He continued to read the cover note. There was a double indemnity clause for accidental death. That meant the policy was worth eleven million dollars, since according to Alberto’s account, Olivier’s death could certainly be shown to be accidental. What about exclusions? Foreign territories, war or insurrection? He scanned the document, looking for any excluded conditions. There appeared to be none.
Finally, he looked at the beneficiaries of the policy. They were Cristina Alves Cabral e Mendonça Borges de Bettencourt de Santiago de Compostela, Olivier’s wife, and Bettencourt SA, the family’s Swiss company.
Charlie sat in silence, absorbing yet another twist in this tragic series of events. What an incredible man. His admiration for his Portuguese friend knew no bounds. By this simple act, executed in London the day before his fatal trip to Luanda, Olivier had ensured financial security for his wife and children. He had also achieved his objective of bringing his father and brothers the capital they needed to develop their new Swiss endeavour. In death, as in his life, he had found a way to fulfill his duty.
Sitting alone in his office, in the quiet of the night, the tears streamed down Charlie’s face. He wept for Henriques and he wept for Manuela. But most of all he wept for Olivier, a brave, clever, far-sighted man. A true and loyal friend, whom he would never, ever forget.
THIRTY-FIVE
Monday, June 30th, 1975
Cascais, Portugal
Charlie hardly slept that night, his mind going over and over the recent tragic events and their present dilemma. This wasn’t a game of outwitting the Nationalisation Committee any longer. It was now a matter of life and death. Three of his friends had already lost their lives and no one knew what danger they and their remaining friends faced. When he got up, still feeling tired and depressed, he asked Nick to take Maggie and the kids to the beach so he and Ellen could be alone. He called Olivier’s latest secretary with a story to cover his absence. Then he explained to Ellen what the insurance policy meant to Cristina and the Bettencourt family’s Geneva plans.
After that, he unburdoned his deepest feelings to her about the money and the diamonds. About their plans for Geneva and their future. Despite the tragic outcome, the plan to retrieve the valuables had worked, but Charlie had had his fill of Portugal and the whole horrible experience. He’d seen enough cruelty, corruption and fear for a lifetime. He wasn’t prepared to take any more risks with their lives or their friends’ lives. He wanted to pack up and get out. Start again somewhere new. To hell with the diamonds and cash, it just wasn’t worth it.
He finished by repeating Alberto’s warning. “We’ve got to get out now. Tomorrow, or Wednesday at the latest.”
Ellen listened until he had exhausted his emotional outburst then she walked with him into the garden and they sat quietly together.
After a few minutes silence, she said, “We’ve been here now for six years. That’s a long time, almost as long as our marriage. Ronnie was born here, so if we leave with nothing else, we’ll at least have achieved something in this country.”
“I’m not following you, Ellen.” His wife was a Yorkshire girl, shrewd and pragmatic, and Charlie was normally used to her thinking process, but now he had no idea what she meant.
“I mean that apart from our child, who could have been born anywhere, we’ve made no progress at all in our lives here. We’ll have to start again in some other place with nothing, because we both know that without Olivier, there’ll be no place for you in Switzerland. It’s clear, the Geneva dream is over and it’s all because of a government full of Marxist dupes who have terrorised us and caused the deaths of our friends for no apparent reason at all.”
“So, what’s your point?”
“My point is that in the safe there’s millions of dollars worth of reward for your six years of hard work in this country. Don’t you think that at least we should get out in good shape? We’ve suffered enough over the last year, more than anyone deserves. We can’t throw in the towel now, when we’ve got the chance to make it all worthwhile. This is an opportunity to achieve financial independence, maybe the last chance we’ll get. It’s also a chance for Nick and Alberto to get through this nightmare with more than just bad memories.”
“So, you’re saying we have to get out with the valuables. You’re willing to take the risk?”
