by Penny Jordan
It was the opportunity Jake had been looking for. He followed him discreetly, photographing the man he eventually met with while staying well out of sight.
No one in London recognised the man in the photograph, but someone in Miami did.
‘José Ortuga. We’ve had our suspicions about him for a long time, but he’s been too clever for us. We think he’s the brains behind the organisation of getting the drugs to their various destinations, and that he controls the small group of trusted main distributors at the other end of the chain… He travels frequently, but he’s always clean… he meets a lot of people. Officially he’s got a post with the Colombian government… We haven’t been able to pin a thing on him. What we can’t understand,’ they told Jake, ‘is what he’s doing meeting with a smalltime creep like Rodriguez.’
Jake had no idea, either… not then.
He was due to return to Colombia at the end of the week. When he did he wasn’t phoned by his usual contact, but by another man, a stranger to him, who told him that a meeting had been arranged for him with someone important. He wouldn’t give a name nor specify who, but Jake felt the first stirrings of excitement and tension. This must be the result of all his months of painstaking work coming to fruition at last…
In London Beth missed Jake desperately. She always did when he was away. She hadn’t made any friends other than Annie… She was mortally afraid of betraying Jake in some way, so she kept her conversation with her neighbours to an absolute minimum.
She ought to have been lonely, but she wasn’t. Jake was her whole world. When she was with him she knew a happiness she had never thought she could experience. When he was away she comforted herself by dreaming of the times when they were together. And now there was something else to add to her joy. She was expecting Jake’s child… her doctor had only just confirmed it, and she was aching for Jake to return so that she could tell him.
Their apartment was in a large Victorian house in a quiet tree-lined street in a part of London not yet fashionable, and rather run down in a way that she found comforting and homely. Jake had given her a free hand to redecorate the apartment, and she had enjoyed herself doing so. She had a good eye for colour and fabrics, and the effect of the warm terracotta and peach walls and the rich fabrics she had chosen to go with them was very homely.
Now, in late spring, the lime-trees were in full leaf, and it was almost a pleasure to walk down the road from the apartment to the local shops.
The first phone-call came late one evening, just after she had gone to sleep. She was drowsy, unguarded, relaxed, and initially the soft soothing tones of the man’s voice rang no alarm bells.
Muzzy with sleep, she thought he must be one of Jake’s friends, especially as he seemed to know that Jake was in South America and why, and then, confusingly, his voice changed and became charged with menace as he warned her of the danger Jake was in. Jake must return from South America immediately, he told her. If he did not… who knew what might happen to him?
She hardly slept after that. Jake, in danger… she had known his work was dangerous, of course, he had told her that himself… but this specific and direct warning to her of that danger caused her heart to pound with fear and her stomach to tense in knots of anxiety.
Her first thought was to find someone to confide in, to help her… and the only person who came to mind was Annie, but when after a sleepless night she dialled their telephone number, no one answered.
The post arrived while she was replacing the receiver. She went to collect it, frowning as she saw that there was an additional letter with no stamp.
For some reason she knew even before she opened it what it was… The words were printed crudely as though written by a child, but there was nothing childish about the menace the letter contained… the threats against Jake’s life… against their future.
Right down on the bottom line was a warning not to tell anyone else about either the phone-call or the letter itself, but just to make sure that Jake came home.
She could do it, she could write to him at the collection address she had been given, begging him to come home, but Beth wasn’t a fool. She was Jake’s wife; he loved her, trusted her. He was engaged in a very dangerous and important mission. She was not sure why, if these people were his enemies and, moreover, they knew what he was doing in South America, they were threatening him through her. She was intelligent enough to recognise that they must not be in as much control of the situation as they pretended if they were having to force Jake’s hand via her, which meant that, despite the fact that they had apparently broken his cover, he must still remain a threat to them in some way. And then, with a thrill of pure terror, she wondered if perhaps they were trying to use her to lure Jake into some kind of trap. They wanted her to make him come home, for his own safety, they had said, but what if they were lying? What if they wanted him to come home for some other reason?
The effort of constantly thinking… puzzling… analysing was making her head ache. She hadn’t been feeling well for days. Her hand touched her stomach lightly. Could she put it down to her pregnancy?
Was it really only yesterday that she had felt so happy that she was almost walking on air? Now she felt so much older… so much more adult… so very, very frightened for Jake. She must not allow herself to be manipulated into doing something that might place him in danger.
If only there was someone she could talk to, someone who could advise her, but they had warned her not to do so… had made it plain that she was being watched, her movements monitored…
Panic clawed through her, making her dizzy and sick, but she told herself that for Jake’s sake she must remain strong. She desperately wanted him not just to love her but to be proud of her as well. To treat her not as someone vulnerable who must be cherished, but as an equal.
Three days after she had received the first telephone-call, just as she was beginning to think the whole thing had been a nightmare, just as she had managed to convince herself that the letter she had pushed to the back of the drawer beneath her underwear did not really exist, she had another phone-call.
