26
Colombia
Francisco de Quesada leaned against the door frame,
hoping the view would calm his frustration and anger. It wasn’t so
much the scenery he was admiring – though the impossibly blue sweep
of the Caribbean beyond the clifftop edge of his palacio’s infinity pool was certainly something to
behold – as the occupants of the pool itself, a pair of stunningly
beautiful women who had responded to his click of the fingers by
entering a passionate, lip-locking embrace, making a show of
unfastening each other’s bikini tops. There was normally nothing
like a pair of twenty-year-old bisexual models to take his mind off
life’s burdens.
Not today, though.
The weight hanging over him was too heavy to ignore. Annoyed, he
turned back to his guests, who were studiously attempting to ignore
the display in the pool. ‘I don’t see why you can’t make this go
away,’ he snapped. ‘You have done before – why not
now?’
His visitors shifted
uncomfortably, and not solely because they were wearing formal
suits in the humid heat. ‘The thing is,’ said Corwin Bloom, the
bald and doleful chief representative of the American law firm de
Quesada had on permanent standby, ‘with all the previous charges
against you, the evidence could be made out to be tainted and
therefore inadmissible, or witnesses, ah . . . dealt with. But on
this occasion you were seen by millions of people on national
television making a deal with General Callas.’
‘That was in
Venezuela, not Colombia. Surely that doesn’t count as admissible
evidence?’
‘The DEA submitted
it,’ said Bloom’s assistant, Alison Goldberg, a starchy young woman
in black-rimmed glasses and stiletto heels. ‘Under the rules of
Plan Colombia, evidence obtained by the DEA, no matter from where
in the world, is admissible in Colombian narcotics-related
cases.’
Bloom put down his
briefcase on a table and opened it, handing a document to the drug
lord. ‘This is a memo we, ah, obtained from within the Ministry of
Justice, from the minister himself.’ De Quesada began to read it,
his expression rapidly darkening as he flicked through the pages.
‘To summarise, they think they have you.’
The Colombian hurled
the papers to the floor. ‘No one has me!’ he snarled, snapping his
fingers angrily at a broad-shouldered bodyguard standing near a
drinks cabinet. By the time de Quesada reached him, the man had
poured a large glass of Scotch and soda filled with clinking ice
cubes. He downed half the amber liquid in a single gulp, and
crunched a cube between his teeth.
‘We also learned
there is a plan in motion to take you into custody,’ said
Goldberg.
De Quesada whirled on
her. ‘And you didn’t tell me this the moment you came through my
door?’ He looked in alarm at the bodyguard, who hurried away to
alert his comrades.
‘They’re waiting for
the final warrants to be signed,’ said Bloom. ‘We have a source
inside the Ministry who will alert us as soon as this happens.
You’ll have ample warning.’
‘Not if they’re
already here.’ He crossed to a window and looked suspiciously out
at the cliffs across the channel.
‘We didn’t see anyone
when we arrived,’ said Goldberg.
‘No. You wouldn’t.’
De Quesada finished his drink, chewed another ice cube, then waved
for the Americans to follow him. ‘Tell me what my options
are.’
They entered a broad
hall, the walls decorated with artworks old and new – and the
khipu, pinned to a board like a giant bedraggled moth. ‘There is
the usual ploy of dragging the matter out in court, of course,’
said Bloom. ‘Challenging of evidence and witnesses and so
forth—’
‘I don’t want this to
even get to court,’ de Quesada growled.
‘I meant, what are my options for leaving the
country?’
‘Limited,’ Goldberg
told him. ‘It would give the American government the excuse it
needed to freeze your assets worldwide. And then there’s the issue
of extradition . . .’ She tailed off as the Colombian went into a
white-tiled room – and unzipped his fly.
‘What? Haven’t you
ever seen a man take a piss before? Keep talking,’ he demanded. But
both lawyers had been left speechless by the bizarre nature of his
bathroom. Rather than a lavatory, the room housed a sunken square
four feet to a side. Incredibly, set into its floor was the stolen
sun disc. An unimaginable fortune in gold, a priceless cultural
treasure . . . now acting as a urinal.
