by Mark Burnell
He said, ‘You understand that we have not yet assembled or manufactured the products that Senhor Lehmans requested.’
‘Of course.’
‘But we can show you something similar. And in here,’ he said, tapping the file with his fingertips, ‘we can show you alternatives with specifications.’
What Gustavo Marin offered was a cornucopia of destruction. Explosives and weapons of all sorts and in any quantity imaginable, delivery guaranteed. Ferreira said there was nowhere beyond their reach. And if a client had more specific needs—the sort of dark needs not specified in the catalogue—then those, too, could be met. Just recently, for example, one of Marin’s laboratories had doctored two packets of Camel cigarettes for an Iraqi client, coating the filters with anthrax spores, a practice developed by and bought from South Africa’s biological warfare programme. Even nuclear material was available, Ferreira claimed.
‘But first,’ he said, handing Petra a sheet of paper, ‘here is the list that Lehmans sent us.’
Petra took her time running through the contents which were printed in English: twenty-five Memopark safety-arming switches, one hundred kilos of Ammonal—a Russian manufactured explosive—one hundred kilos of Czech-manufactured Semtex, fifteen Iraco detonators, twenty Heckler & Koch carbines, ten infra-red sensors. All in all, enough to cause plenty of mayhem in Moscow and elsewhere. At the bottom of the list, and separate from the rest of it, were two entries she did not recognize: six Series-410/5s and three CBTs.
Choosing her words cautiously, she said, ‘The two at the bottom—I’m not familiar with the names.’
Ferreira smiled and turned his attention to the pieces spread across the tarpaulin. ‘Series-410 is a range of customized weapons that we manufacture as a by-product of a larger industrial process at one of our plants in São Paulo. Made from plastic resins and ceramics, they are designed to be carried through automatic security checks.’
Such as might exist in the homes or offices of Ismailov’s targets, Petra thought.
‘They are easy to assemble,’ continued Ferreira, ‘so that they can be carried unassembled if a physical check is a possibility. The pieces can be disguised as everyday objects; a glasses case, a mobile phone or pager, a Walkman, a pen, a lighter, a key-ring.’ He waved a hand over the pieces on the tarpaulin. ‘As you can see, these components are plain at the moment, but you can get an idea of how they work.’ He began to assemble the weapon. ‘This is the Series-410 prototype, a basic one-round unit. An experimental model, really. The 410/5 that you have ordered is an automatic, taking up to fifteen 9mm rounds.’
The fully assembled gun looked more like a plastic camera grip with an unsightly stubby cylinder attached, but the principle was neat enough. Petra nodded in appreciation and then pointed at the black metal box on the tarpaulin. ‘And in there?’
‘A CBT. A customized barometric trigger. A real work of art.’
Ferreira opened the box. Set in a grey foam cushion was a single, slim glass capsule, almost oval in shape, about an inch and a half in length. He picked it out and held it between his thumb and forefinger before passing it to her. The surface was perfectly smooth except for one minuscule dot halfway down the capsule. Ferreira saw her squinting at it and said, ‘A pressure valve.’
‘How does it work?’
He turned round and took a box off the top of a filing cabinet, from which he produced a small, spring-loaded switch in a glass frame. With his fingers, he withdrew the spring creating a gap in the housing. ‘The capsule goes in here and then the trigger is attached to the device. When the correct pressure is attained, the capsule disintegrates, the spring is released and the device is detonated. Or maybe the trigger is attached to a timer, in which case the timer is initiated.’
‘I still don’t see how it works.’
Ferreira smiled. ‘That’s because you can’t see how it works. The truth is there are two capsules, not one. There’s a second capsule inside the first. There’s a pressure differential between the two and when the outside pressure changes, the built-in fracture lines crack and the capsule shatters, releasing the spring. The trigger is then activated.’
‘Ingenious.’
‘And beautiful. All of these are individually made for us in Minas Gerais. Each one is precisely calibrated to be triggered at a pre-selected pressure. Lehmans mentioned that all three of yours were to be used on helicopters. Is that right?’
I have no idea. She looked up at him and smiled coldly. ‘That’s right, yes.’
