by Andy Lucas
Manaus docks catered for every conceivable size of vessel. The river at this point was deep enough to comfortably accept the draught of an ocean-going tanker. It was a bizarre thing to see a dugout canoe housed along the same stretch of water as a towering oil tanker but this was one of the sights that met his gaze.
Finally arriving at one of the many privately owned berths, Pace knew that the adventure had truly begun.
10
The small ship sat motionless on the oily brown water. Her metal hull was freshly painted in white, as were her upper decks. She looked to be a fairly modern vessel, and not for the pleasure market. She was more an ocean-going vessel and somewhat boxy in her design; a cargo vessel that had been refitted to accommodate passengers.
As he climbed out of the jeep and tried in vain to suck in enough air to comfortably breathe, Pace eyed her solid lines appreciatively.
Her captain was waiting to greet them at the dockside. A twenty-foot metal gangplank extended from the side of the ship’s lower deck. A hinged door in the railings was latched open; the space it left offering them entry.
The captain introduced himself as Eduardo Longe. Pace later learned he was an immigrant American; his family originally from Chile and he figured the man to be in his late fifties.
Longe wore a crisply pressed captain’s uniform; whites and cap, resplendent with gold braid in all the right places. He looked fit and deeply tanned, and when he spoke his soft tones and delicate lisping accent were in striking contrast to his burly, two hundred pound stature. He sported a neatly trimmed full beard, more grey than black, and heavy eyebrows capped friendly eyes of deep blue. His hand was extended to them all in turn and the new arrivals introduced themselves to him, one by one, as they were invited aboard.
A proud Eduardo filled him in on its history as they all sat down together in a gorgeous, rosewood-panelled lounge and ate a very welcome breakfast of spicy sausage, fried eggs and bread rolls.
The food was delicious and tasted even better to him when washed down with a cup of freshly brewed coffee. The food was laid out, buffet-style, on a large table and, as he helped himself to another portion of sausage, Pace realised there was far too much food for just three of them. Soon enough they were joined by a small crowd of equally hungry passengers.
It was breakfast time for everyone on board and he counted about twenty heads. A very efficient air-conditioning unit cooled the lounge but the temperature did start to rise a little as space filled up. His answer was to pour himself some more of Captain Longe’s wonderful coffee and ignore it.
Just then, he spotted Sarah talking with a couple of people across the other side of the lounge. She was locked deeply in conversation and didn’t see him so he focused his attention back to their host.
The ship they were aboard was called Toronto, after one of the only cities that Captain Longe had never managed to visit. Something had always gone wrong whenever he’d been set to sail there, so many times in fact that it became a standing joke in the shipping company he worked for.
After several decades running ships as a paid employee, he had been fortunate to receive a large sum of money from a dying friend. He was not specific on who, or how much. All he did say was that he retired on the spot and put in a bid for the Toronto. He knew full well the company was looking for ways to cut costs and also that the ship, at the time called The Eskhal, was due for an expensive refit.
He had guessed the board’s predicament well and managed to acquire her for himself. He then made Manaus his base, having been enraptured with its unspecified charms over his years of global trading. As Toronto had been a destination to elude him so many times in his working life, he renamed his ship after the city. And no, he laughed, he had still not been there.
With his hunger sated, Pace began to feel the need to get settled and unpacked. Perhaps Longe sensed it, for the next moment all talk ceased and he beckoned to a couple of hovering crewmen. Both were very young men, still in their late teens. He instructed them to show Hammond and Pace to their cabins.
As Pace stood up and shook Longe’s calloused hand, he caught a glimpse of Sarah crossing the room in his direction. She had some coffee in her hand. He gave her his best smile, which she returned.
‘Sorry I haven’t been over to see you yet,’ she started. ‘There are so many things I need to check up on that I’ve been a bit caught up.’
‘No need to explain. This young man is about to point me in the direction of my room.’
‘Your cabin, don’t you mean?’
‘Stateroom,’ corrected the crewman politely. He was of oriental origin and spoke softly. ‘All rooms on the upper deck are allocated to the racing participants. They are our very best.’
‘You see.’ Pace cocked an eyebrow in her direction. ‘Stateroom if you please.’
They moved through a couple of internal passages and up a flight of stairs. The entire trip smelled of new carpet and Pace suspected the ship had won a top-of-the-range McEntire facelift; he couldn’t fault the vessel at all.
The refit had been extensive and must have cost a small fortune. It was beyond clean and comfortable, instead edging towards luxurious and opulent. He got an even bigger surprise when his guide opened the door to his stateroom and beckoned him to step inside, which he did, closely followed by Sarah. Longe had done well out of the deal.
The stateroom was large and airy. The rosewood panelling from the lounge was repeated here, wall-to-wall; the outer hull wall sporting several large brass portholes, each with new curtains held open with sashes of ornate rope-work. Lights were unobtrusively sunk into a white ceiling, where they softly illuminated two distinct areas; a bedroom and a lounge. There was a large bed in one corner and a smart lounge suite on the other side.
