by AFN CLARKE
“Mr Thomas Gunn. What may I do for you?” he said. Samuel De Costas looked more like a benign accountant. He was short, slim with a slightly egg shaped balding head with amber eyes that flickered and glittered like a cobra. I turned to the woman who was probably in her mid thirties, expensively dressed, tall with long dark hair and striking green eyes. She looked at me with air of a Countess, as if I were something unpleasant stuck to the bottom of her shoe. I thought I had seen her somewhere before, but just couldn't think where, perhaps because I was more concerned about De Costas.
The woman looked at De Costas disdainfully; rose collected a file from the desk, paused and said. “I'll be expecting that consignment in ten days.” It sounded like a command.
She swept past Julie and glanced at me with a slight smile, and I caught the slight smell of vanilla and another odour I was not familiar with, in her perfume.
I turned back to De Costas. “Rathborne Micro-Electronics Ltd.”
De Costas sat back gently in his oversized chair, watching me without smiling. He seemed uneasy and little irritated. “What about it?”
“It seems you are trying to buy it, or should I say steal it from my company. I would like to know why.” There's nothing like getting straight to the point.
“I heard you was, how shall I say, a little hot-headed Mr Gunn and I will try to not take offence, even if, where I come from, your accusations could get you hurt,” he said in a bad Brooklyn accent.
“Sounds like everything I read about you is true, then, including the phoney Brooklyn I-belong-to-the-mob accent.”
If his eyes could get any colder and more malevolent they just did.
“Whose the girl?” he said, his eyes flickering over to Julie.
“None of your business. Now Rathborne Micro-Electronics Ltd. What do you want with the company?”
“I make global investments. This seems like a good investment. I talked it over with your father and he agreed with me.” He paused and leaned forward his mouth curving into a slight smile that did not touch his eyes. “My condolences.”
“Really. That's interesting, because I talked it over with my father, and he doesn't agree with you. In fact he sent me here to find out just what kind of game you're playing.”
If any more blood could have drained from his face it just did.
“Your father was killed. I saw it on the news....” De Costas blurted out before stopping himself. “You're not quite as stupid as they say you are, Mr Gunn.”
“True.” I reached into my pocket and took out my cell phone as the bodyguards lunged for their guns. I turned on the audio playback feature and held it up so everyone could hear.
“Over the years Mary has been receiving drugs from a London supplier, who I think is linked to Samuel De Costas, the man who is threatening to take over the Northern Ireland project. I went to the authorities of course but the inquiries have gone nowhere. I want you to fly to Belfast. Find out and then go to San Francisco. Find Samuel de Costas. Something bigger than a drug deal is afoot, Thomas.” Earlier in the day I edited the transcript, taking out some words to make it sound as if my father was briefing me, and I was sure De Costas wouldn't notice the slight hesitations in the audio.
“You have nothing, just some words of a failed businessman who can't keep up with the new world,” De Costas said, but I detected uncertainty and a tinge of fear in his voice.
“I don't know what you are up to, De Costas, but I will find out and I will come for you. You can bet on that.” With that I turned, took Julie's arm, crossed the office, and walked down the corridor to the elevator.
“Holy crap, when you said rattle his cage you really meant it, didn't you?” Julie whispered. “Are we going to get out of here alive?”
“Oh yes. He's not that stupid, but when we get outside that's a whole different ball game. Did you catch the name on the file that woman took with her?”
“Coltrane Engineering.”
“Guess that's our next stop.”
“And she was wearing Clive Christian No.1.”
“Oh yeah? And what's that?”
“Just the most expensive perfume in the world. That woman is loaded,” she said tartly. “Personally I don't care for the smell of Ylang-Ylang.”
We stepped into the elevator and the doors closed just before two of De Costas' bodyguards could reach us. They would not be far behind, so I had better think of plan quickly. We had parked the car two blocks away, so I had to deal with the two bodyguards before we could make our way back to it. I pressed the button for Parking Level One, ignoring Julie's questioning look.
The second elevator, the only one the bodyguards could use, was still ascending as we began to drop, and only began to descend when we were over half way down.
“De Costas won't want a scene here, so he'll have a reception committee at street level. That's why we're going to Parking Level One. Buy us a little more time.”
“I brought a little insurance,” Julie said pulling up her dress and extricating the Beretta.
“You're lucky they didn't have a metal detector.”
“It was a party, not airport security.”
As we passed the ground floor, I could see two more bodyguards waiting for us in the lobby, caught off-guard as the elevator sped underground. According to the building schematics, there was a loading and unloading bay for the kitchens and laundry adjacent to Parking Level one, which could be accessed by a security door from the garage.
“Text your father to unlock the security door in thirty seconds.”
Julie rapidly sent the text as the elevator glided to a halt and the doors hissed open. We were out and running toward the security door as the sound of footsteps clattered on the metal emergency exit staircase, signifying that the bodyguards would be here in moments. I just hoped my timing was right and Oldfield managed to trip the lock. As my hand closed on the handle I heard the electronic lock trip, gently opened the door and followed Julie through as the emergency exit door banged open on the other side of the parking garage.
