A bunch of children were going from table to table with a tape recorder, getting all the foreigners to say something in their own language. ‘We are Spanish,’ Eddie said apologetically, but they were not spared. ‘Real Madrid are the greatest football team in the world,’ Eddie told them in their own language.
The children left, and a woman appeared in the doorway, demanding that the man at the next table come with her. He argued for a while, then went, leaving half his breakfast still uneaten. No sooner had he gone than two new children appeared, sat down at his table, each with a fork, and demolished the remaining food, occasionally favouring Eddie and the Dame with conspiratorial smiles.
After they had eaten the two men split up, the Dame heading left back up the hill towards the archaeological park, Eddie turning right and walking towards the centre of town. The locals hardly spared him a glance. Most of them seemed too busy playing pool. He could not believe it: in a town as poor and as small as this one he had already walked past half a dozen pool halls. And they were all bursting with activity at nine in the morning.
He walked the length of the main street, past a couple more hotels and a few shops that were obviously aimed at tourists, past a man lying against a wall, his head covered by a poncho. Eddie presumed the man was sleeping rather than dead. A few yards further on a tethered pig grunted at him – affectionately, he thought.
Eddie walked back through the town and found himself standing in the doorway of one of the pool halls. Why not? he asked himself, and wandered in. He paid for a table and tried a few shots, impressing some of the watching Colombian youths. ‘You play me, mister?’ one asked in English.
‘S, señor’, Eddie replied. He looked at his watch as the Colombian boy broke. Two and a half hours.
The Dame walked on up a rutted road, with only the occasional bar or home on either side. Chickens wandered in circles, a youth went by on a scooter. He noticed clusters of bananas growing upside down on their palm trees, and wondered why he had always assumed they grew the other way.
The road wound steadily uphill past a large, empty-looking hotel. A couple of large birds landed on the asphalt some forty metres ahead of them, and showed no sign of moving as they approached and went past. They looked like vultures. Chris would know.
At the archaeological park office he bought a ticket. There were two separate collections of statues to choose from, one on the open hills, the other in the forest. The latter sounded more appropriate for someone trying not be noticed.
After the clear air of the hills the path through the forest seemed darker than it was. The early morning rain was still dripping down through the trees, competing with the incessant birdsong. The statues had been placed at about five-metre intervals, set back from the gravel path.
The first one was a flat stone bas-relief, hardly human yet nothing else, holding what looked like two bread rolls. The second was recognizably non-human, but no less terrifying because of it. Maybe it was a dog, maybe not. The third was of a human figure playing a musical instrument – or maybe swallowing a snake.
A giant flying insect flew low over the Dame’s head and disappeared into the forest. He felt a heightened sense of nature’s reality, and it seemed to weaken his own, leaving him a half-helpless spectator, almost in thrall to the stone images. The dripping sound went on, like Chinese water torture. A black butterfly with pale-green patches fluttered by. The path wound on between hanging palm fronds twice the length of a man.
Almost all the expressions on the faces of the statues seemed part-made of pain, and they flickered past his eyes like a parade of grotesques, a line of mirrors, nightmares within the nightmare.
The next one was different. For one thing it was off the path, in a small clearing surrounded by white-barked trees and enormous palms. For another it featured two full, almost naturalistic figures. And they seemed to be fucking each other. The Dame stared open-mouthed at it for a second, then suddenly burst out laughing.
Chris sat in one of the rocking chairs on the verandah and watched the sun slowly rise above the distant hills. Two other guests, a Canadian husband and wife, had emerged, introduced themselves as Tom and Amy, taken showers, and disappeared back into their room. Judging from the sounds soon coming through the wall, they seemed to be enjoying each other’s company. It made him think of Molly.
In the tree in front of him a bird appeared. It had a long, black, swallow-like tail, a gorgeous emerald-green breast and a long, thin, black beak. As it hovered frenetically, making a soft humming sound, the beak picked at the tree’s crimson flowers.
