by Nick Oldham
Lopez grimaced. ‘Threat?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is this the way you treat informants if they begin to waver, if they wish to withdraw their services? Is this the way the FBI works?’
‘It’s the way I work.’
‘I have given you all I am going to give.’
‘Lopez. . I’m. . I need to get Mendoza and if you will not help me, then as far as I am concerned, you’re back on the shit pile with him. I can’t — or won’t — protect you any more.’
The expression in the Spaniard’s eyes almost froze Donaldson’s arteries.
‘I’m afraid, Karl, that I cannot afford for you to make threats like that. My own game plan is coming together now and I no longer need you. You were part of it once, but now it’s time to cut free. Coming out to Spain was a miscalculation on your part.’ He smiled the smile of a stingray.
Heavy rain suddenly began to fall on the street outside.
Donaldson shivered, heard a noise and turned quickly, plucked from his memories. A man walked out of the kitchen door and on to the terrace. Late fifties, he looked healthy and tanned, slim and fit. Donaldson stood up as the man thrust a hand at him.
‘John Elliot,’ he introduced himself.
‘Karl Donaldson.’
‘I think I may have just saved your life, Mr Donaldson.’
Two guys were behind Donaldson before he could react.
‘They are armed, Karl, and they will shoot you in the back without hesitation should I nod my head, or should you do anything idiotic.’
The men dragged Donaldson to his feet and quickly searched him, then forced him back on to the chair. ‘He’s clean,’ one said.
The men sat down at an empty table, maybe ten feet away. A manageable distance for a handgun — if that’s what they were armed with.
Lopez relaxed.
‘What’s this about?’ Donaldson asked, a wave of his hand indicating the new arrivals, but really meaning the whole situation.
Lopez looked pained. ‘Ambition, greed, power, lust, money, women. . you name it. . conspiracy of the highest order.’ He shrugged. ‘All those things.’
‘All in relation to you?’
‘Yes. . I either have them or crave them, I don’t mind admitting that. . and I have been conspiring to collect them all. It doesn’t really matter that you now know, because soon you will be dead and my words will go with you to your grave — if you can call it a grave.’
Outside, the rain beat down heavily.
‘Is this about you and Mendoza?’ Donaldson guessed, knowing it was a rhetorical and quite naff question, but he was working out how best to take on the two hoods sitting behind him.
‘Very much.’ Lopez warmed to it, shifting excitedly in his chair. ‘A bit like a Greek tragedy, only we are Spanish.’
‘So, a Spanish tragedy?’
Lopez laughed. Donaldson weighed up flight or fight options.
‘I have been scheming for years,’ Lopez admitted, ‘because I want what he has and now the time has come for me to make my move. I can hold back no longer.’
‘Is this a wise conversation?’ Donaldson gestured by tilting his head back towards the heavies behind him.
‘They were brought up on the streets of Madrid, fighting and killing for their very existence. They are merely brainless hoodlums, working conscientiously for whoever pays them at the time — and at the moment I pay them.’
‘Greed, lust, power, money. . my, my, my. . you have some things to tell me then?’
‘Nothing that will surprise you, I suspect.’
‘Try me.’
‘You were just a pawn in the game, to coin a phrase.’
‘Now to be dispensed with, I guess.’
‘I have been planning long-term the fall of Carlos Mendoza. . and you were simply one of the devices I used.’ Donaldson could see the eyes in Lopez’s head twinkling. Power-crazed bastard, he thought. ‘It’s been a long haul,’ the Spaniard sighed. ‘Planning, negotiating, influencing. . killing, even. It has taken time and guile to back Mendoza into this corner, one from which he will be unable to escape.’
‘I’m intrigued,’ Donaldson said genuinely. This was a story he wanted to hear before he worked out how to get free of this deadly situation — and take Lopez with him.
John Elliot had a pleasant expression, as though he was always on the verge of breaking into a grin of self-satisfaction. He seemed content and at peace with the world around him. Sitting next to Donaldson at the table on the terrace, the American found himself to be a little envious of the man who, it seemed, had everything he wanted out of life.
