by Andy Lucas
‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Pace,’ the man said. ‘You’ll have to excuse the basic facilities but the more corners we cut on administration, the more cash goes into the pot.’
‘I understand,’ Pace replied easily.
Hammond slapped him lightly on the back. ‘James, I’d like you to meet the brains at this end. Tom McEntire.’ He waved a hand in a flourish towards Tom. ‘Tom, meet James Pace. James is going to work the camera for Team Two.’
It was interesting to see the marital role reversal. Tom, as Sarah’s husband, had taken her famous name and would doubtless keep it after the divorce. He knew it would open doors for him in the business world that would otherwise remain firmly shut. Pace was making an assumption but his gut told him he was right.
Tom shook his hand quickly and led the way back out onto the desert of the main floor and across to the nest of desks. Sarah’s description of him was unpleasantly accurate. He was in his late thirties, stood about six two, was broad shouldered and had a full head of collar-length dark hair. His eyes were dark and he moved with easy grace that belied his muscular physique, obvious beneath a thin shirt and Bermuda shorts.
The four people he led them over to were all standing and debating a route marked off on a large-scale chart laid out before them. None were much older than him and all were dressed casually in shorts and tee shirts. There were two men and two women.
Tom interrupted them long enough to make the necessary introductions. Of the men, one was an American who dwarfed Tom with the obsidian body of a heavyweight wrestler, the leader of Team One; Tim Bailey. He was a New Yorker and his speech was richly laden with the distinctive drawl of his home city. The second man was another competitor on Team One. In complete contrast to Bailey, he was short, pencil-slim and spoke with a decidedly Mexican accent. His name was Miguel Poranchez and he specialized in native Amazonian languages.
The women were both components of Team Three. The leader, and doctor of the team, was a flame- haired young woman by the name of Kate O’Brannigan. Tall and heavily set for a woman, she gave the instant impression of being solid and reliable. Her companion was the team’s seasoned adventurer; well versed in jungle life. She wore her blonde hair up in a clip and was painfully lean; some might say wiry. Tell-tale lines on her face told him she was in her late thirties; she actually turned out to be forty-three years old. She was a Norwegian, named Anna Olsen.
They were a truly international bunch, with a range of accents and styles of speaking that blended rather than clashed. Pace felt at ease with them pretty much from the start and Bailey, for his part, seemed pleased for the chance at gaining another perspective on the race plans. He beckoned Pace in to take a closer look at their chart.
The race, he already knew, was divided into three distinctive sections, with each section presenting different obstacles for the teams. The first section would be undertaken on foot. The second section would involve collecting mountain bikes and riding for several hundred miles while the final leg would involve navigating specially-designed racing hovercraft back up river to the finishing line.
At points along the way, teams would have to tackle set-piece challenges as well. The first two parts of the race would utilize part of a modern road built through the rainforest. He asked Bailey about the road as he poured over the chart.
‘The Trans-Amazonian Highway,’ growled Bailey, his tone being naturally deep rather than a sign of displeasure; in fact he wore a broad smile. ‘The wonder road built in the eighties to encourage Brazilians to leave the cities and set up small farms in the forest.’
‘A great idea on the surface,’ cut in Kate. ‘The rain forest looks so lush and fertile anyone could be forgiven for thinking that by clearing the land you would have access to fruitful soils beneath.’ She sighed, sweeping her hand across the mass of green forest that virtually filled the entire chart. ‘In truth, the soil stinks. It is only ever good for one season, perhaps two with luck. Never any more.’
‘Then it becomes sterile and the farmer has to move on and clear another section of the forest.’ Bailey seamlessly took back the conversation. ‘Before long even the government could see the problems and shifted the emphasis back towards building new towns and cities to employ workers in industry.’
‘How far does the highway go? How many people use it?’ Pace asked. ‘There wasn’t anything in my briefing that dealt with it.’