‘Will they be operating from sea-level?’
Any answer was better than a pause. ‘Yes.’
‘Are they pressurized?’
‘No.’
Petra ran her fingers over the smooth glass. The connection was unavoidable. A timer ran risks. Commercial flights were so frequently delayed. Also, if one was anxious that an aircraft should be brought down over a specific location—the middle of the Atlantic, for instance, where corpse and debris recovery would prove hardest—then a barometric trigger allied to a timer was ideal; the timer would only be activated once the aircraft was airborne and once the cabin pressure had passed through a designated level. Additionally, a glass barometric trigger was close to perfect, the evidence being totally destroyed by the blast it provoked, so that if the remains were scattered across land, even the craftiest investigator would be defeated.
Petra wasn’t sure whether she wanted to crush the capsule or keep it close to her heart for ever. She looked up at Ferreira. ‘This looks like it would be the perfect trigger for a device on a commercial aircraft.’
He said, ‘It already has been.’
15
The traffic was slow along Avenida Niemeyer, which snaked around the foot of the Morro Dois Irmãos, the double-humped mountain dividing Leblon from São Conrado. Rising steeply from the right of the road was Vidigal, one of Rio’s notorious favelas. To the left, with typical Brazilian insensitivity, stood the Sheraton Hotel. Vidigal was a stew of narrow concrete steps and corridors, of hastily cemented breeze-blocks and corrugated-iron roofs, of stray dogs and stray children. The car swung left towards the hotel entrance, past the permanently manned police-booth on the island at the centre of the road.
The heat and humidity remained oppressive so the hotel’s lobby was a refreshing relief, instantly cooling her. She strolled past a group of American tourists who were being corralled by a flustered tour representative. At the desk, she asked for Eduardo Monteiro. They told her she was expected and that he was in room 1625, on the sixteenth floor.
In the lobby, in full view of the reception desk, sat a man in a tan linen suit and an open-necked light blue shirt. He was folding a copy of the Jornal do Brasil. She never noticed him—there was no reason that she should—but he was watching her.
There were six lifts in the lobby and she had one to herself. She checked her reflection in the coppery metal that surrounded her. A simple cotton dress—navy with a few, small white polka-dots on it—and white Superga gym shoes. She carried a black canvas bag over her shoulder containing a beach towel, a paperback swollen by dampness and two bottles of sun-cream. Plain enough, then, a tourist dressed for her holiday. She kept her sunglasses on.
She turned right out of the lift. 1625 was at the end of the corridor. She knocked on the door and it was opened by a tall man with suede for hair and badly pock-marked skin. There were two other men inside. Neither of them was Eduardo Monteiro. One was Ferreira, the other was Gustavo Marin. She recognized him from the photograph Alexander had shown her in London. She scanned the room, making a check-list. There were two single beds on her right, a table and a cabinet against the left wall, a TV on top of the cabinet. At the far end of the room, sliding glass doors opened on to a narrow balcony overlooking the Atlantic.
Marin dismissed Ferreira. Petra heard the door close behind her and then, a moment later, heard the gentle thud of the door to the neighbouring room. Marin was fat with thinning, curly, grey hair that was heavily-oiled and combed
back over a scalp peppered with liver-spots. He wore a large Fila tennis shirt and black Adidas track-suit bottoms.
‘Petra Reuter, the woman without a face.’ He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘You don’t mind if we speak in English, do you? Living in Switzerland has not helped my French or German as much as it should.’
‘I don’t suppose you spend much time there.’
Marin chuckled. ‘No. You are right.’ He nodded to the man at Petra’s side and then said to her, ‘You’ll forgive me, but I need to know that you are not armed.’
She handed the protection her bag. He went through it carefully, even removing the towel and unfolding it. He put it back and shook his head at Marin, who said, ‘You don’t mind if he frisks you, do you?’
‘That’s why I chose the dress. So that you could see I was unarmed.’
‘I’ve heard so many stories about you. About your ingenuity. Luiso will be quick.’
Luiso lingered. Particularly once his hands were up her dress and crawling over her thighs.