‘I’m a retired cop, actually. Been here since the day of my retirement, just over seven years ago. This place was really run down and it’s only in maybe the last eight, ten months that it’s all come together. Been real graft.’ Elliot sipped from his glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, a little misty-eyed at the memories.
‘You seem to have it sorted.’
‘Mm,’ he agreed, ‘but I couldn’t have done it without the pension behind me. I’ll never make any money from this place, unless I sell it, but that’s not the point, is it?’
‘Any regrets?’ Donaldson asked.
‘Maybe one. . the wife couldn’t stand it. The hard work and discomfort that renovating the place took. No shops within twenty miles. She upped and left four years ago. Haven’t heard from her since. Not even sure if I’m divorced or what.’
Donaldson regarded Elliot. Perhaps he hadn’t got everything.
‘Maria decided to stay. I couldn’t have pulled it together without her, but I think she’s restless now, which is fair enough. I don’t intend to hold her back if she wants to leave.’ He sighed wistfully.
‘How do you make money, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘Pension — as I said. Olives and lemons. I write articles occasionally about British ex-pat life on the Costas and I paint a little. Started selling the odd canvas. . it’s not much. Maria teaches English as a foreign language down in Torrevieja, so we make ends meet.’
‘Sounds a good life.’
‘It has its ups and downs like any other.’ Elliot finished his cold drink. ‘So, Mr Donaldson, now you’ve had a potted history of my life, how did you end up half-drowned in a flooded river bed?’ He turned to him, waited for an explanation.
Lopez had stepped on to an unstoppable train now as he shared his Machiavellian scheming.
Donaldson had witnessed this type of ‘opening the floodgates’ from felons before. At times when they felt comfortable, they would reveal all, hoping that the recipient would let them bask in the limelight and fuel their already outrageous egos. Lopez obviously felt he could blab to Donaldson, which he actually found very worrying. It was like the Bond villain explaining his master plan to the secret agent whilst Bond was pinned to the circular-saw table, because the villain knew that Bond was about to die a most horrible death.
For James Bond, substitute Karl Donaldson.
‘Where should I begin?’ Lopez said thoughtfully. ‘Not at the beginning. That is too far back. All you need to know is that Mendoza worked his way up the crime ladder until he was doing business with the Cosa Nostra in Sicily. They loaned him money to carry out operations for them, he paid them back and both grew rich. . a happy situation. I have known Mendoza for many years. We were gang members in Madrid as kids, running protection rackets, stealing, hurting people. I followed him up the tree until I was well placed in the’ — Lopez shrugged here — ‘thing that he calls his organization.’
Donaldson pretty much knew the history of Miguel Lopez, but he let the man talk uninterrupted.
‘But I always wanted what he had, always believed I was the better man, and that is how my campaign started. Manoeuvring and manipulating him carefully and skilfully into positions where he was made to look, shall we say, less than competent? Situations in which the Mafia paymasters would start seeing him as a liability. . without, of course, him suspecting I was the
one responsible for doing it.’ He grinned at his own brilliance. ‘I was always the better brain.’
‘I’m sure,’ Donaldson said sincerely. ‘Examples?’
‘The loan he made to a gangster in the north of England. Marty Cragg. . a loan which would never have the chance of being repaid. . I made it happen. The loan was made with borrowed Mafia funds and in the end he was forced to kill Cragg and transfer the loan to his wiser brother, Roy. A man who now languishes in prison, unable to pay it back.’ Lopez grinned, shook his head sadly.
Donaldson scowled, remembering the murder of Marty Cragg. It had taken place at the same time and place as the murder of Donaldson’s undercover operative, Zeke. Both men had bullets put into their heads underneath a motorway bridge in Lancashire.
‘I know what you are thinking. Was I there?’ Lopez placed the palm of his hand against his chest. ‘Am I correct?’
‘Yep.’ Donaldson swallowed.
Lopez held Donaldson’s stare. ‘I was there when Verner killed Marty Cragg and the FBI agent,’ he confirmed.
