Four cars behind sat the familiar black Mercedes.
‘Lose them.’
Julia turned at the first intersection. The Mercedes followed, closing the distance between us to two cars. At the next junction Julia darted into the right-hand lane. The Mercedes tried to follow but was blocked by a bus. When we turned right they were unable to follow. It was a simple textbook exercise, except that if we’d followed the book we’d have noticed the tail within moments of leaving the hotel. We’d been careless.
Julia weaved around the centre of Rio for fifteen minutes at high speed, or at least as high as the traffic would allow.
‘As they say in Cairo – drive to kill, not to maim,’ she murmured, the car almost rising on to two wheels as she whipped around a corner. We might be out of sight of the Mercedes, but she appeared to be making us very conspicuous to everyone else, even in the Ben- Hur atmosphere of Rio. Fortunately the police seemed to be on holiday.
Eventually she was satisfied that the tail had gone. We headed again towards Pedro’s apartment.
‘That was stupid. I should have spotted them much sooner.’
‘Not to worry. At least they can’t work out exactly where we were going. But they know the car now.’
‘Right. I’ll park well away from the apartment.’
When we reached the apartment Pedro was waiting. It was clear that he thought breaking into Attirmi’s room had been a bad idea although ‘impetuous’ was his only comment. When we reported what happened after Attirmi arrived he was as mystified as we were.
We sipped the obligatory Brazilian coffee and Julia asked what he’d come up with.
‘Practically nothing. London has confirmed that Captain Mackenzie’s completely above board and that Allenberg’s US address is phoney. I’ve shown various people the photos of the two villa watchers and may have a bite. One of my sources thinks he’s seen them near the docks. I’ll follow it up but don’t pin any hopes on it, he’s not too reliable. And I’ve retrieved your case Thomas, it’s in the bedroom.’
He turned to Julia. ‘This is for you. A nine millimetre Browning FN high power. Canadian. Not a lady’s gun, but it stops people.’
Julia took the weapon, checking the thumb safety on the left-hand side. Then, pressing the button beside the trigger, she ejected the box magazine from the handle, balancing two pounds of lethal metal in one neatly manicured hand with thirteen double-lined staggered cartridges looking especially evil resting on the other. Then she clicked the magazine back and put the pistol in her handbag with two spare magazines.
‘Any news on the opposition?’ I asked. ‘Mendale was keen that we kept our eye on the Russians.’
‘Nothing. The Russians left the hotel right after the bomb and just disappeared. We need to find them. The Americans still don’t seem to be on to them.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘From Harrison. Somehow Six has discovered the Company’s Damascus Station reported to Washington that Bitri and Abdel Rassem are above board. There seem to be a couple of genuine Syrian businessmen called Bitri and Abdel Rassem who have been travelling in the Far East somewhere and the Station concluded they must have moved on to Brazil. What’s more surprising is that the Americans don’t seem to be on to Martines either.
‘Conniston’s now got their Station closed up tighter than a mouse’s arse. I can’t get a peep out of my contact there any more. But one thing I can tell you is that Volmar, their Chief of Station, is asking a lot of questions he wouldn’t need to ask if he knew who they were dealing with. I’m surprised they haven’t just got hold of that hotel manager Cimate and beaten Budermann’s name out of him.’
‘There’s always one of Gomes’ police there,’ interrupted Julia.
‘That wouldn’t normally stop them. My guess is that they’re using Nebulo as a link into the local police. Nebulo and Volmar have been close in the past, and he’s convinced them that Cimate doesn’t know anything. Perhaps they don’t think Cimate matters any more. Since the bomb the auctioneers will be keeping well away from the Hotel Florianopolis, they’ll need to find a new way of handling the bids.’
A new and more sensible way I thought. I stood up and crossed to the window with my back to Pedro and Julia. Someone had to voice the thought that had been in the back of my mind since I first arrived at the Hotel Florianopolis.
‘You realise the whole set-up here is a farce. We’re being played.’
I turned as I spoke and tried to judge their reaction. Neither looked surprised. Pedro’s face gave nothing away. Julia, I thought, looked nervous, although why I had no idea.
‘What do you mean?’ Julia asked.
‘Why are we going through this ridiculous auction process? Martines has been buying and selling guns for years. He knows how to negotiate deals with people all over the world. He knows how to move money around without leaving a trail. Why bring everyone here? Why insist on cash and gold? Why not just negotiate normally and then arrange an exchange somewhere on neutral ground? There is no need at all for any of us to be in Brazil.’
