Authors: Jack Hillgate
‘
Yes sir.’
‘
We have all lost people close to us. You have already lost your father.’
‘
Mr Suares?’
Suares’s eyes lost their iciness and his arms slid gently to his sides.
‘
I also lost my father, Juan Andres. It was a terrible experience, the worst thing that could have happened to my family.’
‘
I’m sorry, sir.’
‘
My mother tried to kill herself. Just like
he
was killed. With a knife, by three of his compatriots, three men who had given up their souls for
dinero
.’ He spat the last word. ‘Two of them held him down while the third one slit his throat from ear to ear like a chicken. This is not how a man should die.’
‘
No, sir.’
‘
Pepe was a bad man, Juan Andres. He stole from your country.’
Juan Andres looked down at the floor and nodded gently, whilst Suares re-folded his arms, once-more the monosyllabic blank-faced intelligence chief, watching his most highly-educated young agent carefully. Juan Andres licked his lips and looked up at his
jefe
.
‘
We killed him then.’
‘
Very good.’
‘
And if I had been in the car with Pepe?’
‘
We only wanted Pepe. You are too valuable to us. You just happened to be with him.’
‘
Claro
.’
‘
I’ve been watching you closely, Juan Andres and I want to take this opportunity to congratulate you.’
Suares reached over for Juan Andres’s hand. Juan Andres blinked and gave it to him.
‘
Your honesty and fortitude through these difficult times have left me with only one course of action.’
‘
Sir?’
‘
I’m promoting you to sergeant.’
‘
Claro, jefe
.’
‘
I’m giving you Pepe’s job.’
‘
Claro que si.
’
The undergrowth was filled with twisting vines that snagged on boots and clothing and slowed his progress. He was running hard and he had been for twenty minutes. He could still hear them behind him, calling his name, telling him to come back, that they didn’t mind that he’d found them. He kept going. He’d learnt not to stop just because someone called his name. He’d learnt his lessons very well, especially the over-riding command that had stayed with him since his first few months in Barranquilla, sweating through the training process and acquiring a taste for
yerbabuena
, a local mint tea. The over-riding monosyllable: run. Run for your life. He was very good at running and he ran faster than the men chasing him.
When he had found the hatch, approximately twenty-two minutes earlier, he had wavered. To radio in, or to climb down the steep steel ladder and to see for himself, for the first time, what all the fuss was about. In six years, four of them as sergeant, he had never once seen a factory. This was the first time, and his chemistry background helped to ignite his natural curiosity and fuel a semblance of bravery as he dropped quickly down the rungs to the earth floor below.
There were two tunnels set at ninety degrees to each other. The muffled sound of heavy industrial processes filtered through to the junction in which he now stood, the sound of the printing of crystalline money, an international currency that required no sovereign’s head or promise to pay the bearer. He crouched in an alcove, which almost made him invisible, and he heard boots pounding the beaten earth and heading in his direction. He had an
Uzi
, a couple of grenades and a Russian pistol, an old
Makarov
PM
. The Uzi would be very noisy and the only people he had killed in his life had been too distant for him to see their faces. This would not be like before.
They were twenty yards away, maybe less. When they stopped, he heard the click of a cigarette lighter. He held the Makarov in one hand and the Uzi in the other. The boots started again and now the voices were distinct, not just one amorphous blur of sound. But it was more than that. The voices were familiar, especially the one doing most of the talking.
By the time Suares had reached the junction, the Makarov was back in Juan Andres’s holster, the Uzi was slung nonchalantly over his back and he was casually smoking a cigarette, a cheap Honduran import which consisted mainly of wood-shavings.
‘I came to warn you’, said Juan Andres. ‘
Americanos
.’
Suares frowned.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘
Si, jefe,
a group, in a black helicopter.’
‘You shouldn’t be here, Juan Andres.’
‘I know, sir.’
‘If you are lying to me I will have to take appropriate action.’
‘I will go first if you like.’
‘Yes’, drawled Suares, ‘perhaps that would be best.’
Juan Andres Montero Garcia climbed the ladder towards the hatch with three Kalashnikovs pointing up at his coccyx.
‘
Go on,’ urged Suares to his prize pupil.
Juan Andres opened the hatch, climbed outside, shut the hatch and started running.
***
We sat together, dozing on the rear bench of the bus, clattering over the potholes and taking all five seats. I could hear the faint tinny sound of Kieran’s Walkman, which in my dreamy state led me to imagine we were a rock band on tour, sitting in the back of our tour-bus, recovering after a heavy night pumping a cocktail of tequila and groupies. He was asleep. The bench was only held in place by our bodyweight and none of us had trusted our bags to the overhead or over-wheel storage facility. I had a black leather bag which I’d purchased in Cotacachi, Ecuador’s answer to World of Leather. Kieran had a grimy black sports bag with grey straps and Juan Andres had a battered brown leather satchel which gave new meaning to the concept of traveling light.
Everyone else on the bus was an
Indio
, and I heard
Quechua
rather than Spanish, a comforting, incomprehensible and soporific mix of low level white noise.