Donaldson felt something surge through him.
‘Mendoza ordered the killing. Verner did the deed. And the knock-on was that the Cosa Nostra was very unimpressed by the way in which Mendoza dealt with the whole situation. Killing a federal agent is frowned upon and they became very twitchy.’
‘And you were there?’
‘I was there.’
‘OK.’ Donaldson held himself back from launching himself across the table and strangling him, but he did weigh up the odds of success. ‘Carry on.’
‘Whilst all this was going on, I was ingratiating myself with our Sicilian colleagues, whilst subtly destroying Mendoza’s reputation. Little by little. Then I gave you Verner on a plate. One of our best killers, killed himself by an unknown assassin. . you, I guess, Karl.’
Donaldson’s teeth ground loudly.
‘What was the story with the illegal immigrants and the drugs?’
‘The next big opportunity. Another Mafia-financed operation. Millions of pounds worth of cocaine and twenty illegal immigrants. At first I thought I would give them to you, then I changed my mind. I had something in place which I thought would be more effective.’
‘Hence the phone call telling me the lorry had changed.’
‘Hence that.’
‘I really need to make contact with the outside world.’ Donaldson said, sipping more coffee, freshly ground, tasting amazing, rich and slightly bitter. Donaldson looked at John Elliot. ‘I think my mobile phone went down the river. Can I make a call from the house phone, please?’
‘Under normal circumstances, you could,’ the ex-pat said. ‘However, the storm yanked down all the phone lines and we don’t have a mobile phone between us.’
‘Oh.’
‘That doesn’t mean to say we can’t still help you.’
Trapped by his own foolhardiness and now he was going to pay the penalty. He was still listening hard to Lopez, hoping he would remember everything, but the other part of his mind was formulating his escape plan.
‘I’ve been grooming people,’ Lopez boasted, ‘moving people into positions. . when I was in Manchester two, three years ago, I met a man with ambition. He wanted to become a major dealer, or should I say, I contacted such a man. Very ambitious, very determined. I began to deal with him. He had a good organization.’ Lopez chuckled at that thought. ‘He was sure he could set up the necessary infrastructure — he and I have been building up his business and suddenly he was ready for the big one — which I put his way, although he and I have never met, nor does he know my true identity.’
‘The drugs in the lorry?’
‘They were Mendoza’s drugs destined for another big Manchester dealer with whom there have been business ties for several years, a man called Sweetman. I let my ambitious man into the secret and suggested he might like to help himself.’
‘Making Mendoza look a fool.’
Lopez nodded sagely. ‘And also ensuring that my own man will come out of this. . not well.’
Donaldson looked puzzled.
‘My plan is now very simple, Karl,’ Lopez explained. ‘Very simple indeed. I am about to take over Mendoza’s organization on my terms. A management buy-out, you might call it.’
The vehicle was a battered old Land Rover. It bounced along the deeply rutted track, throwing the two people about inside it like balls in a bagatelle.
Donaldson held on to the door frame as his backside jolted out of the seat.
Maria gripped the steering wheel, holding the black rim grimly.
Donaldson eyed her, a mock-worried expression on his face. She caught his look, smiled radiantly.
‘How far before we get to a road?’ he shouted over the din.
‘This is a road,’ she teased, then relented. ‘Another mile.’
Donaldson worked it out, guessing that Elliot’s farmhouse was about four miles away from a real road, up narrow, treacherous lanes. ‘You do this journey often?’
‘Four days a week.’
‘Ahh — Torrevieja, teaching.’
‘It’s great for the bum,’ she shouted, hitting a boulder and pitching the Land Rover sideways.
Lopez had finished, told Donaldson everything he wanted to say. He stretched. ‘My men will now deal with you, Karl. Goodbye.’ He stood up.
‘This seems to go against your policy of killing federal agents.’
‘Not policy, Karl, best practice. . but having said that, no one will find your body, so no one will actually know if you are dead or alive. I’m sorry things did not work out for us, but you were simply an avenue I was exploring. It proved to be a dead end, not what I wanted from my perspective.’
