Torque (7 page)

She paused. “Just a sec.”

Fenn heard some murmurings then Asha came
back. “Looks like I spoke too soon. Her Highness wants to talk to
you.”

Fenn didn’t have the chance to make a
discreet disconnect.

“Chas! How are you this morning?”

“Just peachy, Carole. And, you?”

“Listen Chas. About this instructor’s union
thing; Dieter knows he can’t negotiate directly so he wants me to
ask if you’d look over his remuneration package.”

Fenn took a deep breath and let it out
slowly. Some days, Dieter’s way of thinking gave a whole new
meaning to fuzzy logic.

“Why me, in particular?”

“Well it’s obvious, isn’t it Chas. You’re our
most senior instructor, and the others respect you. Why don’t you
talk them out of this certification nonsense like a good chappy,
and we’ll see that something nice comes your way.”

He closed the binder and sank back in his
chair. In general, driving instructors are an easy-going group of
people—those that aren’t tend to burn out quickly. Dieter and
Carole often mistook this amiability for malleability, but whatever
they thought of Fenn, he was not one to put himself above his
colleagues.

“Tell you what, Carole, if Dieter’s new
package improves on his last offering then put it in an envelope
and mail it to me. I’ll run it past a few of the others,
discreetly, but I won’t peddle any influence.”

“Fine. By the way, I’ve got a couple of new
client files and can’t decide who to give them to.”

Fenn wasn’t about to play that game,
either.

“I’m sure Asha can find an empty spot in
someone’s schedule. Anything else?”

“No. I think we’re done.” Carole hung up.

“And you have a nice day, too.” Fenn replaced
the handset in the cradle and rubbed his eyes.

He spent a few minutes tidying his apartment
just in case tonight was not like all the other nights. He put
compact discs back in their cases; Springsteen, Tragically Hip,
Sting, emptied the garbage cans and straightened up the bed.

Mogg, his large grey Persian cat, followed
him around. The whole time he had been on the phone Mogg had sat on
the desk sweeping pencils and paperclips to the floor with her
tail. It was her way of saying ‘Feed me, you fool!’ Finally he
did.

As he closed the refrigerator, Fenn made a
mental note to buy eggs for an omelette. The Vietnamese couple were
booked for lessons today, and he hadn’t used up the mushrooms from
last time.

“Guard the house, Mogg,” he ordered as he
left.

As if.

At the first sign of trouble she’d be under
the bed.

CHAPTER
11

Tuesday, October
20th

The stairwell echoed, as stairwells do, with
the scuff of leather soles on cement steps. The repetitive sound
triggered images in Svoljsak’s mind of a ride taken years ago
aboard a Peruvian prison train. He pulled deeply on his cigarette
remembering the bitter taste of the ones he had shared in a
cramped, fetid, boxcar as it was pulled higher into the Andes by a
labouring steam engine.

Chuff. Chuff. Chuff
.

The images merged into a cohesive memory. One
of mountain passes, revolution, and corruption. He expelled the
smoke and started up the next flight.

Hustlers, rustlers, and every other type of
opportunist have been drawn to the natural resources of Central and
South America ever since Hernán Cortés plundered the Aztec Empire
in 1520. The attraction for Stanislaw Svoljsak had been the
drugs.

Born in Warsaw, Poland, and raised in
Point-St-Charles, one of Montreal’s poorest neighbourhoods,
Svoljsak’s environment had never fostered trust or respect with
regard to authority. His father’s heavy-handed guidance did little
more than temporarily push him off the street into a fight club,
and like many young males in that demographic he found that gangs
were a means to an end and boosting a car was how you got around
town.

Ten years of small time extortion, truck
hijacks, and break-ins had kept him solvent. It had even supported
a wife and baby for the eighteen months they stayed together. It
was a life, that was all, and Svoljsak had harboured loftier
aspirations.

It was the week after his thirtieth birthday
that he made a five thousand mile lunge for the elusive brass ring.
The plan was to supply South American cocaine to the overpaid
toxicomanes
of Montreal, and it started with a flight to
Jorge Chávez International Airport in Lima, Peru.