‘What about a passport?’ I asked Juan Andres. ‘If they think you’re dead.’
‘
No es problema.
They more interested in peoples coming the other way.’
‘Into Ecuador?’
‘Si. Colombia, she need all the
turistas
she can get.’
We exchanged a smile. He seemed relaxed so I forgot about being tense. I wanted to ask him about compound break-downs, solubility and texture, but I wasn’t sure if this was the right time to reveal to him that I’d read natural sciences at Cambridge, with a particular emphasis on the molecular structure of crystalline substances, and that my interest in South America was more than purely academic.
That could wait until we got to know each other a little better.
5
March 2007 – Cannes, South of France
The next time I walked down the
Croissette
I thought someone was following me. I waited a minute until I could feel them nearly on top of me and stopped, turned round abruptly and walked off in the opposite direction. I peered out of the side of my Persol sunglasses, looking for evidence of anyone changing direction with me, but all I saw was a ridiculous old woman dressed like a prostitute, in fishnets, a short black leather skirt, garish red lipstick and wearing an orange wig. ‘
What a disguise
’, I thought. I doubted if her own children would recognize her, not that they would want to. But she was following me.
‘
Excusez-moi, monsieur
’, she began, in a quivering voice, ‘
vous avez de la monnaie
?’
‘If you have the time.’
‘
Quoi
?’
She didn’t speak English. I gave her a euro. She looked disgustedly at it.
The place I was looking for was in an arcade called Gray D’Albion, set on Rue D’Antibes, the main shopping street behind
La Croissette
. I found the shop just inside the main entrance. I stood on the red carpet and looked in at all the toys in the windows. It would be impossible to find a shop like this in a provincial town in England. Not one that sold Tasers, miniature cameras, air-guns, bugging equipment and crossbows, as well as all the other really good stuff that they didn’t put on display.
The bullet-proof vests looked quite chic, but then the French had a much better sense of style than the British, even when it came to body-armour. I dawdled by the window for a few more seconds, checking to see if I was being watched. A few feet away a woman and three small boys were gawping at the miniature cameras with Leica lenses. There was no one else even remotely interested in me or the shop, so I walked inside and made for the brightly-coloured Mace stand.
‘
Bonjour monsieur
’, said a voice behind me. ‘Can I ‘elp you?’
My heart sank, because this meant that I looked British or American or German, but definitely not French. This was not fatal, because Cannes was full of people who were also not French, but it did mean that he would probably assume that I was rich.
‘Aah need security’, I said, adopting a broadly Texan American accent. ‘Back home we got guns ‘n all, and I don’t have a permit here, see, so I need to buy me some alternative means of protecting myself.’
‘Boorglars?’ he asked in a thick French accent.
‘Yeah, I wanna give anyone who comes in unannounced a surprise. Can you help me, son? I’m goin’ back to the States and it’s a gift for my wife. Fer when I go away on business.’
The man smoothed down his slicked back hair and nodded, holding his chin on his palm. I could see him carefully looking at my shoes and my watch.
‘You said you az hand-gun experience, sir?’
‘Yup. And so does my wife.’
He walked over to the Taser section.
‘Zees come in variety models, ze price range from four-hundred euros to one thousand five ‘undred.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘Well. You ‘ave more shots, is lighter, smaller and az more features.’
‘How big is the box?’
‘
Excusez moi
?’
‘I need it to fit into this bag, see.’
I unraveled my large green logo-less supermarket bag. My French guide raised an eyebrow in a way only the French can.
‘I think you take the smallest one’, he said. ‘You ‘ave many free cartridges, and the instructions, zey come in English.’
‘Fifteen hundred euros?’
‘One thousand, five ‘undred. Made in America.’
I opened my wallet, handed him three five-hundred euro bills, slipped the box in my bag and walked out of the store before he had a chance to ring it through on his till or to ask me if I wanted to go on his mailing list.
I turned onto Rue d’Antibes and lingered for a second to light a cigarette, a Gauloise Blanc, with the blue and white packets. They fitted the colour-scheme of my apartment with their brilliant white filters and black tobacco. Opposite me there was a branch of
Sephora
, a cosmetics store for men and women. Outside, leaning against a black plastic hoarding, a woman in her twenties was also lighting a cigarette and it was also a Gauloise Blanc. I had my sunglasses on – as always – and I stood pretending I was waiting for someone whilst I was watching her.
She wore a black and grey uniform with a white name-badge, and the skirt brushed the top of her knees. She was tall and she wore highly-polished flat shoes, diamond earrings and a pendant around her neck with a stone that looked green through my blue-tinted lenses, which probably meant it was yellow. She had long dark hair, wide-set brown eyes, and a deep sun-tan. She was very slim and I could see the bulge in the muscle of her calf. She probably cycled and swam, or did step-aerobics or spinning or some other activity that kept her toned. I had an overwhelming desire to go over and speak to her, but I was also aware that I was standing on a busy shopping street holding a weapon that was illegal in most countries.