Marin enjoyed the show and said, ‘I like my men to be thorough.’
Petra held his gaze and was expressionless. ‘Me too.’
When Luiso had finished, Marin offered her a drink, which she declined. He hauled himself out of his armchair and shuffled to the mini-bar which was housed in the cabinet to Petra’s left, where he mixed himself vodka and orange juice.
‘I come home to Brazil for a month each year. To see my family, to see my friends. When I’m here, I don’t do much business. When I’m at my house in Búzios, I never do any business. So this meeting is unusual. But apparently, you are a woman in a hurry.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Please show me the scar.’
The request was not unexpected. Petra unfastened the zip on her dress a little and shrugged her left shoulder clear of the material, exposing the sealed wound. Then she turned round to show him the exit wound before covering herself again and fastening the zip.
‘How did you get it?’
‘Belgian police.’
‘Where?’
‘Mechelen.’
Wherever he was, Marin liked to conduct business in hotel rooms selected at random and at the last minute; he never met customers on private property. The hotel rooms in which his meetings occurred were never booked in his own name. Instead, he had one of his people register at the hotel in their own name. Typically, the room would be booked just an hour or two before the scheduled meeting, and whoever booked it would stay in it until Marin and his entourage arrived. In this instance, the room had been booked by Eduardo Monteiro, the man Petra had failed to meet in Centro earlier in the day. Monteiro was a forty-four-year-old Harvard-trained lawyer and a very well paid full-time employee of Marin’s. She wondered where he was. Next door, perhaps, with Ferreira?
After her inventory check in the warehouse on the pier, Ferreira had driven Petra to Flamengo, where he’d dropped her. She’d declared herself happy with the list and he’d promised to contact Marin to set up a meeting so that a price could be agreed. He’d given her two phone numbers. She’d called the first one at three and had been told that the meeting would occur between six and seven in the evening. At five, as instructed, she’d called the second number and had been told that the location was the Sheraton and that she should ask for Eduardo Monteiro. Which was how she came to be in room 1625.
‘Look at this,’ said Marin, who was standing by the glass doors leading on to the balcony. ‘It’s beautiful, no?’
Petra stepped forward to admire the view. The sliding glass doors were parted, a hot sea breeze blowing into the room. The curtains billowed, waves of material as a sixteenth-floor extension for the ocean outside. Dusk was descending over the Atlantic. Curving to the left was the Leblon-Ipanema beach-front, the street lamps curving too, countless pinpoints of incandescent white. The hotels and apartment blocks seemed to glow against the early evening light.
‘In Rio, we say God created the world and everything in it in six days and then on the seventh day, he created Rio de Janeiro. It could be true, don’t you think?’
‘From this distance, maybe. But not close up.’
Marin turned round and looked irritated. ‘Tell me about Mechelen.’
‘I thought we had business to discuss.’
‘We do. But I’m curious. The two who were with you—who got killed—who were they? It said in the papers they were drug dealers.’
‘Then that is who they were.’
Marin took the wrapper off a pack of Hollywood cigarettes. ‘Did you know the guns were destined for Irish terrorists?’
‘I know they would never have made it. They were under surveillance.’
‘But you didn’t know that at the time.’
‘What’s your point?’
Marin shrugged. ‘How do you find the Irish?’
‘They’re out of my sphere. I don’t have any contact with them. Republicans or Loyalists, they’re all the same to me. They’re not terrorists, they’re not political, they’re criminal.’
Marin considered this for a moment and said, ‘I agree. In the past, I’ve sold to both and that’s the impression I have. It’s all about money.’
‘Precisely.’
‘In this case, my money.’
* * *
Marin was pointing a gun at Petra’s stomach and, as surely as she could see the darkness down the barrel, she knew Luiso was holding a gun behind her. For several seconds, she was a slave to confusion. Marin was supposed to be setting a price for her. They were meant to seal the deal. That was why she had come to Brazil. The contract with Lehmans had been real. What was happening?
Her mind went to automatic.