From the initial vantage point of a bar stool
in Quebec, it was hard to see that his scheme would fair no better
than the ice in his whisky glass. Peruvian networks run through
governments to every corner of the planet, and cartel gatekeepers
have little use for gringos that try to splash in their pond. His
clumsy efforts only managed to net a couple of minor-league
contacts, and he would soon find that trolling for a top predator
and actually reeling one in are two different things. In their
world Svoljsak was a guppy, a small fish with a big mouth, so they
used him for bait.

On a sleepy Tuesday afternoon the Policia
burst into his apartment above the jewellery shop and practically
plucked him off the jeweller’s wife. She screamed and they laughed.
Then they beat Svoljsak in the kidneys with truncheons. A narcotics
dog found a quarter kilo of high-grade heroin taped to the bottom
of his bed frame. It was a blatant plant, as he had yet to make a
score of his own, but the evidence was damning and Peru is not the
place to be convicted of drug trafficking.

His trial got fast-tracked and the sentence
of fifteen years hard labour, and unmentioned deprivation and
torture, was essentially a writ for a slow and painful execution.
He had only to look about the cattle car of the prison train to see
confirmation etched on every face swaying with the rhythm of the
narrow gauge rails.

Chuff. Chuff. Chuff
.

The nightmare of Yanamayo, the high-altitude
prison near Lake Titicaca, was but a few hours distant when an
unexpected pardon arrived, courtesy of the
Moviemiento
Revolucionario Túpac Amaru
.

The MRTA were a Cuban-based rebel group
waging a war of insurrection against the Peruvian government. Their
explosive ambush blew the ancient locomotive off the tracks and
killed the guards in a short exchange of gunfire. Organized and
efficient, part of the attacking party liberated those prisoners
significant to their cause while others ransacked the supply car.
They occupied the site just long enough to complete the mission
then, like the smoke from their powder, dispersed without a
trace.

In the ensuing silence, shock quickly gave
way to a communal surge for survival. Left with the sentry’s keys
the remaining prisoners frantically disposed of their shackles. Two
unfortunates had been caught in the crossfire. They could not be
buried in the barren terrain but their fetters were removed and
Last Rites hastily given. The dead guards were kicked, spat on, and
relieved of their boots. Finally, the train was searched for
anything of value though little had been left by the rebels.

Those with some sense of the geography
estimated they were on a plateau midway between Arequipa and the
ridge junction of Juliaca. At ten thousand feet above sea level,
the wind sliced through cotton like a razor and ravaged exposed
flesh like a wolf. A more immediate problem for the lowlanders was
altitude sickness brought on by the lower oxygen density. The
nausea and disorientation that Svoljsak felt were the first
symptoms.

Limited options made their plan of action an
easy decision. The escape route for most of them was downhill
towards the coast, and the easiest most direct path was back along
the rail line. The prisoner that Svoljsak had shared cigarettes
with returned the favour and motioned for him to follow. For the
immediate time it was a good way to cover distance but Svoljsak
soon surmised that every mile spent on the tracks increased the
risk of recapture and, after a while, he’d suggested cutting off
onto one of the intersecting paths.

Before long the sun dropped and they were in
shadow, and then near-total darkness. Without cloud cover and only
a thin layer of atmosphere above the temperature dropped rapidly,
but the stars were multitudinous and so bright that the fugitives
could continue to pick their way along the mountain trails.
Svoljsak had lost track of time when his companion finally led him
into a small settlement of huts. They were met with wary silence
from the few men that stood in the doorways. The villagers were
only mistrustful, though, not hostile.

Since the MRTA, or the larger and more
sinister
Sendero Luminoso
(Shining Path), conscripted
support from the highlanders with intimidation and displays of
cruelty, and Government crackdowns with closed-door trials also
swept many an innocent into tortuous incarceration, there was fear
and hatred of both President Fujimori’s regime and the violent
groups that opposed him.

Fugitives from one were often fugitives from
the other, and the mountainfolk had a particular empathy for those
out on the fringe. With a few words, Svoljsak’s companion was able
to arrange for some food and shelter for the night.

