The African Diamond Trilogy Box Set

by Christopher Lowery

  The abduction plan was a work of genius. Apart from a few minor hiccups it had been well executed and she had been confident of recuperating at least a part of Ray’s fortune. Until, she reflected, this evening.

  Now it was time to face the facts. For some reason it looked likely that Dudley’s confident announcement of this morning was unfounded. Otherwise why would he not answer the phone? He was embarrassed and he was hiding from them, so Leo Stewart must not have arrived in Harare, there was no other explanation that made sense. The scheme was compromised and there would be fallout, there always was. Recriminations, blame, arguments and ultimately the risk of disclosure and punishment and that wasn’t part of her plan. The other conspirators were just cogs in the machine and meant nothing to her. If there was no future in the ransom plan then it was time to move on and regroup. There were still ways in which she could come out of this mess ahead of the game. She had learned from the Angolan Clan disaster that she needed a backstop and she had taken some wise precautions, but first she had to extricate herself from the potential repercussions of tonight’s news, or rather, lack of it.

  She went to the British Airways website on her iPad. There were seven flights the next day from Heathrow to Belfast. The two o’clock flight was ninety-nine pounds and there were a few seats available. She knew if she booked it the next morning it would be even cheaper. The Heathrow express cost twenty-one pounds, so that was a maximum of one hundred and twenty pounds and she had an Oyster card for the tube to Victoria. Slater had paid the hotel bill including tonight, so she owed nothing for her room. In her purse she had four hundred and seventy pounds and the train from Belfast to Dublin would be about forty-five Euros. She could manage for a few days in the inexpensive B&B she would go to.

  She quickly made up her mind, as she had been forced to do many times in the last couple of years. I’ll go to see Arthur first thing in the morning. If he hasn’t got confirmation that the boy is in Harare then it’s over. I’ll take the train to Heathrow for an afternoon flight.

  Esther cleaned her teeth and went to bed. She fell asleep almost immediately. Unfortunately, she was becoming used to things going wrong.

  DAY SEVEN

  Saturday, July 17, 2010

  SIXTY-THREE

  At sea, between Antalya, Turkey and Marseille, France

  The cargo ship Erzurat was making eleven knots between Antalya and Marseille. Flying a Greek flag, she was a medium size ninety metre Norwegian vessel, built in 1970 and rebuilt in 1979, with a 2,000 HP MAK engine and 2,900 dead weight tonnage capacity. The ship had left Latakia in Syria two weeks previously, carrying a cargo of shoes, boots, handbags, travel goods and other leather, plastic and rubber articles insured for five hundred thousand dollars. A stopover had been made in Turkey, which produces over half of all TV sets and twenty per cent of white goods manufactured in Europe. In Antalya, on the southern Turkish coast, sixty containers containing ten thousand flat screen television sets, various types of audio equipment, refrigerators and other white goods were loaded, with an insurance value of three million dollars.

  During these loading operations, under the strict control of Captain Bahadir Yilmaz, one of the containers was opened on the dockside and fifty of the television sets were removed and taken into a warehouse. They were extracted from their cartons and polystyrene packaging and the back panels removed and emptied of their components, leaving only the screen and the panel intact. The components weighed four kilos and were easily detached with a screwdriver and a pair of sharp pincers. Inside the four centimetre deep compartment thus created in each TV, four waxed paper packages wrapped in cellophane, measuring thirty by twenty centimetres and weighing one kilo each, were placed and packed around with wood shavings and coffee grounds. The back panels were then replaced, the TVs restored to their original packaging, marked with a new bar code and reloaded into the container amongst the other sets. The twenty foot metal box was then loaded onto the ship alongside its fifty-nine identical partners and the Erzurat was ready to sail for Marseille.

  The two hundred kilos of material inside the packages had a value of over sixty million dollars on the street, or thirty million dollars in bulk, a fraction of the three and a half thousand tons of the same material, valued at over fifty billion dollars, which was shipped from Afghanistan through Pakistan annually. It was heroin, the most potent and most valuable of the mind altering substances available to the two hundred and thirty million people in the world who use hard drugs. Captain Yilmaz had been paid fifty thousand dollars for his attention to this cargo, equivalent to almost two years of his salary.

