Cocaine

by Donald Phillips

Chapter 23

  East Germany, September 1999

  Gunther Hass was angry although he was too careful not to let it show on his face. This was because he was a careful man in everything he did. He was dressed in the typical German business fashion of some years ago with a dark grey, pin striped, slightly old fashioned, double breasted suit with a white shirt and dark blue tie. His iron grey hair was cropped close in the military fashion and he studied the world with his pale blue eyes through stainless steel, square framed spectacles. He looked to be in his early sixties and his passport would have confirmed this although he was in fact just coming up to his seventy first birthday. On the desk in front of him was a calf skin briefcase and an antique silver cigar case, both of which spoke of money.

  He selected a cigar from the case and reaching into the pocket of his jacket, produced a small stainless steel tool with which he expertly cut the tip from the cigar. He took out a book of matches and lit one, carefully waiting until the sulphur had burned out before applying the flame to the end of the cigar. He drew slowly and carefully and then removing the cigar from his mouth examined the tip. It burned evenly. He permitted himself a small nod of satisfaction and only then gave his attention to the man across the other side of the desk.

  "Well, Henri, you appear to have yourself quite a problem, what do you expect me to do about it?"

  The other man gave a conciliatory smile and sat forward in his chair, removing the hat he was wearing and brushing some imaginary dust from his immaculate grey suit with its brim before speaking. His full head of silver hair was cut slightly on the long side and you could have been forgiven for mistaking him for a politician or an American Presidential candidate if it had not been for the decidedly Italian cut of his clothes and shoes.

  "Gunther.... We have been partners for many years, have we not? I think I am entitled to come to you for a little help once in a while."

  Wayne Doolan would have recognised the man sitting across the desk from Gunther Hass as the same person who had terrified him in the apartment in Spain. Henri Parsouel was now in what used to be East Berlin, in the offices of a fruit and vegetable packaging plant which was just one of the many businesses in which Hass had a financial interest. The office was still furnished in Eastern Block style with grey painted steel chairs, desk and filing cabinets, but contained a modern telephone system. The walls were a dirty shade of magnolia and in need of repainting. The only window, steel framed and rusty, looked out onto a concrete lorry park and a low storage shed fronted by loading bays, where boxes and boxes of tired looking vegetables were stacked up ready for dispatch to the East.

  Hass glowered at the other.

  "Help is one thing, but suicide is something else."

  He spat the words out and shook his head in disbelief.

  "From what I can see you have allowed your own daughter to become involved in your drugs business and get arrested. That is careless and very stupid. You then identified yourself to one of your employees as being connected with the business, just so that you could have the satisfaction of personally informing him of his death sentence, before you then allowed him to escape."

  He shook his head again in unfeigned amazement.

  "You have by these acts successfully smashed your own distribution network, a thing which the Police and the Excise people have failed to do for the last ten years and finally, you have been forced to flee the country only just in time to avoid a warrant for your own arrest." He shook his head a third time. "I agree you need help my friend, but what do you expect me to be able to do in the face of all this?"

  Although he was burning inside under the criticism being directed at him, however valid, it was, Parsouel accepted this tirade without answer, as he needed this man's help. He gave Hass a quizzical look from under his eyebrows.

  "You would also of course, be helping yourself, Gunther, or have you forgotten they have Thomas Jensen?" He gave a thin humourless smile. "If he talks they may just get a line on you. He would only have to tell them the name of the haulage company that brings the stuff into Britain and it will then be only a matter of time before they discover you own it."

  Hass waved his hand in dismissal.

  "They could never prove that I knew what it was being used for. After all, its one of over a hundred or more companies in which I have an interest. Still, I admit it would be an inconvenience to have to find another method of distribution and it is always better not to attract attention if you can avoid it." He glared at Parsouel. "As I have always told you, Henri."

  He carefully tipped the ash from the end of his cigar before continuing.

  "What are you asking from me?"

  Parsouel relaxed visibly. Hass was going to see the advantages of co-operation. He leaned forward across the desk, eager to give the other his reasoning.