‘The highway itself is a main route, but there were several other roads built around the same time, cutting off from it to other destinations. Everyone just thinks of it as a single road but, anyway, back to your point,’ he laughed. ‘All traffic is going to be suspended for the duration of the race. We’re being trucked into the interior a little way so traffic would only have been light anyway. For a few days, closure shouldn’t inconvenience too many people.’
‘Are you sure?’ Pace was incredulous. ‘Shutting down the main jungle road has to cause some problems.’
‘Most of the traffic planned for the road switched back to the river years ago. The road is so poorly maintained that travelling along it is no longer a guarantee of getting anywhere. The constant rain and regular flooding make it an impossible job for the authorities to keep the thing in good repair.’
‘The main route was built to run from Belem, on the Atlantic coast, up river, to the jungle city of Manaus.’ Kate took up the baton. ‘From Manaus, sub-routes were cut south to Porto Vehlo, west to Benjamin Constant and north to a place called Boa Vista, not far from the eastern borders of Venezuela.’ She paused to allow the meaningless names to hang in the cool, conditioned air for a second. ‘Thousands of miles of road, cut at massive expense through almost impenetrable terrain and, in the end, all for nothing.’
‘What Kate means,’ explained Bailey ‘is that the road cost a fortune Brazil could ill afford to pay at the time. Right from the start, some places were only ever passable in the dry season. Maintaining it properly, given the environment, just isn’t possible because very little was ever paved.’
‘Some was left as little more than a wide, smooth, dirt track,’ added Kate.
Bailey gave a resigned sigh. ‘Once the thing was built, no amount of money could keep it open. Over the first five years, a lot of it either washed away, was covered by permanent flood water, or began reverting to forest.’
‘And there wasn’t just the economic cost to consider.’ Kate interrupted Bailey once again, but he didn’t seem to mind. ‘The road builders opened up huge areas of forest never before accessible to westerners. They inadvertently subjected virgin tribes to our common diseases and destroyed millions of acres of forest in the process.’
‘I see,’ said Pace.
‘Do you? I hope so. It was bad enough before, when the main problem was just a few mining camps set up to extract precious metals from the interior. They polluted the water and poisoned the land. Many thousands of indigenous people have died as a result of outside exploitation.’
There is a mood of depression, a depth of sobriety even, that instils itself when death is brought into a conversation without warning. Pace didn’t know what to say and so the silence stood for perhaps ten seconds before Bailey, with a conscious shrug of gigantic shoulders, stabbed a thick finger down at the chart.
Mood broken, smiles returned and Pace stared down at the marked spot, waiting for enlightenment to strike.
‘I think I have a great deal to learn,’ sighed Pace honestly. ‘Tell me what’s really out there, waiting for us.’
‘My pleasure,’ beamed Bailey. ‘Ready?’ Pace nodded. ‘Okay then, here goes.’
9
‘The first leg is the foot race, on a section of the highway that’s still in good condition,’ Bailey explained. ‘We will be flown out to Manaus, the starting point for the race. Our first job when we arrive will be to work the media as hard as we can.’
‘There’ll be press from all over the world, hungry for interviews and comments,’ said Kate. ‘Every bit of publicity will mean mor
e money at the end of the day. We all need to give as much time as we can to these people.’
‘As long as it doesn’t stop your own preparations,’ reminded Bailey. ‘Anyway, the race will start with each team setting off at six-hourly intervals. Remember, the whole thing is against each other and against the clock.’
‘Who will be keeping an eye on our time?’ asked Pace. He was sure the times would be clocked externally but someone on each team would need to know how they were doing. Tom McEntire’s voice sounded from over his shoulder. Pace turned to see him grinning.
‘The camera operator not only has the task of recording pictures and sound, but also of monitoring race times.’ That hadn’t been in his dossier but okay. So it was his job.
‘Fine,’ Pace said. ‘What about safety? I’m thinking of sickness, insect bites, accidents, that sort of thing. Can you run over the cover we can expect, once we’re out there?’ He began to feel more involved as worthwhile questions came to mind.