“I’m saying that no bunch of communist thugs should stop us from keeping what’s now ours. You’ve almost given your life to try to save your friends. That fortune that was given to us would have been stolen by some murderous crook if you hadn’t got it out. We’re entitled to it. And if the government, or the army, or anyone else doesn’t like it, well, I say Screw them!”
When Nick returned, Charlie told him that he and Ellen had decided to try to get out of Portugal with the valuables. Nick tried to hide his immense feeling of relief. He’d been desperately afraid that Charlie would drop the project, and him with it. After all the disappointments they’d been through, he didn’t think he could have coped with yet another. But he knew they still had to find a way to get the goods out of the country.
Nick was not good at strategic thinking. He was a technician, an engineer and a diamond expert. “But how do we get the stuff out without Olivier? Can we use Alberto again?”
“No. Alberto has taken this thing as far as he can. He’s fifty-five years old, with a wife and a kid and I’m not about to see him get locked up in a Portuguese prison after everything he’s done for us. Angola to Portugal is one thing but going through immigration and customs into the big outside world is quite another. I can’t let him risk it. We’re on our own.
“But I have a kind of plan, or at least the outline of one. I’ve been worrying about this since we left Luanda and I’ve come up with only one possible way. It’s not clever, it’s down and dirty and it’s probably fraught with danger, but it’s the only way I can think of.”
The South African waited without speaking. This was Charlie’s forte.
“Almost every day there’s more and more people leaving Portugal. There are thousands of people getting out every month. A lot of them travel by car across one of the border posts with Spain and it’s impossible for the border guards to effectively search every car. It’s a logistical nightmare, it can’t be done. So they randomly select every fifth or tenth car, or whatever, to search. And even then it’s almost impossible to search a car thoroughly unless you pull it to bits, and they don’t have time for that. At night, or early in the morning, it’s even more difficult for them because they’re tired and irritable and just want to get rid of you.”
“So we drive through the border at night with the goods hidden in the car. Right?”
“No, Nick. I don’t want you to drive anywhere. A single man, or two men in a car, will draw much more attention than a family. I want to drive Ellen and Ronnie through, like a fed-up, law abiding, English family, going back to the UK via Spain, in a car piled high with belongings. Clothes, pictures, books, family possessions of every kind, so that it would require an X-Ray machine or a mind reader to find a well hidden package.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Right now, nothing. But tonight I want you to come here with Maggie and we’ll plan the move. We’ve got to be out of here by tomorrow, so we’d better get started.”
When Jorge Gomez hadn’t returned by Monday evening, Major Tavares called Colonel de Mouro, the commanding officer at Craveiro Lopes Airport. The colonel confirmed that Gomez had asked for two soldiers to accompany him on a sortie on Thursday evening. They hadn’t yet returned and the sortie request said only Bettencourt, Ambrizete. He knew nothing more and he didn’t have time to spend in trying to find out. He sounded tired and overwhelmed by the worsening situation at the airport. Tavares was irritated that Gomez hadn’t told anyone what he was up to, but he agreed to call the Colonel the next day to check again. Meanwhile, he would look through Gomez’s files to try to locate their destination.
That evening, Charlie explaine
d his plan to the others. As he had said himself, it wasn’t particularly clever and might be dangerous but he didn’t know what else to suggest. In the absence of anything better, they agreed to execute it the following day.
The next morning, they went to the APA offices as usual and talked as if they were staying until the end of July. They concocted a story to explain Olivier’s absence and, by good fortune, there was no meeting of the Nationalisation Committee until the following day.
Charlie called a friend from the golf club and sold Ellen’s Peugeot to him at a bargain price. They had rented the house furnished and Nick’s only possession was the Opel tank, so they would leave nothing of any value in the country when they escaped, except the Morgan and the tank, and they needed them both for his plan.
Jorge Gomez still hadn’t returned by Tuesday afternoon, so Major Tavares went next door to his office and got Lía, the secretary, to check through his files. They found the request that he had made a couple of weeks previously to tap the phones at a mining company in Angola. He called Colonel de Mouro at Luanda airport again and gave him the details. The officer reluctantly agreed to send a couple of soldiers up to Ambrizete the next day to check out the situation.
