Condor (The Gabriel Wolfe Thrillers Book 3)

by Andy Maslen

  Figuring somebody else would already have hit nine-one-one, Frank raced to the inert form of the driver, slamming a new magazine into the Beretta. The heat from the flames was intense and the pool of flaming petrol was spreading across the road. He’d hit the boy high in the chest on the right-hand side and again in the left shoulder. Terrible grouping, his firearms instructor would have said, but good enough to put his man down. He checked for a pulse, pushing two fingers none too gently against the carotid artery on the left side. It was faint, but it was there. He took out his handkerchief and wadded it against the chest wound and pushed down hard with the heel of his left hand, keeping the muzzle of the Beretta against the boy’s head.

  The wail of approaching sirens told him help was on its way, and two minutes later, a posse of black-and-whites, ambulances, and a fire truck screeched round the corner of Melrose Avenue and North Detroit Street. Frank stood aside as paramedics raced from their ambulance and began stabilising the boy. Frank knew he’d be wanted for questioning by the cops later, but right now he needed to call the head of studio security and brief him on what had almost happened.

  *

  Three thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight miles away, Jardin watched with growing satisfaction as the aerial footage from the US TV stations’ choppers relayed the unfolding drama. While everybody else would be focusing on the huge square roof of the sound stage, he was looking at the street on the edge of the picture. There it was! A van emerged from the edge of the frame, paused, then raced down the long street towards the studio entrance.

  Then, “No!” he shouted, his face contorting into a mask of rage, as a security guard left his little building and took up a shooter’s stance in front of the closing gates.

  He jumped to his feet and knelt right in front of the TV screen as the guard began firing. The excited chatter from the commentator drowned out any noise of the gunshots, but Jardin could see plainly the moment Child Zack was hit. As the van swerved and smashed into the parked cars, he jabbed an impotent finger at the screen.

  Toron didn’t leave the sofa behind him. But his sardonic voice made Jardin whirl round.

  “Not quite the result you were hoping for, Christophe? I don’t suppose your Chinese friends will find that worth a trip to Los Angeles.”

  Jardin bit back his words. He didn’t want to fall out with Toron, and the choice phrases trying to batter their way past his teeth would almost certainly put an end to their relationship.

  “There will be other opportunities. I am a patient man.”

  44

  An Unwelcome Invitation

  GABRIEL WAS WEARING AN OUTFIT chosen for him specially by Père Christophe. Khaki chinos, running shoes, a white T-shirt, and a cream cotton waistcoat festooned with pockets, press-studded compartments and woven straps closed with D-rings. A black baseball cap with a TeleGlobo logo stitched in white completed the picture.

  “There,” he’d said, as he lassoed the ID card on its lanyard over Gabriel’s head. “Every inch the media professional.”

  That had been ninety minutes earlier. Together with a second man, Uncle Peter, they’d flown out of Eden to Nova Cidade. For the duration of the flight, Père Christophe had stared into Gabriel’s eyes, held his hands and asked him the same two questions, over and over again:

  “What is your name?”

  “Gabriel Da Costa.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “To film the speeches.”

  After landing, they’d picked up the Range Rover in which Child Eve had driven Gabriel into Eden that first time. Père Christophe had prayed briefly with Gabriel before leaving him in the care of Uncle Peter.

  *

  Now, the white Range Rover rumbled over a red earth road heading for the Santa Augusta project, maintaining a steady fifty. The big car’s suspension soaked up the worst of the ruts and the rain washouts, but the odd pothole caused it to lurch left or right. Uncle Peter was holding the steering wheel too tightly, Gabriel could see that. The man was about forty-five and paunchy. He had wispy, sand-coloured hair that framed a boyish face, disfigured by a port-wine birthmark that covered his right eye like a bandit’s mask.

  “Uncle Peter, let the wheel play a little through your hands. Guide the car, don’t force it.”

