by Susan Lewis
The attempt at double-cross had unnerved them both, but it had also given them an advantage that they might not otherwise have had, as Rita’s surprise entrance meant that she had been able to force Pastillano’s emissary to drop his gun and at the same time it had enabled her and Michael to keep theirs. So now they were riding in the back of an old American car, their weapons close to hand and the depositions tucked inside Michael’s shirt. The thug who had come up to the room was sitting sulkily beside the driver, in no position to make any demands of his passengers who were now calling all the shots.
They said very little, however, as they began travelling higher into the mountains and deeper into the luxuriant density of the forest. Michael was in the grip of an icy calmness that, for the moment at least, was glazing over a murderous rage at the way Pastillano had attempted to snatch the depositions and hang on to Robbie. It told him more than anything how slim their chances were of getting Robbie back and he knew now with absolute certainty that should it prove necessary he would kill Pastillano without thinking twice.
Feeling Rita’s eyes on him he glanced at her briefly, then turned back to the passing darkness. With her flame-coloured hair, round, ruddy cheeks and rapidly blinking eyes, she wasn’t anyone’s idea of a trained killer, which was probably, Michael guessed, what had made her such a successful undercover agent. Certainly he was glad she was with him now, not only because of the way she had handled herself back at the hotel, but because he would have hated to be going into this alone.
‘When we get wherever the hell we’re going,’ she said softly, ‘I’m gonna keep this jerk who came into the hotel right here in the car. We’ll have to hope he matters to Pastillano, because if he doesn’t he’s not going to be much use. It’s a chance we’ll have to take.’
Michael nodded and she continued: ‘I don’t see any way they’re going to let you into the great man’s presence armed, so don’t even attempt it. Just hang on to the depositions and don’t part with them until they’ve handed over your kid. We’ll try making them bring him to the car. It could work, we don’t know until we try. If you’ve got to go some place out of my sight, then you’re on your own. It could be they’ll shoot you dead the minute they get the chance, take the documents and hang on to Cavan and Robbie to make sure no copies start surfacing in places they don’t want.’
Michael looked at her.
‘That’s the worst case scenario,’ she confessed. Then, nodding towards the sullen figure in front she said, ‘It all depends on him. If he’s someone, it could be we’re home and dry; if he’s no one, we’re history.’
Michael’s eyes moved to the back of the man’s squat, oily head.
‘I know,’ Rita whispered, ‘he looks like a no one to me too, but let’s try thinking positive.’
They’d been in the car almost an hour by the time they took an abrupt turn to the left and began winding down a steep, narrow road that offered an occasional glimpse through the trees of the glittering lights of a town below. Michael’s tension started to increase, as though a sixth sense were warning him they were coming close to their destination. Rita must have sensed the same, for she picked up the gun beside her and touched it lightly to the wrinkled flesh at the base of the man’s skull. He began to turn, but she prodded him harder and he gave up.
‘How much longer?’ she asked him.
‘We there now,’ he answered in a voice so dense with anger it was clear how badly he’d screwed up. Worse still, Michael thought as they approached a long, low, windowless building almost totally obscured by trees, was that he was now bringing two armed individuals on to Pastillano’s territory, an eventuality Pastillano and his parasites were very probably unprepared for.
As they drew closer he noticed a waterfall cascading off to the right and felt his heart tighten. There was no doubt this was where he had been brought earlier. He turned at the recognition of another sound and saw two large garage doors at either end of the building, one of which was starting to glide open. The driver was moving towards it with the obvious intention of entering, until Rita barked at him to stop right where they were. Then, turning to Michael she glanced at his gun, indicating he should pick it up and put it to the back of the driver’s neck. Michael did so and was suddenly aware of how hard his heart was beating.
‘Does your friend here speak English?’ she asked the man with oily hair.
He shook his head.
‘Then you tell him to go inside and bring Pastillano and the boy out here,’ she instructed.
‘Who Pastillano?’ he responded.
‘Don’t get smart,’ she sneered, prodding him with the gun. ‘Now tell him to do like I said and you and me, we’re gonna wait right here. If he’s not back in two minutes you’ll be eating your brains? Comprendo?’
He turned his head slightly, presumably translated Rita’s command, then watched the driver get gingerly from the car.
‘Two minutes!’ Rita reminded him, cocking the gun.
‘Dois minutos!’ he shouted.
The driver started to run, disappearing swiftly inside the garage, whose interior was as tenebrous as the pitch night sky.
Michael looked around at the towering black trees and tangled, impenetrable scrub. There was no movement, no sound beyond the high-pitched chafing of crickets, yet the sense of being watched was as eerie as the silent bunker before them. He looked at it, trapped in the headlights, and thought of the iniquity it housed.
‘What’s your name?’ Rita demanded of the man in front.
No answer.
‘Name,’ Rita repeated, prodding him.
‘Cardoza,’ he answered.
‘Oh, like you’re the president,’ she replied, smacking his head with the gun.
‘Same name,’ he cried. ‘I got same name. Cardoza.’
