by Andy Maslen
He was panting heavily as he caught up with Jardin, who was standing on the other side of the trees, yelling at a man with his back to him. Shit! It was definitely Ramón. Then he noticed the girl between Ramón’s legs. Her thin white cotton dress was rucked up around her waist revealing white panties that she was struggling to pull back up, but not before he caught a glimpse of her dark pubic triangle. The girl was young, no more than seventeen, and her face was blotchy and red, wet with tears.
“Leave her alone, you animal!” Jardin shouted, marching up and delivering a ringing slap to the side of Ramón’s head.
Men had died, quickly and bloodily, for lesser insults than that, but Ramón saw that his attacker was accompanied by Toron, so he contented himself with a snarl at Jardin and finished zipping his trousers.
Jardin whirled round at Toron and marched up to him.
“The Children are under my protection, Diego!” he shouted, flecks of spittle clinging to his beard and moustache. “They are mine! My property!”
His face was dark with rage, and his eyes were staring, the whites showing above and below the purple-blue irises. Toron decided appeasement was in order. There would be plenty of time to discipline Ramón later.
“I’ll talk to Ramón. To all my men. It won’t happen again.”
Jardin unclenched his fists and smiled, then took a step closer to Toron.
“Thank you my friend. After all, transgressors must be punished, yes?”
He seemed to fall against Toron. As the younger man bent his knees and reached out to support his business partner, Jardin lunged to his left and grabbed Toron’s pistol.
He spun back to face the foiled rapist.
He racked the slide.
He took aim, holding the gun with both hands cupped around the grip.
And he fired.
Ramón died with an expression of equal parts shock and pain on his face, a fist-sized hole punched through his chest and a torrent of blood staining his yellow silk shirt all the way down to his belt.
The girl scrambled to her feet, looked once at Jardin, mouthed “thank you,” then ran off towards the village.
Toron’s fury, though slow to arrive, burned with an intensity that had earned him a fearsome reputation in Bogotá. When baptism wasn’t an option, he was known to be equally comfortable leaving those who had crossed him with a ‘Colombian necktie,’ a savage mutilation where the victim’s throat was cut and their tongue dragged out through the gaping wound and left flopping and bloody on their chest. If the offence was severe, the necktie would be inflicted while the victim was still alive.
The fire was banking up now.
“Ramón was my cousin. You should not have killed him.”
“Your cousin was about to rape a teenaged girl under my protection. On my land.”
“What, and you haven’t been fucking those little chicas all this time?”
“They’re here to serve me. I don’t force them to do anything.”
“You fucking brainwash them! You feed them fucking Valium like it’s their breakfast. Of course you don’t force them. You just fucking zombify them instead.”
Jardin opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He smiled and cocked his head to one side. He looked down at the gun in his hand. Toron followed his gaze. Looked back at Jardin. Those eyes were unreadable. Shit! Jardin was unreadable. Was he insane? Toron doubted it. He was always rational and clearly enjoyed normal pleasures like most other men. Was he normal? One hundred percent, no. There was something seriously off about this hippie Frenchman. A personality disorder, or maybe he was a psychopath. The fact he never seemed even remotely afraid of Toron made the cartel boss wonder.
The gun floated between them, gripped in Jardin’s right hand. The barrel ascended slowly and Toron tensed himself. But then it pointed left and Jardin transferred his grip to hold the muzzle and offered the pistol to Toron.
“Trust is important, don’t you agree, Diego?”
Taking the pistol and holstering it, Toron nodded. “So is respect, Christophe.”
“Respect goes two ways.”
“So does trust.”
“Do you respect me?”
“Do you trust me?”
In the pause that followed, Jardin stroked his moustache, smoothing it over his top lip, giving Toron that damned superior smile.
“Naturellement.”
“Sí.”
Jardin laughed. “Then we are good. I am sorry for your loss. We can give Ramón a decent burial out here, if you like. He can spend eternity looking up at the rainforest canopy.”
“Do not push my patience. We’ll fly him back to Bogotá. He was married you know. Two children.”
“Your decision. Now,” Jardin checked his watch, “why don’t we go up to the house and turn on the TV? They’re live casting the ceremony, and we wouldn’t want to miss the climax, would we?”
Keeping his simmering temper under control, Toron took one last look at his cousin’s corpse, then turned away and followed Jardin. He stopped on the way to give instruction to two of his men.
“Get Ramón to the plane. Fly him home. Give Elena fifty thousand US and tell her I’ll see that she and the boys are OK when I get back to Bogotá.”
The two men nodded, then trotted over to retrieve their friend’s body.
For one brief moment, Toron considered catching up to Jardin and putting a bullet in the back of his head but then dismissed the idea. Patience, Diego. Build the factory, set up the supply chain, start shipping product. Then maybe we’ll take that blasphemous freak for a trip to the baptistry.
*
Jardin had already turned on the TV by the time Toron entered the house. He could hear the jabbering of the news presenter in that bastard language of theirs. It always sounded to him like they had badly fitting false teeth. Why they couldn’t speak Spanish like the rest of the damn continent escaped him.