Chris could not remember ever seeing anything more beautiful. He was still sitting more than half entranced when the man walked past him down the verandah to where the owner’s wife was on her fifth or sixth breakfast coffee, and started talking to her in a low, insistent voice.
Her replies were equally inaudible, but a single glance towards him told Chris most of what he wanted to know. The only remaining question was what to do about it.
He was still pondering this when their conversation ended and the man walked back towards him. Chris had his hand inside his jacket, resting on the Browning’s grip, but the man walked straight past him, looking resolutely ahead. At this moment the owner’s wife chose to disappear through the door at the far end of the verandah.
The man was five metres away from the other end. Chris drew the Browning as he got to his feet, took aim with both hands and squeezed the trigger. The man went down with a clatter.
Chris whirled round but no one appeared to investigate the noise. The owner’s wife was still out of sight, the lovers still striving towards a muffled climax. Only the hummingbird had sensed the presence of death and flown away.
He reached the body in five strides, grabbed it by the ankles and dragged it backwards along the verandah and in through the doorway of one of their rooms.
‘What the fuck!?’ Anderson exclaimed.
‘He came for our Poll Tax,’ Chris said, closing the door on the outside world and looking through the man’s clothes. There was no identification, unless you counted the flick-knife in a pocket and the Walther automatic in the shoulder holster.
Chirlo gazed out into the street from a second-floor window of the San Agustin police headquarters. There seemed to be more gringos than Colombians, and any of the gringo men out there could be one of the ones he was looking for. He had been prepared to look for tidy-looking young men, short-haired and clean-shaven, but Ramón had told him the SAS did not place much importance on external appearance. So any one of these hippie types could have killed Victoria.
And there were so many of them. He could not have them all arrested. No, but all he did have to do was find Anderson. And Anderson would either be with the others or lead him to them.
If he had to put the man’s cock through a pencil-sharpener he would lead him to them.
Chirlo looked at his watch. It was only ten minutes since he had sent out the men to check the hotels. The road was blocked. And for all he knew the Englishmen were not even here yet.
He took a sip of the coffee Arevalo’s secretary had made for him and lit a cigarette. There was still that empty feeling in the pit of his stomach which had nothing to do with food. And he knew that even killing them all one by one would not begin to fill it.
Wynwood had not had a very successful morning. The woman at the telephone office had been most apologetic but there was a problem with the lines. Both the one running north to Bogotá and the one running west across the mountains were down. It was unheard of that both should be down at once. But … Here she had shrugged and smiled prettily and offered the clichéd Spanish response – it would be all right ‘mañana’.
Wynwood doubted it. If the telephone lines were down he did not hold out much hope of the bus station being unwatched. Sure enough, two men he recognized from Totoro were hanging round outside, casting an eye over each European who came to enquire about travel. The Amarales’s influence might not stretch to kidnapping
them in the middle of San Agustin, but he did not imagine they would think twice about stopping a bus on the open road.
There only seemed one remaining option. He arrived back at the hotel just before Eddie and just after the Dame. They were all treated to the story of the man now stowed under the bed in the corner.
‘Time to leave,’ Anderson said, ‘before someone comes looking for him.’
‘Before he starts to smell,’ Eddie added.
‘The phones are down and the buses are being watched,’ Wynwood told them. ‘We’ll have to pinch a car. Eddie, you’re the expert …’
‘Thanks, boss,’ Eddie said sarcastically. It was true, though – he had stolen more cars in his teens than Tottenham had thrown games away. Which was a lot.
‘We’ll meet on the road outside town,’ Wynwood said as he unfolded the map. ‘Here,’ he decided, pointing to where the road crossed a stream about a kilometre and a half beyond the outskirts. ‘Chris, you and the Dame circle round to the north, me and Andy’ll take the south. You take a nice car,’ he told Eddie. ‘Nothing too flashy.’
‘I’ll look for a Lada.’
‘I said a car.’
‘Yes, boss.’
