Avenger

by Frederick Forsyth

  ‘You got it,’ said McBride.

  There was no such news. At ten Devereaux made his call. It took ten minutes for the Serb to be summoned from the swimming pool to the radio shack, a small room in his basement which, despite its traditional name, was no shack and contained some highly modern and eavesdrop-free communications equipment.

  At half past ten Avenger noticed a flurry of activity on the estate below him. Off-roads streamed from the mansion on the foreland, leaving trails of dust behind them. Below him the EC 120 was wheeled out of the hangar and its main rotors spread and locked into flying mode.

  ‘Someone,’ he mused, ‘appears to have lit the blue touchpaper.’

  The helicopter crew arrived from their homes at the end of the runway on two motor scooters. Within minutes they were at the controls and the big rotors began slowly to turn. The engine kicked into life and the rotor rate rapidly increased to warm-up speed.

  The tail rotor, vital to stop the whole machine from spinning round its own main axis, was also whirring round. Then something in its core bearings seemed to snag. There was a grinding of suffering metal and the spinning hub destroyed itself. A mechanic waved frantically to the two men inside the Perspex bubble and drew his hand across his throat.

  The pilot and observer had been told by the instrument panel that they had a major bearing failure in the tail. They closed down. The main rotors ground to a halt and the crew climbed back out. A group formed round the tail, staring upwards at the damaged prop.

  Uniformed guards poured into the village of the absent peons and began to search the cabanas, stores, even the church. Others, on quads, went off across the estate to spread the word to the gang-masters to keep an eye open for any signs of an intruder. There were none. Such signs as there had been eight hours earlier had been too well disguised.

  Dexter put the uniformed guards at around one hundred. There was a community of about a dozen on the airfield, and the twelve hundred workers. Given more security personnel, plus domestic staff out of sight in the grounds of the mansion and twenty more technicians at the generating station and various repair shops, Dexter now had an idea how many he was up against. And he still had not seen the mansion itself and its no doubt complex defences.

  Just before midday Paul Devereaux called his man in the storm centre.

  ‘Kevin, you have to go over and visit with our friend. I have spoken to him. He is in a high state of temper. I cannot stress enough how vital it is that this wretch plays his part in Project Peregrine. He must not butt out now. One day I’ll be able to tell you how vital he is. For the moment, stand by him until the intruder is caught and neutralized. Apparently his helicopter is malfunctioning. Ask the colonel for a jeep to get you over the sierra. Call me when you get there.’

  At midday Dexter watched a small coaster approach the cliffs. Holding station in the water just clear of the rocks, the freighter discharged crates from its deck and holds, which the derricks hoisted to the concrete apron where flat-back pickups awaited them. Clearly they were for those luxuries the hacienda could not produce.

  The last item was a thousand-gallon fuel tank, an aluminium canister the size of a fuel tanker. An empty one was lowered to the boat’s deck, and it steamed away across the blue ocean.

  Just after one o’clock, below him and to his right, an off-road, having been checked through the guardhouse in the defile, grunted and coughed down the track to the village. It was in San Martin police markings, with a passenger beside the driver.

  Traversing the village, the blue Land Rover came to the chain-link gates and stopped. The police driver descended to offer his ID to the guards manning it. They made a phone call, presumably to the mansion for clearance.

  In the pause, the man in the passenger seat also descended and gazed around with curiosity. He turned to look back at the sierra he had just descended. High above, a pair of binoculars adjusted and settled on his face.

  Like the unseen man above him on the crest, Kevin McBride was impressed. He had been with Paul Devereaux in the heart of Project Peregrine for two years, right through the first contact and recruitment of the Serbian. He had seen the files, knew, he thought, everything there was to know about him, yet they had never met. Devereaux had always reserved that dubious pleasure for himself.

  The blue-liveried police jeep drove towards the high defending wall of the foreland compound, which towered over them as they approached the gate.