  "As I see it we have two outstanding problems. The first one is Jensen. If he talks then the whole thing could go down the tubes, including your own distribution network and the Spanish operation. We have to stop him talking."

  "What do you suggest?"

  "Wait a minute, Gunther, there's more to it yet. The second problem is this little pig shit, Doolan. He is the reason we are in this position in the first place and he is the only other person apart from Jensen who knows that I am involved. Who can give evidence?"

  It was Hass's turn to look quizzical.

  "What about all the Estate Agency managers they have arrested? Don't they count at all? They can all testify too you know."

  He was becoming impatient. Parsouel smiled at him. A peculiarly evil little smile that showed what actually lived under the veneer of sophistication and worldliness he affected.

  "Yes, but only against Jensen. Not against me. They have never even met me and none of them realise that Jensen is not the top man. So take him and Doolan out of the picture and whatever suspicions they may have, they can't touch me. Let alone extradite me."

  "Extradite you?" Hass sat up straighter

  ."Yes. I'm am thinking of going to live in Colombia for a while with my daughter."

  Hass sat back in his seat and slowly nodded his head as the penny dropped. Of course, it was Parsouel's outrage that someone had involved his daughter in the business that had caused him to go off half-cocked in the first place. Now he was planning to murder both of the main witnesses against him and break his daughter out of jail, before going off to live in South America. Once there the British police would need to have a watertight case against him to have any hope of obtaining extradition. He sighed.

  "Thomas Jensen has been with you for over twenty years. Are you telling me that you are now willing to have him killed?"

  "Its him or me and I would ask you what alternative you can suggest?"

  Hass sighed again in resignation.

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "My daughter is in Holloway, in the remand wing awaiting trial. The police have kept her out of court until now because they did not know who she was." His face contorted in hatred. "And to think I identified her myself only hours before that bastard Doolan tipped them off about me. How was I to know where she was? I thought she had gone missing after some wild party or with some man. Even so, if Doolan had died in Spain I could have played the powerful business man and maybe got her of with a suspended sentence, I've played golf with the new Commissioner several times. As it is Doolan has blown all that and now I, Henri Parsouel, have to run like a frightened rabbit."

  He calmed himself with a visible effort and continued.

  "Jensen has two fractured legs and several other injuries including a fractured skull. He is in hospital under the guard of two uniformed police constables, which means they won't be armed. Even if they were he is in a public place and it should not be too difficult to get to him."

  He paused.

  "Doolan is being kept in a cell in New Scotland Yard so that we cannot get at him for the moment. However, I think its fairly certain that they will bring him in as a witness against Angel. After
all, he was the person using her to make the deliveries."

  He stopped and looked Hass squarely in the eyes.

  "Gunther, I know you well and I know that you are weighing up if you would be better off helping me or better off turning your back. Let me put it like this. If you help me in this thing I will turn over the whole business to you and disappear to Colombia with Angel. We can soon get a new identity, I have done it before." He shrugged. "Also, Its in your interest as well as mine to silence these two before it goes any further." He gave a thin smile. "Releasing Angel you will have to put down as a favour to me personally or call it the price you pay to buy me out of the business. We have been partners a long time."

  Hass stood up and came around the desk after laying his cigar carefully in the gunmetal ashtray. He held his hand out.

  "Henri, you are right. We have been partners for far too long to let it end any other way." He put his hand on the other mans shoulder as they shook hands. "Listen, I want you to go to Spain again. I will ring Roberto Crucero and make the necessary arrangements for them to hide you there. Then my friend, when Angelique is freed, they will take her to you and we can arrange to have you taken to South America by one of the freighters that bring the Cocaine over. Return freight so to speak. The voyage will give you a couple of weeks to explain to her what has been going on and why you have to move abroad."

  Parsouel nodded.

  "Thank you, Gunther. I knew we could work it out."

  Hass returned to his desk and his cigar.

  "I have a lot of arrangements to make, but before you go I am curious about one other thing, Henri. Would you mind telling me who the man that Doolan killed in Spain really was? Somebody called Beck, wasn't it?"

