More mapping; more intelligence.
An escape plan.
What he didn’t know, as he sat on one of the benches waiting for Karlo to come back from his room, was that his ambition was about to be turned on its head.
A woman’s voice. English. The same woman he’d seen in the corridor? She sounded agitated. And then three of them burst through the double doors that led to the corridor and his room. Vicky and the other man - the one who had been holding Vicky’s arm; agreeing for her to do something that she seemed unwilling to do.
And Freddie.
Churn. Churn.
He felt sick.
But he tasted sand.
It was an internal battle between courage and fear.
For good men to do nothing. It’s all it took.
The team of three was heading his way. The woman the jam in a sandwich. She wasn’t happy. Both Freddie and the other man had a hand on an elbow. They were directing her. Keeping her on the straight and narrow.
The woman was pencil-mouthed. Angry. Defiant.
‘There’s no need to treat me like a prisoner!’ She was exasperated. Jakov didn’t hear fear in her voice. He sensed resilience. Strength.
‘And I need a cigarette!’
The woman shook her torso trying to release the men’s grip. But to no avail. They were on a mission. Taking her somewhere. On a journey. Jakov thought that maybe there was a cell like his on the opposite side of the quadrangle that he hadn’t picked up - maybe the door by the chapel?
He stopped thinking. Vicky had spotted him. Another connection. And then, bizarre of bizarres, she winked at him.
Or was it a blink? Did she have something in her eye? He wasn’t sure.
It didn’t matter because they were now beside him, then just past him. Freddie ignoring him. Dirt on his shoe.
The woman slipped on the cobbles. Her legs went from beneath her, her bottom crashing towards the floor. Her fall surprised the two men. They released their grip.
As she fell, one arm went up; the other one down ...
… into her pocket?
She twisted as she fell. The two men tried to re-establish their grip, but couldn’t hold her. She was on the floor, her arms now in front of her, inches from Jakov’s feet. He reacted. He half-stood. Bent. Grabbed her hands.
An exchange. A piece of paper from her hand to his.
‘Sorry, so sorry,’ She was all apologetic. Unharmed. No, a grazed knee. They were face to face, the two men catching up, turning and bending.
It was over in a couple of seconds.
‘Are you all right, Vicky?’
She was standing; so was Jakov - she was looking directly at him.
What did he see?
Pleading?
She mouthed a word.
Quickly.
And then out loud. Spitting it out.
‘No thanks to you, Paul.’
She winked again at Jakov, turned, and then they were gone. And he was left with the briefest of encounters. And a piece of paper.
He looked for Karlo.
Not seen.
He took out his notebook, opened it and put the piece of paper in the middle pages.
Quickly?
He turned to his left and made his way to the double doors. Just as he was going into the building, Karlo came out.
He stumbled briefly. Caught himself.
Think.
Jakov pointed at his chest.
Me.
And then he held his nose with one hand and, with the other next to his ear, pulled a non-existent, old-fashioned loo flush.
Toilet.
Karlo smiled. He mimed: me - eat.
OK.
Karlo stuck a thumb up.
Jakov nodded and dashed for the toilet.
Ten seconds later he was sitting on the pan with the illicit note open in front of him. The first couple of lines read:
Get the message to Sam Green. She works for the British government. Her number is:
Next was a +44 mobile number, then a two-paragraph message that made Jakov’s heart skip several beats - and lifted the veil. Now he knew what he was dealing with. Now he understood why the monastery kept the deepest of secrets. Why, having been stranded on its shores just nine days ago, he would never be allowed to step off its shores. What he had just read was incredible. Unbelievable.
Intolerable.
And immediate.
He pushed the note back into his pad, walked out of the cubicle and turned left out of the toilet, down the corridor towards the operations room. His pace was quick. His determination at that point, boundless.
But it was quickly thwarted. The door to the operations room was locked. There was an iris-recognition pad to the right of the door. He tried it. A red, low-energy laser scanned his eye.
Nothing.
No, not nothing.
A buzz. Like an alarm - inside the room.
Should he wait? See if someone came? Try and gain entry? What happens if the door remains closed and a guard comes from elsewhere? What about the dogs?
He felt panic rising in his chest. He looked round. Then back at the door. Round again. Stairs. Leading to the first floor. Bedrooms. Bunks? Maybe a telephone or a mobile?
He ran.
He was on the first floor in no time. It was as he expected. A poorly-lit corridor that led down to a corner - which turned right. More metallic doors?
He walked quickly, trying each door as he came to it. Left then right.
Locked.
Locked.
Locked.
Locked.
Fuck! Come on!
Locked.
Locked.
Open ...
He barged in. It was a big room. Two windows. A double bed. A TV. A table and two chairs. A wardrobe. A settee. A fridge. It was cosy and comfortable. There was a picture frame on a small chest of drawers. He was drawn to it.
Freddie. And … the other man; the one with his hand on ‘Vicky’ in the quad.
No. It can’t be?
He shook himself.
This was Freddie’s room. He was in the lion’s den.
And that made him as good as dead. Karlo would miss him soon. The alarm in the operations room had sounded. There was a traitor on the loose.
