The Music of the Spheres

by Allister Thompson

  They moved away into the shadows. Now that he had found the murderer, Hastings’ mind was in turmoil. Part of him, a part that he had always ignored and suppressed, was filled with anger and hatred. He felt an itch in his left hand, the side of the pocket that contained the gun. But what would killing Rosas accomplish? Guy would never sing on this Earth again, no matter what. With Gonzalez’s connections, and hopefully some evidence if things were handled properly, perhaps Rosas could be brought to trial, if not necessarily for the crimes he committed in Virginia. And if Gonzalez were telling the truth about his society, Rosas would probably pay the ultimate price. But not before Hastings had the chance to ask him some pointed questions about his activities.

  They didn’t have to wait long. After about ten minutes, Rosas rolled up his right sleeve and jabbed a small syringe into his arm with evident relish, then waved farewell to his two friends and headed off down the street. The two pursuers let him get a block ahead of them and followed. After a few more minutes, they were away from the main strip, and the street became much quieter. There were very few pedestrians about as they slowly followed the staggering man. He was kicking up clouds of dust from the road as he lumbered.

  Just as Rosas turned down a side street and Hastings was about to speed up to keep him in sight, he heard Gonzalez yell from behind him, “Look out! Run!” He heard what sounded like a muffled shot and turned to see Gonzalez go sprawling, his gun half out of his pocket. He stared despairingly up at Hastings, an unspoken apology burning in his dying eyes. Three men dressed in black were running toward them, dark blurs in the night. Hastings turned to run, but before he could take more than a couple of steps, he felt a blow to the back of his head. Blinding light and excruciating pain filled his head, and he felt himself falling as well.

  Perhaps he would be following Guy sooner than expected, he thought before darkness came.

  eight

  Hastings jolted back to consciousness. There was a splitting pain in the back of his head. He could feel a breeze or a draft on his left side, and it was surprisingly cold; the air felt thinner. Wasn’t he in Colombia? He tried to open his eyes but was unable to for a few seconds. When he did, he found himself sitting upright in a damp, dark space. There was water trickling down stone walls. He could see what looked like a cold flagstone floor beneath him. When he tried to move, he found that he was tied to a chair.

  “Mr. Simon Hastings.” A figure stepped from the shadows. “I trust you are feeling better.” The figure was that of a tall man with graying, close-cropped hair, wearing a modest but obviously expensive business suit. He had elegant, aquiline features and mild-looking brown eyes, but his thick brows added a hint of brutality. He too had a Spanish accent, but, like Gonzalez, he spoke fluently in an educated tone.

  “Where am I? What have you done with my friend?” Hastings could barely speak, the pain in his head was so intense.

  The man smiled. “I can answer both of those questions, but I don’t think you will like the answers.” He came closer and unceremoniously stuck a cigarette in Hastings’ mouth; he spat it out defiantly. His captor shrugged and sat in a chair to the right, crossing his legs.

  “Since this is my country, it is my right to be the one asking the questions, but there will be plenty of time for that, time which you will not enjoy. Your friend is dead. He was known to us. This brings me to your second question. You are in Medellín, at the headquarters of the Colombian Cartels. I am Ricardo Alvarez, Director of Security. I am also Minister for the Environment in the Government of Colombia. I am holding you on suspicion of illegal pharmaceutical trafficking.”

  Hastings’ head was swimming. Another man dead, this one on his account. “I’m not a drug dealer… I have a perfectly good reason for being in your country,” he managed to stammer. Anger and resentment, as well as the pain, were clouding his brain. “And if I’m suspected of this, why am I not in police custody?”

  Alvarez gave a short, barking laugh, which was incongruous with his sophisticated exterior. “As your friends Gonzalez and Rosas may have warned you, there is a very fine line between the duties of the authorities and company security—”

  “Rosas?”

  “Yes, and do not play stupid with me. Your activities in the country were monitored from the moment you stepped off your flight. Do you think the presence of a known radical and hellraiser in our country would go unnoticed?”

