Pedro had lost his smile.
‘Think about the hotel manager, Carlos Cimate. If someone in his position is offered money these days you take it and then call the police. If you don’t, the policemen’s benevolent association comes along in the middle of the night and you end up in the sea with your head missing.
‘Crime doesn’t pay in Brazil unless your business is supposed to be making the law or enforcing it. A weakling like Cimate would only work for someone with clout, a cop or a politician.’
He was right of course. It made my job look almost impossible. I knew enough about Brazil to know that even a diplomatic passport was no guarantee of immunity, and I didn’t have a diplomatic passport.
‘You mean that the whole thing could be organised from within the government? Or at least within their security forces?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far. Brazilian Intelligence abroad is a farce, certainly outside Latin America. They couldn’t have got on to Griffin in the first place. And the generals are still very dependent on the US, they wouldn’t be very pleased if one of their own people was found in the US trying to steal American military equipment.
‘It’s far more likely to be a freelancer with a long-established base here. But that doesn’t make the situation any less dangerous. If somebody in power is getting his cut he’s going to protect his own interests. Remember the regime have a lot more to gain from a dead British bureaucrat than a live one in prison. Deaths you can blame on the terrorists and turn round to London and say, “Give us replacements for our old Wasp helicopters and we’ll destroy the terrorists.” It’s not so easy to explain the torture marks on someone you’ve been holding on no charge for a week.’
‘That’s really comforting.’
‘Well it’s not supposed to be.’ The jovial Pedro had completely disappeared. ‘I’ll call Fitzwarren about that Mackenzie character on your plane.’
The conversation was very brief.
‘Apparently Mackenzie is entirely above board. His trip has been planned for months and John’s sure the man on the plane is the real Captain Mackenzie. I think we can forget about him.’
‘Looks like it. I’m just naturally suspicious.’
‘You should be.’ He went off to fetch a set of car keys. ‘Your car’s arrived.’
It was a pale green Ford Corcel, mass produced in their thousands at a factory on Avenida Henry Ford in Sao Paulo. Full width radiator, slightly concave grill with horizontal bars, steep windscreen rising from the flat bonnet, large rear windows sloping down to the small tail and the wing line rising over the rear wheels accentuating the small passenger space inside. The normal top speed was over eighty miles per hour. This particular car, Pedro assured me, was much faster. Its twin exhausts were the only signs of modification.
‘If you want to hide your gun,’ Pedro informed me, ‘the imitation leather stuff back here unstaples. I’ve hidden papers there. The police are not too good on subtle jobs like searching cars. But give them something easy, like beating up a child, and, if you’ll forgive the pun, they can’t be beaten.’
‘I’ll remember.’ My stomach rumbled. ‘How about something to eat?’
‘No time sadly. My wife’s due here in ten minutes. She’s been off buying a birthday present for our daughter. Now Sonia wants me to replenish her money supply. In any case I’d better let London know you’ve arrived.
‘One other thing,’ he shouted as I started the car. ‘If you like pirarucu there’s a good restaurant opposite your hotel, Minha Mesa.’
Driving on the right again was no problem but the atrocious drivers almost persuaded me to stick to taxis.
I found a deserted side street near the hotel where I could transfer the Luger and its holster to the back. The hiding place was exactly as Pedro had described. There was no point in advertising my newfound mobility so I locked the anti-theft device and left the car there.
At the hotel I tried my Portuguese on Cimate, hoping to avoid his pidgin American. It was a wasted effort.
‘Existe alguma mensagem para mim?’
‘No, Senhor. There is only the message I give to you this morning when you arrived, Senhor.’
He dragged out the second syllable of ‘arrived’ like a real southern gentleman and then finished with the characteristically soft Portuguese ‘d’. Why did every sentence have to contain ‘Senhor’? While it’s one of the commonest words in Brazil, if he was trying to speak English he might at least learn the term ‘mister’ or even ‘sir’. He did it again.
‘Is there anything other that you want, Senhor?’
‘Nao obrigado.’
The Minha Mesa was next to Captain Mackenzie’s hotel. It was nothing to write home about but the food was excellent. Palmitos, palm hearts in vinegar and olive oil, followed by pirarucu, a sort of well-cooked Amazonian codfish. The service was slow but there was no hurry. My table was right by the street, perfect for watching the Hotel Florianopolis.