“Come in,” Jardin called. “They’re about to go over to Santa Augusta. We might even catch a glimpse of Child Gabriel.”
Grabbing a beer from the fridge, Toron turned his head to watch the TV, then walked into the living room and sprawled out on the sofa, arms spread along the back, claiming the whole piece of furniture for himself.
“Look,” he said in a quiet voice. “There they are, those sons of bitches who want to shut me down.”
47
Two Red Buttons
IN THE CAR PARK, GABRIEL sat in the back of the Range Rover to perform the last few tasks required for his glorification. The detonator was a short, stubby cylinder of black plastic pushed inside a bicycle handgrip of black, ribbed rubber. He unscrewed one end with a coin, inserted the two batteries and twisted the cap back on. Next, he unclipped the coil of detonator cord and connected it to the detonator using a 3.5mm jack plug. At the other end from the jack was a small, cylindrical, red plastic button with a flat top. Toron’s electrician had built it with a two-in-one action. Press to arm the bomb, release to detonate. That way, Gabriel could complete his mission even if the police killed him.
He hoisted the camera by the carrying handle and tucked the detonator into a waistcoat pocket. The walk to the control building took less than a minute, where a small crowd had gathered to hear the speeches and gawp at the spectacle.
In the end, no muscling to the front was required. The media managers had set up a dedicated filming area directly in front of the platform where the two politicians were to give their address. The platform was about two feet high, ten wide, and five from front to back. It was draped in a huge Amazonas State flag: two horizontal white stripes enclosing a red stripe—like a jam sandwich, Gabriel mused. In a corner, a blue rectangle enclosed white stars.
In the centre of the platform was a four-foot tall varnished mahogany box, eight or ten inches to a side. Let into the top was a domed red button five inches across and about two inches high. Beside the box were two mic stands with wires trailing off to the PA system at the side of the platform.
&
nbsp; Gabriel secured a spot dead-centre in the front row of the media enclosure between a huge guy who smelled of last night’s beer, and a skinny little runt with bad body odour. He breathed through his mouth as the two aromas contested the space under his nostrils.
According to the slim young woman in black who’d addressed them from the platform ten minutes earlier, the president and the justice minister would arrive to begin their speeches at noon. He checked the black digital watch Jardin had fastened onto his right wrist before they left Eden. Allowing for the Brazilian concept of punctuality, Gabriel estimated that they might be kept waiting for at least thirty minutes more.
Around and behind him, the cameramen and photographers were checking lenses, batteries, mics, and cable connections. Gabriel fiddled with his own camera, aiming for a look of professional diligence combined with world-weariness, sighing occasionally and looking up at the sun, which was throwing warming rays onto their heads. He was grateful to Père Christophe for the baseball cap. The camera’s rubber grip felt slippery. He transferred it to his other hand and wiped his palm on the side of his leg.
Sweat was dribbling from his hairline into his eyes, the salt stinging and making him blink. Somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach, a faint fluttering started up.
A miniskirted woman of maybe thirty or thirty-five stepped out from the control building and mounted the platform. Her high-heeled black shoes meant this last manoeuvre had to be executed with extra care were she not to show her underwear or topple backwards into the dirt.
The crowd quieted and the media people stopped adjusting lenses and tweaking controls. She waited for a few more seconds until she had everyone’s attention before speaking.
“Ladies and Gentlemen. Enrique Salazar, President of Amazonas State, and Bernardo Menel, the Colombian Minister of Justice.”
There was a brief burst of applause, and a whirring and chattering from the two dozen or so video cameras and digital SLRs in the media pen. She smiled and stood to one side of the two mics.
Onto the platform bounded two men. Both young-looking, with full heads of dark brown hair, combed in side partings. The state president was the older of the two, forty-four according to the official biography in the press pack. Deeply etched lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes, which were set wide apart behind his round, tortoiseshell glasses. His guest was thirtyish, the youngest-ever Minister of Justice in Colombia’s brief but violent post-Indian history. He had been elected—“catapulted” would be a better word—into Colombia’s parliament on a “no corruption” platform and had been appointed to his ministerial role a few months later. He smiled, revealing horsey teeth, and brushed his hair back from his forehead. The sharply tailored suit gave him the appearance of a junior executive anxious to please his boss.
Watching the men with his left eye, Gabriel pressed his right to the rubber eye-cup of the camera and pointed the blind lens at the mahogany tower that housed the dummy switchgear. With his free hand, he reached into his waistcoat pocket for the detonator, pulled it out and transferred it to his trouser pocket.
He closed his hand around the rubber grip.
Placed his thumb over the button.
And pressed down.
He felt the click. The bomb was armed.
Now all he had to do was let go and the president, the Minister of Justice, the pretty press aide, the media people around and behind him, and a goodly proportion of the crowd behind them, would be killed. Those not killed outright by the blast would be mutilated by the Tears of God, with a high chance of dying from blood loss. And me, Gabriel Wolfe? What will become of me? I will die. I will sit at God’s right hand.
The state president stepped forward and grasped the mic. Gabriel noticed he had black hairs on the backs of his fingers.