  Henri's face showed brooding anger as his gaze went inward and for several seconds he did not answer.

  "Henri?"

  He looked back up at Hass and when he spoke it was quietly and without his normal bounce.

  "He was family."

  "Your son?"

  "No, not my son. He was my nephew.”

  He sighed and wiped his face with his hand.

  “You see, although everyone knew her as Mother she was really my sister, Angela that is. She has worked for me ever since we left France after she killed a black marketeer who she said had insulted her. That made things too hot for us there with the Germans and the local underworld both after us, so we took what money we had and fled to England. Our parents had been dead for years. Terry was her child by someone she worked with in London. They were buying up bomb damaged property for me just after the war, so that no one would know who really wanted it and be able to drive the price up. She had only been out of prison for a few months after spending eight years in there, when she got pregnant." He explained quickly. "They were both sent down for beating up a man who refused to sell. Turned out his son was a policeman"

  He acted as if this was a standard business tactic that any businessman would use and approve of. Hass did not look shocked.

  "She wanted the boyfriend to marry her, but he refused and went off with another woman. Said he hadn't known when he made her pregnant that she was as mad as a hatter." He looked a little embarrassed. "It seems that she had wanted him to go with her and kill the man who's evidence had put them both away, but the boyfriend refused. He told her she was unhinged so Angela went to this man's house alone one evening and killed him and his wife herself. Cut their throats while they slept."

  Even Hass looked shocked at that, but Parsouel didn't notice. He shook his head. "The boyfriend was right to run away from her, she was always crazy like that."

  He looked up at Hass who's carefully controlled features now betrayed no emotion.

  "I had to pay some local lads a small fortune to go around there the next night and burn the place to the ground. You know the sort of thing. Upset a paraffin heater in the bedroom and leave an empty whisky bottle in the lounge. You know how its done, Gunther. That's when I brought Tommy Jensen in to run things because she was no longer reliable. After that I kept her where I could control her although her craziness has had its uses."

  He looked up again, a peculiar emptiness in his face that could almost have been grief.

  "So Angelique is all I have left now. Named after her aunt Angela you see."

  Hass nodded sympathetically.

  "I can see now why you want Doolan so badly if he killed your sister and your nephew. Well, we will get him for you. You go to Spain, Henri and leave the arrangements to me."

  He lifted the phone and pressed a button. A male voice answered him in German.

  "Can you come in please, Willie?"

  Wilhelm Slesser was his personal assistant. Blonde and Teutonic, six feet tall with the body of an athlete and hard, pale blue eyes, Willie was his idea of the perfect German male, efficient, intelligent and beautiful. Hass was a disciple of Mien Kampf and the theory of racial purity and had been since the age of fifteen when he had been called up by a German army desperately short of manpower to serve as a guard at one of the smaller prison camps. Not so well known as Dachau they never used to gas and burn their victims as being a small camp the economics were all wrong. No, they merely worked them to death and then shot them when they were of no more use. Needless to say in those days he was not called Gunther Hass.

  He had escaped the rapidly approaching Russian army by the skin off his teeth by throwing away his uniform hiding. He assumed the identity of a comrade who had not returned from Eastern Front at Stalingrad. He had been transferred there when manpower levels in the army were getting to a critical level and was now conveniently missing along with half a million other soldiers from both nations. Hass had discovered from his records at the camp that he had no living relatives and was of similar build and looks. He had assumed the man's identity and disappeared just before the Russians had overrun his camp.

  Willie clicked his heels and gave a small bow.

  "Herr Hass?"

  "Willie, can you arrange for Herr Parsouel to stay the night somewhere safe and cosy where he will not be asked embarrassing questions by nosy policemen?"

  "Of course, Herr Hass."

  "Good, do so and then come back here to me."

  Willie gave another small bow and opened the door, indicating that the other was to precede him. At the doorway Parsouel turned.

  "Gunther, we may not see each other again. Whatever happens, thank you my friend. It has been good working with you."

