to frame me for DuPont’s murder when everything went south for you!” I grunted sourly.

“But it’s all true! I told you, they made me do it. Marty held a gun to my head!” Bjornson cried again.

“You know what? I just don’t care anymore. I won’t believe you, no matter what you say.” I replied. “As far as I’m concerned, you are no different than Sharon. You came to me with a stupid story about rhino horns, and she picked South African swallows. You both thought I was an idiot!”

“Well, it does sound weird, I know!” Bobby admitted it, although reluctantly. “I don’t know; maybe Marty overheard something. After all, he still worked for DuPont at that time! I suppose you were right when we talked back in that cafe in Greenland, and you assumed Sharon wanted to counteract Menelaus’ play. Maybe her idea was to make you suspicious. In any case, she had to hurry because if he made that deal with the Couloongs, she would be screwed!”

I shook my head grimly. Her explanation made enough sense, but there were many blank spots, and I still didn’t want to believe her. Besides, even though Marty and Sharon eliminated DuPont, they didn’t stop after that, which implied something else was brewing. Somehow, Bobby sensed my hesitation.

“Well, it must have been their initial goal, at least,” she added after a short pause. “Their actions sharply changed after the murder. I don’t know what exactly they planned, but if they aimed for his money, maybe they realized he was almost broke due to the project on Olosega. Probably that’s why they started looking for a partner.”

“Partner? What partner?” I stared at her, suspicious.

“I’m not entirely sure, but I think Sharon is making passes at one of the mafia bosses here. She wouldn’t do such a thing for fun or sex, so there is definitely more to it. Besides, I managed to snatch a memory stick out of Marty’s car a couple of days ago when I accidentally ran into him, and the files inside made me believe they wanted to enter the ammonia business. Unfortunately, Cork got me the next day, and he took the memory stick back.”

“You mean the accident in the motel where you tried to kill me?” I asked without telling her I had the stick now.

“I didn’t try to kill you! Marty was right behind me; he almost killed me! Plus, I hit the brake to give you a chance, didn’t I?”

I didn’t answer. I was looking thoughtfully through the front windshield of my car, arranging the puzzle pieces in my head. Everything suddenly fit together, and it explained why Marty appeared on the deck of Southern Star and why Sharon hooked up with Sengupta on his boat. I just didn’t know their final goal yet, and I realized Bjornson was actually my only chance to find out.

“So, will you come?” She used the pause to beg me again. “They’ll kill me soon if you don’t!”

I slowly turned my eyes to look back at her. Her face was tense and showed fear and desperation. She seemed sincere—maybe for the first time since I met her.

“Where are you now?” I asked her coldly. I wasn’t sure if it was the right decision, but I knew I had no other options. If Marty got to her again, he would waste her, and I would remain alone against these crazy bastards.

Bobby’s face sharply disappeared for a few seconds, and then I received a message with an address. I heard her voice behind the camera say she would be in bungalow 27B the next day at six in the afternoon. Right after that, she hung up. I quickly searched the place on the navigation system, and it turned out to be the beach at Leone Bay. It certainly matched the panorama I saw flashing behind her head when we talked, but it meant absolutely nothing.

I tiredly put the phone back in my pocket and reached out to start the car. It was close to three-thirty p.m., and I barely held myself together. I hadn’t slept properly for over fifty hours and urgently needed a safe place to spend the night. It had to be as far away from here as possible. I also desperately needed a shower and food, but I wasn’t sure I would have enough strength. At the moment, my main concern was not to drop dead while I was still driving.

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