They would find him. And that would be that.
But he had a message to send.
Find a mobile!
No. Idiot. All mobiles are locked. Idiot. Even if he found one, he wouldn’t be able to use it.
Idiot!
Real panic now. He had to send this message.
Sand. In his eyes. Down his throat.
Idiot.
He looked about wildly. Searching for something. Anything.
And then he couldn’t believe his luck. Next to Freddie’s bed. A normal phone with a wire running to a wall socket. Like people used to use.
It was two strides away. He took them.
For some reason he couldn’t get himself to sit on Freddie’s bed. Instead, he dropped to his knees, like he was praying. He picked up the receiver and dialled the number on the piece of paper.
Immediately the phone spoke to him.
Dee-dah, dee-dah.
No. That didn’t work.
Try ‘9’ first, then 0044. Get an open line.
He dialled.
Dee-dah, dee-dah.
No.
Try 9, then wait for a dialling tone.
He dialled 9.
Brrr.
That did it.
He dialled the number.
It rang. And rang. And rang.
He was about to put the phone down when the telephone company interrupted the call and suggested that he wait for the beep and then leave a message.
The wait was the longest two seconds of his life. He looked over his shoulder towards the door.
Nothing.
Beep.
Jakov read the woman’s message word for word. As he said it out loud he couldn’t believe what he was reading. I
t was too extraordinary - too awful - for words. The world was heading for a disaster too large to contemplate. A precursor to war. East versus west. Islam and Christianity. And it was going to happen - tonight.
Unless Sam Green picked up her messages.
Who was she? The woman who could prevent this reckless disaster?
What Jakov was about to find out was that his own world was heading for its own disaster - at a speed quicker than the rest of the planet.
He decided to add his own story to end of the message.
‘This is Jakov Vuković. I am being held against my will at Samostan Monastery. I …’
He didn’t have chance to elaborate. Freddie’s foot smashed against the phone’s receiver. It broke into a hundred pieces, four or five of them were embedded into Jakov’s cheek. One made it all the way through his flesh and into his mouth - which filled with blood as his jawbone broke away from his skull, ripping sinew and muscle into shreds. Freddie’s second kick found Jakov’s left kidney and, above it, his pancreas - which split.
Disaster.
Jakov didn’t feel the third kick. Or the fourth. Or the fifth.
By the sixth he was dead.
Terminal de Pasajeros, San Fernando de Apure, Central Venezuela
Sam’s blouse was drenched. She was leaking. And brown. She was covered in a layer of fine dust. And she’d had enough. A ten-hour bus journey was feeling more like ten days. The coach may have looked modern, but the aircon wasn’t working. As a result all the windows were open, letting in hot, damp, dirty air - the dust rising from a road whose tarmac had seen better days. She was surprised at how well the bus’s suspension took the potholes - that was the only plus. What didn’t surprise her was the kamikaze nature of their driver, who thought nothing of passing one of the many hand-decorated, rickety old trucks on a blind corner. Sam cringed every time he tried the manoeuvre, waiting for a disastrous outcome - her eyes firmly shut.
When she’d had her eyes open, Venezuela was as she’d expected. Their route predominantly followed the floodplains of the many rivers that fed southeast to the huge Orinoco River. She guessed that, fifty years ago, the whole place would have been one impenetrable equatorial forest. Now the trees were mostly gone. In its place was farmland - and wetland. Early on she spotted coffee and corn; later, as the terrain flattened and the ground got damper, rice. But Sam reckoned at least 50% of the land wasn’t utilised - it was too wet to encourage cultivation; even rice. People who’d not visited countries close to the equator didn’t get it. Much of the land can be uninhabitable. It was consistently very hot - and it rained most days. Often torrentially. There were seasons - the summer was wetter than the winter above the equator but, whichever the season, the combination of persistent heat and damp can be unworkable for most normal crops.
One outcome was incredibly lush, tropical vegetation. Verdant and fast-growing. Water and heat. The perfect growing combination for primary jungle.
The villages were small groupings of wood and mud-brick huts - few made it to two storeys. The wood used for the dwellings was mostly painted in bold reds, blues and yellows, but it looked sodden; much of the paint peeling to leave the dark stain of damp timber. Brick houses were rendered. Where that survived, from the floor up, the black tracking of damp was prevalent. Roofs were rusty, wiggly-tin affairs. The poorer shacks used straw and reed. Only the churches seemed to escape the decay.
There was some industry. Sam saw a large wood yard and at least ten garages. But the equipment in these places was reminiscent of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Everything looked outdated and in need of repair.
What Sam didn’t see, other than a score of tankers – with two of which they nearly had an argument, was any sign of the Venezuelan oil industry. She’d read that it was huge. She couldn’t help remembering that the country was the 11th biggest oil producer in the world - 2.2 million barrels of crude a day. Russia was the biggest at over ten million barrels. The Orinoco field, which, as the bus pulled into the bus station in San Fernando de Apure, was below its tyres, stretched hundreds of miles to the east following the course of the Orinoco River.
