Bacchus and Sanderson (Deceased)

by Simon Speight

  Jemima was the only one who didn’t look stunned.

  “Our most important job is stopping her. Ben was my drugged mumblings enough to help you work out what I discovered?”

  “I saw that the Cortez ships we thought would be the carriers couldn’t be. Wrong places and not enough time to rectify that. The cargo ships you had highlighted belong to Cameron Holdings Corporation, but I can’t see a connection to the Cortez’s with that either. Then William called about Annabel and I left my search and came to help my brother.”

  Jemima smiled and said,

  “Good as far as it goes and I’m sure you would have got there, but this is what I’ve got. Grandfather and Felicity have been clever. Did you notice the cargos? No? It’s timber from the Colombian rain forest that they harvest as a by-product of their palm oil plantations which they use to produce biodiesel. Rosewood, Teak, Mahogany all used in high-end furniture production. Cameron Holdings Corporation as you saw is a shell, well almost; they are a minor shareholder in two other companies. Timber importation to the UK, specifically hardwoods and a composite polymer manufacturer who specialises in the production of materials used in lead free aprons for radiologists. Now the next part is a bit of a leap of faith, but what I think is that in larger trees, of which there are many, a hollow of about thirty centimetres in diameter is drilled out along three quarters of the length of the tree. This has a composite tube inserted filled with the cocaine in solution. The tube fills around half of the length of the tree. A cap of the original tree is placed in the hole and it is then invisible. The tubes will be forty feet long. This will give you a lot of cocaine in solution, almost nine hundred litres per tree. These freighters carry thousands of trees. Do the maths. When I visited the family in Colombia, I saw a large number of these tubes, I asked what they were for, the man said with a smile for putting into trees to make them ‘high.’ I didn’t understand and thought he was teasing me. He was telling the truth.”

  Ben nodded before speaking,

  “There’s a lot of supposition in there isn’t there?”

  Jonas interrupted before Jemima could reply.

  “Yes, and no,” he said.

  “In December nineteen seventy two, I was able to get a look at files in the research directors office. He was a sloppy man who had risen further than his ability should have allowed. He had left drawings of aluminium tubes and also plastic tubes that could be sealed and are airtight. I only realised what they would use the tubes for by chance. Then, Cameron Holdings was still a subsidiary of CHC, but was called Cortez timber. Cortez timber had a small stake in an engineering company that manufactured precision metal parts. He had left an order for a drill thirty feet long and with a diameter of six inches on his desk. Why would CHC need those? Cortez timber was sold to a Colombian logging company, who sold it to a Peruvian hardwood exporter. They renamed the company and absorbed it into their operation. Cameron Holdings was incorporated in the Cayman Islands in January nineteen seventy three. As soon as incorporation was completed it bought a ten per cent holding in the Peruvian hardwood exportation company and invested a similar amount in a materials research company. Back to the research directors office. His biggest error and the one that forced them to kill me was an obscure research paper on the solubility of benzoyl-methyl-ecgonine.[2,3] in an aqueous solution that he had left open on his desk. As a chemist, they knew I would recognise benzoyl-methyl-ecgonine.[2,3] as cocaine. Combined that with the drawings of Aluminium and plastic tubes I had seen and an order for drill bits. They were terrified that I would put it all together. In fact, I hadn’t made the leap that Jemima has made. I was concerned that CHC had begun experimenting with cocaine, which was illegal. I hadn’t recognised that they were the exporters and this was an early iteration of the transportation method they would eventually use. They killed me too quickly to allow me to finish connecting the dots.”

  Jemima looked at Jonas with gratitude and relief and then replied to Ben’s original question.

  “No, not as much supposition as you thought. Jonas has filled a lot of the holes in my research. Also, the two subsidiaries of Cameron Holdings, hardwood exporters and materials research both have Uncle Freddie as a non-executive director. Frederick Aldhelm, no connection to CHC or the Cortez family. I struggled to start with, until I realised he was the only Cortez who’s hands were clean. Obvious choice and a direct line connection to Cortez holdings in Colombia. Where do you think Freddie holidays?”

  “Colombia, Cartagena?” said Ben.

  “No, of course not. He vacations on the yacht of our revered Uncle Juan off the coast of Bermuda. He of the hot tubs and hookers. The Cortez family looks after its own.” Ben still looked troubled as he thought back to the map of the Caribbean and Atlantic ocean he had been looking at in Jemima's hospital room. Reaching into his backpack he pulled out his computer and refreshed the page showing the position of the ships. He turned the computer around so that everybody could see the screen. Ben said to Jemima,

  “Everything you have said makes sense, but something is bothering me." He pointed at three other ships further across the Atlantic Ocean that were on a similar path towards Britain.

  “These ships are also owned by Cameron Holdings. I have checked their manifests and they're carrying containers in the hold and stacked on deck. At the moment I can't get any information on the contents of the containers, but ships from the same company, travelling in the same direction, to the same ports, at approximately the same time, makes me suspicious.” Jemima looked sceptical and Jonas pouring oil on troubled waters said,

  “Until we can prove that they're carrying anything in the containers that could be used to smuggle cocaine, we have to follow the timber theory."