  A small door in the gate opened and a burly man in slacks and sea island cotton shirt stepped out. The shirt flapped over the waistband, and for a reason. It obscured the Glock 9mm. McBride recognized him from the file: Kulac, the only one the Serb gangster had brought from Belgrade with him, his perpetual bodyguard.

  The man approached the passenger door and beckoned. After two years away from home he still spoke not a word but Serbo-Croat.

  ‘Muchas gracias. Adios,’ said McBride to his police driver. The man nodded, keen to get back to the capital.

  Inside the giant timber gates, made of beams the size of rail sleepers and machine-operated, was a table. McBride was expertly frisked for concealed weapons, then his handgrip was searched on the table. A white-starched butler descended from an upper terrace and waited until the precautions were complete.

  Kulac grunted that he was satisfied. With the butler in the lead, carrying the grip, the three went up the steps. McBride got his first real glimpse of the mansion.

  It was three storeys tall, set in manicured lawns. Two peons in white tunics could be seen at a distance, intent on their gardening. The house was not unlike some of the more luxurious residences seen along the French, Italian and Croatian Rivieras, each upper room balconied but steel-shuttered against the heat.

  The flagged patio on which they stood may have been several feet above the base of the gate they had entered, but it was still below the top of the protective wall. One could see over the wall to the cordillera through which McBride had come, but no sniper in the near ground was going to be able to fire over the wall to hit someone on the terrace.

  Set into the patio was a gleaming blue swimming pool, and beside the pool a large table of white Carrara marble on stone supports was set for lunch. Silver and crystal glittered.

  To one side a cluster of easy chairs surrounded a table on which an ice bucket played host to a bottle of Dom Perignon. The butler gestured that McBride should sit. The bodyguard remained upright and alert. From the deep shade of the villa a man emerged in white slacks and cream silk safari shirt.

  McBride hardly recognized the man who had once been Zoran Zilic, gang enforcer from Zemun district, Belgrade, mobster of a dozen underworld rackets in Germany and Sweden, killer in the Bosnian war, runner of prostitutes, drugs and arms out of Belgrade, embezzler of the Yugoslav treasury and eventual fugitive from justice.

  The new face bore little resemblance to the one in the CIA file. That spring the Swiss surgeons had done a good job. The Baltic pallor was replaced by a tropical tan, and only the fine white lines of scars refused to darken.

  But McBride had once been told that ears, like fingerprints, were totally distinctive to each human being and, short of surgery, never change. Zilic’s ears were the same, and his fingerprints, and when they shook hands McBride noticed the hazel, wild-animal eyes.

  Zilic sat at the marble table and nodded to the only other vacant setting. McBride sat. There was a rapid exchange in Serbo-Croat between Zilic and the bodyguard. The muscular thug ambled away to eat somewhere else.

  A very young and pretty Martino girl in a blue maid’s uniform filled two flutes of champagne. Zilic proposed no toast; he studied the amber liquid, then downed it without pause.

  ‘This man,’ he said in good if not flawless English, ‘who is he?’

  ‘We do not exactly know. He is a private contractor. Very secretive. Known only by his own chosen code name.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘The Avenger.’

  The Serb considered the word, then
shrugged. Two more girls began to serve the meal. There were quail egg tartlets and asparagus in melted butter.

  ‘All made on the estate?’ asked McBride.

  Zilic nodded.

  ‘Bread, salads, eggs, milk, olive oil, grapes . . . I saw them all as we drove through.’

  Another nod.

  ‘Why does he come after me?’ asked the Serb.

  McBride thought. If he gave the real reason the Serb might decide there was no point in further cooperation with the USA or any part of its establishment on the grounds they would never forgive him anyway. His charge from Devereaux was to keep the loathsome creature inside the Peregrine team.

  ‘We do not know,’ he said. ‘Contracted by somebody else. Perhaps an old enemy from Yugoslavia.’

  Zilic thought it through then shook his head.

  ‘Why did you leave it so late, Mr McBride?’

