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‘How ‘bout we go back to vein for a vein. Worked before.’
Ped was in the backroom of the Washington DC hotel suite with Jin, putting the finishing touches to the victory speech to launch the national campaign.
Polls continued to show DC would be a close race, but with Ped needing only two of the 19 delegates on offer, the nomination was a done deal.
Jin shook her head.
‘Don’t think so. It’s a new ballgame. You’ve got to appeal...’
The door burst open. Patricia blustered into the room holding up her iPad like it was radioactive. She brushed past Jin, marched up to Ped, slapped him hard on the face.
‘What?’
She thrust the iPad into his chest, spun on her heels, stormed out, slamming the door.
Ped looked at the screen. There was a post from the journalist Bullard with an old photo of the twins. The phrase BLOW your mind hit him between the eyes. Then he saw the word illegitimate.
‘Give me a minute will you, Jin?’
She left through the back door.
Garland walked over to the piano, sat on the bench, willing himself to keep calm.
He placed the iPad on the music rack.
Took out his phone, tried Carl again. His right-hand man and former partner in crime had been AWOL since being outed in Hunter’s show-and-tell press conference.
The dial tone sounded once, followed by a faint click, then an automated message: The number you are calling has been disconnected and is no longer in service.
*****
The appropriately named Fern Avenue was a narrow private lane, and Jay saw the rear of the police car just in time. Parked at the end of the cul-de-sac, beside a black Holden, same license plate as the one Detective Robinson was driving the night of the raid on the Airbnb.
Jay reversed and drove into the empty garage of one of the Pearse’s neighbors.
‘Fricken hell Jay. My laptop’s in there.’
‘Give Julie a call. Put her on speaker.’
The lawyer picked up after two rings.
‘The police are here to arrest you and Jay for breaching the conditions of your bail.’
Jay answered: ‘Where are they, Julie?’
‘Here, at the house.’
‘Where specifically? No, don’t answer that. Are they in the living room, yes or no?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘OK, there’s more than one of them. Are they close enough to hear your answers to my questions?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are any of them near the guest wing, yes or no?’
‘No.’
‘Do they have a warrant?’
‘Yes.’
‘For our arrest, or to search the property?’
‘The former.’
‘So, you can keep them away from the guest wing, yes or no?’
‘Absolutely.’
Jay smiled. ‘OK Julie. Thanks for that. What do you suggest we do?’
‘As your lawyer, my advice is to hand yourselves in?’
‘Can’t do that I’m afraid, Julie. I’m sorry if this puts you in an awkward position as our guarantor. Can you put Robbo on the line please?’
‘How did you...? Just a minute, he’s all yours.’
‘Tick tock tick tock Duggan. Time’s up.’
‘We need just a few more hours, Detective. We’re close to breaking...’
‘Save your breath for the judge, Duggan. Only thing being broken here is your bail. As well as your lawyer’s reputation. And whatever trust you conned out of Superintendent Hansen.’
‘Three hours Robbo, that’s all I’m asking.’
‘You’re in no position to ask for...’
‘Listen you moron. What we’re dealing with here is far bigger than one packet of blow planted in an Airbnb. We’re talking about a global trafficking operation linking Bali and Colombia and New Zealand and...
‘I don’t give a...’
‘... the guy likely to be the next President of...’
‘... rat’s ass. Tick tock tick tock. Hear that Duggan? Rant all you want about conspiracy theories. You and your girlfriend have broken bail on serious drug charges. Time’s up. Your number’s up. Do as your lawyer suggests, before you dig the hole even deeper.’
Bec raised the phone to her mouth.
‘That’s not happening Detective. You’ve got no idea what you’re interfering with here. Our investigation...’
‘Tick tock tick tock Corelli. You might do things differently in the States, but I’ll let you in on a little secret. This isn’t Hollywood or the pages of some Lee Child thriller. In this country the police do the investigating. Whatever game you think you’re playing almost certainly constitutes obstruction of justice.’
Jay had an idea.
‘How’s your investigation going into the guy who planted the drugs in the Airbnb, Robbo?’
‘He’s on the other end of this call.’
‘You’re full of shit, Robbo. But I’m prepared to cut you some slack.’
‘Just tell me where you are Duggan?’
‘You know the scenic lookout point a mile or two east of the airport, where you can see planes landing and taking off?’
‘I do.’
‘There’s a kanuka tree about fifty paces on from the Alcohol Ban sign at the back of the parking lot. Ten feet further on, towards the creek, there’s a rock shaped like a turtle. Under it you’ll find a bag containing about a kilo of cocaine we, ah, intercepted from a mule.’
‘Last chance Duggan. Before I call in the cavalry.’