‘Sure,’ nodded Bailey. ‘Each team will carry a satellite-linked transmitter and the route, though demanding, has been specially planned so that a helicopter evacuation can be made within a couple of hours of receiving a call for help. Given that each team has a fully qualified doctor, complete with medical kit, anti-venoms and such like, there is very little real danger posed to anyone.’ He sounded very confident.
‘The one thing everybody should remember about this race is that it is for conservation.’ It was obvious Kate had no idea that interrupting somebody was anything other than her right. ‘Speed is essential for winning but it has to be tempered with a sense of where we are and the real dangers all around, whatever anyone says.’ She scowled at Bailey but there was an edge of humour in her tone. ‘Every competitor has to complete each stage, then the person clocking up the slowest time will stand as the official team time. If someone gets injured, tough break. If one of us becomes too ill to continue then the whole team will be disqualified and simply airlifted out.’ The sincerity in her body language was evident from her urgent stance and balled fists.
‘That’s right,’ nodded Bailey, ‘please remember that fact. We are all in this thing together. Yes, we all want our respective teams to win but risking injury to keep up an unreasonable speed could be disastrous.’
It was Pace’s turn to chip in again. ‘So the last member of the team across the line accounts for the whole team’s official section time?’ Kate and Bailey nodded in unison although they weren’t looking at each other at the time. ‘A team effort all the way, good.’ Another thought struck him. It was something Tom McEntire had mentioned a few minutes earlier. ‘As camera operator my duties are pretty straightforward. Is the issue of time keeping just going to be about clock watching?’
Poranchez spoke up for the first time since introducing himself. ‘The race is going to be very arduous, my friend. It will take many days to complete. The teams are allocated rest periods of six hours each day. How they rest is up to each team and it can be altered during the race if needed. Sleep for six hours solidly, or take three two-hour breaks, it doesn’t matter as long as a team only rests for the six hours. Any more would breach the rules and disqualify the team. It is your job to record each break and keep the team within the rules.’
‘I get the feeling that will be fine at first.’ Pace shot him a wry look. ‘The further we get and the more exhausted everybody gets, I could become unpopular.’
‘Who said you’re popular now?’ Tom McEntire smiled as he jibed.
Not quite sure if he meant it or not, Poranchez ignored the comment and pressed on. ‘The theme of the race is teamwork. Helping each other to help the world’s endangered habitats, it’s very simple. Anybody who can’t follow that principle may as well go home.’
The next hour passed in a pattern of occasionally heated, but good-natured debate. Pace spent it dutifully soaking up as much detailed information as he could. Tom left them to it, as did Hammond. They both knew the race plans inside out and locked themselves in the side office until Pace was ready to leave. What they spoke about was anybody’s guess but the door was closed for the duration of their meeting.
The start of the race was going to be televised, live, across the world but the rest of it would be down to the video operator to capture. The video footage collected by each team would be cut together later to make a documentary film, which was to be auctioned to the major television networks around the globe.
The environment; in reality the constant damp and seclusion, made it impractical to send footage back to base on a daily basis. The equipment all had to be carried and so needed to be minimal. Editing everything in a comfortable studio at the end of the race was the most sensible option.
Pace’s brief was fairly simple. He was to film what he saw happening around him, to the team as a whole but also to individual members. He had to capture on film how each competitor dealt with the conditions. He would have to stage some personal interviews as well, to add real grit, but it was basic stuff.
The remaining days passed in a mixture of sightseeing in the mornings and workouts in the hotel gymnasium in the afternoon. Pace managed a two-mile run along the beach at night as he began to feel more comfortable with the heat and humidity. Before long it was time to wave goodbye to his palatial home and hop aboard the flight to Manaus. Once there, he would meet the other competitors and together they would all make their final preparations.
