His phone rang, it was Juliette calling from Paris. John Ennis had called his office early that morning to checkout some of the details he had been trying to piece together.
“John, I contacted your friend Boisnier at the DST. He’s very talkative, probably trying to pick up some info himself.”
“What did he say?” asked Ennis a little impatiently.
“Well your friend Ortega has been banned from France. Persona non grata! Suspected of some highly distasteful business with the Russian Mafiya and possibly Colombian drug cartels!”
“I see, anything else?”
“Oh yes, he has been involved with one of Castlemain’s friends in Ireland, Pat Kennedy!
“Well, well,” replied Ennis with a soft whistle. “OK, listen Juliette, email me everything right away. Keep this to yourself and then check up on Castlemain and his business here in the Caribbean, a project called Ciscap in Cuba,” he spelt out the word Ciscap, “quickly if you can.”
He rang off and started to put a list of names down on paper of those who seemed to be linked to Castlemain in one way or another. Ortega and Castlemain seemed unlikely bedfellows, but there was a connection, there must be, the odds were too great that so many things should lead back to Castlemain. How was Kavanagh involved in all that? Why was he in Cuba, why had he gone to George Town? Was it something to do with the stockmarket crash and the growing Swap scandal?
On the other hand there was not necessarily something wrong, although Castlemain had been a little too smooth in Montego Bay, perhaps he was hiding something. It was now obvious that he had been trying to fob them with the trip to Cayo Saetia.
Once back in Havana contacts with the outside would become much more difficult and there remained little time to collect and piece together the puzzle before their Caribbean mission came to an end and they returned to France. Whatever happens there’s no way I’m going to get something to write about unless I move my arse, Ennis thought to himself determined to seize on what was beginning to look like a scoop.
He found Paul sunning himself by the pool tapping his Cuban claves, two round polished sticks of hard wood that he was tapping together, producing a rhythmic clicking sound like a one note xylophone, popular amongst Latin American musicians. Paul had become enamoured by the Caribbean, but more in particular Cuba and its music, he was eager to get back to his mojitos. His thing was photography and Grand Cayman offered nothing that could be compared to Cuba, there was little more worth shooting, only rich tourists, he had become quickly bored with George Town.
Chapter 77
A Mafioso in the Sun
Offshore Islands Page 76