Hearing no further
legal advice forthcoming, de Quesada looked over his shoulder. ‘Oh,
this?’ he said, anger briefly diminishing as he took the
opportunity to boast. ‘A little trinket I bought in Venezuela. I
thought it would take weeks to arrive, but my new shipping company
was very efficient. Now every time I take a piss, I’m pissing on
the culture of my old friend Arcani Pachac! I may even send him a
picture – although I doubt he has good cell reception in the
mountains of Peru.’
‘Ah . . . quite,’
said Bloom, as de Quesada shook himself off and zipped up. ‘But on
the subject of extradition—’ His phone trilled. ‘Excuse
me.’
Now de Quesada was
all business, watching intently as the lawyer listened. ‘Was that
your man?’ he said as Bloom terminated the call.
‘I’m afraid so. The
warrant has been signed.’
‘This way,’ the drug
lord ordered, pushing past them and continuing down the
hall.
Two of his men met
the trio. ‘Jefe!’ said one. ‘I just
talked to someone in the village. He said some trucks went down
your road and haven’t come back.’
‘When?’
‘About two hours
ago.’
De Quesada glared
accusingly at the two lawyers. ‘I told you, we didn’t see anyone,’
Goldberg said, trying to conceal her sudden
nervousness.
De Quesada whispered
to the bodyguards, who nodded and jogged back to the room
overlooking the infinity pool. ‘In here,’ the Colombian said,
leading the Americans to a set of arched double doors. He opened
them to reveal a large room that was a combination of luxurious
lounge and office, leather armchairs and couches laid out before a
black chrome desk with a top of polished granite. Along one wall
was a bar with hundreds of different bottles arranged behind it –
and above them a large, yet seemingly empty, aquarium.
Goldberg regarded the
glass tank curiously, but de Quesada passed a second archway to the
hall and went behind the bar to the shelves at its end. He pulled
out one particular bottle – which only slid so far before stopping
with a click. ‘My vault,’ he told the intrigued pair. ‘There are
some documents I don’t want them to find, you
understand?’
‘Perfectly,’ said
Bloom.
‘Good.’ He swung the
shelves away to reveal a small room hidden behind them. Goldberg
tried to peer inside, but at his stare switched her attention back
to the aquarium. ‘You like my pets?’ he asked. Both lawyers were
puzzled, seeing nothing. ‘There, in the middle.’
Goldberg stepped
behind the bar, finally spotting one of the tank’s occupants: a
little yellow octopus, two of its suckered tentacles holding it to
the transparent wall. She leaned closer, hesitantly tapping the
glass. The octopus leapt away, turning a far brighter yellow with
rings of black and vivid blue appearing all over its body. Eight
limbs pulsing in unison, it shot towards the surface.
‘Don’t stand too
close,’ said de Quesada. ‘It’s a blue-ringed octopus – one of the
world’s deadliest creatures. If it bites you . . . you’ll
die.’
‘The glass looks
quite thick,’ she said, covering her brief shock with haughty
indifference.
‘Maybe, but the tank
has no top – and they can climb.’
She hurriedly
retreated. De Quesada laughed harshly. ‘Now, here is what I want
you to do,’ he said. ‘Wait on the bridge for them to arrive, and do
not let them pass. Say you need to check the warrant, any legal
shit you can think of, just hold them up for as long as you
can.’
‘This . . . isn’t
really what you hired us for,’ said Goldberg.
‘I hired you to keep
me out of prison, and I pay you a lot of money to do it. So do it.
Consider it part of your client service.’ The bodyguard entered,
carrying Bloom’s briefcase. ‘Take your case and go. Keep them
busy.’ When they didn’t move immediately, he barked: ‘Now!’
Affronted, Bloom
collected his case and the lawyers departed. The bodyguard waited
until they were gone, then went to the bar. ‘Did you do it?’ de
Quesada asked.
‘Yes, jefe.’ He handed the drug lord a small remote
control unit. ‘Everything is set.’
‘Good. Tell the
others to arm up. And bring Alicia and Sylvie here – I want them as
my last line of defence.’ A cruel smirk. ‘No man would dare shoot
them.’ He returned to the hidden vault. ‘I have to destroy the hard
drives. Get ready – they will be coming!’
