Death and Other Lovers

by Jo Bannister

  “There’s nothing else I can do, Gil,” he said. He was over the horror but despair remained as a thin burr behind his voice. “They’ve left me nothing else, not even the time to think much about it. I know where to find Obregon and I’m going to see him. If I can I’ll build in some edge so he doesn’t drop me on the spot; but if I can’t, what the hell, I’m only speeding the inevitable and maybe saving us all a lot of trouble. At least this way I’m not going to be responsible for anyone else’s death.”

  “Mickey, you’re not responsible for anyone’s death. None of this is your fault.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe if I’d been a bit more ready to back off, a bit less keen on going boldly where no photographer had gone before?” He ran his fingers through his hair distractedly. “If Obregon killed two hundred and twenty people because I pushed him over the edge of reason—”

  Todd was steadfast, partly because he believed he was right but beyond that because Flynn needed him to be. “If Obregon destroyed that plane, it wasn’t because of anything you did to him eighteen months ago but because he is and always was evil, which is why you took him on in the first place. If we’re playing the numbers game, set a figure on the lives you saved by moving him along. Add up the misery you prevented.

  “Anyway, I don’t know. Obregon? I’m not convinced. After these many months why would he suddenly be so angry with you again that nailing you would be worth killing not only two hundred and twenty uninvolved people but also one of his own couriers? Marine Faber must be worth her weight in gold to him, but he’d have lost her if she hadn’t panicked when the police came aboard. Why was it suddenly so urgent?”

  “I’ll ask him.”

  “You think he’ll give you the chance?”

  “Hellfire, Gil, I don’t know. Maybe it is crazy.” Now Flynn’s fingers were shredding the business card Derek had kept so carefully for him. “But I’ve got to do something, and I can’t think what else. He killed two hundred and twenty people—for me—and I have to do something about that.”

  “All you’ll do is die.”

  Flynn shrugged. “I sure as hell can’t live with it.”

  Todd had said everything he could think of to dissuade him. He thought Flynn was probably throwing his life away for no good purpose, but he had no power to stop him. Once he would have tried, but they were both a little older now. “Colombia, is it? Will you fly?”

  “I’ll get onto a military flight somehow. I’m not boarding another airliner, or going any place with a lot of people, until this is settled one way or the other.”

  2. Beasts of Blood

  Chapter One

  Flynn watched Obregon, carefully, from a distance, for two days before making his move. Partly he was waiting for a set of circumstances that would allow him to approach the man, protected as he was by the power and privilege which his wealth had bought him, and say what he had to say and hear what Obregon had to say in reply, and give him some chance of leaving with his skin intact afterwards.

  His other reason for waiting was that once he moved into the open the initiative would pass from him to a man who had already threatened to kill him and was involved somehow, even if he did not know how, in the destruction of Flight 98. Once Obregon knew he was there, he would dictate the pace and probably the outcome. And Flynn was afraid of him.

  There had been a time, not all that long ago, when Mickey Flynn had hardly known the meaning of the word. Like the sword Excalibur, his camera had been guide and protector to him, and he had thought in his young man’s arrogance that he was close to invulnerable. A bullet in the back during a Dutch riot put him straight. He had recovered completely from the physical effects of that, but not wholly from the psychological ones. Flirting with danger lost much of its charm when he discovered that either his guardian angel had off-days or, more likely, there was no-one up there who cared whether he lived or died. He still took risks as and when necessary, but never again in the absolute confidence that he would get away with them.

  Now the prospect of confronting Tomas Obregon on his own ground left him breathless with fear. The stuff clogged his brain like cotton-wool, gathered behind his knees like alcohol, weighed on his shoulders like lead. He had wondered, crouching in shrubbery like jungle, watching Obregon’s house—a big white house like the big white car—if a fear that crippling amounted to cowardice. He decided, on the balance of probabilities and judging from the fact that he had got this far, that it was not so much cowardice as the kind of good healthy fear designed to stop people getting themselves into positions like this. But there was no-one, even Todd if he had been here, that he would have discussed it with. Perhaps that was cowardice too.

  Finally, after two days, a moment came when he had to either take the chance presented and let events take their course, or admit that he would never get his nerve up enough to do what he had come here for, make a discreet withdrawal and go home. One thing decided him. He had had trouble hitching on a military flight and had no promise of a ride home. The prospect of having to cross the Atlantic on a civil airliner crammed with young boys in new suits and old men with musical beards, and tired women and fretful children, and some bloody nun with a guitar, and wondering what else was in the baggage hold besides baggage, was harder to contemplate than what Obregon might do to him. So he straightened up, brushed the dirt from the knees of his trousers and went to join the party.

  Because a party gave him an edge. He knew Obregon would be circulating. With the grounds full of visitors it would be possible to approach the man unimpeded by his staff. Unless they were all very close friends indeed, Obregon would be reluctant to deal with Flynn as he might wish in their presence.