The sunglasses she was still wearing were circular. The lenses were completely flat, allowing her to see fragments of reflected movement behind her, at the outer edges of the dark disks. A change in light suggested movement and triggered movement of her own. Luiso wouldn’t shoot for fear of hitting his master, but Petra knew that Marin would have no reciprocal qualms. So she lunged forwards, feinting to the left and then ducking to the right. Marin fired his gun but missed her. The bullet hit the door.
Luiso stood still for a second, stunned by what he was seeing and unsure of how he should react to it. Petra reached Marin and grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the gun. In a series of movements that were concluded in a moment, she altered her grip and broke his wrist. He buckled at the knees and squealed. The gun went off again. She tore the weapon free of his fingers and then spun round to confront Luiso. But he wasn’t where she had pictured him. He was tilting, his left hand still clutching his gun but also resting against the cabinet for support. His right hand was clamped to the right side of his torso. Mouth agape, his eyes were wide in astonishment. Blood began to seep from between his fingers.
Somewhere deep inside Petra, a computer was at work, assessing priorities, directing function. It was calculating the seconds since the first shot, pinpointing the rumble of feet from the room next door. Petra trained Marin’s Colt on Luiso and then back on Marin himself, who whimpered.
Spinning on her left foot, she lashed out with her right, catching Luiso on his wound. He gasped as he collapsed. She yanked the Beretta from him and tossed it on to the carpet between the two beds. Then she grabbed him by the back of the collar of his shirt, twisting it tightly, choking him, sapping his strength yet further. She pressed her body behind his and forced him to his feet. Having proved to be useless protection for Marin, he was now to serve as more practical protection for Petra. With one quick monitoring glance at Marin—he was retreating towards the balcony, desperate to get as far away from her as possible—she pointed the Colt at the bedroom door.
It burst open, the lock splintering. It was Ferreira. As predicted, his eye-line was distracted by the sight of Marin cowering in front of the window, clutching his fractured wrist. Petra fired shots in quick succession. He went down, dead before he hit the carpet, but not before he manag
ed to squeeze off three shots. One hit Luiso in the shoulder. He screamed like a child, high-pitched and frantic. The blow punched hard, knocking Petra off-balance. A second shot pierced a sliding glass door. The third winged Petra. There was a searing pain down her right side. She and Luiso tumbled to the floor, his weight winding her.
She scrambled out from beneath his body. Marin was mewing by the window, unable to prevent himself from urinating into his track-suit bottoms. Luiso was going into shock, his mouth flapping uselessly; he looked like a fish out of water. His legs twitched violently. Ferreira’s glasses were shattered. His left eye-socket was a crimson tear. Petra pressed her palm to her right side, feeling the heat of her blood coming through the cotton. The percussive crack of the shots rang in her ears, their scent was strong in her nostrils.
She dropped Marin’s Colt into her shoulder bag and picked up Luiso’s Beretta from the carpet. She checked the clip—eight left—and slapped it back into place. Then she pointed the gun at Marin. ‘Why?’
‘Please, don’t shoot!’ he wailed.
‘Why?’
His mind was too scrambled for coherence. ‘Please! No! I have money. We can–’
She thought of the glass barometric trigger. And of smoking bodies falling towards a black sea.
He was crying when she shot him.
* * *
The lift took an eternity to arrive. She checked the corridor again. Nothing. The doors parted, revealing five people inside, three men, two women. She saw sunburned shoulders, beach towels, a Dallas Cowboys cap, five jaws dropping. She raised the Beretta.
‘Get out!’
They hesitated and she read their minds: maybe the doors will close and save us. She aimed at the woman nearest her, a skinny creature with beetroot burns beneath gold jewellery.
‘Do it now!’
They moved like sheep; one of the men tentatively taking the lead, scraping past her before breaking into a scamper, the others following blindly. Petra stepped into the lift. The doors closed. She dropped the Beretta into her shoulder bag, where the Colt was. Then she examined her copper reflection. There was nothing to be done about the stain on her dress and she was thankful that the cotton was mostly navy. She took the dark green towel from the bag and wiped Luiso’s blood from her thighs and left shoulder. She watched the floors counting down to the lobby. The lift slowed.