‘The guy may be a
criminal,’ admitted Nina, ‘but he’s got a gorgeous
house.’
The combined force
from Interpol, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the
Colombian police – and the two representatives of the International
Heritage Agency – was concealed amongst the trees along the
clifftop, looking at the little island below. De Quesada’s villa
had been impressive enough in photos, but in reality it was
magnificent; white walls gleaming in the sunlight.
‘Nice taste in
bodyguards, too,’ said Eddie, taking a closer look through
binoculars.
Nina could guess at
what – or whom – he was looking. ‘Give me those,’ she snapped,
wresting the binoculars from his grip as the two young women
emerged from the infinity pool and padded, still topless, into the
building. ‘And I’m pretty sure they’re way below your “half the man’s age plus seven
years” rule.’
Eddie grinned. ‘No
harm in looking.’
‘There will be if I
catch you doing it again.’ She panned along the house to the
crossing. While it seemed solidly built, it was still merely a
footbridge, too narrow to accommodate vehicles. The drug lord’s
cars were kept in a garage on the mainland, outside which an SUV
had stopped and disgorged a suited man and woman about twenty
minutes earlier.
She moved her view
back to the island. At each end of the bridge were tall and stout
wooden poles, a cable that she guessed was a power line hanging
between them. Near the far pole was the house’s main entrance – the
doors of which suddenly opened. ‘Someone’s coming
out.’
It was the suited
couple. ‘De Quesada’s lawyers,’ said Baker.
‘They don’t look
happy.’ The pair were in the midst of an agitated
discussion.
‘I think I know why.’
Nina looked round to see Kit, holding several sheets of paper, and
Probst slipping through the bushes. ‘This just came through over
the mobile fax.’
Baker took the pages.
‘Outstanding.’
‘The warrant?’ Eddie
asked.
‘Signed, sealed and
delivered. We now have full authority to go in and get that son of
a bitch. Okay, Mr Jindal, Dr Wilde, Mr Chase, wait here until we’re
done. Walther, are the snipers covering the jetty?’
Probst nodded. ‘We
can take out the boats any time.’
‘Great. Okay, time to
kick ass . . . ’ He stopped, seeing that the lawyers had come to a
standstill three-quarters of the way across the bridge. ‘Now what
the hell are those two doing?’
The answer came as
the man called out in American-accented Spanish. ‘Well, shit!’
exclaimed Baker.
‘What’s he saying?’
Eddie asked.
The DEA agent shook
his head in disgust. ‘They want to talk to us. Guess they heard
about the warrant.’
‘So much for the
element of surprise,’ Nina said gloomily. ‘Now what do we
do?’
Probst surveyed the
house. ‘I don’t like it. It could be a trap.’
‘We outnumber them
three to one,’ Baker said dismissively, ‘we’ve got an elevated
position and superior firepower, and all their escape routes are
cut off. That son of a bitch is just trying to buy time so he can
destroy anything incriminating. Mr Cruz!’ he called. The head of
the Colombian SWAT team, who had been standing beside a six-wheeled
truck giving last-minute instructions to his men, hurried over.
‘You and four of your guys, come with me. We’ll see what these
clowns have to say. Get the rest ready to move in. Walther, keep
your guys on lookout.’
Cruz signalled to his
unit, and four black-clad cops joined him. Baker summoned four more
DEA agents, and the ten men, weapons at the ready, headed for the
bridge. Probst and Kit moved away to organise the Interpol
team.
‘Not keen on this,’
Eddie muttered.
‘You think it’s a
trap too?’ asked Nina. The two lawyers were still waiting on the
bridge.
‘Yeah, but . . . I
don’t know what this arsehole’s got planned. And that worries me.’
He took the binoculars back from Nina and checked the villa once
more.
Inside the house, de
Quesada looked back at him through his own binoculars from behind a
Venetian blind on the upper floor. One of his bodyguards had
spotted movement in the trees. With their cover blown, the
intruders were less concerned about secrecy.
Which could be their
fatal mistake. ‘How many?’ he asked.
‘At least fifteen
people,’ his bodyguard replied, hefting his M16 assault rifle.
‘Probably more.’