‘Presumably we’re here because Nebulo doesn’t trust Martines and wants to be present when the money is handed over,’ Julia responded.
‘Perhaps. But if you were trying to sell something that both the Americans and Russians wanted wouldn’t you make sure that they were kept well away from each other. Inviting both of them to Rio is crazy, putting them both in the same hotel is worse than crazy and putting them in adjacent rooms is farcical.’
Julia considered this for a minute. ‘They must have thought that if everyone was watching everybody else there could be no funny business.’
‘That’s pretty flimsy and in any case I was the only one given the other parties’ names. Think about it. The auctioneers gave me the names of the American and Russian bidders. Why would they want me to know that? The only answer is that they expected me to try to keep an eye on them. Why?’
‘You tell us,’ said Pedro.
‘So that I would report back to London.’
‘And why would they want you to do that?’
‘Because the auctioneers had someone in the DIS in London, they knew that anything I reported to London would be relayed back to Martines here.’
‘That’s pretty fanciful,’ responded Pedro. ‘How would someone like Martines manage to plant a mole in the DIS?’
‘Perhaps the mole came to him.’
Nobody said anything until Pedro broke the silence.
‘Well that’s quite a theory.’ He sounded distinctly dubious. ‘But before we start chasing moles through the corridors of Whitehall let’s concentrate on the job in hand. Mendale told us to keep our eyes on the Russians. What are they doing?’
‘They’re probably not doing anything,’ I said. ‘I think they’ve already won the auction. Martines put the deadline back to allow someone to get their gold here. The Americans wouldn’t have needed time so it must have been the Russians. And the Russians wouldn’t risk bringing gold in unless they were sure they would need it and that they could trust whoever they’re dealing with. And that means,’ I added as another thought struck me, ‘that as I suspected they’ve probably dealt with Martines before as well.’
‘As well?’ queried Julia.
‘Thomas has a theory,’ said Pedro ‘that the Company have had dealings with Martines before, although obviously they don’t have his name. The idea is that Martines has been running a private intelligence service flogging pieces of information to the Americans and the Russians.’ He made my suggestion sound utterly far-fetched.
‘But never to us,’ I added and Julia flashed me a quizzical glance.
‘That’s not surprising,’ said Pedro, ‘we probably couldn’t afford it.’
‘Yet we’ve been invited to this Griffin auction.’
Julia changed the subject. ‘Let’s get back to what we’re going to do now. I need to check in to my hotel and if I’m going to bribe Martines’ mistress, Miranda Gonçalves, tomorrow I’m going to need cash, right there on the nail and a lot of it.’
‘You’d better take my kitty,’ Pedro replied. ‘And you can take my car. I’ll use my wife’s. Let’s sort that and then I’m going to the docks to see if I can get anything on Allenberg’s group. Before that I’ll set some balls in motion to find our Russian friends but in a city like this don’t expect quick results.’
‘We should start by phoning the big international hotels,’ I suggested. ‘After the Florianopolis I should think they would want somewhere a bit more comfortable.’
‘And where they won’t stand out,’ agreed Julia. ‘I’ll do that while you head out to the villa and see if the taps are still working. When do we meet again?’
‘I’ll be outside the hairdressing salon tomorrow morning and we’ll take it from there. If we need to get in touch we’ll just have to phone around. There’s one other question.’
I turned to Pedro. I was tired of beating around the bush.
‘Why did you question Jenny Merchant about me?’
Pedro’s face gave nothing away. ‘Yes that was rather a coincidence. One of the commercial chaps asked me to check out tour companies for an event they’re organising. Your name happened to come up.’
‘Bollocks. You were sent Jenny’s name. Why?’
‘Don’t bollocks me my son. We’re on the same side. It was a coincidence.’
‘Mendale asked you to check up on me.’
Pedro looked at me coldly then turned around and left. Julia followed without looking in my direction.
What game was Pedro playing? What game was anyone playing? I tried to grab a quick hour’s sleep but my mind was whirring.
There seemed to be two separate sets of characters in two separate plays and the only time they were on stage together was when the scene moved to the Villa Nhambiquaras. One play involved actors I knew virtually nothing about: the Allenberg group and Attirmi. The actors in the other play I knew well but understood not at all. Mendale, the DG, Julia, Pedro, the whole of the Defence Intelligence Staff. I wanted to believe Julia’s story about a Russian spy in the DIS but it just didn’t ring true.