Eddie went back to the pool hall and had one last game. He knew it would take the others up to an hour to reach the rendezvous point, and he wanted to be damn sure he would not have to wait for them in a stolen car out in the open.
With about twenty minutes to go he sauntered into the centre of town, keeping his eyes open for a likely prospect. Nothing appeared. He walked on towards a hotel he had noticed earlier that day which offered escorted trips to the nearby ruins for tourists with money. A group of Americans were just setting out on horseback, two blond men and two brunette women. Eddie casually wandered up the alley which ran down the side of the hotel and looked into the yard at the back. There were three cars: a dark-blue Ford Escort, a black Fiat Uno and a red BMW. There were a couple of upstairs windows overlooking the yard, but only a door on the ground floor. No wonder auto-crime is soaring, Eddie told himself.
The BMW was almost irresistible, but he could imagine Wynwood’s face when he drove up in it. And the Escort was a hire car with Bogotá plates. The Americans. They had even left the doors open. He climbed in confidently, took off the handbrake and rolled the car silently out of the yard. No one screamed ‘thief’ at him. In a blind spot by the side of the hotel he stopped and hot-wired the engine.
His watch said he had four minutes. Good timing, he said to himself. Ticka-ticka.
No one seemed to take any notice as he drove out of the town and down a long slope towards the bottom of the valley. He stopped on the nearside of the bridge across the stream, and four men appeared out of nowhere and piled into the car.
‘You can’t move for hitchhikers in this country,’ Eddie sighed.
For a few kilometres they motored along, passing only a couple of cars in the opposite direction, feeling it was too good to be true. They were right. About eight kilometres north of San Agustin they crested a rise and saw the roadblock a kilometre ahead in the valley below. Two cars had been parked nose to nose across the road at a place where it was bordered by a wall on one side and a river on the other. At the moment two buses were being inspected, which was fortunate, because it gave Eddie time to halt the car, throw it into reverse and accelerate back up out of sight.
‘Did they see us?’ Chris asked.
‘Don’t think so,’ Eddie said.
‘No way round it?’ Anderson asked.
‘Nope.’
‘Wouldn’t help anyway,’ Wynwood said. ‘Once we’re seen they’ve got nearly 500 kilometres in which to stop us.’
‘Plan B, then?’ Anderson asked.
‘Yep,’ Wynwood agreed.
Eddie groaned, and started to turn the car round.
‘I hate the fucking ulu’, he said, using the SAS name for the jungle.
‘Don’t expect it’s overfond of you,’ Chris replied.
Chapter 12
San Agustin and what passed for civilization was disappearing behind them, swallowed by the hills that surrounded it. Their road, already deteriorating, ran uphill towards yet another range of mountains. The last road sign had offered the rather dispiriting information that Florencia was sixty-five kilometres away.
‘Where exactly are we going?’ Chris asked.
‘Like Eddie said,’ Wynwood replied, ‘the fucking ulu’.
‘Any particular piece?’
‘Give him the map, Andy,’ Wynwood said, and waited while Chris found his bearings. ‘Once we’re over these mountains we’re in the Amazon basin and it’s all downhill to the Atlantic’
‘About 5000 kilometres’ worth,’ Eddie said.
Wynwood ignored him. ‘If we take the road south from Florencia to Tres Esquinas we’ll be on the River Caqueta. From there it’s only about two hundred and forty kilometres down river to some place whose name I’ve forgotten …’
‘La Tagua,’ Chris read off the map. ‘And then there’s a road to the Peruvian border. About thirty kilometres.’
‘Right.’
‘Are we going to be any better off in Peru?’ the Dame asked.
‘No idea. We’ll have to talk to Belize. If not, there’s always Brazil …’
‘Which is over 1500 kilometres away.’
‘A thousand,’ Wynwood corrected him.
‘Oh, no problem then,’ Eddie said.
Wynwood laughed. ‘Where would we be without your cheery optimism?’ he asked. ‘And I don’t want an answer.’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘Have you always had this natural respect for authority?’ Anderson asked Eddie.