The restaurant wasn’t crowded. A noisy group from Sao Paulo left soon after I arrived. Only occasionally did the sound of voices reach me; the Carioca accents sounding harsh after the sweet sibilants of Sao Paulo.
Settling back with the coffee I kept an eye on the hotel, but nothing happened. A few beautiful girls walked by and served to occupy my mind, which was fortunate as I had nothing else to think about. I had no plan: just sit and wait and pray that something would turn up. Fatigue from the flight was starting to set in.
As I left the restaurant I noticed Captain Mackenzie entering his hotel. He walked with his hands clasped behind his straight back, his head slightly forward and his eyes looking directly ahead. How could have I suspected him of being anything other than he was? He might have stepped off the bridge of a cruiser just minutes before.
Cimate was perched on a stool behind the reception desk, munching a sandwich. He stopped eating for long enough to say ‘no messages, Senhor’ before returning to his attack on the sandwich.
I asked if Gary Stover had arrived. The answer was yes but both the Company men were out.
‘Senhor Bitri is in his room,’ Cimate added.
I didn’t fancy a friendly chat with the KGB so I sat in the bar until eleven. Nothing happened and I went to bed after checking carefully that my room had not been disturbed.
My body clock was still on English time when I phoned Pedro next morning.
‘Any news?’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘Nothing on that black thing?’
‘No. My friends aren’t being very talkative. I may not be able to get anything.’
If Pedro couldn’t trace the black Mercedes I’d seen when I arrived there was nothing to do but sit around the hotel.
Downstairs Cimate came bounding up to tell me that Stover and Bitri had already gone out. My other two ‘companions’ were still in their rooms. There were no messages from the auctioneers.
After breakfast of croissants and coffee I sat in the lounge writing letters home on the free stationery and reading the Jornal do Brasil.
A man came down and glared suspiciously at me. He spoke to Cimate who merely shrugged his shoulders and pointed at the register. The man reached for it, copied something down and left.
‘Senhor Conniston,’ Cimate informed me. ‘He wanted your name, Senhor.’
So that was what the CIA agent had put in his notebook. It didn’t make sense. He would only have noted my name if he hadn’t seen it before. And that meant that the auctioneers hadn’t given it to him when he arrived. Then why had they given the Americans’ names to me?
‘Did you tell Senhor Conniston why I was here?’
‘Of course not, Senhor.’ Cimate retreated to his desk looking hurt.
I believed him and that again didn’t fit in. Why keep me informed on the whereabouts of the Americans and the Russians but not help them in the same way?
My thoughts were interrupted by a voice asking Cimate for a room key.
‘A chave do meu quarto por favor.’
The Portuguese was technically correct and precisely enunciated, but there was something wrong with the almost mechanical accent. The words were pronounced by a tongue that had been born to a much harsher language.
I looked up just in time to see Cimate taking a key from the board behind him and giving it to my auctioneer friend, the man who had attacked me in Chicago. He had entered almost silently which is more than could be said of the two people who followed him. He turned and glanced at them and then, with the bellboy I had christened Oliver Twist, entered the lift. It did not occur to me to wonder why the boy was needed because my attention was grabbed by the two caricatures of American tourists. The man, wearing Bermuda shorts and sunglasses and with a camera round his neck, was bellowing at Cimate that he wanted his suitcases taken to his room.
‘The boy, he will be down in one moment, Senhor.’
‘Then you’ll have to take the bags. Your ad says prompt service and that’s just what we want.’
Cimate started to explain that he could not leave his desk but thought better of it. He came round and summoned the lift back down. When it arrived he put the cases inside and followed the man and his wife into it. There must have been quite a squash. The woman was enormous.
Moving swiftly to the desk, I looked at the position on the key rack from which Cimate had removed the auctioneer’s key; it was numbered 28. The register was still on the desk and it took only a few seconds to find the entry. Senhor Humberto Barcisa had been booked into room 28 on Saturday, the day after he had stolen Griffin in Chicago. I was back in my seat when Cimate, perspiring heavily, returned. I finished my letter, pocketed it and left. Oliver Twist had still not returned.
So now I had a name. Humberto Barcisa. I should pass that on to Pedro Vernon as soon as possible but first I wanted to see if I could spot the mysterious men in the black Mercedes who had been following Barcisa the last time I’d seen him. I now had no idea who they were: local police, Americans, Russians or somebody else entirely. It was unlikely that they were Americans or Pedro would have heard of it. And if they were Russians they would surely have acted by now.