‘Haven’t got time for this bullshit, Robinson.’
He ended the call. They slumped down in the seats to wait. The marked police car left after a few minutes, but not Robinson’s Holden.
Jay reversed onto the lane, drove round the corner, parked beside a back entrance to the domain. He put on a New Zealand Breakers cap, pulling the brim to cover half his face, then walked through the gate and along the path at the back of the houses.
A guy approached on a mountain bike with chunky tires. After he passed, Jay slipped through the gate behind the Pearses, entered the guest wing through the bathroom window they’d left open. He returned to the car with Bec’s laptop and a backpack, into which he’d stuffed a couple of toys Mike had left behind and other kit that might come in useful.
Bec was looking... defiant. A good sign.
‘Any word from Mike?’
‘No. I’ll keep trying him.’
‘OK, what do you need?’
‘A place to work. With Wi-Fi.’
‘I’ll find somewhere on the way to the airport.’
He dropped her at Greenwoods Corner, where there was a selection of cafés to choose from, gave her the number for Superintendent Hansen in case the shit hit the fan, then sped out to the airport.
The fuel gauge was getting low. He approached the Z Service Station on George Bolt Memorial, considering whether to risk stopping to top up, when he saw the limo sail by in the opposite direction.
Shit. He cut across the front of an Airport Express bus, drove up onto the median strip, then swung right and ran the red back onto George Bolt Memorial.
He caught up with the limo just before an exit, slipped in a few cars back. The limo slowed to the required speed limit through the Waterview Tunnel, obviously keen not to attract attention, which suited Jay fine.
They stuck to the highway through downtown, across the harbor bridge and through the North Shore. Jay smiled at the irony of the Keep a Safe Following Distance sign soon after passing beneath wire mesh stanchions holding toll cameras. The smile went west when the fuel indicator light began flashing in the Johnstones Hill Tunnel.
He began riding the accelerator to conserve fuel. He lost sight of the limo for a while, but caught up when it was forced to stop for roadworks near the offramp to Puhoi. Jay gave the thumbs-up to the exaggerated arm movements of a Mãori guy holding a stop-go sign.
The limo finally left the highway near Warkworth, turned into the road to Matakana, then right towards Sandspit. With no vehicles between them, Jay let the gap widen as they passed through rolling green farmland with tall roadside trees denuded of leaves. The arrow on the fuel gauge had nowhere left to go. He was on borrowed time.
He got his first glimpse of the ocean at Snells Beach, a village of down-market houses, holiday homes, a park with dual soccer and rugby posts, a Bottle-O liquor store. Not the sort of place you’d expect to see a limo.
The engine started sputtering as Jay limped through Algies Bay, past a guy mowing his lawn in a beanie and gumboots, a sign advertising horse poo for sale. The engine finally died on a downhill bend. He was able to coast long enough to see the limo turn right onto Ridge Road, before the rental came to a rest beneath a sign saying Winding Road 2km.
‘Not good.’
*****
Mike had been pinballing on adrenalin and coffee for the entire four-hour flight from Cali. He’d edited the Danilo interview, selected other background footage and images, including the photo of the smiling Montoya boys. He’d made a start on the voiceover text when the seatbelt sign came on and he had to stow the laptop for landing.
As soon as he got into the transit lounge at Miami, he phoned Bec, told her what he had and was about to send. He was distracted by familiar images on a TV screen on the wall.
‘Just a minute, Bec.’
An NBC affiliate was running a story on a shootout near the airport in Cali. There were shaky pictures recorded by cellphones of passing motorists, clearer footage taken from a drone shooting promotional video for the airport company.
A banner across the top of the screen said Five dead in shootout between rival gangs. There was no mention of the part played by the gringo at the bottom of the picture, half-crouching, half-running from a white cab like a war correspondent leaving a chopper.
‘You still there, Mike? You OK?’
‘Yeah. Never better. What can I do? I’ve got Wi-Fi and about ninety minutes here in Miami before I board for DC.’
Bec asked if he had access to any footage of Garland they could use.
‘I should have some material from the visit to his drug foundation center in Harlem. I’ll check my phone.’
They divided up the tasks, got to work.
Mike did a search on Garland’s movements, and the time the polls opened. He did a quick calculation, placed a call to DC.
Then he fired off messages to the network of influencers he’d been grooming for this moment, giving them a confidential heads-up on what the Aristotle team was about to publish, urging them to share the video when it went live.
*****
Rodrigo Montoya’s day had gone from terrible to catastrófico.
He’d just heard from Bali the first package did not arrive, and whoever took it left a smart-ass note inside the guidebook. Had to be Duggan. Which meant they knew how the coke was transported.
He checked the time. The second shipment, if it got away, would already be in the air.