  When he had gone Hass opened his briefcase and spent the next hour going through the finances of the company in whose offices he was sat. He was just closing it again when there was a soft knock at the door.

  "Come in."

  Willie re-entered the room and came to a stop in front of the desk, his hands held together behind his back. Hass smiled. The old military habits were hard to shake off. Even after two years out of uniform and in a smart dark blue business suit, Willie looked like a soldier. He was actually an ex Major in the East German border guard, intelligence section, although all records of this had conveniently disappeared at the same time as Gunther's.

  "Relax, Willie and take a seat."

  He indicated the chair that until recently had been occupied by Henri Parsouel and waited until Willie had settled.

  "Willie, can we still make contact with the Irishman we did that little deal with last year? You know, when we wanted to remove that nasty government officer?"

  "Yes I think so, Herr Hass, but I am not sure if he is still in that business."

  Hass gave a snort of derision.

  "Listen, Willie. Hired killers are always in the business after they have done it once. They are trapped there, you understand?"

  Willie nodded.

  "Good. Now listen carefully and I will tell you exactly what I want to achieve." He smiled. "Then you can advise me on how we can best go about it." He cut and lit another cigar while Willie waited patiently.

  It had been raining when he left Berlin and again at Heathrow where he ch
anged flights. It was still raining now and that was doing nothing to improve his mood. Willie did not like dealing with the Irishman because he made him nervous. It was not just that the man was a killer, he could deal with that, it was that he enjoyed killing and he was totally unpredictable. To Willie, whose trained mind liked everything in the right place at the right time, the Irishman was like an unexploded bomb and Willie did not like unexploded bombs. He sighed. He would have preferred to use someone else for this operation, but the lack of time, and the fact that the Irishman had at one time actually worked for the British authorities and knew their methods well, left them no choice in the matter. Now he was sat in the rain in a hired Ford Mondeo at a cross roads in the middle of the Irish countryside. Dressed as a holidaying golfer complete to the well-used set of golf clubs in the boot, waiting for the Irishman to make contact.

  He turned on the ignition and flicked the wipers against the steadily pouring rain. Despite the fact that he had the window open some ten centimetres, risking the occasional face full of water when the wind suddenly veered, the car was slowly misting up. It was only eight thirty p.m. in the evening, but the leaden sky and the rain had meant that he had been driving on dipped headlights for the last half hour. No wonder this country was so green, it was permanently watered. He left the ignition turned on and examined the dashboard layout to find the rear de-mister. There it was. He pushed the button in. Wouldn't do to let the Irishman sneak up on him. It was the sort of joke he liked and he would make sure Willie would not forget it.

  "You can get a flat battery like that you know, Heinz."

  Willie's heart pounded violently as the mocking, soft Irish voice spoke to him from six inches away from his right ear, his right hand going instinctively for the gun that he wasn't carrying. Not in Ireland. Too damned dangerous if you got stopped at a roadblock. With a great effort Willie kept his eyes to the front until his heartbeat approached normal and he felt he could speak without showing the anger that was building up in him.

  "Hello, Irish. You're ten minutes late. That is not very professional old man. I might have thought I was at the wrong cross-roads and driven off."

  Willie deliberately used the term old man as he felt it would show the Irishman that he was not all together unfamiliar with habits of the British Army. No Eastern Block officer was allowed to be.

  "Bollocks! I was here a good five minutes before you arrived and if you had got out of the car to look at the signpost, like we agreed, instead of sitting on your backside in here because you don't like getting it wet, I wouldn't have had to waste fifteen minutes making sure it was you and not some gentleman from the Guarda setting me up." He showed his teeth in a wide grin across his weather beaten face. "Now open the door and let me in would you. Sure and I'm wet enough already and its not as if they are your own seats I'll be ruining, is it?"

  Willie knew that the last was delivered in stage Irish purely to poke fun at him for being caught so easily and he bit back his resentment with difficulty. He leaned over and lifted the lock button on the passenger door. The Irishman removed the oilskin cape he was wearing, revealing a full set of motorbike leathers underneath. He threw the cape into the rear and slid easily into the front passenger seat. He gave the grin again.