  Despite his discomfort, Hastings couldn’t help but feel flattered by this description of himself. Alvarez smiled again. “Though my daughter, who attends private school in Upper Canada, enjoys your music very much, and I do not forbid her to listen to it. A stage, you know.” Hastings opened his mouth to speak, but Alvarez waved him to silence. “You were followed to the British consulate, where you presumably notified your countrymen of your status as a tourist for cover. You then contacted, a little to our surprise, Miguel Gonzalez, with whom I am very familiar, a man known to harbor some very dangerous views indeed. He had been of some use to me in the past, but I’d had my eye on him for some time for stepping outside acceptable boundaries.

  “But the reason for your presence here was still a mystery to us until you arrived for your meeting with your third partner, Rosas. We have been watching him for a while also, having heard of certain very undesirable activities of his that affected our profits. Activities that made us very angry. He is a slippery one and has managed to avoid leaving evidence so far.

  “Yes, we do officially require evidence before arresting someone; we try to stick to that most of the time. Fortuitously, you were followed right to him, and our agents decided it would be opportune to remove the threat. Perhaps regrettable in some ways. The only reason you are still alive is that you are a foreigner, and we need to preserve our good foreign relations. If someone knows you went missing here, that would not be good. Still, I have not quite decided what to you do with you yet. We know Rosas recently visited you in New York. International illegal dealing is a very big crime.”

  “Rosas?” Hastings croaked.

  “He escaped yet again, unfortunately, by slipping down an alley while we apprehended you. But he won’t evade us for long. Now, what shall I do with you?” Alvarez crossed his legs, leaned back, and took a long pull on his cigarette.

  Hastings finally pulled himself together. He must try to reason with the man. “Listen, Mr. Alvarez, you’ve got this all wrong, and a good man has died because of your error.”

  Alvarez shrugged casually. “Many good men have died at my command. More good ones than evil, most likely. That’s the nature of my work. But if I am incorrect, please do fill me in. I have plenty of time.”

  Alvarez’s attitude toward the killing of Gonzalez, and the story his people had concocted, sent Hastings into a rage. He could no longer control himself; he had heard plenty about these multinational executives and the way they played fast and loose with the law, seemingly living in their own world where they could get away with whatever they pleased. “I’ll fill you in all right, you sick bastard,” he almost roared, straining at his bonds. “Rosas is responsible for the murders of two men in New York, ironically a couple of your best customers. I came here to track him down. And you let him get away!”

  He cursed and raved in this fashion for a few minutes, while Alvarez looked on stonily, then finally calmed down and related the facts. He was getting tired of explaining himself.

  When he had finished, Alvarez got up and paced the room for a few long seconds then stopped and stared hard at Hastings. “Calvert is dead, eh? My daughter will be heartbroken. Now that you mention it, I did hear that some British pop star had died. I will confirm this story. I will also have a chat with my friend Fairweather-Smyth, who, if you are telling the truth, was overly cautious in sending you to that amateur Gonzalez. I would have been perfectly happy to assist you. We could have helped each other! The consul should have told you that avoiding the long arm of the Cartels is impossible in Colombia. I will be back, and if you are lying, diplomacy b
e damned, you won’t live another day!”

  He roughly untied Hastings’ arms and offered him another cigarette, which was grudgingly accepted. Then he left. Hastings heard the lock turn in the heavy metal door.

  He looked around him. He was in what was once likely a storage room; the walls, ceiling, and floor were concrete, not stone, which, he noticed with a shiver, was stained a dark red in many places. Water dripped from several cracks in the walls and ceiling. The two wooden chairs were the only furniture and a naked bulb the only light. No doubt this room was designed to break the will of the captive.

  It was at least a couple of hours before Alvarez returned; hunger pangs were clawing at Hastings’ stomach. He was slumped on the floor, heedless of the dirt. He had passed out for a while, but his head still pounded. He raised himself slowly to his feet, noticing that Alvarez had changed into some sort of fancy black evening dress. “What’s the time?”