Like the billions of dollars in revenues, there was little of the infrastructure for the average Joe to see. Which was shameful as, looking around at the state of the coach station, the place could do with a few dollars being spent on it.
The bus ground to a halt.
‘Treinta minutos,’ was the call from the bus driver. Sam guessed at 30 minutes. She needed a pee and a coffee. In that order.
She was the last off the bus. She let the lady with the chickens, her friend and the two young lads who needed a wash, get off before her. Subconsciously there was part of her that didn’t want to meet another pair of thugs who might try and extract all of her cash. Twice in the same day would be unnecessary. Getting off the bus opened her to that opportunity.
As she stepped out of the heat, into the heat, she was met by the ageing ‘action man’. He was waiting for her.
‘Hi. Are you American?’
He had a kind and sincere face. She thought he looked a bit lost - out of place; like he may have once been comfortable in deepest Venezuela. But now, even dressed for every eventuality - not so much.
Sam didn’t need a passenger. She worked best on her own. That gave her two choices. She could tell the truth, that she was English and could understand every word. And what did he want? And where did he keep his parachute?
Or she could go straight into Russian. And confuse the hell out of him.
She sighed inwardly. Her mother’s ‘manners maketh man, pet’ maxim ringing in her ears.
English it is.
‘English. How can I help you?’
‘Uh, nothing. Just … well, just interested.’
Definitely no threat.
‘I need to go for a pee and get some coffee. In that order. I’m heading that way.’ Sam pointed in the direction of what looked like a cafe, just across the road.
‘Oh. Uh. Do you mind if I join you?’
She assumed he only meant the coffee part.
‘Be my guest.’
Sam traipsed off in the direction of the down-at-heel cafe. She was four steps ahead of him before he had chance to pick up his military bag and follow her.
Austin had no idea why he had accosted the rather fierce-looking woman he’d first seen at the airport. She may only be, in his vernacular, ‘slight’, but her demeanour spoke a different language. She was sharp and uncompromising. No time for small talk. Like a female marine.
But she wasn’t unkind.
She was just direct.
Apparently, as they headed back across the tarmac to their bus - a thick and strong coffee to the better, she worked for the British government in geological survey. She was just a scribe - more like a glorified secretary - for a team of engineers. She was meeting her team in Puerto Ayacucho where they would be taking a boat up-river to look at opportunities for damming the Orinoco. She didn’t sound knowledgeable, but oozed an odd confidence. That dichotomy surprised him.
‘Isn’t it a bit odd that you’re travelling on your own?’ He’d asked.
She’d laughed at that point. Almost scoffed at his question.
She’d missed the original flight from London and had been given instructions from the team to make her own way to Puerto Ayacucho. He thought that had been a tough call - one he would never have made for any team member of his.
She’d pressed him on what he was up to. He’d come very close to blurting out the truth, but held back. He made up some cock and bull story about his son’s plane going down in the jungle, near to Puerto Ayacucho. He was a pilot flying for some local firm and the aircraft had come down in a storm. He was hoping to visit the site where the plane had crashed. Where he’d lost his son.
As he went into a little of the detail about the crash - especially the line about it ‘being close to the Colombian border’ - the woman, whose name was Annie, became even more intense. It was as though he’d touched a n
erve.
‘A plane crash? Near the Colombian border?’ She’d pressed.
‘Yes. I don’t think it was reported anywhere, so you won’t have heard about it.’
They’d quickly moved on. She’d called for the check - and insisted on paying. ‘It’s on Her Majesty’. And then they’d made their way back to the bus.
The whole exchange had been strange. Like they had both been sparring with each other. Finding each other’s weaknesses. As if they knew each of them was lying - both of them covering a different story.
From his perspective it was a wholly unsatisfactory exchange.
Which was now over. He wouldn’t talk to her again at Puerto Ayacucho. He’d go his own way.
Flemingstraße, Munich, Germany
Frank stared across at Wolfgang. The German’s eyes flickered and his fingers rested on the keyboard. Then his head dropped forward, only to be sharply righted as he broke through sleep, back into semi consciousness. Frank knew how he felt. It was - he checked - 19.55. They were both looking at another night with little or no sleep. The search for the coordinates of the satellite control centre had sent them in different directions. Frank was working with GCHQ on the known phone records; Wolfgang was hacking into the Venezuelan phone company CANTV. His ambition was to follow the landline number that Freddie called in Amazonas directly to its source.
Currently, though, Wolfgang was snoozing more than cruising. Frank couldn’t blame him. He’d give him a nudge in a couple of minutes. Maybe he’d call Elisabeth and get her to bring some coffee to the door? That seemed to have done the trick before.
Brrr, brrr.
It was his computer. GCHQ were on the line. He pressed the green phone ‘Connect’ icon.
‘Yes, Harry, what have you got for me?’
‘It’s dynamite, Frank. And we got it by complete chance. You know early on you asked us to monitor Sam Green’s mobile numbers?’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, the UK one, which I happened to check just now, was left a message about three hours ago. I’ve just pinged the transcript to you. Have a look.’
For Good Men to Do Nothing Page 32