I cast my mind back to the meeting with the DG at the House of Lords. Mendale was not only there but he seemed to be in control of the operation. Would Julia’s uncle really have allowed a suspected Russian spy to have full access to our plans for the Griffin Interrogator? What wasn’t Julia telling me?
I was dreaming of Julia, rather exciting dreams, when the phone rang.
‘Did I get you up?’ she asked.
The double entendre immediately struck me but I didn’t know her well enough to respond with more than a ‘Yes.’
She gave me the details of the hotel she had found.
‘You might as well hit the sack,’ I told her. ‘I’ll drive out to the villa.’
‘Why don’t you pick me up first?’
An attractive invitation I had to ignore. I didn’t want someone with me that I still couldn’t completely trust.
‘No. You sleep. We may be active tomorrow night.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Breaking into that villa. If we can’t get anything from the Gonçalves woman and the phone tap is unproductive, that’ll be the only option left.’
Wary after this afternoon’s experience I kept an eye on the rear-view mirror. Nobody was following. It had rained earlier but when I arrived at the villa the night was clear. That might be helpful in finding the tap, but bad if anyone was waiting for me.
I wasn’t looking forward to the night’s business. Martines would have to be unusually incompetent not to have found my tap on his phone. I consoled myself with the thought that he should have discovered it when he found the tap placed by the Allenberg group and he hadn’t.
Not much light penetrated through the branches and I crashed through the wet undergrowth. The forest was alive with the sounds of night. At one point there was the snap of a breaking branch behind me. I stood rigid for five minutes but heard nothing moving. I checked that the thumb safety on the upper left-hand side was down. Pedro had given me the standard model: on some Lugers the safety control has the exact opposite format. The German word ‘Gesichert’ would now be showing above the thumb piece.
Occasional glimpses of the moon served as a guide. Hopefully, my sense of direction would do the rest. It did, almost too well.
The sudden flash of a torch was the real warning. The order to halt was submerged under the pandemonium of a submachine gun as I dived right. Bullets sprayed past, searing into the bushes and smashing into the fallen tree trunk which sheltered me.
The torch went out. To the left thirty degrees, ten o’clock. My silenced Luger gave a clearly discernible hiss. Another spray of bullets. Then silence.
Whispers. Again to the left. Ten, fifteen yards. Hard to tell at night. But close. I moved right, slowly, along the tree trunk. More shots, wide. The submachine gun, then two pistol shots: the flashes clear. Thirty-five degrees. Twenty yards or less. I fired.
Something fell. A gurgling noise, strangely loud, echoed through the night. Somebody had been hit.
It was anybody’s guess how many were left.
They weren’t professionals. Professionals would have waited until they couldn’t miss, until I was practically on top. But it wasn’t important. With their firepower it didn’t matter how amateur they were.
I moved again. Further right. Towards the road.
A pistol opened up in front. Two shots. Close. Then more silence. No sound, no movement, just blackness.
Again I edged forward, slithering along the ground. More shots. Two pistols now, between me and the road. And the submachine gun behind. Again slither. Again bullets. I felt the air move that time.
I had to escape. The noise must have woken everyone in the villa. It was too dark to run so I crawled forward, inch by inch. Another shot. One of them was closer now.
Then I saw him and fired twice and he dropped on one knee and then fell forward.
But his companion was still shooting. How many bullets left in his magazine? He stopped firing. The submachine gun was getting closer. I had to run.
Ready, stand up. Run. And the man with the pistol jumped up too. Outlined in the moonlight. Amateur. Just like the shooting range. And he collapsed. Both shots in the heart. My last.
Keep running. The Luger’s breach open, toggle points buckled up. Shove at the magazine release catch. Look where you’re going. Too late.
I tripped, the Luger spinning from my hand. All hell broke loose. That bloody submachine gun. It was time to pray.
I could see him coming. A short little runt in an oversized police uniform. I registered that he was grasping a Heckler and Koch MP5 and then his head exploded.
Not like the shooting range in Durham. The sound: thirty or forty yards away. Two heavy shots, something like a .375 Magnum, something my time in the OTC had not prepared me for.
And only a gun like a Magnum could so thoroughly have smashed the face. Splinters of bone and red, spurting into the black of night.
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the insects were stilled.
Reflex actions took over. Grope for the Luger. Find it. Take the dismounting tool from the holster flap. Slot it over the magazine stud. Press down on the hook. Force the spent magazine out. Insert a new one.
The owner of the Magnum didn’t appear. Who was it? I’d no time to find out, shouts were coming from the villa.
I ran.