  “Six p.m., Mr. Hastings. You were out for about sixteen hours, you know, and completely oblivious to your helicopter journey to our lovely highland corporate headquarters. Our men are good at their jobs.” Hastings noticed that he had not shut the door behind him, but a heavy-set man in a black uniform with a large gun stood outside. “The facts would appear to confirm your story. I owe you, ahem, an apology for our hastiness. You have come on a brave and foolish mission, sir. Well, follow me, and we can continue this discussion in more comfort.”

  Hastings painfully followed him out of the door, up a flight of stairs, and into the pink marble-floored lobby of some large building. There seemed to be no one around. The guard accompanied them. The entered a large elevator. The guard would not return Hastings’ gaze, standing at attention with his gun across his chest, his face impassive.

  They disembarked at the fortieth floor, went down a long white hallway, and into an office. The guard remained outside. The office was by far the most opulent Hastings had seen. There were priceless-looking antiques in display cases around the room and several paintings that looked like the work of the renowned and recently deceased Photographic Realist painter Federico Picasso, the value of which must have been in the millions of pounds. There was a massive desk, a few well-appointed chairs, and a luxurious crimson shag carpet. A large window with open curtains opened on a beautiful valley panorama of rolling hills and thick, emerald jungle stretching into the distance, where he could see the outskirts of a large city. The sun was beginning to set, filling the room with blood-red ambiance.

  “Please forgive our rough treatment, Mr. Hastings. Welcome to Medellín. We may have had our information mixed up, but we thought we had to act quickly. Unfortunately, I am forced to admit, our actions deprived us of our real quarry in the end. This does not happen very often.” In the red glow, Alvarez looked positively satanic. “Some port?” He poured two glasses of rich burgundy liquid from a crystal decanter and seated himself behind his desk with a sigh.

  And you killed a man who had helped you in the past, thought Hastings but kept that thought to himself. The man who sat facing him obviously possessed no conscience. “Well, you can make it up to me by helping me track down this arsehole again,” he bluntly said instead.

  “That would be my pleasure, but there has been an unfortunate complication.”

  “Which is?”

  Alvarez now wore an impishly coy look, which Hastings found annoying. “Rosas, as I said, ran away into an alley. We have had the police tear apart every shack in that neighborhood, during the course of which they made several coincidental arrests based on what they found, which made them very happy. In one filthy place they were directed to they questioned a woman of ill repute, who, under the influence of, ah, some mild interrogation, admitted to being the current paramour of the elusive Rosas, who had run out of the house in great haste minutes before my men arrived. Other tenants of the neighborhood were able to confirm that Rosas lives there. The woman produced this list from his lodgings, which, as you can see, has your name on it. Curious, hmmm? We originally thought it was a contact list, but now its meaning seems more sinister, would you not agree?” He handed Hastings a sheet of paper with a list, in two parts, scrawled in a messy hand.

  Hunter Burlington

  Guy Calvert

  Simon Hastings

  Martin Sharpe-Thornton

  Maurice Wyatt

  Daevid Mallorn

  Rick Farren

  Ed Barrett

  Hastings was very familiar with all the names. He looked up quizzically. “This must be a hit list!”

  Alvarez continued smiling in his inscrutable way. “So it would seem, so it would seem. A strange pastime, assassinating minor pop stars! It appears you are a marked man.”

  “That was why he looked so upset when I wouldn’t buy any of his drugs.”

  “Indeed. These other men, you know them?”

  “Yes, they’re outspoken rock musicians. They all share the beliefs and to some extent the sounds of my band. We’ve gigged with all of them. Obviously, this man is supposed to or wants to kill us all. Why?”

