Cocaine

by Donald Phillips

Chapter 11

  Santa Pola, Spain, November 1997

  The sky was a brilliant Mediterranean blue and only the slight change of colour showed where it and the sea met. The three men sitting in the comfortable cane deck furniture were sheltered from the heat of the morning sun by the white awning that covered the whole of the after deck of the sixty five foot, brilliant white diesel yacht. There was little movement of the boat in the water as the vessel was still moored by Its stern to a pontoon in the Santa Pola, Club Nautica, although the slight vibrations from the big marine diesels could be felt as they gently ticked over. The drinks in front of the men reflected this with the liquid sitting still in the glasses.

  Two of the men were in their sixties and grey haired, the third about forty and dark. The older men, Henri Parsouel and Gunther Hass, had been working together on and off for twenty years. They were both experienced and successful and neither had ever been convicted of a criminal act. The younger man, Roberto Crucero, had been invited to join the cartel because of his geographical position, his success as one of Spain's major drug barons and his language and criminal connections with South America.

  Hass was typically German in his dress and mannerisms which both spoke of efficiency and practicality. Short in stature, but well set up he could have passed as a businessman in any European capitol without attracting a second glance. The other two were far more flamboyant types of obvious Latin extraction. Henri Parsouel was of just over medium height and dressed in a well-cut, lightweight white hunter suite in a pale, creamy colour. He wore a silk cravat; a white Panama hat and hand made cream leather shoes, the exact shade on his suit. He seemed at ease with himself. Roberto Crucero too was well dressed in a nautical blazer, white duck trousers with deck shoes and he also affected a cravat. Of the three men he was the only one who carried any amount of excess weight and had the beginnings of what promised to be a real stomach in a few years. His black hair and brown eyes could only have originated in the Mediterranean.

  Henri Parsouel owned the yacht, the “Angelique,” although with his various interests around the world he rarely saw it and it was evenly less frequently seen to leave the harbour. It was going to leave the harbour for a few hours this morning however, but that owed more to the three men's desire to hold any conversation out of range of any possible electronic eavesdropping than a desire to sail the seas. For this was the quarterly meeting of one of the most successful drug cartels in Europe. This was the meeting of the organisation responsible for the import of ninety percent of all hard drugs to enter Europe, which explained the presence of three other men standing in a loose group at the stern rail. Men dressed in full suites in order to conceal the weapons they carried in the leather holsters under their arms, despite the heat of the morning.

  A deck hand came to the stern and at a signal from the bridge cast off the mooring and the beautiful yacht eased gently away from the pontoon and towards the harbour entrance, the smaller craft scuttling out of her way. Half an hour later she was steaming gently along, some three mile off of and parallel to the coast and the meeting came to order. The three men moved down into the comfort of the air conditioned saloon and the three minders were able to relax and take their turn at the table with a drink for an hour or so. Gunther Hass was his normal self.

  "I still say it's a risk to meet like this, out in the open where we can be seen together."

  The German accent carried the harshness of the eastern bloc and the face matched it.

  "Relax, Gunther." Roberto Crucero was a Spaniard, but only got excitable when watching football. The rest of the time his eyes were expressionless. "We have to meet and plan these things and face to face it carries far less risk than any other method." He waved at the distant shore. "I can't see anybody overhearing us from there. Can you?"

  Gunther Hass glowered at him.

  "The trouble with you Latinos is that you spend too much time enjoying yourselves and too little time on the business. One day it will catch you out and I do not want to be around when it does. We are running a business here for God's sake and there are plenty of people who would like to stop us. Enjoy your money if you want to, but do not ask me to take foolish risks like coming here and meeting in the open where every one can see us."

  Roberto Crucero spoke softly when he answered, but there was no mistaking the anger in his voice.

  "Gunther, I know you and Henri put more money into this than I did, but Its I who found the Borrodos to run the factory, Its I who had the contacts in Colombia to get the whole thing started and Its I who take the biggest risks when the stuff is landed, while you keep yourself at a safe distance. So do not talk to me of security risks. Henri and I know what we are doing as we have been in this business for years, so back off, amigo."