This one was even more menacing than the first, the male voice grittily emphatic as it detailed Jake’s danger and his ultimate fate if she did not persuade him to come home.
Despite her fear, she felt almost driven to convince her unseen tormentor that she was neither as weak, nor as stupid, as he seemed to think.
Breathlessly she told him that nothing he could do or say would make her do what he wanted.
She could almost hear the surprise in the silence that greeted her outburst. She felt surprised herself, elated almost that she had managed to find the courage to ignore his threats. Proudly she told herself that she had done what Jake would have done, that Jake would never have given in to threats or pressure and that neither must she.
While the elation still surged through her veins she replaced the receiver. She was trembling wildly, and had to rush to the bathroom to be sick.
As the adrenalin surge retreated, terror followed in its wake. She started shivering, her teeth chattering. She wanted Jake with her more than anything else in the world… She wanted him here beside her to hold her and comfort her, to tell her that everything was all right… and yet, horribly, her imagination kept playing and replaying to her a mental film of Jake stepping off the plane… Jake coming towards her smiling, his arms open wide… and then suddenly crumpling, blood on his face, his body still… lifeless…
She clung to that vision all day, fighting to hold on to it when the second letter arrived. She tried not to give in to the awful temptation to read it, but was unable to resist. The threats were explicit and detailed, making her run to the bathroom a second time.
She wasn’t in the least bit brave, really, she acknowledged…
While Beth went to bed and pretended to herself that she was going to sleep, the man who had telephoned her made his report.
It was received in cold silence and he felt the sweat breaking out
on his skin.
‘I did what you told me to do,’ he blustered, cursing the efficiency of the central heating, unwilling to admit that it was fear that was making him sweat so much.
‘No,’ the cold voice denied. ‘I told you to make sure that Jake Fitton left South America and returned to London.’
He hid his fear behind a surly expression of uninterest.
‘Why bother? It would be easy enough to get rid of him over there…’
‘Yes,’ the cold voice agreed. ‘And then his place would be filled by someone else, whose identity we would have to discover. We already know Fitton’s identity. What we need now is a means of rendering him harmless… of getting him to act for us instead of against us. That was why I wanted him here in London. There are some men who can be bribed into changing sides; there are others, like Jake Fitton, on whom more subtle methods of persuasion are necessary. Fitton loves his wife. Any threat against her would be a very powerful means of persuading him to be, shall we say, less assiduous in his efforts to pry any further into our affairs?
‘But for that kind of persuasion I need to see Fitton myself. Once his wife had given in to pressure by making him come home, he would have been that much more receptive to what I have to say. And now you, you stupid fool, have managed to ruin everything.’
It took several minutes for what he was being told to sink in. When it had done, he said angrily, ‘But you never told me any of this… you said I was to threaten his wife…’
‘And make her get Fitton home… not turn her into a damned martyr. I know her type. She’ll be terrified, but she won’t budge. You’ve been very stupid, Fernandez, and there’s no room in this organisation for stupidity.’
He was sweating in earnest now.
‘It’s not too late,’ he blustered. ‘We can get someone to warn Fitton that his wife’s life is in danger unless he comes back…’
‘No.’ The scorn in the acid voice silenced him. ‘You fool… He’d come back all right, but not before he’d informed his superiors… not before he’d resigned from the mission. No, I want him here, where I can deal with him myself. I didn’t want him to know anything other than that that stupid little wife of his is in a panic… Now, thanks to you…’
Fernandez ignored the soft threat in the words and said as confidently as he could, ‘So what do you want me to do now?’
‘There is only one thing we can do. Fitton has already discovered too much. On our side, he could have been of use to us. We could allow him to live, perhaps, and feed him false information, but he’s too intelligent to be deceived by that for long. If we can’t disarm him, then I’m afraid we must destroy him.’
‘Kill him, you mean?’
There was a small pause.
‘Not, I think, at this stage. Mr Fitton has caused us rather a lot of trouble. I think he needs to be taught how foolish he’s been… and it will serve as a warning to others who might be tempted to continue what he’s started.
‘Jake Fitton is one of that wearying breed: a man with principles. But principles must be paid for, and I think I know exactly the coin in which to make Fitton feel the weight of that payment.’
Fernandez looked confused. Intelligence was not one of his stronger points.
‘What do you want me to do about the woman… his wife?’ he asked cautiously, not wanting to provoke any acid gibe about his inefficiency.
‘Leave her to me.’
He was not an over-imaginative man, but even he shivered as he saw the cruel smile hardening the thin mouth.
‘If she’s so eager to become a martyr, perhaps we ought to help her.’
Beth shopped daily, preferring fresh food, and preferring to walk rather than take the car.
The road wasn’t particularly busy; there was a pedestrian crossing quite close to the shops. She checked the road before stepping out on to it, and it was empty, apart from a solitary car pulling away from the pavement some distance away.
She stepped off the pavement… and into oblivion.