Lopez clicked his fingers. As if on cue, there was a flash of lightning, followed almost immediately by a deep roar as thunder rent the atmosphere. The rain suddenly became torrential, beating down loudly on the roof of the restaurant. ‘The storms from the mountains have joined us,’ Lopez said. He coughed. ‘My men will deal with you cleanly and effectively. I owe you that much.’
‘You’re very kind. . but do you think you’ll get away with this? My people know where I am, who I’m seeing.’
Lopez shrugged indifferently. ‘I don’t really care. That’s a bridge I’ll cross when I come to it.’ He nodded to his men.
‘Up!’ a harsh voice ordered from behind Donaldson.
Donaldson glanced over his shoulder. Both of the heavies were on their feet, guns in hand, pointed at his back. They were big-calibre revolvers, unwieldy, but probably reliable and deadly at close range. Donaldson rose slowly, a cynical, defeated expression on his face.
‘You think you’ll take over from Mendoza?’ he sneered.
Lopez nodded confidently. ‘I have everything in place. It will be my inheritance. He would not have achieved anything had it not been for my business skills anyway. It’s only right that I now assume control.’
‘Somehow I doubt it,’ Donaldson said. Lopez shrugged, but a dark line of puzzlement crossed his face. ‘He’s too smart.’
‘Unlike you, my friend,’ Lopez said, dismissing the comment. He pointed at him for the benefit of his men and said, ‘Finish him,’ in Spanish.
They did not do it in the restaurant. They should have done, but they didn’t, and once Donaldson realized they were not going to blast him there and then, that they intended to drive him somewhere isolated, kill and dispose of him, he knew he had a chance. Their mistake.
He was in the back seat of a car, a big old Peugeot. Child locks were on and he was sitting directly behind the driver, one of the two guys from the restaurant. The other man was sitting in the front passenger seat, twisted round, his piece aimed lazily at Donaldson’s body mass. His forefinger was on the trigger and the gun looked dangerous.
They were confident guys. They had done this before, that much was apparent. Probably to some dumb hood or another, maybe more than once. They kept quiet, speaking only when necessary, the one in the passenger seat
keeping constant vigil on Donaldson.
The car headed out of Ciudad Quesada, then turned inland towards the weather. The wipers struggled against the volume of rain. The headlights, on main beam, hardly seemed to penetrate the darkness ahead. They left the main road and began to climb.
Donaldson considered going for the driver. He could lunge, arms going around the headrest, hands on either side of his neck, and snap the neck within four seconds. Too long. Four seconds was a lifetime in these situations. It would be long enough to see two big, nasty bullet holes in his chest.
He also thought about the pros and cons of going for the one with the gun. He was a fraction too far away. It could be done, but the angles were not favourable.
He would have to wait. . and there was also the problem of the car. Where would it veer to? Peering out into the rain, feeling the car go higher up steep mountain roads, there was a good chance that if he did try something, they would end up over a precipice. Donaldson wanted to come out of this alive. . so he waited.
The road became narrower, winding around hairpins, rising all the time against the atrocious weather.
He smirked, snorting a laugh down his nose.
‘What you laughing at?’ the guy in the passenger seat asked.
Donaldson regarded him with a chill. ‘The way you’re going to die,’ he said. The man’s face dropped. He shifted, then smirked.
‘Don’t you mean the way you are going to?’
‘No.’ Donaldson turned away and looked out of the window, seeing dark trees rising through the heavy rain, liking what he saw. The elements were on his side and also the fact that two street-hardened tough guys were contracted to kill him. To him, that put them down as amateurs.
Twenty minutes later they stopped.
‘As Mr Lopez said, this will be quick. You will not suffer.’
‘Please thank Mr Lopez for that.’
‘You stay seated,’ he was ordered.
The driver climbed out and went to Donaldson’s door whilst the other guy covered him. Donaldson knew this would be the only chance he had — one in the car, the other outside.
The driver had his gun in his hand now, pointed at Donaldson through the window. He put a hand to the door, pulled it open a fraction of an inch.