  Alvarez put a finger to his mouth. “I know Rosas’ history very well. He is not the type to take an interest either in cultural or political affairs. Our supposition must be that he is working for someone else, and not necessarily someone in this country. I know all of the rich madmen and madwomen of Colombia intimately (some might say that I am one of them!), and I don’t know of anyone who would want to knock off northern pop stars, even for sport. We are an insular people. Rosas spent a great deal of time out of the country last year, but we do not know where. We assumed he was working in the slave trade somewhere. As long as he stayed away, we were well satisfied. It was stupid of him to come back. Let me tell you what I think.” He was silent for a few moments.

  “Yes?” Hastings’ head was still aching, and he was feeling rather faint. He sipped some of the port to steady himself.

  “Rosas, during his travels, has met with someone who has contracted him to do these killings, presumably for a large fee. He is not the sort to turn down large financial gain — who is? — and having worked briefly as a member of my security force, albeit not one of the most skilled, killing is not an activity to which he would give a second thought.” Hastings felt a chill run up his spine and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “It would be easy enough to follow one of you home and shoot or stab you, but the mastermind of this plan has been clever and has decided to boldly pin the killings, should they be discovered, on the Cartels. It is intended to be the perfect crime — committed by our former employee, with what is purported to be our products. This incenses me, especially since it involves betrayal by a once-trusted member of our team. A very careful, seemingly foolproof plan. Despite the potential danger to him here, Rosas has been instructed to go to ground. He is taking a break to return home to enjoy some of his earnings, to renew some of his business contacts, and if anyone suspects anything, to make it look like he is returning to report to his bosses — myself, in other words.”

  “Why did you fire him?”

  Alvarez shrugged. “I had orders to downsize. Others had more seniority and far more skill, so I unfortunately had to let him go. He may have turned into something given a longer trial. We offered him a very generous severance package, including an extension of his dental benefits for a year.”

  “And you don’t sell a drug called Cortezuma #1?”

  Alvarez looked offended. “Give us more credit than that. The Cartels are very concerned about the political correctness of our product names, and this insult to a great Spanish hero and a conquered king by combining their names would be very unpopular!”

  Hastings gazed out the window. It all fit together. If Alvarez was right, a great deal of preparation had gone into these murders, and there would be more to follow if Rosas were not caught or the targets weren’t at least warned of the danger. He might already be running out of time; Rosas may even have left already, and England would likely be his next stop. The Cartels’ security obviously was
n’t as proficient as Alvarez liked to think. There was only one thing to be done, and one person to do it.

  “Mr. Hastings.” Alvarez had stood up and was pacing slowly and precisely, like a caged lion. “I think that you had better return to your home country, to London, if that is where your friends live. I cannot assist you in tracking down Rosas in Britain. It would mean a great deal of trouble, and not only with your friend Fairweather-Smyth, if Colombian operatives were to be found working in England. MI5 is a rather bumbling group but nonetheless not one I care to alarm at the moment. We are currently involved in a silly little border dispute with one of your colonies to the east of here, and my hands will be tied until that is resolved and our countries are allies once again.”

  “Understood,” Hastings said, longing to be out of the company of this most disturbing man. “Well, if you could kindly return me to Bogotá, as quickly as possible, I can be on the next flight to London. I assume considering that all of the rest of the people on the list are there, I’d best go and warn them about the danger.”

  Alvarez held up a hand. “Not so fast, Mr. Hastings. I am as interested — for my own reasons — in ending the activities of our little assassin as you are. You will be taken directly to the airport for an overnight flight, and we will endeavor to find out what your hotel has done with your baggage. I have one request, with which I cannot, naturally, force you to comply.” His eyes glinted evilly, as though he was enjoying the idea of “forcing.”

  “And that is?”

  “I would like you to carry a gun. We have developed a new prototype weapon, a sonic gun. We also have needle guns that inject poisons, which might seem appropriate in this case, but we are also eager to move to the forefront of sonic attack weaponry development. It has only been … tested … a few times here, but it is effective. This will be an excellent chance to give it a field test. The European authorities know nothing of it and should not be able to detect the presence of its use in a corpse.”