An unexpected bonus for him was that Doyle McEntire was planning to personally oversee the start of the race from Manaus, so had asked his daughter to fly down with them. To that end, they were at least on speaking terms by the time their privately chartered executive jet dipped its wings below the low clouds of dawn and touched down on the tarmac at Eduardo Gomez International Airport.
Pace was first out. He had been told to expect more intense heat but it felt as if he’d just walked down some steps into a bowl of clear treacle; the air was thick and heavy, drawing a fine sweat from his pores before he even reached the ground. Breathing was instantly laboured but he gritted his teeth and forcibly sucked in as much of the thick air as he could. It was a horrible feeling after the comfort of the aircraft’s cool, pressurised cabin, and took a few deep breaths to adjust to.
A couple of blue, roofless military jeeps whisked them and their hand luggage over to a private terminal. The two policemen at the wheels did little more than acknowledge them with a nod, the weak sunlight reflecting softly off of their matt sunglasses.
Once inside again, the conditioned air prickled coldly against his skin in a sensation similar to that of standing in front of an open freezer door on a warm day. Despite the early hour, the lounge outside the small customs barrier was awash with journalists. Pace was getting paid a great deal to publicise the race and sat through a two-hour press briefing with a big smile fixed on his face.
Sarah made her excuses at the very start of the briefing and disappeared with one of the policemen, leaving Hammond to answer any questions that were fielded about the McEntire Corporation. He seemed pleased with the positive nature of the questions thrown at them and the news that another couple of sponsors had agreed to support them.
There were no foreseen problems from the official standpoint and Hammond was at pains to point out that the race would start on time. Finally, there were some words of welcome and congratulations from a member of the local government and a staged handshake for the cameras. Once the last camera had clicked, they said their goodbyes and the briefing concluded.
At ten past eight they were back in a jeep; a large, air-conditioned Range Rover, following in Sarah’s apparent tracks, heading into the city. That first sight of it was something that scored itself deeply into Pace’s memory; one of those dozen or so life experiences that can be recalled at any age and appear as fresh and clear as the day they took place.
The road into the city was a wide, modern highway that led them the eight or so miles into Manaus. They weren’t staying in a hotel this time, ins
tead home was to be a re-fitted boat chartered specifically to house all the teams together. It would double as both accommodation and a floating race headquarters, which sounded fun. The idea of sleeping on a jungle boat conjured images of Bogart and daring adventure in Pace’s mind; the first tangible step on the road into the Amazon.
After weaving through fairly quiet streets and Italian-style piazzas in the modern commercial centre of the city, they passed close to the stunning Opera House, resplendent in its newly renovated pink and white stonework. Sweeping arches and verandas were dwarfed by its huge cupola, clad with tens of thousands of imported French roofing tiles.
In the choking humidity, amid a city a thousand miles upriver from the mouth of the Atlantic, the building looked every bit at home as it would have in the midst of London, Paris or Rome. According to his guidebook, it was built around a wrought iron skeleton, forged in Scotland and then imported, along with tons of Italian stone and marble. Once all of the raw materials were gathered, it had taken local builders twelve full years to put it up. It was a breathtaking sight.
Heading down towards the docks the jeep turned onto the Avenida Sete de Setembro, where Pace noticed a definite thickening of both road and pedestrian traffic. They passed by a huge cathedral, impressive in its contrasting simplicity to the Opera House, and drove down past the greenery of its adjacent public park.
Pace could already see the docks. Built by a British company at the turn of the century, its concrete piers were supported on floating pontoons, designed to cope with the high shift in the tidal depth of the river. It sat just behind the Customs House, itself an impressive yellow-brick building, also imported in prefabricated blocks, again from Britain, in 1906. That was when we were still kings in world trade, he mused.
The riverside was awash with life, both human and animal. Along with the sight of so much hustle and bustle came the noise and the inevitable smell. Some were wonderful, as they slowly inched past locals selling unknown hot food from small carts. Less pleasant smells came from the close proximity of too many sweaty bodies and animals.