Rodrigo had heard from a source at American Airways in Cali that Bullard was heading to DC. He had arranged – at great expense – for the journalist to be intercepted after he left the airport.
Mauricio wanted to warn the old man.
Rodrigo looked out over the inlet, past the boats moored in the channel to the jetties poking into the gray water from the opposite shore. He was weighing the pros and cons when an alarm sounded.
‘What the fuck is that?’
‘The drone detector.’
*****
Jay adjusted the forward pitch, applied the rudder and fin to make the drone bank left for another sweep.
He’d wasted fifteen minutes finding a bucket and hose at the back of a farmhouse, siphoning enough fuel from a paddock car to bring the rental back to life.
Ridge Road snaked along the top of the Mahurangi East peninsula towards a restored nineteenth century homestead. Driveways headed off both sides of the road to dozens of secluded properties where a limousine would not look out of place. If you could find it.
Jay had driven with growing frustration past tourists on e-bikes, a woman walking a dog, a carpenter working a skill saw outside a garage being extended. He slowed at an intersection with a Little Library and Neighborhood Support sign, wondering if the readers realized they had an international drug trafficker for a neighbor. Jay had almost given up finding the limo when the road narrowed and he came across a high stone wall with razor wire, iron grill gate with keypad, camera, spotlight. A level of security over-the-top and out-of-place for rural New Zealand. The sign declaring Private Property, No Public Access was hardly necessary.
He’d reversed and parked under a large mahoe tree, then scrambled up the embankment to launch the drone. The large property, ringed entirely by an electrified fence, extended from Ridge Road down to the water’s edge, with stands of mature bush to the north and south. Jay recognized pohutukawa, cabbage trees, kauri, manuka. The main house was a multi-level affair set into the hillside, with a deck along the front and a sunken hot tub. There were several outbuildings, a large shipping container, tennis court, impressive orchard. When he lowered the drone to hover closer to the ground, the camera was good enough to pick up tui feeding on the juice of mandarins that had fallen to the ground – and the license plate of the limo parked beside a white Peugeot in the open garage under the house.
Jay pushed the throttle to gain altitude, flew the drone towards the water to look more closely at the place he’d identified as the most promising penetration point.
*****
The walls of the Coffee & Tea Lovers Café at Greenwoods Corner were crowded with teacups, coffee mugs, tea pots, coffee presses and machines, an aroma center, burlap bags stenciled with exotic names.
Bec had commandeered a table for six and, surrounded by yellow sticky notes, edited the footage of the Wiggs couple being picked up by the limo, dropped at the airport, finding the cocaine block inside the guidebook.
With a detailed storyboard in her mind, she knew instinctively which images and segments of video best conveyed the key messages, how to manage the transitions, and to keep the content compelling, viewers engaged.
She was trying to script a voice-over connecting Ped Garland’s twin sons to the Bali resorts, the property in Uluwatu where Jay found the lab, the limo companies in Denpasar and Auckland. The words weren’t flowing.
There had been plenty of free tables when Bec arrived, but the café was filling now with customers in puffer jackets and scarves. Rising volume from the chatter, and traffic through the open door, was becoming a distraction. When people began eyeing up the empty seats at her table and the sound system started playing I Want To Break Free, Bec took it as a cue.
She’d noticed a group of women having what looked like a business meeting through the window of another café across the road. Time to move.
*****
Jay had to backtrack half a mile along the road to a find a path down through the bush. He emerged onto a pebbly beach. The trunk of an ancient pohutukawa grew horizontally over the water. Seagulls wheeled above white-hulled boats moored in the channel. Half a dozen dinghies were stacked on their sterns against a rock wall. Jay chose the lightest, dragged it across the mud, rowed out around the headland.
He was aiming for an old man pine he’d noticed with branches hanging across the electrified fence at the north-eastern end of the property. Once ashore, he tightened the straps on his backpack, climbed the tree. The only limb reaching over the fence that would hold his weight was higher than he’d anticipated, so he cut a length of supplejack vine, tied it to the end of his rope.
He was confident he couldn’t be seen from the house, so shimmied quickly down, dropping the last eight feet to the ground.
A siren blared, followed by the baying of maddened dogs.
Jay looked around for an escape route. The vine was out of reach. The fence electrified. The dogs seconds away. Options limited. Chances of reaching the house under his own steam: zero.
There was a raised water tank with a rusted ladder about fifty feet away. He sprinted for it, reaching temporary safety just in time. As the Rottweilers salivated beneath him, he took the drone out of the backpack, set the mode to transmit, launched it to hover above the tank. He used tape to stick the settings in place and attach the controller to the side of the tank.
Then waited for his escort to arrive.