‘OK, Cardoza,’ she said, lifting her watch into the light, ‘looks like you’re about to find out your value around here. And while we’re waiting, you can tell us exactly where inside that summer camp over there we’re gonna find this gentleman’s relatives, should a search prove necessary.’
‘I not know what you mean,’ he answered.
‘Oh, sure you do,’ she replied. ‘This is the Inferno, isn’t it?’
‘I not know what you mean, Inferno,’ he said.
Rita glanced at Michael, then smashed the butt of her pistol down on Cardoza’s head. ‘The Inferno,’ she repeated. ‘You know, the place where Pastillano puts on his private shows. I expect you bring the players here for him, don’t you, Cardoza? What is it you do? Break their feet? Is that your speciality? Or is it you who gets them to sit in acid, or pulls out their teeth? Maybe you get in on the rape too? Is that what lights your fire, Cardoza? Defenceless boys …’
‘OK,’ Michael broke in.
Rita looked at him, her face hard with anger.
‘All we need to know is where Cavan and Robbie are likely to be,’ Michael said, expecting an army of cohorts to come swarming out at any minute complete with masks, AK47s and enough ammunition to blow them all from here to life everlasting.
‘Is impossible to say,’ Cardozo spluttered as Rita pulled his head back and jammed the pistol under his jaw. ‘Maybe they downstairs, in tank, or maybe they with the boss. Could be they not together. Is impossible to say.’
‘How do you get to the tank?’ Michael said.
‘Through there,’ Cardozo answered, pointing at the garage.
‘Any other way?’
‘I not know. I no think so.’
He squealed as Rita tightened her grip.
‘Try harder,’ she barked. ‘Any other way?’
‘Around back, I think. There is fire stair. Maybe there is door there, I not sure. I no remember.’
Rita was quiet for a moment, then said, ‘You know what worries me about you, Cardoza, is how fast you’re giving up this information. I mean, either you’re a lily-livered slimeball, or there’s something going down here you’re not telling us about. So which is it?’
Rita turned quickly to Michael as he nudged her, then followed his eyes to the garage. Two men were emerging, both carrying automatic pistols and neither weighing less than two hundred pounds.
As they approached, Michael’s hand tightened on his own gun and as the blood began pounding through his head he heard Rita murmur, ‘So, Cardoza, are you a Mr Big around here, or are you a Mr Nothing? I guess we’re about to find out. Crack the window, then sit on your hands.’
Cardoza was shaking so hard he could barely move.
‘The window,’ she hissed, banging his head against it.
Michael’s heart was in his throat. A Mr Big wouldn’t be this scared. His eyes returned to the advancing figures. They were coming up on his side of the car.
‘You will please come with us,’ one of them said, as they reached him.
Fear cleaved through Michael’s chest as he turned to Rita.
‘So far so good,’ she told him.
He looked at her.
‘Well they didn’t kill us yet, did they? Which could mean they want this sucker alive.’
Michael opened the car door and stepped out. The night was humid and airless, and alive with insect falsetto.
‘I will take the gun,’ he was told. ‘Where are the depositions?’
‘Where’s my son?’ Michael countered. ‘The deal was, I bring the depositions, you give me my son.’
‘The boy is inside. You will bring the depositions,’ the man responded and turned towards the garage.
Michael stayed where he was. ‘And my brother?’ he demanded.
The man turned back. ‘Your brother was not part of the deal.’
‘Then make him a part of the deal,’ Michael said.
‘You are in no position to make demands. Remember, we have your son.’
Michael leaned back into the car and picked up the depositions. ‘The chances are they’re going to shoot me the minute I get inside,’ he said to Rita. ‘If they do, shoot him, then get the hell out of here.’
Rita’s eyebrows were raised. ‘You giving orders?’ she joshed.
‘For your own good,’ he responded and straightened up.
The two men positioned themselves either side of him as they escorted him across to the garage, through a wide, heavy door at the back and into a large, brightly lit room where there were nothing but masked men in dark clothes, each brandishing an automatic pistol. They were standing absolutely still, feet uniformly apart, guns trained on Michael’s head and heart. There was no furniture, nothing on the gnarled stone walls, nor on the white concrete floor. The room was a perfect square with no windows, two doors and nowhere to hide.
Michael looked from one concealed face to the next. There were half a dozen of them, without doubt all members of Pastillano’s grupo de extermínio. He couldn’t help wondering how many children these monsters had brutalized and killed between them, and knowing that they were very probably military policemen, so say protectors of the innocent, sickened him right through to his soul.
He waited motionlessly for someone to speak. Fear thrummed in his chest and drove through his brain. His face was taut, every muscle in his body strained. The envelope containing the depositions was dangling from his right hand, his left fell loosely at his side.
A minute or more passed. Nobody moved. The only sound came from the hectic night forest, bursting in through the open door behind him. Sweat trickled from his temple and ran into his neck. Then, hearing footsteps approaching he moved his eyes to the other door.
As it opened the men in the room parted, creating a kind of aisle with Michael at one end and the man who was entering at the other. He was short, overweight, with a shining bald pate, pendulous cheeks and a pursed, fleshy mouth. His bulbous eyes glinted like newly minted coins, his hands and throat were weighted with gold.