So far so good.
The door locked comfortingly behind us as we walked quickly up the ramp and out of the loading bay into the cool San Francisco night.
“Quite some trick from halfway around the world,” Julie said breathlessly as we kept to the shadows and put as much distance between us and the De Costas building as possible before circling back to the Volvo.
“Mainframe computers are instantaneous. Doesn't matter where you are, if the connection is fast enough.”
“Now what?”
“We can't go back to the beach house, the bridges have surveillance cameras so I guess it's Mojave and have a look at what De Costas is hiding out in the desert.”
“Back to being Mr and Mrs Blacket then?”
“Indeed.”
Driving out of the city was a matter of keeping to side streets and avoiding the main highways. I'd taken the precaution of filling up with gas before leaving Stinson Beach, at a small local gas station where I knew they didn't have cameras, so we snaked our way down the peninsula to San Jose, then cut across to Sonora where a winding highway took us across the mountains to the Nevada border. From there it was a straight run down the west side of Death Valley to the Mojave Desert. Well not straight exactly, but if anyone decided to follow Mr and Mrs Blacket, it would be a long hot drive.
“There's a motel I know near Panamint Springs on the edge of Death Valley. We'll stay there tomorrow night.”
“Sounds wonderful. Just as long as they have air conditioning.”
“They do. What's more important is that it's quiet, private and is exactly where Mr and Mrs Blacket would stay.”
“Well OK. Hon” Julie drawled. “I juz caint wait to snuggle up with you in a nice little 'itsy-bitsy' motel.”
TEN
We arrived in Panamint Springs at seven in the morning having driven all night, tired, dusty, and ready for a shower and breakfast. The motel was pretty much as I remembered. Quaint, simple, and
clean, perched on the edge of nowhere in Death Valley National Park. It was already hot, dry and dusty, and it wasn't going to get any cooler, so once we checked in and cleaned up, Julie and I went over to the restaurant, sat on the porch, ordered ice cold orange juice, scrambled eggs and bacon.
“How did you find this place?” Julie asked stroking the head of an old Australian sheepdog that wandered up, hoping for a scrap or two. “Hey fella, nothing here for you I'm afraid.” The dog licked her hand and gazed at her adoringly.
“When I was travelling after I left school, I wanted to see Death Valley, ended up here and liked it. So far away from my own cloistered life.”
“You can say that again.”
After breakfast I called the pilot of the G550 on one of my burn phones, and asked him to reposition the aircraft to Henderson Executive Airport near Las Vegas. Then Julie and I drove to the trailhead of Darwin Falls. It is perhaps the unlikeliest place in Death Valley, a year round waterfall at the head of a narrow gorge about three and a half miles in from the main road. The hike was flat most of the way, but required a little scrambling over rocks. As we went deeper into the gorge, we escaped the direct heat from the sun and finally reached the small twenty-foot tall waterfall. Surrounded by ferns and other flora, it just shouldn't be in a desert at all.
“My God, who would have thought,” Julie marvelled, sitting on a rock in the cool of the gorge.
“Runs year round from a spring which feeds the Motel.”
“I'm glad we came. It's a tiny jewel in a moonscape.”
“Death Valley's full of weird things.”
“And it's taken an Englishman who is half American to show me parts of my country I've never seen.”
“We get around. It's in the blood.”
For several hours we sat, talked and wandered back to the car, a gentle break before the reality of our purpose brought back the tension and uncertainty of the future. But not before I showed her some of the other attractions of Death Valley and we lunched in Furnace Creek, drove through Artist's Drive and then to Dante's View just as typical tourists would do, cementing our identities as Mr and Mrs Blacket.
We arrived back late in the afternoon, tired, dusty and hot despite the car's air-conditioning, ready for an early dinner and bed.
The Australian sheepdog joined us for dinner on the porch and received some of Julie's fresh Angus beef burger for his amber eyed imploring, eating with relish. After dinner we lay on the grass with the dog, which had taken a fancy to Julie, and watched shooting stars light up the clear night sky.
“It's so quiet and yet so loud with the cicadas. There's such a sense of infinity here.” Julie whispered as if afraid to wake the sleeping gods and spoil the magic of the night.
All too soon the night of gentle lovemaking was over and we were back on the road, following the GPS to the co-ordinates Professor Oldfield had supplied for Coltrane Engineering, ten miles North East of Mojave Airport. It seemed an odd out-of-the-way place to establish a company supposedly dealing in the manufacture of oil and gas pumps, but nothing about my life at this moment was normal, everything absurdly surreal. Such a short time ago, Julie and I were naïve boat bums, sunning ourselves in the Mediterranean without a care in the world, now we were hiding from would-be killers and searching for answers to the murder of my father.
Mojave is a small dusty town hiding a spaceport where wealthy civilian potential astronauts lined up to take a Virgin Galactic flight into space. The desert is a perfect flat empty space for experimental aircraft; the test pilot flight school at Edwards Air Force Base and returning space shuttle flights. I followed the road out of town past the spaceport, following the GPS navigator, then turn left onto a small potholed road five miles out of town that petered out into a dusty track.
