A Five Year Plan

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Special thanks are due to Ben Gunn for supplying me with much of the information about merchant shipping; to Robert Bookman, for doing the business, as always; and to Marian Wood, my editor, and Michael Naumann, my publisher, for their faith. I should also like to thank Nicholas Bognor, Graham Saltmarsh, Frances Coady, Linda Shaughnessy, Caradoc King, Terry Burke, Deborah Hayward, Nick Marston, and my wife, Jane Thynne for all their help and encouragement.

‘Ah-choooo!’

The sneeze reverberated like a gunshot.

Jimmy Figaro glanced around his well-appointed office to check nothing was damaged.

‘Fuckin’ hay fever,’ sniffed Rizzoli from behind a napkin-sized handkerchief. ‘According to the fuckin’ Herald, the pollen index is 129. That’s on a scale of 201. On account of all the fuckin’ mango trees we got down here in Florida.’

Rizzoli sneezed again, a great explosion of noise that was half growl, half whoop, like the yahooing sound a rodeo-rider might make on exiting the ring aboard a bucking horse. He said, ‘It was up to me? I’d burn every fuckin’ mango tree in Miami.’

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