‘Mr McCann,’ he said in accented English, ‘you have brought the depositions I see.’
He was looking at the envelope in Michael’s hand. Michael made no move. There was no doubt in his mind now that he was going to die, for the only reason Pastillano would have shown himself was because he had no intention of letting him out of there.
‘Perhaps you would like to hand them over,’ Pastillano suggested affably.
Michael’s eyes were like steel. ‘You’ve tried to escape your part of the bargain once already tonight,’ he reminded him. ‘Are you going to try again?’
Pastillano’s thick black brows rose. ‘Try?’ he repeated in a curious drawl. ‘Are you saying you are going to resist when you are surrounded by armed men?’
‘What I am saying,’ Michael corrected, ‘is that you are a coward.’
Pastillano’s eyes held steady as every gun in the room made ready to fire. ‘Are you a fool, Mr McCann?’ he enquired.
‘Are you a murderer and a sodomite and all the other things you are accused of in these statements?’ Michael replied.
Pastillano’s nostrils flared. ‘What you have there, Mr McCann,’ he said tightly, ‘is a pile of trash, false declarations made by the notorious Estrela gang whose drug activities are on the verge of being shut down by the Rio state police. They are prepared to go to any lengths to stop that happening.’
‘Is that so?’ Michael said sarcastically. ‘Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind explaining why you have abducted my son and my brother, and are holding them to ransom for these statements, if, as you say, they are false?’
‘False though they are, they could still do me considerable harm,’ Pastillano confessed.
‘But surely a man in your position has no need to resort to kidnapping and torture in order to save his own skin,’ Michael reminded him. ‘Unless, of course, the charges against him are true.’
‘I can assure you they are not,’ Pastillano responded.
‘Then you will have no problem in releasing my son and my brother,’ Michael told him.
Pastillano stared at him hard, his narrowed, glinting eyes seeming to pierce right through his skull. Then, putting a hand out to one side he clicked his fingers. The door behind him was still open and Michael’s insides began to solidify as a man came through carrying a small boy with a thick line of black tape across his mouth. The boy’s deep-blue eyes were wide with fear as he looked around the room. As they came to rest on Michael, Michael felt his heart collapsing. Then a terrible rage suddenly seized him, almost plunging him into violence, as he struggled with the urge to annihilate every man in the room for ever laying a single hand on his son.
Pastillano was watching him closely, as though waiting for the explosion until, realizing it wasn’t going to come, he looked disappointed and said, ‘Our arrangement was, the boy for the documents,’ he reminded him and held out his hand.
Michael tore his eyes from Robbie and fixed them on Pastillano.
Pastillano smiled his encouragement. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘the child is right here and I assure you I am a man of my word.’
Knowing he had no alternative, Michael started towards him. As he moved he felt strangely weighted, slowed by suspicion, distanced by fear. He wondered who the man was out in the car with Rita, for he surely was the only reason no one had yet opened fire. Pastillano’s piercing eyes bored into his. He felt Robbie watching him and wished he could tell him it would be all right. But his throat was too tight, his senses too concentrated on what might happen at any moment.
At last he was face to face with Pastillano. Pastillano inclined his head politely and Michael passed him the envelope. The ex-army colonel slid the documents out and scanned them. Then, looking at Michael again, he said, ‘Thank you, Mr McCann.’
Michael watched him and felt revulsion and terror slide through him as his smile started to widen. He heard, rather than saw, the click of fingers and before he could move a muscle a gun was pressing against his head.
Pastillano wa
s still smiling. ‘You see, Mr McCann,’ he said, ‘you are a fool. A fool to hand these over and a fool to think your son will be returned,’ and nodding to the man holding Robbie he said, ‘get him out of here.’
The man started to turn. Michael’s eyes darted to him, then suddenly in one lightning move of madness and with a strength he never knew he possessed, he slammed an elbow into his captor’s gut, spun round, grabbed the gun and hooking Pastillano around the neck jammed it right into his face.
It had happened so fast, and with such an insane precision and confusion of bodies, that not a single shot had been fired.
Michael glared over Pastillano’s shoulder at the thwarted men. He was breathing too fast, his pulses were exploding. ‘One move, any of you, and I’ll blow his fucking head off,’ he shouted, edging round so he had them all in his sight. He looked at the man holding Robbie. ‘Put him down!’ he barked.
The man didn’t move.
‘I said put him down!’ Michael yelled and yanked Pastillano’s head back so hard he heard his bones crack.
‘Ponha a criança no chão,’ Pastillano choked.
The man did as he was told, keeping his eyes fixed on Michael, as he lowered Robbie to the ground.
‘Come here,’ Michael said to his son, his voice roughened by adrenalin and terror.
Robbie ran to him.
‘Get behind me,’ Michael said, his eyes darting frantically about the room. He wished to God he knew what he was going to do now. ‘You,’ he said to one of the men who had brought him in, ‘go back to the car and tell the woman to bring in Cardoza.’
The man looked uneasily at the others.
‘Do it!’ Pastillano seethed, his voice strangled by Michael’s grip on his throat.