  He shook his head and raised his eyebrows at Henri Parsouel, who declined the invitation to join in the argument by turning his head to stare out of the window at the distant shore. Hass was a fanatic about security, but he agreed with Crucero. What is the point of making millions if you never allowed yourself to enjoy it? He allowed the heavy silence to build up for some moments before he chose to speak.

  "How we live our lives is up to us I think, Gunther. If you choose to stay locked up in that old castle of yours then that is your affair. Roberto and I prefer to live a little and we shall continue to do so. We have plenty of legitimate interests to explain the way we live. If you do not like that we can dissolve this partnership and go back to the way we worked before."

  Hass went a bright red, but held his tongue. He knew that the cartel was making more money than they had ever made, as individuals and he did not want to be the one who broke it. Besides, he knew that if he did the other two would get together to force him out of the drugs business altogether, if they left him alive. He gave in with a bad grace.

  "I just want us to remember that we are rich because we are careful and I would like us to stay that way. Have your fun, Henri, but remember the dangers we face."

  Crucero decided to play peacemaker. He gave Gunther Hass a friendly slap on the arm.

  "OK, Gunther, you old worrier. Henri and I will be careful and you will be the richest man in the graveyard. Now lets talk business."

  Mollified, Hass gave a small smile and the meeting began to discuss quotas, delivery dates and times and profit margins, just like any normal business.

  Back in London, Wayne Doolan was not relaxing in luxury with a drink in his hand. He was finding London outside of anything he had experienced. It was so hard. There were hard men in Liverpool of course and plenty of them, but here the whole ambience was hard. Kill or be killed and the devil take the hindmost. It had all started at Euston Station when he left the train.

  He gone straight to a phone booth and rang his old cellmate. He and Davey Cropp had shared a cell for six months and had got on really well considering they were in each other’s pocket for most of their waking hours. Davey was a professional driver. At least he had been, until leaving a building society along with two of his colleagues and in something of a hurry, he had made a slight misjudgement while cornering at over fifty miles an hour. Clipping the kerb and blowing out the tyre, he had rolled the car and all three of them through the window of a local butchers shop and subsequently into Her Majesties prison system. Doolan had come to consider him a close friend and he was not prepared for the reception he received when the phone was picked up after the third ring.

  "Yeah?"

  "Hello? Can I talk to Davey Cropp please?"

  There was a moment’s silence.

  "Who wants him?"

  "Wayne Doolan, is that you Davey?"

  There was a moment’s silence, then.

  "Hello, Wayne. Yeah, its me. What can I do for you mate?"

  The voice had returned to the way Doolan remembered it.

  "Well I could do with a bit of help, Davey and you said that if I ever felt like a change of scenery you could put me on to a good thing. So here I am, at Euston".... He got no further.

>   "How much change you got on you?" said Cropp, the voice back to where it had started.

  "Not much, about sixty pence."

  "Right, give me the number of your phone."

  Doolan complied.

  "OK, now put your phone down and wait."

  He complied again.

  After about a minute the phone rang and he picked it up.

  "That you, Wayne?"

  "Yes."

  "Right, I want you to tell me everything that's brought you down to London in such a hurry, you've only been out about three weeks by my reckoning. I won't interrupt unless I need to, but I want everything. Ready?"

  Doolan went through the whole of the last three weeks since his release from prison while Cropp listened, now and then asking a question to clarify a point. Then he told him to wait by the phone and he would ring him back.

  Doolan waited a nervous half hour during in which several people used the phone. One elderly lady was in the booth for over ten minutes and although to him it seemed like an hour, he dare not draw attention to himself by asking her to get a move on or opening the door and dragging her out. Then she left and he worried that Davey Cropp had found the phone engaged and given up. Then it rang. He leapt off the bench he had been waiting on and dived into the phone box, pulling open the door and snatching up the receiver all in one movement.

  "Yes?"

  Davey Cropp's voice answered him.

  "That you, Wayne? Good, now listen. Go to this address where they will be expecting you."

  He gave the address slowly and then repeated it.

  "Got that?"

  Doolan read it back to him.

  "Right. Sometime in the next few days someone will contact you. I can't tell you what his name will be, but as a ex-cell mate I can tell you this. If you want any help at all, be patient and stay put. This lot don't fuck about, but if they like your face you can earn a nice little living. OK, I'm off. Perhaps I'll see you sometime." The phone went dead.