The drug lord clicked
his tongue, not liking the odds even with his contingency plan
ready to go. ‘They’ll be watching the boats . . .’ He stopped when
he picked out a dash of contrasting colour amongst the greenery. A
woman, her fiery red hair standing out clearly.
A familiar woman.
‘What’s she doing here?’ he asked
himself, recognising Nina Wilde from their meeting at the
Clubhouse. Why would an archaeologist be accompanying a police
raid?
The answer was
obvious. ‘Wait here and get ready to shoot,’ he ordered as he
headed downstairs to the hall. Two more armed bodyguards lurked
near the front door; he ignored them, instead going to one of the
artworks.
The khipu. He plucked
it from the board, then hurried back to his office, glancing into
the bathroom as he passed. The sun disc was obviously far more
valuable, almost certainly the main reason for Wilde’s presence,
but unlike the khipu it could hardly be slipped into a pocket.
Wilde had told him that the lengths of string were potentially
worth millions to the right buyer; he might soon need the
cash.
But first, he had to
make sure he remained free. He entered his office, where he found
the dark-haired Alicia and the blonde Sylvie waiting for him. He
gave their naked breasts an appreciative look. ‘You know what to
do?’
‘Yeah, babe,’ said
Alicia, raising her imposing weapon: an AA-12 automatic shotgun,
its twenty-round drum magazine making it look like a futuristic
gangster’s Tommy gun. Sylvie was similarly armed, and both women’s
wide-eyed, hyper expressions told him they had just snorted
considerable amounts of confidence-boosting cocaine off the marble
table. ‘We won’t let anyone in until you’re done.’
‘Good.’ He kissed
her, then did the same to Sylvie before going through the hidden
door.
It was a shame to
lose such hot companions, he thought as he placed a small thermite
block on top of the computer containing his financial records. But
then, he could always find more.
A CCTV monitor showed
him the bridge, Bloom and Goldberg still standing partway across
it. As he watched, the cops finally revealed themselves, ten armed
men trooping to the crossing.
He tugged out a tab
to light the thermite’s fuse and retreated to the bar, shielding
his eyes. The block ignited, sparks spitting as the matchbox-sized
incendiary device almost instantly melted through the plastic case,
the hard drive inside it and the shelf on which the computer was
sitting, and finally made a sterling effort to burrow into the
concrete floor.
The girls gave him
worried looks, but he smiled reassuringly and, wafting away the
smoke, returned to the vault. In an ideal world he would have
closed the door to ensure total security, but the stench of
vaporised plastic and metal was choking in the confined
space.
Another look at the
screen. The SWAT team was now on the bridge, marching to meet the
lawyers.
He gathered up the
items he needed – a clutch of passports, a flash drive containing
Swiss bank account details, an encrypted cell phone, a wad of
high-denomination banknotes of assorted currencies, and the khipu –
and sealed them in a watertight Ziploc bag, then held the remote.
Any second now . . .
‘Are you with the
DEA?’ asked Bloom, blocking the SWAT team’s path.
Baker tapped the huge
DEA logo emblazoned across his body armour. ‘What gave it away?’ he
asked sarcastically. ‘Let us through.’
‘You’re not taking
another step across this bridge until we see a warrant,’ Goldberg
said firmly. ‘We have reason to believe that our client’s rights
are being violated by the issuing of an illegal search order, and
we demand to inspect said order before we allow you on his
property.’
‘In accordance with
the Colombian legal code,’ added Bloom.
Baker looked
irritably to Cruz. ‘Is that right?’ The Colombian nodded. ‘Well,
good thing I brought these.’ He thrust the faxed documents at the
lawyer. ‘Read fast, ’cause one way or another, we’re crossing this
bridge.’
Bloom handed the
papers to his partner. ‘I need my reading glasses,’ he said,
opening his briefcase.
It contained a
laptop, several folders of documents, assorted pens and a spectacle
case, for which Bloom reached . . . before he registered something
extra amongst his belongings. A booksized block of a dull yellow
putty-like substance, to which was taped a small electronic device,
a red light glowing on it.
He stared at it in
bewilderment. ‘What—’
The brick of C-4
plastic explosive detonated.