A woman standing not far away saw everything. As she told the police later, she had never seen a car driven so fast… It was as if he actually wanted to hit her, she told them over and over again, and the police, aware of her shock, comforted her as best they could while they waited for the ambulance to come and remove the lifeless body of the young woman who had been killed.
Hit-and-run drivers… There were too many of them about, and they were on the increase… Of course, no one got the car number, or even its make, and they would never find it or its driver…
In Colombia Jake’s meeting was mysteriously cancelled. There was no follow-up phone-call, and once his supposed business was completed he had no choice but to fly home.
At Heathrow they were calling his name over the tannoy. A messenger was waiting for him… He handed Jake a large rectangular box and then disappeared. Jake opened the box.
Inside was a coffin-shaped floral decoration with a cross on top of it. His skin started to crawl, his stomach twisting in knots. There was a card as well… He picked it up and read the message on it.
‘Our condolences on the loss of your wife’… and then, beneath the unsigned message, was another: ‘Stay out of our business, Fitton.’
It was all the message read, but it was enough… He raced towards the airport exit and suddenly heard Annie calling his name.
One look at her face was enough.
‘If it’s any comfort, she wouldn’t have felt a thing,’ Annie told him quietly when they were back at her house.
It was only later that Jake learned all that he had lost… not just his wife, but his child as well. There was a small private funeral which he refused to let Gloria Pilling attend. Now that Beth was dead, Gloria was claiming that he had robbed her of her only and dearly beloved child… Listening to her made Jake want to be violently ill.
Nothing—nothing could ever wipe out of his mind the knowledge that he was responsible for Beth’s death, and he swore that he would avenge her… that those responsible for killing her would be punished.
At first his superiors refused to allow him back in the field. He was too emotionally unstable, they told him, but when he announced that he intended to go back and root out his wife’s killers, with or without their permission, they had to give way.
This time when he flew into Colombia there was no need for subterfuge or pretence… his adversaries knew exactly who he was, but that didn’t stop him.
He tracked down his old contact and terrified him into giving him a list of names.
José Ortuga, that was the man he wanted, but he proved difficult to find. Ortuga was well protected… In the end it took Jake and some dedicated men, including Tom, four years to track him down, and then, just as they were closing in on him, and had uncovered information incriminating two more of Ortuga’s group, their quarry had been snatched from them by a car bomb, a trap set by one of Ortuga’s many enemies in the drugs business. That Ortuga had received his punishment, at other hands than his own, infuriated Jake, whose quarry had been snatched from his grasp while his own sight had been destroyed. From his hospital bed, Jake had been forced to tell the FBI what he knew of the other two men, acknowledging that he himself was too weak to track them down now, bitter though that knowledge was. They were quickly apprehended and were now awaiting trial. Four years to find three men, and there was still the all-important London controller to find; the shadowy, hidden figure who ran the London end of the organisation… the one who had ordered and organised Beth’s death…
He wouldn’t rest until he had found him and brought him to justice, Jake vowed. He owed it to Beth… and yet as he lay in his hospital bed he admitted that he was tired of death, of killing, of destruction… and that what he wanted more than anything else was the cool, familiar peacefulness of Fitton Park.
Instead Annie descended on him and swept him off to Switzerland. Annie who, like him, had known the agony of losing someone she loved. Tom had been killed outright in the sa
me bomb blast that had blinded Jake. Morally, if not technically, he felt that he was to blame for Tom’s death, in much the same way that he was to blame for Beth’s, but Annie apparently did not share that view.
Somehow, somewhere she had found a serenity, learned an acceptance he himself had yet to know. He told himself that there was only one way he would ever again know peace of mind, and that that was by tracking down those who were responsible for Beth’s murder. His own blindness he could accept as the price to be paid for the risks he took, but Beth’s death—that was something different.
Tom’s death hadn’t really changed Annie; it had only reinforced those strengths she had already had. Knowing how much she had loved Tom, Jake wondered where she found such strength.
She had her work, of course; since, quite by chance, she had been the one to perform a life-saving operation on the son of an immensely rich American, that work had taken on an extra dimension.
The boy had been badly burned in a fire started in the family’s hotel suite by accident. He had been rushed to the nearest hospital, where Annie had been on call and where she had performed a long series of operations which had ultimately restored the boy’s terribly burned face and hands to normality.
It was out of gratitude for this that his father had given Annie the money which had initially allowed her to set up her private clinic, and now she was receiving patients from all over the world, children, in the main—victims of war, whose faces and bodies she rebuilt.
They had only discussed Tom once, when in a savage moment of self-loathing Jake had asked her how she could endure his presence when he was indirectly responsible for Tom’s death.
‘I don’t look at it that way,’ she told him quietly. ‘Tom’s work, and the risks that went with it, were something I accepted as part of him a long time ago. Tom’s dead; nothing I can do will ever bring him back. I know he’d have hated to think of me spending the rest of my life living in the past.’ She had looked down at her hands.