A flat screen television was neatly built into a wooden cabinet in the lounge area. An adjacent mahogany unit, beautifully carved and buffed to a mirrored shine, held several bottles of alcohol and a small refrigerator. Inside, Pace supposed, would be a selection of chilled drinks which he determined to check out later on.
A door in the far corner led into a large en-suite bathroom. The floor was richly carpeted in a red, deep-pile pattern and strategically placed vases of exotic flowers filled the air with a faint sweetness.
There wasn’t an outer door; no companionway ran outside the room; it was sheer from the main deck, a dozen feet above, right down to the river’s surface some fifteen feet below. The upper decks were only accessible through the main passageways.
The crewman bade them a good morning and left. Alone with Sarah, he felt a wave of awkwardness wash over him. He stumbled around inside his mind for a suitable opener because conversation was needed.
‘The race has really begun,’ Pace ventured cautiously. ‘Who’d have believed there would be ships like this on the Amazon, let alone huge tankers? I had dug-outs and rusting tramp steamers in mind.’
‘Most people just think of the Amazon as a very long, narrow, jungle waterway, which for a large part it is. They also group the whole river as the Amazon, where really it doesn’t get started until about seven miles downstream from where we are now. Manaus actually lies on the Rio Negro, which merges with the Solimões to become the Amazon. It runs to a minimum depth of over a hundred feet here and can get much deeper from here down to the ocean.’
‘Someone’s been reading their text books.’
‘It pays to know about the place you’re going to, however short a time you’ll be there.’
‘I read up on the place as well but missed just how huge a port there is here. I was concentrating on the history of the city I suppose.’
‘And the heat here is something else. No, not heat, it’s the humidity,’ she corrected herself. ‘No amount of written warning can do it justice.’
‘Yes, it’s hot and sticky,’ he agreed.
‘And this is nothing compared to the basin itself, or so I’ve read,’ muttered Sarah.
‘Yep, this is where it all becomes real. Th
e humidity is going to be one of the toughest things we will have to cope with.’
Although their initial friendship was a strangely distant memory, things looked more positive and it was a calculated gamble on his part to draw her into a personal conversation. Pace only hoped it didn’t sound too much like playing for the sympathy vote.
‘You’ll all be fine,’ Sarah replied. There was no hint of anything else. ‘Once my father gets here, he’ll have any untidy threads neatly sutured before you get your marching orders.’
She hardly sipped from her own coffee cup, instead vaguely wetting her lips.
‘You’re probably right. I’m fitter than I look.’ He was stung by her indifference. After all, wasn’t it her and her damned father who’d jumped on his temporary celebrity status to push their pet project? ‘When I last the distance, I’ll have some great memories and be able to go home and spend all of that money he’s paying me.’
‘Money? You’re in the middle of Brazil, thousands of miles from England, and all you can think about is money? I thought you were in it for other reasons too, or has the cash taken over?’ Her surprisingly bitter attack fanned the flames of his anger.
‘Look,’ he snapped, glaring at her as he brought his cup down a little too hard on a gorgeous mahogany sideboard. ‘Money may not mean a great deal to someone like you, who’s practically bathed in the stuff since birth. To someone like me, who’s never had much of it, you’re damned right it means a lot! It gives me the chance of a better future, simple.’
‘No amount of money will give you a future until you stop wasting your life and get your backside into gear,’ she countered testily, heading for the door.
She neatly sidestepped around him and he spun on his heels, watching as she flung the door open and stormed off into the passageway, heading back towards the lounge.
‘Really nice, thanks.’ Pace sent the words tumbling down the passage after her. ‘I’ve never had any money other than the damned pittance I’ve worked for all my life. So yes, the money is my ticket. Damned sorry to offend you!’
He bellowed the last few words but she had already disappeared from view.
He was furious. Not just at her but at the way he’d allowed the situation to deteriorate so fast. It had been the perfect opportunity to repair the damage of the past week yet he’d blown it again.
‘Idiot,’ he admitted softly. ‘You bloody, stupid idiot. You deserve everything you get.’
On arrival in Chicago, Wolf checked into a cheap motel a few miles from the airport, having once again sailed through the admittedly far tougher United States immigration checks. The false identity was flawless, even as far as the false fingerprint sheaths he wore; seamless artificial grafts as thin as a human hair. It didn’t come cheap but it was a drop in the ocean compared to his own fees.
He could only use Browner once, knowing he would be fingerprinted upon entry to an increasing number of the world’s countries. Next time he would be someone else, with a new set of prints.
He was meticulously careful and was confident he could continue to elude the authorities indefinitely.
His given name was Simon Maluse but he never went by that name. He never spoke it, and hadn’t done for over twenty years. The underworld knew of him only as Wolf. Together with his sister, aptly called Puma, they had slowly risen in the assassination world rankings to become the most sought after of killers.
His sister had been christened Jasmine Maluse but she, like him, had discarded the name to carve out her own pathway to riches and power. Wolf was ruthless enough but even the people that managed to hire his sister shivered at her murderous reputation. It allowed them both to charge a high premium for their skills.