I walked quite a way down the avenue and then crossed over and started walking back on the other side. I saw nothing suspicious.
It was lucky I hadn’t gone further. Just emerging from the hotel was Barcisa. He looked carefully around him and I ducked quickly into a shop entrance. Then he walked to his car, the same battered Ford I had seen last time. I rushed across the street to my own car, nearly being knocked down in the process. I fumbled with the locks first of the door and then of the anti-theft gadget and by the time I’d started it seemed inevitable that he would have disappeared. I was lucky again. He was cruising along about ten cars in front of me.
I should have realised that he would hardly have returned to the hotel to stay at this hour. It was far more likely that he had come to leave a message. He couldn’t just walk in and leave the message or messages at the desk, especially with me sitting there. So instead, he had gone up to his room with Oliver Twist and given a message to him. Then he had waited for me to go, Cimate had probably told him I had gone to post a letter, before leaving himself.
Now I had been handed a break from heaven, just as long as I could hold on to him and yet avoid being seen. He was driving away from the city centre towards Ipanema and he was driving slowly, letting the cars behind him pass. There were only two cars between us by the time we approached Leblon and the canal linking the sea and the lagoon. Somehow I had to let the distance between the two of us widen. I pulled in behind a row of parked cars and as I pulled out again the rain came with one gigantic rush. I cursed. The road directly in front of us was barely visible. I put my foot hard down, fighting to control the car as it surged forward on the slippery surface. After passing five or six cars, what I hoped was the silhouette of the Ford appeared ahead. I prayed that it was the right car and that he had not spotted my clumsy manoeuvre. It seemed impossible that he could have missed it.
I dropped back to let a Volkswagen Variant get between us. Driving in Rio has to be seen to be believed, it makes Rome look like a veteran car rally. Nobody obeys traffic regulations and intersections are habitually chaotic. Barcisa suddenly signalled right, away from the sea, and instinctively I did the same, but he shot off left across the oncoming traffic. A cacophony of horns erupted and the driver of the Variant slammed on his brakes. There was no way I could follow. I had lost my target.
The street Barcisa had taken ended at the ocean. I wondered which way he would have gone when he got there. He could either turn right, roughly the direction he had been going in before, or turn left and double back towards Copacabana and the city centre. If he was a professional he would have been leading me away from his real destination from the moment he left the hotel. In that case he might now conclude that there was nobody on his tail and be doubling back. If on the other hand his destination was somewhere like Gavea, further west along the coast, and he had only taken evasive action because he had spotted me, then the chances were that he would now be continuing in that direction.
In either event my only realistic option was to return to the hotel, contact Pedro and give him Barcisa’s name and car number.
I turned back the way I had come and just three minutes later the gods smiled: I saw Barcisa again. He had evidently headed towards Copacabana but then, when he was sure he wasn’t being followed turned again, inland towards the mountains. He flashed across in front of me. I pulled the wheel round sharply and turned after him, silently thanking Pedro for hiring such an inconspicuous car. It was soon obvious that Barcisa must be heading for the André Rebouças tunnel. The tunnel, opened less than ten years before, made it possible to reach Rio’s northern suburbs without having to navigate the permanent traffic jams of the city centre.
As if by magic the rain had stopped when I emerged at the other end of the tunnel. I could see Barcisa’s Ford some way ahead, now keeping up with the traffic around him. I had to decide quickly what to do. If I kept close it would surely be a matter of time before he realised there was someone on his tail. If I dropped back it would be easy to lose him. I decided to drop back. I had a name Pedro could work on and it was more than likely that I would lose Barcisa whichever option I chose. I had hoped he would stop not too far from the hotel but now it was clear that he could be going anywhere. The chances of successfully following him unobserved if he suddenly turned off again were tiny.
But he didn’t turn off. He took the route north past the Aeroporto Galeao and continued towards Duque de Caxias. We passed the oddly shaped buildings that bore witness to the presence of the petrochemical industry, and out into the countryside. He was on the Petrópolis road now. There was still a fair amount of traffic and although there was little chance of my being spotted I dropped even further back. At times I thought I had lost him but he always came back into view.
