by Blake Banner
“Very. So then I found a high class escort agency and I booked two girls. I told them it was for the minister.” He laughed. “The madam who took the booking asks me why Pedro is not making the booking like usual. I said this was a private company providing entertainment for the minister. We need absolute discretion and we pay a big bonus if everything is good. She was very happy, so we have Carmen Zeta and Rosa Mari coming tonight. I call the hotel again and tell them that the minister has two companions tonight and I want them booked into his room. He says no problem.”
“What time are they arriving?”
“Eight PM.”
“Good, that gives us time to set up. He’ll arrive at nine thirty. I’ll meet him at the intersection and we’ll drive down to the bridge. Let’s go and have a look.”
We climbed into his truck and pulled onto the dirt track again. The bridge was another six hundred yards down the road. When we got there, I was surprised at how big it was. It was a good sixty feet across over a deep canal, but it was not a bridge in any conventional sense of the word. There were no barriers at the side, and there were no sidewalks. It was just a concrete arch with dirt on top. It was a gift.
I peered down at the dark, green water. “Have you checked the depth?”
“Yuh, ten feet.”
“Couldn’t be better. The gods are smiling on us. Let’s hope it lasts.”
I scanned the fields all around us. We were still almost four miles from the hotel, and there was just empty fields and occasional copses as far as the eye could see. I looked back the way we’d come. “I’ll meet him at the intersection in my car. I’ll tell him to follow me. I’ll drive slowly. When we pass the copse where you are parked now, you pull out behind him, across the road, so he can’t reverse. Get out and start waving your arms like you need help. I’ll stop in the middle of the road so he can’t get past. I’ll walk back toward you, asking you what the hell is going on. I’ll make like I don’t understand you and ask him to translate. He gets out, we do the job.”
“OK in theory, but what if he will sense a trap? What if he will panic, lock the doors, try to escape?”
I nodded. “Be prepared. Do what I did to his man. Have a plug ready for his exhaust, and a hammer for the window. But let’s try to avoid that.”
He echoed my nod. “OK. What car is he using, do you know?”
“Ford Focus, why?”
“I make a good plug, that fits good with duct tape. But be careful, Lacklan, you have to assume he will be armed.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ll be ready. OK, let’s get out of here. I’ll see you tomorrow night at seven.”
We drove back to the copse. I got in my car and headed back toward Buenos Aires via a long, circuitous route to the south.
ELEVEN
That night I dined in the hotel dining room. When I had finished, at about nine thirty, I went to reception and asked one of the male receptionists where there was a nice club where I could have some fun. He recommended the Jet Lounge, which was a short taxi ride from the hotel. The place was noisy and expensive. I found a table and made an effort to enjoy myself with a couple of girls, and even danced a bit, mainly for the benefit of my new shadow. He was more discreet than his predecessor, but still not what you’d call a real pro. He sat most of the evening over a beer and looked unhappy, while I had all kinds of fun he couldn’t afford.
At one AM I had them call me a cab and left with a girl on each arm. I let him and the receptionist see me go up to my room with them, and then I ordered a bottle of Dom Perignon, a bottle of vodka and a bottle of single malt from room service. It wasn’t really my scene, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices in order to convince your enemy you are for real.
At nine the next morning, we had Eggs Benedict for three and at ten I sent them home, a few hundred bucks richer than they had been the day before.
At midday I called Narciso.
“Nicholas, I am not sure you should call me so often.”
“Keep on the way you’re going, Narciso, and this will be the last time I call you. I thought we had an understanding, but your lack of trust is very disturbing. I am on the level here. I want to do business and have a little fun, as your man last night must have seen. But I am getting the feeling this is a one-sided relationship.”
“Please, Nicholas, let’s not be hasty. You don’t understand, a man in my position…”
“You said you had real power, Narciso. Let me see that. The meeting tonight was due to be a cordial, relaxed affair. Now you are making me take precautions.”
He was quiet for a moment. “What kind of precautions?”
“If we see anybody with you, anybody at all, the deal is off and we go to Brazil. Period.”