  It was not a complete answer, nowhere near enough to guarantee his safety, it was an edge, that was all. If he caught Obregon off his guard, and kept him that way for the fifteen minutes this was going to take, and if Obregon did not crave his blood more than he valued his own reputation, he might be allowed to leave afterwards. Anyway it would be out of Flynn’s hands. That would be a relief of a kind.

  Even with the leaf-mould removed he was not exactly dressed for a party. Fortunately it was afternoon and fairly informal so he was not as conspicuous as he would have been after sundown. He waited for a moment when Obregon was both alone and surrounded by his guests, then he set off across the cropped green lawn on a collision course with his host.

  It was harder than he had expected. The temptation to turn aside in those last half-dozen strides before Obregon spotted him was enormous. Again, only blackmail—the image of the shattered airliner outside Slough, and the other one he would have to buy a ticket for if he left here now—kept him firm to his purpose.

  People were milling round so Flynn was quite close before Obregon realised the tall young man in the desert-coloured shirt wanted to talk to him. The play of expressions across his face was interesting. At first the naturally sallow, slightly angular face, its flesh sculpted in satiric lines, was welcoming and open if a shade non-committal because he supposed that even if he could not remember who he was he must have invited this young man, and his purpose and hopefully his identity would become clearer when he spoke.

  Then there was a moment of bewilderment as Obregon realised he should know that face—wide across the eyes, pointed in the jaw, the wide mouth, the brown hair that was just long enough to look untidy. Obregon himself was a small man, a little less than average height and slight with it, and perhaps because of that he groomed and dressed himself to the point where immaculate hovered on dandified. So he noticed things like Flynn’s hair and had to suppress a shudder at his boots.

  He looked again at the long form ambling towards him, and knew it should mean something to him and would do but for the wrongness of the context. This was not a man he expected to see at his home.

  At last came recognition and with it, in quick succession, disbelief, indignation, a momentary alarm—his black olive gaze slid out sideways to check the whereabouts of his staff—then mou
nting anger. Finally, slipping up quietly unnoticed from behind, came a kind of unholy satisfaction.

  Flynn stopped in front of him, just far enough away to avoid looming over the smaller man. Far enough, too, that they could speak unheard but any raising of voices would draw attention. He said, “Remember me?”

  “Why, Mr. Flynn,” said Obregon, his English as painstaking as his attire, “how could I ever forget?”

  Something odd had happened to Flynn on his walk across the lawn. It was barely thirty paces from where he had committed himself to the point where he intercepted Obregon, less than that from the last place he seriously considered making a run for it, but somewhere along the way he had shed the crippling awareness of fear. It was not that he was more optimistic now about the outcome. He did not think it was the calm of ultimate despair. He was getting angry. Now he had Obregon face to face, the outrageousness of the man’s behaviour was flooding his veins with fire. Anger is a signal remedy against both fear and pain.

  So they were two angry men who faced each other across a yard of expensively maintained Colombian turf.

  Obregon said, “I don’t remember inviting you to my party, Mr. Flynn. Or are you doing weddings and social functions now?”

  “No, I’m still in news,” growled Flynn. “Crime, corruption, that kind of thing. Air crashes.”

  Obregon eyed him keenly. This close—Flynn had never been this close before—there was a world of refined cruelty in the sculpted face. “The London disaster? I heard you were involved. The first list of casualties had your name on it. I thought then, I should be so lucky. True enough, the next day they corrected it.”

  “That must have been a bitter disappointment.”

  “Oh, it was, Mr. Flynn. It was.”

  “I hope you hadn’t paid up already.”

  There was no misunderstanding what Flynn meant by that. The barbed humour that had served Obregon while he waited to learn Flynn’s purpose here would serve no longer. That was a direct accusation, he had to admit it or deny it or somehow act upon it. There was no room left for fancy footwork. The yard of green grass and sunshine between them grew still with anticipation. Without either of them being aware of it, they were beginning to attract attention.

  After a cool minute Obregon said precisely, his tone still light but the anger heavy in his predatory eyes, “However carefully you examine photographs of that crash, Flynn, you won’t see my car behind the wreckage.”

  “Maybe not. But your courier’s in some of them.”

  That seemed to startle Obregon almost as much as the sight of Flynn had done. The creases dropped out of his face and his eyes rounded. “What?”

  Flynn laughed, without much humour. “Didn’t read that list too carefully, did you? The first one, the one with my name on it—it also had Maxine Faber’s.”

  Tomas Obregon had not got to be a rich and powerful man by showing in his face every notion that passed through his mind. His expression closed like a curtain, like a power-plant shutting down. So Flynn could have been wrong, but he thought he was telling Obregon something he did not already know.

  Obregon said quietly, “I think we’ll continue this conversation somewhere more private.” He signalled with an authoritative gesture that involved no more than a finger on each hand.

  Flynn did not know whether to look behind him or keep his eyes on Obregon. He said, quite loudly, “Me, I’d just as soon keep it public. I mean, there may be people here who don’t know what you do for a living, or why you need people like Maxine Faber working for you.”