“Stranger and stranger,” Julie muttered. “Who the hell would build an engineering plant that has no access for big trucks?”
“We're coming in the back way,” I grinned. “I figured De Costas might have a reception committee lined up if we came in the front door.”
“Good thinking.”
A good two miles from Coltrane Engineering, I pulled the car into a shallow arroyo, hidden from view to anyone but the most earnest hunters. I collected a couple of handguns, two sleeping bags, two small cans of compressed liquid nitrogen, heavy duty rubberised industrial gloves and a pair of high powered binoculars from the back of the car, while Julie packed sandwiches, energy bars, glucose tablets and water into two back packs. Once we had everything we needed, I wired an explosive charge to a cell phone and tucked it under the fuel tank.
“What's that for?”
“A nasty surprise for De Costas' men, just in case they find the car.”
“If that happens, how the hell do we get out of here? Walk?”
“There's always a way.”
We hiked along the arroyo for half an hour following the directions on a handheld GPS, until we were confronted by a ten-foot high electrified wire fence, that looked very new.
“Whatever's going on here is recent, that's for sure,” Julie remarked. “And they don't want visitors.”
“But as yet no remote CCTV cameras. Looks like they are ready to install them but haven't got around to it yet.” There was a scuffling noise to our right and a gopher shot from a hole, ran to the fence, struggled through and dove into another hole on the other side. “And no electricity to the fence yet either.”
“That'll make life easier.”
To our right the edge of the arroyo rose sharply to a ridge about fifty feet high. The only access via a narrow cleft that wound through the rock and disappeared around a sharp corner. Julie followed as I explored the opening, reaching a dead end about one hundred metres in, but with a simple climb up to the back of the ridge that edged the arroyo. From there we had a good view across the open land to the Coltrane Engineering buildings a good eight hundred metres from where we lay. Between the buildings and us two graders flattened the ground, pushing the dirt to one side but apart from that there seemed little movement in and around the buildings. An MD-902 Explorer helicopter sat on a helipad at the East side of the property, with three SUVs parked nearby beside a low structure, which I took to be the offices attached to the main square, windowless, concrete construction facility. Whatever was happening here had a direct connection to De Costas and Rathborne Micro-Electronics in Belfast. The door to the office block opened and the woman we had seen at De Costas office walked across to the helicopter, followed by a man. Through the binoculars I could see them very clearly. The pilot was obviously already on board, because I heard the engines start just as the passengers boarded, and within a minute the aircraft was airborne and headed away from us toward Mojave.
“I told you she was loaded,” Julie murmured.
“She looks familiar, but I can't place her.”
“She was in De Costas office.”
“No, before then. I've seen her, but I just can't remember where. If I could just get the context I'd know.”
“It's going to bug you isn't it?”
“Yes it is. I hate loose ends.”
“Well let's get in there and find out what's going on.”
“We will, but not until tomorrow.”
“What,” Julie exclaimed. “Where the hell are we going to sleep?”
“Right here. Until about two thirty in the morning.”
“Wonderful.”
“Well I'll have a sandwich and imagine it's that delicious crab we had in Newport.”
Covert observation posts are perhaps one of the most boring and yet stressful tasks anyone can undertake, even if it's only for a half a day and half a night. There is absolutely nothing to do, except keep still, watch and stay out-of-sight. The cover and shadows provided by the large boulders scattered across the rocky ridgeline above the arroyo provided us a measure of shelter from the intense heat and hid us from view. Comfortable it was not, but Julie managed to find a sandy soft spot tucked up beneath an overhang where the desert
sand had blown in and was able to scrape herself a 'bed' that was at least softer than solid rock. And, as was her uncanny ability, fell fast asleep while the sun dipped toward the horizon, the only sound now that the graders had stopped, was the helicopter returning from wherever it flew. The pilot shut down, walked toward the office and five minutes later several men and two women exited, climbed into the SUVs and drove away, presumably to their homes in Mojave.
As darkness fell, the quiet of the evening was broken only by the sounds of nocturnal creatures venturing out from their burrows to hunt and feast in the cool desert night, until the sun forced them back underground to sleep away the heat of the day.
At two o'clock in the morning, as the half moon descended toward the horizon several hours before the pale light of dawn would begin to filter across the desert-scape, I started packing up our little camp site. Julie lay sleeping, wrapped up against the cold, mouth slightly open and eyelids twitching in REM sleep, stirring as I gently shook her shoulder.
“Time to go,” I whispered. She nodded eyes still closed, and promptly turned and fell asleep again. This time I pinched her ear lobe. Her eyes snapped open, unfocused for a moment, hand reaching up to rub her ear.
“What was that?” she said groggily.
“Me. Time to go.”
As I finished clearing up, Julie struggled out of her sleeping bag, rolled it up and took the bottle of energy drink from me, sipping slowly in the cool night air.
“Did you sleep?” she asked, taking a chocolate covered muesli bar from her backpack.
“No.”
“You should have woken me earlier.”
“I wasn't sleepy.”
“That's not true.”