“That is not necessary. We simply had a man on you. It is standard proced…”
I cut him short. “Be at the junction at the agreed time. I’ll meet you there and lead you to the hotel. If I see anybody else with you, the deal is off. Irrevocably. I need you to understand that, Narciso. You said it yourself, there are billions of dollars riding on this deal. Play smart and you can be a part of that. Play too smart, and we are out of here. Do we have an understanding this time?”
“We have an understanding, Nicholas.”
“I’ll see you this evening.”
I hung up and stood for a while looking out at the view of the vast mouth of the River Plata, thinking. Narciso’s biggest worry now, after the call, was that he might lose out on the deal that was going down. We were talking now in billions, not millions, and he would be desperate to get cut in on a share of that deal. Any residual doubts he might have, he would keep going back to the fact that this introduction had been made by a U.S. senator—a senator whom he knew personally. References don’t come much better than that.
The attempts he’d made to tail me had been half-hearted at best, and had shown him exactly what he must have expected to see, that I was a successful businessman having fun in Buenos Aires. And the tap on my phone showed him the same thing.
He would be there that night. And I would kill him.
That afternoon I booked a three AM flight to Brasilia in the name of Jason Devries, using Jason Devries’ credit card. Then I went through the suite, wiping my prints off everything I had touched, and making sure there was none of my hair left in the shower, the sink or the bed. I packed my bag, went without lunch, because hunger will give you an edge of aggression on a hit, and at twenty to six, I was downstairs with my bag, settling the bill. Twenty minutes after that, as the sun was setting, I headed off in my car, taking a winding route through the evening city, as the lights came on and the sky grew dark, watching my mirror to see if I was tailed. I didn’t expect to be, and I wasn’t.
I wound up eventually on the RP200, leading through Marcos Paz and General Las Heras to Navarro. By the time I got there it was seven thirty, and dark. I crossed through the town and covered the last seven miles in a leisurely ten minutes. There I parked on a piece of wasteland beside the road in the cover of some trees. It was seven forty. I sent Njal a text: OK?
The reply came almost instantly: 10/4
I settled down to wait. At eight o’clock, a limousine approached from the direction of Buenos Aires. It turned onto the dirt track and I watched its red taillights disappear toward the hotel. I waited another twenty minutes and the limo returned and took off again back toward the city.
When it was gone from view, I got out and jogged the seven hundred yards to the copse. There was no moon, and the Ford was hidden from view in the darkness. I stepped close to a tree, so I made no silhouette, and whispered, “Njal?”
His voice came out of the shadows. “OK, I am here.”
I heard a footfall and a deeper patch of blackness moved. Next thing, he was standing in front of me.
“We have an hour, but there is not much to prepare. I have a plug for the exhaust if it is necessary, and I have the hammer. Better if you take it.”
He gave it to me and I slipped it in my waist
band, behind my back. Then we walked the short distance to the road and picked out markers so I would know exactly where to stop and Njal could cut Narciso off, leaving a minimum amount of room for maneuver. After that, we spent half an hour discussing possible things that could go wrong, the worst, and most likely, of which was that he might turn up with a couple of wagons of soldiers. If he did that, we decided, we’d kill them all and head for Uruguay, just across the river.
With half an hour to go, I jogged the short distance back to my car at the intersection and waited.
He was punctual. At nine twenty-five, I saw a bright light approaching from the north. At first I thought it was a bike, but then the single light split like a glowing amoeba and resolved itself into two lamps. I climbed out of the car and leaned on the roof, watching. If there was any trouble, the car would give me some cover, and I could make for the ditch and the trees behind me.
The lamps drew closer and soon I could make out that it was a white Focus. It slowed and soon turned in to the dirt track and stopped. The windshield was black. I waited. After a moment, the door opened and Narciso leaned out.
“Nicholas?”
I raised my hand. “Good evening. Do me a favor, Narciso. Just switch on the light inside your car, would you?”
He put on the light and I could see the seats were empty. I smiled at him and walked over. As I shook his hand, I looked in the back. There was nobody there, either. I grinned. “I guess we’re all getting a bit jumpy, huh? A lot riding on this deal. C’mon, follow me. Phil’s at the hotel. I think you’re going to have a nice evening. I wish I could be a part of it.”