  ‘We knew nothing of this man until you complained of the aeroplane flying over your estate and taking pictures. You took the registration number. Fine. Then you sent men to Guyana to intervene. Mr Devereaux thought we could find the interloper, identify him and stop him. He slipped through the net.’

  The lobsters were cold in mayonnaise, also from local ingredients. To round off there were Muscat grapes and peaches, with strong black coffee. The butler offered Cohibas and waited until both were drawing well before leaving. The Serb seemed lost in thought.

  The three pretty waitresses were lined up against the wall of the house. Zilic turned in his chair, pointed at one and snapped his fingers. The girl went pale but turned and entered the house, presumably to prepare herself for her master’s arrival. ‘I take a siesta at this hour. It is a local custom and quite a good one. Before I leave, let me tell you something. I designed this fortress with Major van Rensberg, whom you will meet. I regard it as probably the safest place on earth.

  ‘I do not believe your mercenary will even be able to get in here. If he does, he will never leave alive. The security systems here have been tested. This man may have got past you; he will not get past my systems and near to me. While I enjoy my rest, Van Rensberg will show you round. Then you can tell Mr Devereaux his crisis is over. Until later.’

  He rose and left the table. McBride stayed on. Below the terrace the door in the main gate opened and a man walked up the steps to the flagstones. McBride knew him from the files, but pretended not to.

  Adriaan van Rensberg was another man with a history. During the period when the National Party and its apartheid policies ruled South Africa, he had been an eager recruit to the Bureau of State Security, the dreaded BOSS, and had risen through the ranks due to his dedication to the extreme forms of that body’s excesses.

  After the arrival of Nelson Mandela, he had joined the extreme-right AWB party led by Eugene Terre-Blanche, and when that collapsed he thought it would be wiser to flee the country. After several years hiring his services as steward and security expert to a number of European fascist factions, he had caught the eye of Zoran Zilic and landed the plum job of devising, designing, building and commanding the fortress hacienda of El Punto.

  Unlike Colonel Moreno, the South African’s size was not down to fat but muscled bulk. Only the belly folding over the broad leather belt betrayed a taste for beer and plenty of it.

  McBride noted that he had designed himself a uniform for the part: combat boots, jungle camouflage, leopardskin-ringed bush hat and flattering insignia.

  ‘Mr McBride? The American gentleman?’

  ‘That’s me, pal.’

  ‘Major van Rensberg, Head of Security. I am instructed to give you a tour of the estate. Shall we say tomorrow morning? Eight thirty?’

  In the car park at the resort of La Bahia one of the policemen found the Ford. The plates were local, but forged and made up in a garage elsewhere. The manual in the glove compartment was in Dutch. As in Surinam.

  Much later someone recalled seeing a backpacker with a large camouflaged Bergen haversack, trekking away from the resort on foot. He was heading east. Colonel Moreno called back his entire police force and the army to their barracks. In the morning, he said, they would climb and sweep the cordillera from the landward side; from the road to the crest.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The Tour

  It was the second sunset and fall of darkness that Dexter had witnessed from his invisible lying-up position on the peak of the sierra, and it would be his last.

  Still motionless, he watched the last lights snuff in the windows of the peninsula below him, then prepared to move. They rose early down there, and slept early. For him there would be, again, precious little sleep.

  He feasted off the last of his field rations, packing down two days’ supply of vitamins and minerals, fibre and sugar. He was able to finish off the last of his water, giving his body a reservoir for the next twenty-four hours. The big Bergen, the scrim netting and raincape could be abandoned. What he needed he had either brought with him or stolen the previous night. They all fitted into a smaller backpack. Only the coiled rope across his shoulders would remain bulky and would have to be hidden where it would not be found.

  It was past midnight when he made what remained of his encampment as invisible as possible and left it.

  Using a branch to brush out the tracks left by his own feet, he worked his way slowly to his right until he was over the labourers’ village rather than the airfield. It took him half a mile and cost an hour. But he timed it right. The sickle moon rose. The sweat began to soak his clothes again.