  "Now to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"

  From inside his leather tunic he produced a small note pad and a thin gold pen.

  James Simon Bryant had been a career officer in the British Army, Irish Guards. A fitness fanatic and an athlete, he had been an exemplary soldier, but found the Army in civilian life too tame for his taste. He had applied for the Special Boat Services and after undergoing exhaustive testing was accepted, just twelve months before the Falklands war had exploded into violence. His experiences in that particular action had left him with a taste for bloodletting and he felt he could not return again to the boredom of the army proper. Therefore, he had volunteered for service in Northern Ireland with the SAS. The fact that he was Irish and a catholic to boot made him a natural for covert operations against the IRA and his transfer was affected without difficulty. His black, tightly curled hair and brilliant blue eyes were not being exactly handicaps. In fact at five feet eleven inches and with the build of a rugby full back, he was Ireland personified.

  But from there it had all started go wrong. It did not take the Army very long to work out that more people were being killed or wounded in operations that Bryant was involved in, than all the other operations put together. The crunch came when a young couple were mistakenly shot dead for failing to stop when supposedly waved down at a checkpoint on a country road at the dead of night. They turned out to be Americans spending their honeymoon in the Old Country instead of the Provo gunrunners that Bryant and his lads had been expecting. They could hardly accuse him of running an execution squad without giving political seed corn to the IRA, but it was enough for the Army to turf him out of the Special Forces and back to his regiment, promoted to a full captain while his sergeant, who had only fired on Bryant's command, got to have the court martial when Bryant denied giving the order. Publicly they played the whole thing down as a tragic mistake cause by a combination of nervous soldiers, several had been killed in the area in the last few weeks, and the ignorance of the tourists in not knowing when to stop at a roadblock.

  Not prepared to go back to peacetime soldiering Bryant resigned within three months and went back to his native County Cork, supposedly to run his ageing parents farm. What nobody knew was that he had also started another, more profitable business on the side utilising the part time services of some of his former colleagues, now retired from the Army. They, like him, were finding it difficult to settle in civilian life and were not averse to using the skills they had obtained in the military for other things, if the money was right. This should have made him and Willie soul mates, but for some reason the chemistry was all wrong.

  Half an hour later they were finished. Bryant tucked the small packet of photos and his own closely written notes into his leather jacket and reached into the back of the car to retrieve his waterproof cape. He put it down near his feet and turned again to Willie.

  "All right, Heinz. How much?"

  Although Willie had never revealed to the Irishman his real identity, he resented the fact that he always called him Heinz in this derogatory manner. He looked at the Irishman making no effort to hide his dislike.

  "Bryant, you will push me too far one day and I will be forced to tell my boss that I believe you have become unreliable. You are not the only hit man in the world, you know."

  Bryant ignored him.

  "Three hundred and fifty thousand. Pounds that is. Sterling."

  "I was saying...."

  "And I said three hundred and fifty thousand, Heinz. Don't bullshit me. You need this job doing and you would pay twice that if I asked for it." He showed the white teeth again. "I want it in cash. Tomorrow, here at the same time."

  He gave him a sheet of paper from his notebook that he had kept back.

  "I also want this equipment delivered to this address in London by the day after tomorrow. Anything else we need we will take care of."

  He got out of the car and put his cape on.

  "See you in twenty four hours."

  He strode of down the right hand road of the crossroads. Twenty seconds after he had disappeared around the first corner Willie heard the sound of a powerful motorbike engine starting up and moving away. He read down the list of armaments Bryant wanted and then opened his briefcase and took out a cell telephone. He dialled a number. A voice answered with a single word, cell phones being the most insecure of them all.

  "Yes?"

  "Contact made. No problems." He put the phone back in his briefcase and started the car. The rain was still falling steadily. "Bloody country." It was said with real feeling.

  Alan Sobers was visibly agitated and it showed despite the fact that he was doing his best to hide it. He was stood up behind his desk waving his arms to emphasise his point
.