  The man’s frown deepened into a scowl. “Thank you, Child Gabriel, but I think I’ll drive the way I want to, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Of course,” Gabriel said, returning his gaze to his own window and the rainforest that began at the edge of the road and extended for thousands of miles away from them. He leaned against the glass and let its delicious coolness spread across his forehead.

  “How are you feeling?” the man asked.

  “Feeling? About what?”

  “About carrying out the Second Order.”

  “I am blessed, of course. After my glorification I will be with the Almighty Father. I will have served Père Christophe faithfully to the end of my days, and I will sit at God’s right hand to wait until he calls Père Christophe to him. ‘Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee’. Deuteronomy, thirty-one six.”

  The man nodded and relaxed his grip on the wheel. He drew in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. Gabriel spoke again.

  “Are you all right, Uncle Peter?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine. Are you hungry? Thirsty? We could stop if you like. There’s a diner coming up.”

  “If you want.”

  The man nodded once, then braked for the diner and swung the Range Rover into the dusty parking lot behind the building, which was little more than a corrugated iron shack painted yellow, green, and blue.

  Inside, the place smelled of churros and coffee. They sat at the counter on chrome and red vinyl stools, which were bolted to the floor. The young girl behind the bar, made up like a Hollywood starlet, put her phone down and sauntered over.

  “What can I get you?” she asked.

  Uncle Peter ordered two coffees and a plate of churros, tempted perhaps by the smell wafting from the steaming pyramid of sugary doughnut sticks the girl had just lifted from the frying basket with a wide slotted spoon.

  With their food and coffees in front of them, Uncle Peter turned to Gabriel. “Good?”

  Unable to speak through his hot mouthful of coffee and deep-fried dough, Gabriel nodded and smiled, his cheeks bulging like a hamster’s.

  Uncle Peter leaned closer. “Listen. Gabriel. You’re not going through with the bombing, OK?”

  Swallowing, Gabriel looked round sharply. “What do you mean? Père Christophe gave me the Second Order. It’s my glorification. It’s my duty.”

  “No, it isn’t. You don’t have to do this. He’s tricked you. Like he’s tricked everyone. I’m leaving, and I want you to come with me. There are people who can help you. They’ll talk to you, get you to understand how Père Christophe has messed around in your head. Not just you, everyone.”

  “I don’t understand. Why are you saying this?”

  “I met some people, about a year ago, in Nova Cidade. From the Brazilian police. I go in every two weeks to run errands for Père Christophe and buy supplies. They spoke to me and gave me something to take. A drug, you know? To counteract the effects of that shit he pumps into us all. I started meeting them regularly, for deprogramming, they call it. But when I asked to leave with them, they said, no. I had to stay to gather evidence for them. You are that evidence, Gabriel. You!”

  Gabriel shook his head. “No. This isn’t right. You’re lying. Père Christophe is a good man. A holy man. ‘A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.’ Matthew, twelve thirty-five.” Frowning, he slid off the stool, and walked to the door. “Come on. We have to get there with the rest of the media.”

  Outside, squinting against the sun, Gabriel made his way round
the side of the diner to the Range Rover. It was still locked, but that didn’t matter. He stood waiting for Uncle Peter by the driver’s door.

  As the man approached, thumbing the unlock button on the key fob, Gabriel stood back to let him grab the door handle. He looked around. The car park was empty. There were no cars in sight on the highway, either.

  Gabriel curled his right hand into a fist, pulled it back and delivered a massive blow to the back of Uncle Peter’s head, driving it forwards into the steel pillar between the front and rear doors with a bang. Catching him as he fell, he wrapped his arms around the man’s head and neck and wrenched them violently in opposite directions. The snap was audible as the cervical vertebrae parted company, severing the man’s spinal cord.

  Gabriel opened the door, pressed the button that lifted the tailgate, then hauled the corpse round to the back and up into the load space beside the camera.