  He made his way slowly and carefully down the scarp, from handhold to handhold, stump to stump, root to root, until he needed the rope. This time he had to double it and hang the loop over a smooth root where it would not snag when he pulled from below.

  He abseiled the rest, avoiding athletic leaps which might dislodge pebbles, but simply walking backwards, pace by pace, until he arrived in the cleft between the cliffs and the rear of the church. He hoped the priest was a good sleeper; he was only a few yards from his house.

  He tugged gently on one strand of the double rope. The other slipped over the stump high up the face and at last cascaded down around him. He coiled it round his shoulder and left the shadows of the church.

  Latrine facilities were communal and single-sex. There were no women in the labour camp. He had watched the men at their ablutions from above. The basis of the latrine was a long trench covered by boards to mask the inevitable stench, or at least the worst of it. In the boards were circular holes covered by circular lids. There was no concession to modesty. Taking a deep breath, Dexter lifted one of the lids and dropped his coiled rope into the black interior. With luck, it would simply disappear for ever, even if it were searched for, which was extremely unlikely.

  The hutments in which the men lived and slept were small squares, little more than a police cell, but each worker had one to himself. They were in rows of fifty, facing another fifty and thus forming a street. Each group of one hundred ran outwards from a main highway, and that was the residential section.

  The main road led to the square, flanked by the washing units, the kitchens and the thatch-topped refectory tables. Avoiding the moonlight of the main square, sticking to the shadows of the buildings, Dexter returned to the church. The lock on the main door detained him for no more than a few minutes.

  There was not much to it, as churches go, but for those running the labour camp it was a wise precaution to provide a safety valve in this deeply Catholic country. Dexter wondered idly how the resident priest would square his job with his creed.

  He found what he wanted at the far back, behind the altar and to one side, in the vestry. Leaving the main door unlocked, he went back to the rows of huts where the workers snored away their few hours of repose.

  From above, he had memorized the location of the cabin he wanted. He had seen the man emerge for his breakfast. Fifth cabin down, left-hand side, third street off the main road after the plaza.

  There was no lock; just
a simple wooden latch. Dexter stepped inside and froze motionless to accustom his eyes to the almost complete darkness after the pale moonlight outside.

  The hunched figure on the bunk snored on. Three minutes later, with complete night vision, Dexter could see the low hump under the coarse blanket. He crouched to remove something from his knapsack, then went towards the bed. The sweet odour of chloroform came up to him from the soaked pad in his hand.

  The peon grunted once, tried to roll from side to side for a few seconds, then lapsed into deeper sleep. Dexter kept the pad in place to ensure hours of insensibility. When he was ready, he hefted the sleeping man over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and flitted silently back the way he had come, to the church.

  In the doorway of the coral-stone building he stopped again and waited to hear if he had disturbed anyone, but the village slept on. When he found the vestry again he used stout masking tape to bind the peon’s feet and ankles, and to cover the mouth, while leaving the nose free to breathe.

  As he relocked the main door he glanced with satisfaction at the notice beside it on the blackboard. The notice was a lucky ‘plus’.

  Back in the empty shack he risked a pen light to examine the labourer’s worldly possessions. They were not many. There was a portrait of the Virgin on one wall and stuck into the frame a faded photo of a smiling young woman. Fiancée, sister, daughter? Through powerful binoculars the man had looked about Dexter’s age, but he might have been younger. Those caught up in Colonel Moreno’s penal system and sent to El Punto would age fast. Certainly he was of the same height and build, which was why Dexter had picked him.

  No other wall decorations; just pegs on which hung two sets of work clothes, both identical – coarse cotton trousers and a shirt of the same material. On the floor a pair of rope-soled espadrilles, stained and worn but tough and reliable. Other than that, a sombrero of plaited straw completed the work clothes. There was a canvas bag with drawstring for carrying lunch to the plantation. Dexter snapped off his torch and checked his watch. Five past four.