  "Christ, Jack, you can't go sodding of to Spain this afternoon. I need you here tomorrow when we bring Angelique Parsouel up for charging."

  Ropell smiled at him.

  "You know you don't need me for that, Alan, what's the real reason?"

  Sobers sat back down behind his desk with a thump.

  "I don't really know to tell the truth, but something is worrying me and I can't put my finger on it."

  Ropell leaned his chair back against the wall and put his hands behind his head. It had become a familiar mannerism to Sobers over the last two weeks. He stared at the ceiling and his eyes lost focus as he went through it.

  "OK, lets look at what we have shall we? Tomorrow you are taking Angelique Parsouel to court where she will be officially charged with trafficking in narcotics, two kilos of undiluted Cocaine. You have Wayne Doolan who will swear that he gave it to her to deliver and that she knew what was in the packet and that she had made other deliveries before. He will also confirm for whom the delivery was intended."

  He continued.

  "You have a slight problem with Jensen because they had to operate two days ago to relieve internal pressure of the skull due to injuries received when arrested. However, he is safely tucked away in hospital and you now have the evidence of the computer floppies you found in his home. That clearly shows amounts of money being banked abroad far in excess of anything that could be achieved through his estate agency business."

  He put his feet up on Sobers desk crossing them at the ankles.

  "The Spanish police have agreed to wave all charges against Doolan in return for our continued co-operation in catching whoever it was that shot their patrol boat up, and that means me going over there." He lifted his feet from the desk and let the chair return to all four feet. "So what's the problem?"

  Sobers got up and began to pace the small office like a caged tiger, the mannerism that Ropell had come to expect from him. He stopped and putting both hands on the desk, leaned towards the other.

  "I don't really know what is worrying me in definitive terms or why I am feeling so anxious. Perhaps its my copper's intuition, but there are several things that are not quiet right."

  He held up his left hand and began to tick points off on the fingers.

  "Where is Henri Parsouel and why has he disappeared? At this point in time we have only the word of Doolan that he is involved in this thing, whatever our suspicions may be and the word of one convicted criminal hardly constitutes a watertight case. Not with the lawyers our Henri can afford. If we pulled him in they would have him out again in less than twenty four hours."

  He tapped another digit.

  "Why hasn't he sent a lawyer here to see his daughter? According to everything we know Angelique Parsouel is the apple of her fathers eye. She has now been held in Holloway remand for nearly two weeks and not a peep from anyone. When she was allowed to phone her family solicitor he told her he couldn't act without instructions from her father. The court has had to provide her with Legal Aid for gods sake." He shook his head in disbelief. "A girl with a millionaire for a father."

  He went back to his desk and sat down.

  "Something stinks here you know, but at this point in time I cannot for the life of me work out what."

  Ropell stood up and went to the window. He spoke with his back to the other.

  "What's our best chance of actually nailing Parsouel with any of this, Alan? Who is the only man who can really give us any hard evidence against Parsouel?"

  Sobers looked at him from under a furrowed brow.

  "Jensen of course, but he has just had a rather significant hole cut in his head and according to the doctors it will be some days before we could take a statement from him that the court could find acceptable as coming from a man of a clear and lucid frame of mind, let alone get the bugger into a courtroom."

  Still staring down at the busy traffic in the street below Ropell nodded slowly.

  "How many men have you got watching him?"

  "Two, one in his room and one outside in the corridor, but he is hardly likely to be doing a runner at the moment."

  "Are they armed?"

  "Whatever for? Oh my Christ! I need my backside kicking."

  He left the room at a rate of knots while Ropell sat down again and waited. Ten minutes later he returned.

  "I should have thought of that. If they get him, then we have no chance of ever nailing Henri. I've changed the uniforms for armed plain clothes."

  "No problems with the hospital?"

  "Didn't bother to find out. Gave the theory to Sir William and he said do it. The hospital is his problem. Ours is keeping Jensen alive."

  Ropell got to his feet with a smile.

  "Great, now can I go and pack a bag and catch my plane?"

  "Yes." Sobers held out his hand. "You nail the bastards, Jack"