  “The Devil seduced you, Uncle Peter. You were Satan’s instrument. And I am God’s.”

  “He was an evil man, but I won’t fail you, Père Christophe. I will prove myself worthy of your faith,” Gabriel said as he drove south towards Santa Augusta. His eyes flicked left and right, looking for a spot to dump the body. Then he slammed the brakes on, dragging the car to a juddering halt. He reversed for a few yards then turned the wheel onto full lock, pushed the gear selector back into drive and wove down a narrow track.

  After five minutes, the track turned through a right-angle and ran parallel to a wide, fast-flowing river. Gabriel pulled up and a few minutes later was standing with the limp body of his former Uncle on the riverbank. The water was a muddy green, cloudy with silt and algae. Gabriel let the body fall to the grass and shaded his eyes with his hand to look downstream, into the sun. He smiled at what he saw: a dozen or so long, dark, brownish-green, knobbly shapes, near the far bank, half in, half out of the water.

  Getting to his knees, he pushed and rolled the body until it slid off the bank into the water with a small splash. He stood again and watched as it sank from view. He knew what would be happening beneath the surface. The body would start to roll and twist in the current, bouncing off rocks and tree branches. Perhaps it would snag and stay submerged, to decompose until the crocodiles could smell it. Perhaps it would bloat and rise to the surface, where they could see it. Or maybe it would simply roll and tumble all the way to the sea. It really didn’t matter.

  He was back in the Range Rover and heading south again ten minutes later.

  45

  Gabriel Wolfe, Suicide Bomber

  THE BRAND NEW TARMAC ROAD was glassy smooth, the white line down the centre flecked with reflecting chips of mica and still unmarked by rubber from truck tyres. Gabriel had turned off the highway two minutes earlier and was now driving towards the hydroelectric plant. Ahead, its white-painted turbine hall and control building stood out like a modernist cathedral plonked down in the middle of the rainforest. They were still a mile away, but the road was arrow-straight, drawing the eye towards this example of man’s mastery of the environment to deliver that precious, invisible commodity: power. At this distance, Gabriel couldn’t pick out any details. The haze wavering off the hot road surface rendered the buildings as simple three-dimensional shapes: a cube, a rectangular block, a sphere.

  The Range Rover was silent as he cruised towards his glorification. No tyre roar or wind noise penetrated the cabin. His mind was quiet, too, his thoughts sluggish, as the double dose of his morning Valium purred through his veins, finally taking effect.

  Then he saw a group of shimmering black shapes on the road. He craned his neck towards the windscreen and squinted. Finally, he smiled and a lazy laugh escaped his lips. He took his foot off the throttle and coasted for another two hundred yards before braking smoothly and bringing the car to a stop. In front of him, ambling across the road, was an adult tapir, a mother presumably, and three miniature versions of herself, striped and spotted where she was a deep, chocolatey brown. Their questing noses, really more like short little trunks—Ha! truncated trunks—twitched as the petrol-scented air from the Range Rover’s bow wave floated across them. They were taking too long.

  “Come on,” he said. “Shift yourselves. We’ve still got a day’s march ahead of us.”

  Then he frowned and shook his head.

  He slipped his right foot off the brake pedal and onto the throttle.

  Feeding a sip of petrol into the engine, Gabriel eased the car forward until its front bumper was touching the mother’s right flank.

  That was enough. She hurried her brood off the road and into the trees.

  After that, he put his foot down and was at the main gate ninety seconds later.

  Pulse? Sixty-two. Breathe. Focus. Still your mind. Pulse? Fifty-nine … eight … seven … Cameramen do not look nervous.

  Inside Gabriel’s brain, two sets of psychoactive chemicals were skirmishing for advantage. The benzodiazepines administered by the Uncle at the end of his row at morning prayers were exerting a calming effect. The adrenaline and cortisol that his adrenal glands were secreting were doing the opposite. The benzodiazepines won. Coupled with his meditation and breath-control, they lowered his pulse and refreshed the blood supply to his skin and facial muscles. All was calm once more. Gabriel Wolfe was ready to die.