  Williams phone rang and he grabbed it, stabbing at the screen to answer the call.

  “Tiny? Hi. Where are you? Ok, I’ll come out. Bye.”

  William got up picked up a jacket and said to Ben,

  “Tiny’s friends think they’ve identified where Annabel has been taken. Tiny and I are going now. The plan is we’ll rescue her and be back by morning. I’ll keep in touch. Bye.”

  As William move towards the door, Jemima stopped him saying,

  “In the short time I have known Annabel, she has been more of a friend to me than anyone else has ever been. I don’t care that I’m in a wheelchair; Eric and Ernie can deal with that. We,” she looked across at Ben who smiled and nodded in agreement,

  “Are coming with you. Ben’s security can follow in their Range Rover. Six SAS has to be better than two, doesn’t it?”

  William gave her a long look examining her face to judge her sincerity. He stood up and opened the door and said to the four bodyguards in the kitchen.

  “Tiny’s meeting us downstairs. We’re all going to Southampton to get Annabel. Ben will travel with Jemima.” He gestured to Ben’s security,

  “You two can follow the rest of us.” With a grim smile he said,

  “Many hands make light work.” A chorus of voices from the kitchen answered,

  “Yes boss.”

  Chapter 39

  When the van jerked to a halt, Annabel slumped down onto her left side to protect her iPhone and pretended she was still unconscious. Controlling her breathing and staying still, she gave the appearance of a person in a deep sleep. The rear door opened and a blast of cool salty air replaced the fug of the interior of the van. They dragged her forward and lifted her between them out of the rear of the van. After a few meters they put her down onto cool concrete and took the handcuffs off her. She felt one of the men ease a cushion under her head while she heard the other place a bucket and some bottles on the floor next to her.

  “She look okay to you?”

  “She’s breathing, she’s alive. Job done. Someone else will be here in a few hours to deal with her.”

  The next sound she heard was the sound of the door clanging shut, two bolts sliding into place and then the snap of one padlock closing then another. Then silence, nothin
g but the background sound of the wind and the receding rattle of the van engine as it drove away.

  Annabel opened her eyes and eased herself into a sitting position. She listened, trying to discern the sounds of anyone still outside of the building. Nothing. She inspected the interior of the room from her sitting position. She struggled to make out anything in the gloom, but gradually her eyes adjusted to the low levels of ambient light. She could see where the door was, saw a pile of rubbish in one corner and saw the bottles of water and a bucket she had been left as a makeshift toilet. The door they had come through was the only one into or out of the small room. Natural light, even on the brightest day would be in scant supply as the only window was a small skylight over the centre of the room. Annabel rose to her feet and swayed, still feeling the aftereffects from the drugs they had sprayed into her face. She took a small sip from one of the bottles of water and then gulped the rest in three long swallows. Better, much better.

  Reaching into her pocket, she found the iPhone and checked to see if she had any signal. Five bars. She tapped in the speed dial for William and waited for it to connect to his phone.

  “Annabel?” His voice was hesitant, unsure; as if he thought that it wasn’t going to be her calling him, but her kidnappers.

  “I have never been so pleased to hear your voice.” The strangled gasp at the other end terrified her. Was the shock causing another heart attack?

  “Annabel, it’s Tiny, friend of William. He’s a little emotional with relief. Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine. A little woozy from the knockout spray, but fine.”

  “Do you know where you are?” he said.

  “I’m in a small room, about two square meters, no window, just a small skylight above the centre of the room. The door is metal and has two bolts with padlocks on. Oh, I can also smell the sea.”

  “We think you’re just outside Southampton, Fawley, the container port. CHC has warehouses there. We’ve been tracking you using the ‘Find friends’ app on your phone. We should be with you in about half an hour. I’m assuming that you’re alone at the moment. Are you expecting to see the people who kidnapped you again? Did they say anything about returning to check on you?”

  Annabel paused forcing herself to remember the mumbled conversation in the back of the van, or was it in the warehouse?

  “They checked I was breathing and then said to each other that someone else would be here to deal with me in a few hours. That was around an hour ago.”

  William had recovered enough to take over from Tiny.

  “Annabel, we want to catch whoever has done this to you. To do that I need you to sit tight for a little while longer.”

  Annabel interrupted,

  “William, no. Get me out of this place before some Cortez hit man comes to finish me off.”

  “Annabel calm down, I wasn’t suggesting that. We’ll be with you in about thirty minutes. That’s Ben, Jemima, Tiny, six ex-SAS bodyguards and me I hired through Tiny. What they want to do is for us to break in and for one of the SAS guys to remain in the room with you. The rest of us will be waiting, hidden outside. When they arrive and let themselves into the room the guy inside will take care of the kidnapper and we’ll be their in seconds to back him up. If we just break you out it might spook him and we loose this chance. Believe me I don’t like this either, but I trust Tiny and his friends. Will you do it?”

  Annabel sat thinking for a long moment before saying,

  “Yes. You owe me Bacchus and I intend to collect. Okay?”

  She heard William begin laughing and then the phone went silent. Annabel smiled he knew what she meant.