There was no mistaking the complacency in his face. “Maybe next time, Nicholas.”
“Yeah, maybe next time.”
I walked back to my car, climbed in and fired her up. Then I pulled slowly onto the track, doing maybe fifteen miles an hour, with Narciso close behind me. After a minute or so, my headlamps picked out the turn off with the copse beside it. I rolled past and dropped to second gear, keeping my eyes on the mirror. I saw him pull level with the copse and then move past. I slowed to a crawl, like there were bumps ahead in the road. Narciso came right up a couple of feet behind me, and then I saw the lane flooded with light and Njal’s truck roared and plunged across the road, came to a dead halt short of the ditch, and he clambered out the door, shouting and waving his arms.
I stopped and climbed out, shouting at him angrily, “Que pasa? Que pasa?” Through his windshield, I could see Narciso frowning. His hood was three feet from my trunk, and his trunk was six feet from Njal’s door. I gestured to Narciso to stay put and walked toward Njal, still shouting at him, “Que pasa?”
Njal was coming toward me, burbling loudly in something that might have been Spanish. We made noises and gestures at each other for a moment longer and finally I went over to Narciso’s car, knocked on the glass and made a motion to wind down his window, saying loudly, “I think the damned idiot is drunk! Can you translate for me?”
He opened the door to get out. “Nicholas, this is not England! You have to be careful!” And that was when I saw he had a 9 mm Glock in his hand and was pointing it at Njal. He snapped, “Quien eres? Que haces aquí? Que buscas? Habla!”
I had seconds. As soon as Njal opened his mouth, Narciso would know he wasn’t Latin American. Half a second after that, he’d know he’d been stung. My instinct was to snatch the gun, but it was pointing straight at Njal’s chest. If it went off, it would kill him outright. Instead I shouted at Narciso, “What the hell are you doing? You want this man to go to the cops? You know what low profile means, right?”
He glanced at me. It was all Njal needed. He wailed, “No! Por favor, no me mate!” and dropped on his belly. As Narciso turned to look at him, I grabbed the barrel in my right hand and his wrist in my left, and wrenched hard down. He cried out in pain as his index finger snapped. The weapon came free and I smashed it into his face. He staggered back and I tossed the Glock over to Njal. Narciso was looking at me in horror. For a second, pity twisted my gut. I ignored it and took two large steps toward him as he backed against the hood of his car.
He was stammering, “What are you doing? What is this?”
I jabbed him in the chin with my right. His eyes rolled and his legs went wobbly. Then I grabbed him by his shirt collar and dragged him toward me. He made no effort to fight back. He just whimpered, “Please, Nicholas… why?”
I stepped behind him and slipped my right arm around his neck, wedging my elbow under his chin, and grabbed my own wrist with my left hand. As I squeezed I spoke into his ear. “You want compassion, Mu? Go ask for it from all the people Omega has destroyed, and all those it was planning to destroy. I’ll see you in hell, Mu.”
I squeezed hard, lifted and twisted savagely. I heard his neck snap and dragged him to the Focus. There, we bundled him in the back. Njal reversed his truck into the cover of the trees and then ran over and got behind the wheel of the Focus. I saw he was wearing gloves. I got into my rental car and we drove the eight hundred yards to the bridge. When we got there, Njal climbed out and we put Narciso behind the wheel. Njal said, “I brought a bottle of whiskey for him. That was the plan.”
I shook my head. “If we could have forced him to drink it, that would have been good. But if there’s an autopsy and they find it’s all in his mouth and on his clothes, but none in his belly or his blood… That’s a bad look.”
He shrugged. “OK, it’s a dark night, there is no moon and no barrier on the bridge. It’s good enough.”
We rolled the car to the edge of the canal. Njal had longer arms, so while I held the door open, he got down on his knees, depressed the clutch with his left hand and the gas with his right, getting the revs up high. I leaned in, across Narciso’s limp, staring body, and moved the gear shift into third. Then Njal released the clutch and the gas pedal, and the car lurched violently forward, tipped over the side and toppled, upside down, into the water, with a huge splash. We watched it a moment as it sank among a rush of froth and bubbles.