The simple meal of
puchero de garbanzos y
arepas
, chickpea casserole and corn bread, did much to restore
‘the gringo and his guide’ as did a few shivering hours of restless
sleep at the lower elevation. They set off again when it was just
light enough to see their breath. They walked the winding mountain
paths in single-file, without talking, stopping occasionally to
listen or reconnoiter from cover when open terrain had to be
crossed.

Attempts by the militia to round up the
fugitives were half-hearted at best. The occasional low-flying
aircraft appeared to be the only visible threat and with each
downward step Svoljsak’s hope for freedom rose. Soon the paths
became roads and other travelers more frequent. By the following
afternoon the pair were able to assume the mantle of locals going
about their business. To his credit, Svoljsak’s guide waited until
they’d skirted Arequipa—also a prison town—to decide his tobacco
debt had been paid in full.

Before letting Svoljsak fend for himself,
though, the Peruvian located a telephone from which they could each
make calls. For his help, Svoljsak wanted to give the man a small
golden amulet that he’d managed to conceal. The jeweller’s wife had
given it to him ‘for protection and luck’, but with typical South
American graciousness his comrade bade him to keep it for the
journey ahead.

“Vaya con Dios, Amigo!”

Svoljsak echoed back, “Go with God, my
friend,” and the Peruvian vanished into the marketplace like a
ghost into a tapestry.

His telephone contacts eventually provided a
forged passport, an exit visa, and transport, all acquired with
wired funds that emptied his accounts. By way of Moquegua and
Tacha, and several greased palms, the would-be drug czar from
Quebec finally managed to quit Peru via the Chilean border.

CHAPTER
12

The large FOUR on a steel door brought
Svoljsak out of his reverie like a hypnotist’s finger snap. He
dropped the cigarette butt on the landing for his boot to snuff out
and flicked the telltale ashes from the lapel of his uniform, or
whoever’s uniform it used to be.

He opened the door and stepped cautiously
into the hall. He’d left the other security guard checking the
ground level accesses but didn’t know the man’s routine, and
preferred not to find out about it here.

This floor, like the others at Simedyne
Corporation, had been freshly painted in neutral tones and given
new light-blue carpeting. Framed watercolours basked in a diffused
light and a false ceiling of white fiberboard helped to mute the
sounds of commerce down to an executive hush.

The quiet emptiness amplified the clicks and
pops of settling joints and cooling pipes. The aging edifice had
undergone an extensive makeover but that didn’t change the fact she
was an old broad that slept fitfully at night. The low rumble of
her respiration came through sheet metal sinuses as mechanical
lungs, floors below, pumped her breath into the corridors.

There were only two offices to Svoljsak’s
left. Role-playing he gave their doorknobs a perfunctory turn then
continued on, testing all the others to the same result. He reached
the far EXIT sign, checked out the stairwell, then strode directly
back to the room labeled: DOCUMENTATION LIBRARY–RESEARCH AND
DEVELOPMENT.

He scrutinized both door and frame, and
devoted several seconds to the push-button combination lock. He
stood his large flashlight, lens down, on the floor and wriggled
his fingers into a pair of latex gloves. From his wallet he plucked
a white plastic card with a magnetic strip on one side. On the
other side was the embossed name of its former owner: ROGER
AIRD—RDL 01565.

Svoljsak had been in the game long enough to
know that every caper had a point of no return. To swipe this card
through the reader of the lockbox would be akin to playing Russian
roulette. The coded strip could either unlock the door or open a
Pandora’s box of flashing lights and clanging bells.

He looked at the rectangular pass again and
tried to divine its effect. He knew the PIN code for the card and
he knew there was a chance it was no longer valid. It didn’t help
his confidence any that the plan had been drafted by someone he’d
only recently met. In these situations sex, even great sex, didn’t
count for much. A court conviction for industrial espionage meant
serious time in a penitentiary, and he had been set-up before.

He ran a dry tongue across parched lips and
made a visual pace count to the stairs. As if expecting an
explosion he took a half step toward the exit and pulled the card
through the groove.