  Three paramilitary cops stood in front of the gate, two men and a woman, feet apart, khaki caps pulled down low over their eyes, grey shirts marked with sweat stains visible where their black body armour ended under their armpits. One of the men had his sleeves rolled up, secured with straps attached to press-studs, revealing muscles like road cobbles, laid in close formation under his brown, tattooed skin. The woman wore hers rolled down, but her stance said, “I may have tits under the Kevlar, but I’ll put you down without thinking about your wife and kids for a second”. All three had black assault rifles carried diagonally across their torsos.

  Somewhere in the locker room of Gabriel’s swoony brain, an old bit of his training surfaced, complete with an extract from his photographic memory for international firearms makes and models. Combat appreciation, yes, sir! Three enemy combatants. Fit, hard, trained. Weapons, Imbel IA2 assault rifles, curved magazines chambered for 5.56mm NATO rounds. Taurus PT 24/7 9mm semi-auto pistols. Tear-gas grenades. Tasers. Compliance best option, sir!

  The woman broke away from her two colleagues and strode over to the Range Rover. Gabriel buzzed the window down as she drew near.

  “TeleGlobo,” he said, smiling, knowing his hastily assembled Portuguese mini-vocabulary would get him through this encounter.

  “ID?”

  Gabriel flashed his laminated media accreditation.

  She scrutinised it for ten seconds or so, flicking her gaze back and forth between the grainy digitised photo on the ID and Gabriel’s own impassive face. Pulse? Fifty-five.

  “Gabriel Da Costa?”

  He nodded. “Cameraman.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the boot.

  She strolled round to the back of the Range Rover, her finger crooked over her rifle’s trigger guard.

  “Open it,” she called.

  Gabriel pressed the tailgate release switch.

  She waited while the heavy door swung open, then leaned into the load space. The camera was secured with a length of black webbing to a couple of chromed D-rings screwed to the insides of the wheel arches.

  Gabriel unclipped his seatbelt and twisted round in his seat to watch.

  If she asked him to switch it on, the glorification would be at an end. The detonator was stored in the glovebox and the black detonator cable had been coiled and clipped to the camera body, but in the absence of electronics, the heavy camera’s masquerade would be discovered.

  She poked at the camera, then scanned the rest of the load space, but there was nothing else there.

  “OK, close it,” she said.

  Gabriel thumbed the switch again and listened to the hum of the powerful electric motors as they pulled the tailgate closed, then latched
it.

  The cop came round to the driver’s window again. She pointed beyond the gate.

  “Down there to the end. Turn left. Park with the others. Follow the signs and do what you’re told.”

  Then she called over to her colleagues.

  “Open it!”

  One of the men strolled over to the galvanised iron pillar supporting the gate and pressed a button. The gate jerked to the left with a clang then slid back behind the razor-wire-topped fence.

  All three cops stood aside as Gabriel drove through the gate and inside the plant.

  46

  How to Deal with Child Abuse

  A SCREAM PIERCED THE CLATTER and thud of the building work. Not of pain, but of fear. Stark terror. It stopped abruptly just as it was rising in pitch, so the screamer clearly had breath left in her lungs. Toron and Jardin were standing at one edge of the clearing watching the factory’s roof being laid onto the wooden rafters. The Children working on the factory all stopped, as did Toron’s men, who were nominally supervising the work, but mainly standing around smoking.

  Jardin pointed to a stand of açaí palms maybe seventy-five feet away from where they were standing.

  “Over there!”

  He set off at a run, surprising Toron with his speed. Toron followed, pulling his Five-seveN, and swearing under his breath. He’d noticed that one of his men was missing from the building site. Ramón, always leering at women in the street, wolf-whistling at secretaries on their way to work.