“Today, we take another important step in the fight to make Amazonas State self-sufficient in energy. The Santa Augusta Hydroelectric Generating Station will produce enough power to reduce our dependence on the national grid supply by seventeen percent in its first year of operation. But there is another fight in which we are engaged. A fight against corruption. And against the befouled well from which that corruption creeps like a plague. You know, ladies and gentlemen, that I am speaking of the drugs trade and of the cartels who control it. With intimidation, bribery, and violence.”
Nice link. Smooth. As it’s your last speech, it’s good you’ve made the effort.
Gabriel could feel the tension in his left hand. How easy it would be to release it and himself. Then someone nudged him in the back. He turned, but the men directly behind him were focused intently on the president.
As he turned back, he saw a familiar figure had replaced the skinny man with the personal hygiene problem.
“Hello, Boss.”
“Hello, Smudge. You’re looking good.”
Smudge touched his chin. “This, you mean? I know. Seems to have healed up nicely, doesn’t it? You going to kill everyone, then?”
“Looks like it.”
“You want to do that, do you? Really?”
“I do. It’s my duty to Père Christophe. He gave me the Second Order.”
“What’s that then?”
“Give your life to cleanse the world of sin.”
“Fucking strange order, Boss. Who authorised it?”
“Père Christophe.”
‘What? So you’re saying this Christophe geezer sent you out here to murder a load of innocent people and yourself, and he authorised his own kill order?”
Gabriel frowned. “Yes, he did. But they’re not innocent. Those men are evil”
“How d’you figure that out, then?”
“I didn’t. Père Christophe did. He told me.”
“Oh, well as long as he told you, that’s all right then, isn’t it? Come on, Boss, this isn’t you. You’re better than this. What would Master Zhao say?”
“How do you know about Master Zhao?”
“Or your Dad? Or the one who called you ‘Gable’?”
“What?”
“You heard. The one from before you joined up. The one from way back.”
Gabriel blinked. His thumb was quivering, and he began to unwind the muscles that kept it clamped down on the button.
48
Release
GABRIEL MADE A SMALL ADJUSTMENT to the bomb.
Then, with a tiny smile, he released the button.
“Well done, Boss. I knew you could do it. We’ll speak again.”
“Thanks, Smudge. Bye for now.”
“Bye, Boss.”
49
Mission Resumed
GABRIEL LET THE DISCONNECTED JACK plug drop. Then he put the disarmed detonator back in his pocket. Excusing himself to his skinny neighbour, he shuffled out of the media pen, drawing a fleeting frown from the Colombian justice minister. He walked away from the crowd towards the downstream side of the dam. Nobody was watching him. The security detail were focused on their bosses, the media people on the journalists, the crowd on the bigwigs who were now berating previous governments for cowardice in the face of the threat from the cartels. If only they knew.
Rounding a corner, he found what he was looking for. He ran down a narrow pathway between two windowless concrete buildings towards a retaining wall set on the cliff that separated the plant from the two-hundred-foot drop to the river below. He leant over the parapet. Far below, the green water looked as though it was barely moving. Five streams of water from the sluices at the foot of the dam kept the current flowing, leaving white feathers of bubbles trailing out into the river.
He took a final look behind him then turned, swung his arm back, and hurled the bomb towards the middle of the river.
It tumbled end-over-end through the air, diminishing in size until it disappeared before hitting the surface with a foamy, green-white splash. No sound reached him. He wound the cable around the detonator, tucked the end with the jack plug under the final coil and flung it far out into the air. It vanished after a couple
of seconds, and if it made a splash, Gabriel didn’t see it.
His head still felt fuzzy from the increased dose of Valium, but the mental conversation with Smudge had reset his brain’s rational circuitry. Best of all, he felt himself again, as if he’d been mired in a fever-dream for months. But now he had a job to do. A job he was going to enjoy. Kill Père Christophe. End his terror campaign. And get back to England, and his sanity.
As he drove up to the gate, one of the pumped-up paramilitary police turned at the noise of the Range Rover’s engine and frowned. Then he unshouldered his rifle, pointed at Gabriel and made a ‘turn off the ignition’ gesture, twisting an imaginary car key in the air in front of his shoulder. Gabriel coasted to a stop. He got out and came round the door to face the cop through the bars of the gate, feeling as though he were in prison, talking to someone on the outside.
“Why are you leaving?” the cop said.
“My boss called. Hospital fire. I have to go film it.” Gabriel shrugged and pulled the corners of his mouth down as if to say, orders are orders.
“Bloody vultures. OK, hold on.”
Gabriel got back in and started the car again. Then a jolt of adrenaline shot through him. What if he asks to look in the back again? There’s no camera.
He started calculating. Three against one. Full-auto assault rifles against a thin-skinned Range Rover. Accuracy versus speed. The advantage of surprise. Or claim I lent the camera to a colleague. But then what are you going to use to film this alleged inferno, compadre?
The gate juddered and began its journey along the well-greased rail let into the tarmac.
It clanged to a stop.
The cop stood to one side and beckoned him forward.
The female and the other male cop started to walk into the centre of the road. They wanted to talk.