  Although he hadn't expected the red carpet and the fatted calf, Doolan had expected someone, probably Davey, to come and get him. Also, the Davey he had just talked to on the phone was not the Davey of the top bunk, second cell on the left. He'd been a far more easy going bloke. Reflecting on what it all meant, he walked out of the front entrance and joined the queue waiting patiently for taxis.

  When the cab stopped at the address he had been given, he found it to be a large three-story town house of the type that has a basement reached by a separate flight of stairs. Unusually this house had not been turned into a warren of flats and bedsits, but bore a sign stating that it was, "Mother's Guest house". He walked up a short flight of steps to the large solid front door and used the big old fashioned and highly polished brass knocker he found there. After several seconds nothing had happened and he was just reaching for the knocker again when the door swung silently open on well-oiled hinges.

  The woman who stood there was tiny at no more than four feet ten inches. She was dressed in a smart grey, knitted two-piece, with a white frilled blouse, black stockings and black low-heeled shoes. She had cared for grey hair, worn in a shoulder length pageboy sort of style, a smooth, wrinkle free skin and the largest baby blue eyes he had ever seen in such a small face. She must have been over sixty, but it was still obvious that she had been a real beauty in her day. She smiled a beautiful gentle smile at him.

  "Good day, can I help you young man?" The voice, like the eyes, would not have been out of place in a young girl.

  Doolan smiled back, he couldn't help himself.

  "Good day to you, Madam. I understand I may be able to find accommodation here for a few days."

  He found himself on his best behaviour for some reason.

  The woman looked up at him.

  "I see, and may I have your name please?"

  Again the angelic smile.

  "Of course Its Wayne Doola...er, er, sorry, I'm sorry. How stupid. Its King. Mr Graham King."

  He mentally kicked himself and vowed that he would have to do a lot better than that. The woman obviously thought so too for the smile had been replaced by a small frown, when she spoke again much the warmth had gone from her voice.

  "Well, if you have definitely decided you are Graham King you had better come in. I have been expecting you." She turned towards the house. "Come on then."

  Doolan felt he had been tested and found wanting. He grimaced and picking up his bag followed her inside the house. Once in the dark old-fashioned hall she turned towards a door that evidently led into one of the front ground floor rooms.

  "Wait here please" she said over her shoulder.

  A few moments later she returned again holding a key attached to a large wooden disc that bore no number. She had obviously forgiven him for the farce outside because she once more gave him the benefit of the beautiful smile.

  "Its the attic room at the top of the stairs, its three rooms really, made into a small flat. There's a shower and toilet, a small lounge with a television and of course the bedroom. Its also got all you need for making tea or coffee and a supply of biscuits, so you really need not leave it."

  Sweet old lady or not she managed to make the last sentence sound like an order.

  "There is also a telephone, but I'm afraid it only accepts incoming calls."

  She handed him the key and then put her head on one side like a small pretty child.

  "Its at the top of the last set of stairs. Take no notice of the rope across them, that's just to keep my normal guests out." She stressed the word normal as if to emphasise the fact that he was not. "All your meals will be brought to you, starting with luncheon in half an hour."

  He roused himself to head towards the stairs and then stopped and turned back.

  "Oh by the way" he asked, "what do I call you, Mrs?

  She gave him the full benefit of the angelic smile one more time.

  "But it's on the front of the house, Mr King. All my gentlemen call me Mother."

  She turned and without a backward glance walked into the room from which she had fetched the key. For a couple of seconds Doolan stood there too bemused to move. Then he shook himself and picking up his holdall began to climb the stairs. He wondered what the hell sort of organisation he was dealing with that used little old ladies. He shook his head. He would have to go along with it as he was out on a limb at the moment and Davey Cropp was the only contact he had here in the big city.

  The rooms were as described and furnished in everyday anonymous. A quick look around showed him that there was no view; the only windows were skylights and no drinks cabinet either. After ten minutes he switched on the television and got Eurosport. Experiment showed him that all the other channels just showed an angry white static. Not really being interested in last months truck racing he switched off and lay down on the bed to get his thoughts in order.