Major Tavares invited Lía for dinner that night. She readily agreed and put on her best outfit for the date. She was starting to move up the ladder of powerful men. Mostly on her back or on her knees, but it was better than living in a filthy hovel in Angola.
THIRTH-SIX
Tuesday, July 1st, 1975
Cascais, Portugal; Malaga, Spain
That evening, Nick drove over with Maggie and Alan in the Opel and parked it by the Morgan in front of the garages at the side of the house, so they could come and go to the cars in the dark without being seen from the road.
Charlie opened up the boot of the old car. “Give me a hand, Nick. All that stuff piled in the garage is going in here. I reckon it’ll just about fill this monster.”
They packed the boot until it was overflowing with every conceivable thing, including Ronnie’s games and their golf and tennis gear. The clothes and items that they needed for their trip were packed into two suitcases.
“OK. Now for the clever bit, I hope. Can you get the back seat out of there, and open up the tool compartment?”
They wrapped the cash, the diamonds and their few family valuables in a plastic tablecloth, hid them inside the tool box and placed the box back in the tool compartment, under the back seat. Then they put the seat back in place.
“Now for the camouflage.”
They loaded layers of clothing, beach towels and blankets onto the back seat, until it was as high as the door handles. Then Charlie laid a sleeping bag bed for Ronnie on top of all the layers. He placed some family papers into the briefcase, and stood it on the floor in the back.
Stepping back, he inspected the old car. There wasn’t an inch of wasted space. “Right. It’ll have to do. Let’s have a drink with the ladies.”
Ellen and Maggie put the boys to bed, then made some sandwiches and they opened a bottle of wine. At the table they discussed the details of their plan.
“We’ll set off at about eleven. I’m going to drive down to the Algarve and then through Spain to Malaga.” Charlie held Ellen’s hand. “It’ll be fine, it’s just a day and a half’s drive. We’ll be there tomorrow lunch time. Nothing is going to go wrong, I’m sure of it.”
Nick, Maggie and Alan would spend the night at the house then drive back to Estoril next morning in the Morgan. Anyone watching would assume it was Charlie and Ellen. They would go out to the airport in the afternoon and dump the Morgan nearby. Nick would leave on the Madrid flight and check into the Hotel Plantamar. Maggie’s diplomatic immunity would help if there was a problem at the airport. Then Maggie and Alan would take a cab back to Estoril.
Charlie would call Nick at the Plantamar in the afternoon. If he couldn’t make the call, well that was pretty self-explanatory.
“There’s one more thing.” Nick got up and raised his glass. “Here’s to all of us. Good luck and good health.”
They clinked their glasses and drank a toast, then he fished in his pocket and took out two ring boxes. “For two wonderful ladies. Thanks for everything.”
The women opened up the boxes.
“Oh my God! Nick, how fabulous!” Maggie slipped the solitaire diamond ring onto her engagement finger. Ellen did the same. They were equally stunning. Nick had mounted them on white gold, to show off the exquisite lustre of the diamonds, each of which was just over one carat. He was embarrassed at the grateful thanks they showered on him.
‘They look better on your fingers than in the APA vault.”
“You’d better not wear them at the border, or it might scupper our plans. Nick, you’re a real gentleman.” Charlie shook his hand. Both women were in tears. It was going to be a difficult parting for them all.
They said goodbye just after eleven o’ clock and Charlie drove the Opel out of Cascais to Lisbon and then down the main southbound highway, towards the Algarve. He didn’t drive fast. First, because he didn’t want to attract attention, and second, because he was worried that the tank couldn’t take it. He knew the radiator tended to overheat, so he stopped twice to fill it up. They passed several check points, but they were not challenged. He was wearing a black tee shirt and had not shaved. Ellen had pinned her long dark hair into a bun and could easily be mistaken for a Portuguese Senhora. In the old car, Charlie hoped they would be of too little interest for the soldiers to bother them. He was partially right.