‘Yeah.’
‘What sort of boat do you think we’re going to find?’ Chris asked. ‘Do we have enough money to buy one?’
Anderson grunted. ‘Quartermaster’s going to love us. We dump all our weapons and then buy a boat.’
‘A yacht would be nice,’ Eddie observed. ‘Maybe we could pick up some luscious cuties en route.’
‘The rainforest is full of them. We’ll probably have to make do with gang-banging Sting,’ Anderson said.
‘Jesus!’ the Dame exclaimed.
‘I doubt if we’ll meet him.’
‘Who – Jesus or Sting?’
‘You could handle a yacht, could you?’ Chris asked Eddie.
‘A yacht with a crew, yes. But I shouldn’t worry about it – I’m sure the boss here is thinking more of leaky canoes.’
‘A mind-reader!’
‘Seriously, boss,’ Eddie said, ‘you’re not really thinking of canoeing a thousand kilometres, are you?’
‘Got any better ideas?’
‘Beam me up, Scottie.’
‘Señor Chirlo,’ Arevalo said respectfully, despite the fact that Chirlo had his feet on the police chief’s desk. ‘A car has been reported stolen from one of the hotels …’
Pérez came through the door. ‘We just found Jorge – dead – in one of the rooms at the Residencias El Cesar. The Englishmen were there this morning – five of them. The owner’s wife recognized the description of Anderson.’
‘They’re gone,’ Chirlo said. It wasn’t a question. ‘Have you checked with your men on the Bogotá road?’ he snapped at Arevalo.
‘Not yet …’
‘Do it!’
The police chief returned a minute later. ‘They have checked every vehicle. And they haven’t seen a blue Ford.’
‘And there is no way round the block?’
‘No, señor.’
‘So where are they?’ Chirlo asked himself out loud. He got up and walked across to take another look at the map on the wall. If they were not headed for Bogotá, then where? They wouldn’t go back into the mountains, surely? And the only other roads led down towards the jungle. There was no way home for them that way. He turned away and stared into space for a moment, the scar livid on his cheek.
‘Every policeman in Huila is looking out for them, señor
,’ Arevalo said.
Chirlo sighed. He would have to be patient.
An idea came to him. ‘Spread the word that there’s a thousand-dollar reward for the man who spots them,’ he said.
‘Yes, chief.’
Chirlo turned his eyes back to the streets, the parade of gringo tourists. The reward would come out of his own pocket, which was only right. In the matter of Victoria’s killers he would not want anyone else to pay.
* * *
Motoring down the eastern slope of the mountains, telegraph poles flashing past the window, it occurred to Wynwood that the enemy was not the only one who could interfere with communications. They stopped in a deserted lay-by, with more than a kilometre of road visible in each direction, and the Dame shinned up a pole with the wire-cutters.
An hour later they drove into Florencia, a small town close to the feet of the mountains. They had felt both temperature and humidity rising with every one of the last thirty downhill kilometres, and it was now distressingly obvious why most Colombians preferred to live in the mountains. A ten-metre walk in Florencia was enough to stick the shirts to their backs.
They had other, more serious things to worry about. Despite the Dame’s work with the wire-cutters, Wynwood had half expected either more roadblocks or an armed deputation of welcome. Neither materialized. In fact the town seemed still becalmed in its afternoon siesta, despite it being nearly five o’clock.
On the journey across the mountains they had compiled a shopping list of what they would need in the jungle, and now they set about trying to fill it. Getting shopkeepers to open up was one problem, finding what they needed in the chaotic shops was another.
They had enough dehydrated food for a week, and collecting and purifying water in the jungle was one of the first things they had learnt during training in Brunei. They were not carrying mosquito nets though, since they had not been expecting to be operating below the altitude at which mosquitoes live. The fair-skinned Eddie was particularly keen that they should make up for this lack of foresight.
Soldier D: The Colombian Cocaine War Page 22