He drove on steadily and we rose higher. The road twisted as it climbed the ridges across its path and descended into the valleys between, each one higher than the previous. The lush vegetation springing from the rich red soil reached the road. Occasionally a large house stood back from the road. The poor couldn’t afford to live this far out.
I was watching the distance carefully. It was exactly twenty-six kilometres from Duque de Caxias when he turned off left. I’d been hoping he would stop somewhere along the main road. Now I had to make a quick choice. I played safe and continued along the highway.
The road Barcisa had taken looked small, hopefully it didn’t go far. If he was any kind of professional he would be stopped just along the road, waiting to make sure he wasn’t being followed. I drove towards Petrópolis. Within a mile I found a small store beside the road. It was undoubtedly my lucky day for the store had a phone, something far from automatic in Brazil. I settled down to code a message for Pedro using the random number pads he had given me.
Perhaps nothing better illustrates the extent to which the world has changed than the cumbersome way we communicated in those days. The pads had thirty-six rows marked with the letters A to Z and numerals 0 to 9 and a series of columns containing two-digit numbers. To code a message I started with the number of the pad and the number of a column and simply read off the two-digit code for each letter I wanted. Every twenty or thirty letters I changed the column and carried on. It took less than five minutes to code the message and Pedro just had to choose the same pad and reverse the process.
Child’s play but foolproof. Without the pads the cipher couldn’t be broken even by a computer unless the message was much longer than the one I intended sending, which simply gave Barcisa’s name, car number and the whereabouts of the road junction where he’d disappeared.
It took me some time to get through to the Consulate.
‘Posso falar com o Senhor Jimmy Fitzwarren, por favor.’
Within seconds Pedro’s voice boomed ‘Hallo.’
‘I’m calling on behalf of the Bluejay Marine Engineering Company. We have some specifications that you might care to note.’
I repeated the coded message interspersed with pieces of nonsense that hopefully sounded technical.
‘No news here,’ Pedro concluded.
After replacing the phone I thanked the uncomprehending man behind the counter. He remained impassive, as if strangers came in every day to babble away in English on his phone. The hotel manager in Zandvoort had behaved the same way when I’d emerged soaking wet from the mist and said I wanted to phone England.
I bought a Guarana, a carbonated fruit drink, and sipped it slowly, trying to guess what flavour it was supposed to be, but failing. There was no hurry. If I had made a mistake it was too late to correct it. I returned to the car and drove back to the junction where Barcisa had disappeared.
A weather-beaten sign indicated Barra do Pirai but if Barcisa had been heading in that direction he was taking a very long way round. It was more likely that he was making for a house or farm somewhere before that, at least that’s what I wanted to believe. Even so that might mean forty miles of road to search and probably a lot more if there were turn-offs or crossroads.
The road was narrow. Almost single track. It seemed to travel one mile sideways for every two miles forward, twisting and turning like a tropical version of a Cornish lane. The countryside was deserted. It was two miles before there were any signs of human habitation: a collection of wooden huts. Two children played with the chickens. There was no Ford. I drove on, passing a few rudimentary dairy farms and two or three villas. These had garages and if Barcisa was in one of them, and it seemed more likely that he would live in a villa than a wooden shack, it would be quite a job finding him.
The road wound on through forests of liana-hung mango and silk cotton trees, the verges speckled with brightly coloured flowers: Maria sem vergonha, Maria without shame.
Nearly halfway to Barra do Pirai there was a fork in the road. I took the right-hand arm, the one farthest from Rio. The other seemed to curve back south. If nothing appeared in the first ten miles I would turn back and try the other.
I found what I was looking for almost immediately. It was a villa entirely enclosed by a twelve-foot wall. There was nothing suspicious about it and I drove past, but around the corner a car was parked half off the road. It was not Barcisa’s Ford but it was enough to make me sure I had reached my goal. Parked against the trees was a black Mercedes. A quick glance at the yellow plates confirmed that it was the one that had been outside the hotel when I arrived.
So friend Barcisa was being watched, but who by? I needed to find out.
Nearly half a mile further on there was a gap in the trees on the left of the road, the same side as the villa. After driving on a little to ensure there was nobody nearby I reversed back and through the trees, leaving the car about ten yards off the road along what had once been a track. It was now overgrown and the car was visible from the road only if you knew where to look. Anyone driving casually along the road would miss it.
Strapping on the Luger nervously I walked back towards the villa.