It took them just over five hours to reach the Algarve coast road. For the first couple of hours, the three of them sat on the front bench seat and played word games. It was a very hot night and the car had no air conditioning. By the time they reached Grândola, Ronnie was tired and looked pale from the heat and the lack of air, so they laid him down in the sleeping bag on the back seat.
They were stopped for the first time at the coast road. There was a small wooden guard post at the junction, and a soldier with an automatic rifle stepped into the road and asked for their papers. He perused them for a moment, looked into the car and at Ronnie’s sleeping form then waved them on. They followed the road east, all the way past Loulé and Faro. At about half past five in the morning they stopped in Tavira, to fill up with petrol and pour water into the radiator. It was just after six thirty when they got to the Castro Marim border post. Ronnie was still fast asleep in his make shift bed. There were no other cars waiting. The place was deserted. Charlie had got it wrong.
The border post was a concrete building, with barbed wire running north and south from each side. There were four soldiers on duty, two were inside listening to the radio, and the other two were sitting smoking on a bench outside the door. One of them stood up and came to the driver’s door. Charlie spoke to him through the open window. “Bom dia Senhor.”
The soldier ignored him. “Passaportes e documentação.”
Charlie gave him their two passports and the car documents. The soldier examined the passports, looking at the photographs and back at them. He looked at the sleeping child on the back seat. Ronnie’s name was added to Ellen’s passport. He closed them after a careful examination. Then he checked Charlie’s driver’s license. Finally, he looked at the car registration document and the license plate. He said in Portuguese, “So, this is not your car?”
In halting Portuguese, Charlie said, “Não, Senhor. It belongs to a friend”
The soldier looked inside the car, at Ellen, at Ronnie and all the stuff piled inside. He opened up the passports again and looked at the photographs. “Why are you driving it across the border?” he asked.
When Charlie started to speak in English the man silenced him. “Fale em Portuguêse! Speak Portuguese!”
Charlie couldn’t answer the question, so he just shrugged and said nothing.
The soldier said, “Para fora,” signalling to him to get out of the car. They went round to the trunk. “Abra! Open!�
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As he opened the boot, the other soldier walked across from the bench. Charlie noticed uneasily that he was wearing a captain’s uniform. The two men conversed and then signalled to Charlie to empty the trunk. It took him a couple of minutes to take out the golf bags, the suitcases, the tennis kit, the books, toys, clothes and all of the rubbish that he had piled in the previous evening.
The two soldiers examined all of this, then started on the trunk. They lifted up the cover to the spare wheel and searched the compartment with a torch. They prised away the side and back panels and inspected every cavity. Going underneath the car they searched the chassis with their torch. Then they told Charlie to load it up again and open the bonnet.
He released the bonnet catch, propped it open and came back to the trunk. Didn’t bother fixing the panels back, just hurled the stuff in as fast as he was able. During this time, he saw a couple of other cars arrive alongside them at the post. A third soldier casually examined their papers and waved them across the border. Typical bloody Bishop’s luck, he said to himself.
The soldiers searched the engine compartment and the underside of the engine and chassis with the aid of their flashlight. As Charlie finished repacking the trunk, they pushed the bonnet closed again and opened up the back doors of the car from each side. The captain picked up the briefcase, looked through the papers inside and replaced it without comment.
The other soldier spoke and gestured to Charlie, clearly instructing him to empty the back seat. In the front, Ellen was terrified, pressing her legs together desperately, trying not to pee herself with fear. Charlie was sweating and hyperventilating, at his wits end. They’re going to find everything. What the hell can I do? He didn’t know how to stop them. He gestured at Ronnie, lying in his sleeping bag. “My son is asleep. Meu filho. Dormir.”
The African Diamond Trilogy Box Set Page 25