Wolf paid little heed to the drab surroundings he now found himself in. The weather outside was hot and bright but his was not a sightseeing tour. He knew what he had to do and he wanted to get on with it. However, haste wasn’t in his vocabulary; it inevitably led to error and, ultimately, to capture.
So he spent several days watching his mark from a used Cadillac he bought, for cash, from a second-hand car dealership a mile or so down the road from his motel. Rusty brown and very tired, the car served its purpose of being inconspicuous transport.
Disguises often drew more attention than anything else so he disliked using them. His hair had been coloured and styled purely for his Browner identity; the real Browner having met an untimely end a few weeks earlier and now interred for all time beneath the newly-poured foundations of a city centre office building in Colchester.
Sadly for Browner, his had been a perfect identity snatch. Wolf had felt no remorse at murdering a totally innocent human being. He needed the man’s life for a job – simple.
Wolf easily tracked the mark from work to her home address and could have killed her a dozen times over if he had been more emotional about it. He wasn’t and just waited, and watched, then watched some more. As he watched, he considered his victim’s impending fate with dispassion. The name meant nothing to him.
Amanda Pace was a school teacher. He had been given enough information to find her and to make a risk assessment; good background information had been provided about her friends, lovers, colleagues – anyone who might influence how, and where, he would strike. Wolf did not feel pity for her.
On the fourth day, admittedly a couple of days later than he’d promised his criminal paymasters, he felt sure that all was as it seemed. There would be no nasty surprises to interrupt the job. The information proved to be accurate; there was no man in the house and no dog either. Friends were few, and didn’t seem to visit her home. The alarm system was rudimentary and could be, and was, easily by-passed.
Deciding that it was finally time, he slipped inside the smart, white-washed five bedroom townhouse a little after one in the morning. The residential area boasted wide, clean roads and leafy, tree-lined avenues for as far as the eye could see. It was typical of well-groomed American suburbia and the house owner had taken great pride in turning the building into a home.
The furniture was antique; none newer than the 1920’s, most from the mid-nineteen century. The curtains were drawn tightly closed but his eyes were accustomed to the gloom so he picked his way easily around the chairs and sofa until he reached the foot of a flight of richly-carpeted stairs. One of the upstairs lights had been left on but it wasn’t the main hall light; there was just a faint glow of illumination as he looked up intently.
He paused and listened. Years of experience had given him the ability to stop and wait, mid-task, and to calmly detach himself from the coming experience. His ears strained to catch any sign that his intrusion had been detected. He heard nothing at all; the house was quiet.
The age-old problem with stairs, especially in a property of any years, was that they always had at least one creaky stair that would immediately give the game away. Because of this, he knew he had reached the moment when planning, observation and stealth could be discarded in favour of direct action.
Pausing long enough to slip on a black balaclava, and making no attempt to step lightly, he flew up the stairs and found himself on a wide, carpeted landing. Five doors led off from the landing. One was open and obviously a bathroom; it was this room that had its light still on although its door was only half open. The remaining doors were all firmly closed, which was unusual and meant he had to check them all.
The first door he tried opened onto a study, complete with large wooden bookcases crammed with volumes and a huge desk. He saw no more detail in the dark and didn’t need to. The next door opened onto a spare bedroom. A single bed and bare mattress told him nobody was using it.
As he reached to turn the handle of the third door, the brass knob turned suddenly by itself and the door opened inwards, leaving him face to face with his victim.
The woman had been rudely dragged from a pleasant dream by the sound of his footsteps on the stairs. She didn’t quite know what it was she had heard, or thought she’d heard, and pulled herself from h
er large, warm bed with the idea of going to the bathroom. She wasn’t frightened. It was an old house and this wasn’t the first time a creak or groan from the old structure had roused her from sleep.
She was totally dumbstruck, as she blearily opened her bedroom door, to be confronted by the solid, sinister shadow of a masked intruder. A scream welled up inside her but dread froze her blood and paralysed her larynx.
Though the sudden meeting was a surprise to both of them, the man recovered himself seamlessly. He sprung forward and gripped the terrified young woman by the throat with one hand, while slapping the other hard over her mouth, stifling the scream that would never now come. Her eyes bulged in their sockets as she was swept back into the room and pushed down on her bed, knowing she was going to be raped yet more concerned about breathing, as strong fingers crushed her tiny throat, constricting her airway.
She was in her late twenties, fit and slim, yet the speed of the attack left her no time to defend herself; she was helpless as the man pressed down on top of her. He said nothing at all as he squeezed her throat harder, using his weight to pin her down. Within a few seconds, she started to fade and soon passed into blissful unconsciousness without making a sound.
Releasing her throat, the man stepped back from the bed and eyed her limp form, darkness lifted only slightly by light spilling in from the hallway.
He had planned the actions meticulously in his head many times over and executed them now on autopilot. Five minutes later, satisfied that he had set the scene well enough, he turned his attention back to the unconscious young woman. An hour later, he was back in his motel room and preparing to leave for the airport.
The flight back to Nice, his home for fifteen years, was uneventful and achieved by way of a short stop in Paris. A twenty-minute drive brought him to his plush hillside home, overlooking the deep blue of a sparkling Mediterranean Sea some two miles distant.