  ***

  Felicity, as she had expected, had been both awed and disappointed by sex with the devil. As he wasn’t a tangible entity himself, he had to borrow a body. He had allowed her to choose and then they had copulated. No intimacy, just rutting. She now had the potential to be carrying a baby Satan. Their tryst had come to an abrupt end when Satan had left his donor body naked on the floor of the hotel room that they had used. Now she had nine months to wait until their baby arrived. First though, she had this mess to deal with.

  “You did it then. You went through with it. I thought when you considered what you were contemplating you’d realise that it had a number of downsides. I’m no angel and I’ve done a lot of things over the course of my life, but, are you sure?”

  Felicity turned around and faced her grandfather with a look of contempt on her face.

  “I have two questions for you. One; how else could your years of mismanagement and lack of strength be rectified? Two; can you imagine the power I now have? I’m going to give birth to a new world leader. I’ll be guiding, moulding, teaching the future.”

  Charles looked at his granddaughter with new respect. He smiled and said with unfeigned sincerity,

  “Your wish is my command.”

  The display on her iPhone said, ‘Uncle Alex’ and the clamorous ringtone she had assigned him, Barbie Girl by Aqua, irritated her beyond reason. Fitting, as so did Uncle Alex.

  “What?” she snapped out of habit.

  “We have a problem, actually two problems. You might want to sit down with a large brandy”

  “Alex spit it out.” She heard him take a deep breath, paused for a moment and then said,

  “Ben Sanderson was released from Yeovil police station after only four hours in custody. The CCTV from the House of Parliament showed that the person planting Semtex looked nothing like Ben and Cambridge professor rang the inspector and confirmed that Ben had been in Cambridge with her at the time the explosives were being planted. The local police confirmed the college CCTV footage shows Ben and Annabel arriving and leaving again later that day. That is nothing compared to our next problem. The Home Secretary is dead and we’re in the shit. He committed suicide. He called me earlier this evening burbling on about his wife and family. He sounded a bit shaky, so I gave him the ‘money will enable him to give his family everything’ speech. He asked how that helped when you have no self-respect left. I mean, he’s going to be wealthy beyond his imagination shedding a little self-respect can’t be too high a price to pay; can it? Anyway, I went across to the house to calm him down and found him slumped across his desk with the contents of his skull all over the wallpaper. He’d left a note for his Permanent Secretary, I…”

  Felicity interrupted,

  “Shut up, let me think.” Her head was spinning and she clutched the edge of her desk to steady herself. She poured a glass of mineral water, sipped it and paced the room.

  “Okay, the note. Have you got it?”

  “Yes. I was about to tell you. He has detailed what he was going to do for us, what we were paying him and the reason he was being paid. In the note, he has also said that he has left documentation of our offer and the bank account the money was going to be paid into and recordings of the conversations you had with him and also all the conversations I have been having with him. The ‘keep him focused’ ones you wanted each day. It’s all in his office safe. The problem is he has changed his combinations, so I can’t break in and retrieve the recordings and paperwork. If this get’s out we’re all screwed.”

  Felicity didn’t answer or comment on what he had said. She continued pacing while she thought. After two minutes of frenetic pacing, she said,

  “Do you still have access to his office?”

  “Yes, for now. Once his Permanent Secretary arrives his office will be sealed the police will be called, MI5, Special Branch. You won’t be able to move for coppers and spooks.”

  “How long have we got?”

  Alexander hesitated before answering,

  “The Permanent Secretary won’t be in before nine tomorrow morning. He always beats Jonathan in by a good couple of hours so no one will go into his office before him.”

  “It’s eight o’clock now so we have thirteen hours. You’re sure that security won’t check his office?”

  “They can’t, no security clearance. He even
has a special cleaner who comes in during the day while he is in the house and is supervised by his PA.”

  Felicity paused again for a moment and then said to Alexander,

  “Okay, go home and stay by your phone; I may call at any time.” After she hung up with a smile, a sleepless night ahead for Uncle Alex. She started to call Thrasher, then stopped herself. Had he only left behind the items he had described in his note or had he left other incriminating documents elsewhere? Helena, she decided, needed to earn her gratitude. She was on thin ice with her boss, something Felicity could help with.

  “Helena, Charles.” After a delay of ten seconds, they materialised in her living room.

  Without preamble, she recounted the conversation that she had just had with Uncle Alex.

  “I’ll call Thrasher and tell him to send the Ladrones to burgle his offices, but,” she paused while she lit another cigarette, a slight tremble visible when she clicked the Dunhill lighter.

  “Is there anything else he has left that could incriminate the Cortez family? I need to know. Can you do that?”

  Helena nodded.

  “Yes and no. I can go back about a week, in a particular place and review everything that happened there. I need the exact location. If you need more than a week then it becomes more difficult as the variables increase exponentially, more so in a busy setting. Do you need his home or office reviewed?”

  “Primarily office, maybe both. The time frame is from my conversation with Jonathan until just before he shot himself. That’s about ten day’s, but I expect whatever he has done, if anything will be in the last week. I need to know quickly, our delivery is tomorrow evening.”