  All other conversations in the vicinity had died. Obregon’s guests were standing round undecidedly, suspecting that good manners required them to move away and hoping they could put it off until they had heard something juicy. Most of them knew at least approximately the line of business he was in. It had, after all, been rendered common knowledge by Flynn’s witty campaign of eighteen months before. But certain echelons of certain societies prosper best by turning a deaf ear to common knowledge and subjugating common good to individual enterprise, so there was still novelty value in hearing Obregon’s crimes flung in his teeth as the climax of one of his own garden parties.

  Obregon raised his own voice in reply so that his words were clearly audible to those around. His voice was cold, his tone affronted. “Mr. Flynn, you were not invited here, and you have long outstayed any welcome you could have expected. My staff will show you the way out.” He terminated the interview abruptly by stalking past Flynn, close enough to brush him aside.

  Flynn made a mistake then. Given a moment longer to think, he would not have done—at least, not this one that Obregon had manoeuvred him into. But he was taken aback by the old fox’s response, and by his bumping into him like that, and before he could stop himself he had reacted as a man might on being jostled in a pub or a train—he put out his hand to restore the distance between them.

  Immediately Obregon staggered back. “How dare you, sir?” he demanded in a voice vibrant with outrage; the members of his staff who had been approaching determinedly now put on a spurt, and Flynn went down as under a ton of falling masonry.

  Flynn’s consciousness washed in and out like a tide. Sometimes he was aware of voices, sometimes of hands. He was aware that time was passing, but not how much of it. He knew something had happened to him, was not sure what, decided his best policy was probably to sleep it off.

  Hands again, pulling him upright. His senses swimming. Explosions of sound and sensation about his face: someone slapping him. A voice, irritable, impatient: “What did you hit him with—a truck?” Flynn knew what the words were without quite knowing what they meant. He blinked his eyes open and mumbled something. It must have been the right thing because they stopped hitting him.

  Obregon stood back, watching, his sculpted lip curled in distaste. He was not usually this close to the sharp end of his activities, and it gave him no great pleasure to see a helpless man beaten. Even Flynn. There had been a time when he had lain awake, night after satisfying night, planning the punishments he would inflict on Mickey Flynn when Providence eventually delivered him into his hands. But that was a year ago: he must be mellowing as he grew older, in any event, now Flynn had delivered himself Obregon was not at all sure what he was going to do with him.

  Except first. First he was going to find out what Flynn knew about Maxine Faber and the Rotterdam shipment. Had she been on Flight 98?—and if so, how could she have been seen at the crash site? As he grew older, and richer, Obregon had distanced himself a little from the daily workings of his business, and he had not known that Faber had failed to arrive in New York as expected. To find out what Flynn knew, and why Flynn was here, he was prepared to over-ride his new-found delicacy and conduct this interview personally.

  Flynn was propped up against the wall, his head on one side, his long limbs slack. The least nudge would have tipped him over. Obregon had never seen him before, knew him only from photographs. He was a little surprised to have recognised him so quickly: awake he looked a fair bit older than those photographs, and a lot harder.

  Unconscious he looked much younger, like a beaten child. His lip was split in two places, one eye was blackened, and somebody’s ring had left a deep score across his left cheek. The blood had run to his jaw and was only now congealing. His eyelids were hovering at half-mast: there was little sign of intelligence in them yet. Obregon could have wished his people a shade less enthusiastic in defence of his person, but then they were not to know that he had orchestrated the attack on himself precisely so that he could have Flynn hustled away from his guests to where he could talk to him.

  Flynn was coming round now but too slowly. His guests would be leaving: he had to see them off.

  He apologised smilingly for the disturbance. “These young men of the press—they have no respect! I’m afraid my people were rather rough with him. Well, when he’s feeling better maybe I’ll pose for his photograph so we can part friends.”

  Obregon returned t
o the snooker room where he had left Flynn with the men who had beaten him senseless. He was looking livelier: his eyes were open and his head came up as Obregon entered the room. He moved as if to stand but Obregon’s men pushed him back against the wall, firmly but with neither violence nor malice.

  Obregon regarded him levelly for some moments. Then he took a cue from the rack, weighing it thoughtfully in his hand. Then he nodded to his men to leave. “I’ll call if I want you.” The bigger of the two gave Flynn a warning sort of look over his shoulder as he left.

  Obregon came and stood over Flynn, resting the butt of the long cue on the floor, one ankle crossed elegantly over the other. Perfectly groomed in his pale grey lightweight suit that could have been silk, with his grey kid shoes crossed one over the other and not a hair out of place on his well-coiffed head, he looked a little like an aging matinee idol and a little like a panther. His voice was light in timbre and he could speak almost negligently and still load the words with meaning and menace.

  He said, “You’re a bigger man than I am, Mr. Flynn, and a younger one, and now we are alone you may think it a small matter to overpower me and escape the way you came.” One shapely eyebrow arched, he waited for Flynn’s reply. Flynn made none. Actually that was not what he was thinking.

  Then so suddenly that Flynn did not see him begin to move, he snatched the cue up by the business end and brought the heavy butt crashing down on the solid timber frame of the snooker table. The violence of the act was so unexpected, despite what had gone before, and so overt that Flynn could not keep himself from flinching.