Dirty White

by Brian Freemantle

  Brennan looked down at the folders. “We could subpoena you.”

  “Which would make me a hostile witness, so I’d need a lawyer of my own. He’d have to ask me about how the original thing was set up, in the Caymans, which didn’t happen the way it was explained in court. It might give Scarletti grounds to appeal to the Supreme Court,” said Farr.

  Brennan looked at the broker across the rim of the glass. “You’ve really thought this out, haven’t you?”

  “Like I said, that’s all there is. You won’t have a money trail, like last time. But you should be able to get enough evidence.”

  “On the phone, to Washington, you said you wanted to trade,” reminded Brennan. “What is it you want in return?”

  Farr told him, aware as he talked of Brennan’s change of attitude, a stiffening in the chair in which he sat.

  “In court you testified that it wasn’t the Gomez you saw in Lang’s office.”

  “I know what I testified in court,” said the broker.

  “So why this!”

  “I just want to know, that’s all.”

  “No,” refused Brennan. “That’s not all.”

  “Again, that’s all there is,” said Farr, in a refusal of his own. “You’ve got some sort of monitor, haven’t you? If not your own people, then someone at the embassy? Drug Enforcement people, perhaps?”

  Brennan sat for a long time without replying. Then he said, “So that’s how it was!”

  Farr stared back at the man, saying nothing.

  Brennan said, “You going to tell me what you’ve done?”

  “No,” said Farr.

  “I’ll need a reason to initiate protection again,” said Brennan.

  “I didn’t ask for protection; don’t want it,” said the broker. “All I want is what I’ve asked for.”

  “Stupid son of a bitch!” said Brennan.

  “Fuck you!” said Farr.

  Ramos let the suggestion emanate from Gomez and was himself the recognized and trusted liaison between the Colombian and Navarra, who agreed to proceed. Both sets of lawyers flew to the islands, basing themselves in Honolulu and commuting when it was necessary to Maui. Ramos decided he’d been extremely clever, choosing the way to get Gomez and Navarra into American jurisdiction and subsequent arrest, planting the idea of a necessary visit—for a purchase of such magnitude—in the minds of the lawyers for them to do the persuading, instead of himself. Because even after they were arrested and jailed, no suspicion had to be attached to him: he had to be clean, to continue. A week before the intended visit, the separate teams of lawyers returned respectively to La Paz and Medellin, for the necessary authority to initiate the deposit payment from the Panamanian company established by Roberto Meiss, against the full settlement figure. The Maui developers required twenty percent, which was fifty million dollars against the agreed and negotiated completion sum of two hundred and fifty million dollars.

  When the lawyers called by appointment at Meiss’s office on the Plaza Cinco de Mayo, the Panamanian looked at them in obvious bewilderment.

  “What are you talking about!” demanded Meiss. And produced the accounts which showed the company to be just under twenty thousand dollars in credit.

  Epilogue

  Farr stared down at the photographs, wanting to feel something but feeling nothing at all, neither satisfaction nor revulsion nor disgust. Would it have been better if he could have identified either man from the bloodied mess? He didn’t think so. It was easier to remember Howard’s mutilated body. And imagine Harriet’s.

  “Ever seen anything like that?” asked Brennan.

  “No,” said Farr.

  “Both in Medellin,” said the FBI supervisor. “They’re used to violence in Colombia but our man there, a guy called Green, says not even the authorities know anything like this. Autopsy reports say there wasn’t a torture they hadn’t been subject to before they were killed. They actually—”

  “I can see.” Farr did not need an explanation.

  “Jorge Herrera Gomez and a guy called Orlando Ramos, continued Brennan. “There was some dental information—just—and some sort of fingerprints. We had Ramos on photo record, too—from the time when we first tried to identify Gomez’s man.”

  “They must have suffered,” said Farr, handing the pictures back to the other man.

  “Difficult to imagine just how much,” said Brennan. He waited in vain for the broker to speak and then went on, “Authorities think it was some sort of gang war, between rival factions …” The American stopped again. Still Farr did not attempt to speak. “They’ve no idea what it could have been about. The war, I mean …”

  “Probably never will have,” said Farr. “These things don’t seem to become public, do they?”

  “You have any idea why it could have happened?”

  “None at all,” said Farr. It would have taken only days, he thought; maybe it was the same day that Navarra’s lawyers learned there was no money left. Farr intentionally made it as easy as possible for Navarra’s attorney to trace from the transference document in Ramos’s name the second company created by the lawyer Francisco Zarak: the company registered in the name of Jorge Herrera Gomez and Orlando Ramos weeks in advance of the other by Farr’s two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, with the sole object of cheating Julio Navarra of a hundred million dollars. The Bolivian might have exacted his own revenge for what the man imagined to have happened but he was never going to be able to recover his money. Farr wasn’t surprised at the extent of the torture.

  “You wanna know something?” asked the FBI man.

  “What?”

  “I don’t believe you. I just wish to hell I knew how you made it happen.”