When it had settled, we got in my car and sped back along the dark track to the copse where Njal had left the pickup. As we drove, with the headlamps picking out the rushing ribbon of road, but throwing everything around it into blackness, I spoke fast.
“OK, we are a day ahead of schedule. So change of plan. We don’t want to hang around Buenos Aires while his body is found and they start investigating. Here’s what we do. You drive now to Uruguay. If you cross at Fray Bentos, it shouldn’t take you more than four hours to get there. From there you get the first flight to Brasilia. Have you got another car? That pickup is going to look conspicuous.”
“Yeah. I got a normal car prepared with luggage. I had thought this already. What are you gonna do?”
“Nobody is going to miss the minister till tomorrow morning. There won’t be an alert out for him till midday at the soonest. I’m going straight from here to the airport. I’ll see you in Brazil. Wash your truck. Message me as soon as you’re in Brasilia.”
“You are teaching your grandmother to suck eggs. I have done this before.”
“Yeah? You’ll have to tell me about that one day.”
I pulled up at the copse. He climbed out, slammed the door and ran in among the trees where his vehicle was waiting, invisible. I didn’t wait. I took off back toward Lobos via Laguna Navarro, where I dumped Nicholas Eddington’s passport, credit card and driving license. From now on I was Jason Devries. At Lobos I would pick up the 205, which would carry me all the way to the airport.
I felt sick. I told myself it was because I hadn’t eaten, but all I could think about was Narciso staring at me, frightened and confused, not even trying to fight back. He had trusted me. More fool him. He’d been complacent and stupid. And all I wanted was to get out of the goddamn city, out of the goddamn country, and finish the job. So I could go home.
Wherever the hell that was.
TWELVE
At seven o’clock the following morning I disem
barked at Brasilia’s international airport, in need of a few hours sleep, a shave and a shower. The rental company had given me a choice between an Audi sedan and a Jeep Renegade. It was no contest. Audis are German and designed for middle managers who play golf. Jeeps are cool.
I picked up the Renegade at the hire office and, after I had persuaded the SatNav to stop talking to me in Portuguese, I headed into town. I had never been to Brasilia before, and my first impression was that Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyerit, the guys who’d designed it, had done too much ayahuasca while watching H. G. Wells’ Things to Come, before designing it. The whole city is in the shape of an airplane, its fuselage is the Monumental Axis: two wide avenues flanking a massive park five miles long, while the cockpit is the Praça dos Três Poderes—the Plaza of the Three Powers—which holds Congress, the Supreme Court and most of the ministries. The wings are two vast, parabolic sectors with broad avenues and boulevards, and towers of steel and glass rising among wide gardens and parks. The whole thing was planned and developed between 1956 and 1960, when it was inaugurated as the capital city of Brazil. It should have been beautiful, and I guess to an ant or an android it might be.
At half past eight I pulled onto the ERL Sul, one of the three avenues that form the starboard wing of the plane, and headed for the commercial sector of the city, where my hotel, the Windsor Plaza Brasilia, was located. The skies were very blue and already, at that time of the morning, we were in the low seventies.
As I drove, I ran over in my mind where we stood and what we had to do. Though we were ahead of schedule, it was now only by a few hours—I had arrived in Brasilia early Sunday morning, instead of late Sunday afternoon—which meant we had four days before the next meeting between Nu, Xi and Omicron in Casalá, and three days before Raul Rocha, Lambda, next visited his mistress, Joelma, at her place on Conjunto 6.
We were always going to have to act fast, but since the night before, I had felt an urgency to get the job done, go back to my house in Boston and put Omega, and my father’s whole sad, twisted legacy behind me. But before we could put our plan into action, I needed to hear from Njal. I had departed from the plan by sending him via Uruguay. I don’t like to vary from my plan; more often than not it can start a disastrous chain reaction of events. But on this occasion it seemed an unnecessary risk to me to stay in Argentina after the job was done. Now I had to wait for him.