  Farr refused to be drawn into any boast.

  Brennan sighed, resigned. Abandoning the attempts, he said, “Looks like we’re going to be able to bring something against the Accadio family. It’ll take some time, but I think we can do it.”

  “I’m glad,” said Farr.

  “You want to keep these photographs?” asked Brennan.

  “No.”

  The FBI man stood, replacing them into his briefcase. He looked down at the broker and said, “I wish—after what you did—that you could bring them back, Harriet and Howard. But you can’t, can you?”

  “No,” Farr finally conceded. “I can’t bring them back.”

  Postscript

  Malcolm: Let’s make us medicine of our great revenge.

  Macduff: He has no children. All my pretty ones?

  Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?

  What? All my pretty chickens and their dam,

  At one fell swoop?

  SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth

  A Biography of Brian Freemantle

  Brian Freemantle (b. 1936) is one of Britain’s most prolific and accomplished authors of spy fiction. His novels have sold more than ten million copies worldwide, and have been optioned for numerous film and television adaptations.

  Born in Southampton, on the southern coast of England, Freemantle began his career as a journalist. In 1975, as the foreign editor at the Daily Mail, he made headlines during the American evacuation of Saigon: As the North Vietnamese closed in on the city, Freemantle became worried about the future of the city’s orphans. He lobbied his superiors at the paper to take action, and they agreed to fund an evacuation for the children. In three days, Freemantle organized a thirty-six-hour helicopter airlift for ninety-nine children, who were transported to Britain. In a flash of dramatic inspiration, he changed nearly one hundred lives—and sold a bundle of newspapers.

  Although he began writing espionage fiction in the late 1960s, he first won fame in 1977, with Charlie M. That book introduced the world to Charlie Muffin—a disheveled spy with a skill set more bureaucratic than Bond-like. The novel, which drew favorable comparisons to the work of John Le Carré, was a hit, and Freemantle began writing sequels. The sixth in the series, The Blind Run, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel. To date,
Freemantle has penned fourteen titles in the Charlie Muffin series, the most recent of which is Red Star Rising (2010), which brought back the popular spy after a nine-year absence.

  In addition to the stories of Charlie Muffin, Freemantle has written more than two dozen standalone novels, many of them under pseudonyms including Jonathan Evans and Andrea Hart. Freemantle’s other series include two books about Sebastian Holmes, an illegitimate son of Sherlock Holmes, and the four Cowley and Danilov books, which were written in the years after the end of the Cold War and follow an odd pair of detectives—an FBI operative and the head of Russia’s organized crime bureau.

  Freemantle lives and works in London, England.

  A school photograph of Brian Freemantle at age twelve.

  Brian Freemantle, at age fourteen, with his mother, Violet, at the country estate of a family acquaintance, Major Mears.

  Freemantle’s parents, Harold and Violet Freemantle, at the country estate of Major Mears.

  Brian Freemantle and his wife, Maureen, on their wedding day. They were married on December 8, 1956, in Southampton, where both were born and spent their childhoods. Although they attended the same schools, they did not meet until after they had both left Southampton.

  Brian Freemantle (right) with photographer Bob Lowry in 1959. Freemantle and Lowry opened a branch office of the Bristol Evening World together in Trowbridge, in Wiltshire, England.

  A bearded Freemantle with his wife, Maureen, circa 1971. He grew the beard for an undercover newspaper assignment in what was then known as Czechoslovakia.

  Freemantle (left) with Lady and Sir David English, the editors of the Daily Mail, on Freemantle’s fiftieth birthday. Freemantle was foreign editor of the Daily Mail, and with the backing of Sir David and the newspaper, he organized the airlift rescue of nearly one hundred Vietnamese orphans from Saigon in 1975.

  Freemantle working on a novel before beginning his daily newspaper assignments. His wife, Maureen, looks over his shoulder.

  Brian Freemantle says good-bye to Fleet Street and the Daily Mail to take up a fulltime career as a writer in 1975. The editor’s office was turned into a replica of a railway carriage to represent the fact that Freemantle had written eight books while commuting—when he wasn’t abroad as a foreign correspondent.

  Many of the staff secretaries are dressed as Vietnamese hostesses to commemorate the many tours Freemantle carried out in Vietnam.

  The Freemantle family on the grounds of the Winchester Cathedral in 1988. Back row: wife Maureen; eldest daughter, Victoria; and mother-in-law, Alice Tipney, a widow who lived with the Freemantle family for a total of forty-eight years until her death. Second row: middle daughter, Emma; granddaughter, Harriet; Freemantle; and third daughter, Charlotte.

  Freemantle in 1999, in the Outer Close outside Winchester Cathedral. For thirty years, he lived with his family in the basement library of a fourteenth-century house with a tunnel connecting it to the cathedral. Priests used this tunnel to escape persecution during the English Reformation.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental

  copyright © 1985 by Brian Freemantle

  cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

  This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media

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  New York, NY 10014

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