  The heroin now hidden inside the television sets had come on a long trip. It had started life in an opium poppy field near Jalalabad in Nangahar province, Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan and more importantly, close to one of the busiest ports of entry for people and goods moving between Afghanistan and Pakistan, at Torkham - the historic Khyber Pass. After being refined from two thousand kilos of opium locally, on June twentieth, the two hundred kilos of pure heroin had been brought across the border in a horse drawn cart carrying a family of farmers and leading a small herd of cattle. The cart was full of chicken feet, already beginning to decompose and smelling so badly that the customs official accepted a very small bribe to avoid investigating the bloody, stinking mess. Even if this had not been the case, the money that changed hands ensured discretion. Jobs at border crossings are highly valued and equally competitive, as money earned from corruption usually exceeds actual salary. These posts are commonly awarded along familial, tribal or friendship lines. As a result of corruption and inefficiency on both sides of the frontier, Torkham border is favoured by drug smugglers as ineffective and not threatening to their movements.

  Once comfortably over the border, the two hundred packages were transferred to cavities built into the side panels and floor of a battered and broken down lorry filled with second hand bicycles and spare parts. It took three days, including stops for two flat tyres and a broken fan belt, to cover the fourteen hundred kilometres that brought them to the coastal area of Balochistan, on the Arabian Sea. In the port of Karachi the merchandise was transferred to the Lady Guinevere, a cabin cruiser kitted out as a fishing boat and flying Gibraltar colors, where it was hidden underneath the cabin floorboards in the hull space.

  The thirty-one foot 1972 Trojan Express cruiser, powered by its Mercury Mercruiser twin inboard/outboard engines, set off at twenty knots westward towards the Gulf of Oman at seven in the morning on the twenty-sixth of June. The boat passed Ras Al-Kaimah and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in the evening of the twenty-eighth, sailing through into the Persian Gulf. Off the coast of Qatar a customs boat came alongside, but after a short discussion and an exchange of several packages of cigarettes, the Lady Guinevere was sent on its way and entered the Port of Shuaiba, in Kuwait, on the twenty-ninth.

  The next transfer was into a compartment built in the floor of an ex-US army canvas roofed Chevrolet C/K truck, with Kuwaiti military plates. The lorry was then packed with a heavy load of scrap copper, recuperated from bombed-out electricity stations, and the lorry’s speed was accordingly compromised. The driver had the necessary papers to drive out of Kuwait, through Iraq and into Syria. He set off on the morning of June thirtieth and after leaving the tiny state, headed north-west, averaging forty miles an hour on Route 1 towards Falluja in Iraq. From there he continued in a westerly direction on Route 12, a secondary road, reaching the Al Qaim-Abu Kamal crossing on the Euphrates River belt after another twelve hours drive. He drove into Syria without any problems on the morning of July second and the following evening the merchandise arrived under cover of darkness in the port of Latakia, on the north western coast of Syria. The packages were removed from the lorry and stored that night in the warehouse of MediShip, a small Turkish shipping company.

  The next morning, the fourth of July, the Erzurat came into harbor from Marseilles and offloaded a shipment of French pharmaceutical products and optical, te
chnical and medical equipment. The new cargo of Syrian exports of leather, plastic and rubber articles was loaded, together with the merchandise from Afghanistan. The cargo ship sailed to Antalya that afternoon and arrived on the night of the 6th July to load the sixty containers waiting on the dock. The packages were taken off the ship into the warehouse once the fifty TV sets had been opened up to receive them. Loading of the containers was completed during the following two days. The Erzurat sailed for Marseille on the evening of the second day with a full cargo and had now been at sea for nine days. The whole delivery mechanism up to this point had taken twenty-seven days and it would take another day and a half to arrive in Marseille.

  The price paid to the drug lab in Afghanistan for the two hundred kilos of pure heroin was four hundred thousand dollars. That price is not much higher than unrefined opium, but heroin is easier to smuggle and the sales price more profitable. The drug smugglers and their transport, plus the additional costs of bribing district officials, insurgents and warlords to permit the merchandise to pass their jurisdictions amounted to six hundred thousand dollars, including the organiser’s commission and Captain Yilmaz’s fifty thousand dollars, making a total cost of one million dollars. This was the investment made by the funder, without any additional bribes.

  The price of heroin is typically valued at eight to ten times that of cocaine on European streets, making it a high-profit/low volume substance for smugglers and dealers. The average street price is one hundred dollars per gram with thirty-five per cent purity. One kilo is worth three hundred thousand dollars at the user level, or about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in bulk to dealers. Two hundred kilos is worth sixty million dollars on the street and has a bulk value of over thirty million dollars, making a profit of at least that same amount to the funders. Erzurat was carrying one of its most valuable cargos ever, uninsured, and it was just a day and a half away from its destination.

  Delmas, Mpumalanga, South Africa

  “Breakfast!” Karen shouted the order, or invitation, from the kitchen. Coetzee was still upstairs in the bathroom and Abby had just returned from walking the two dogs. The house was busy and happy; she felt as contented as she believed was possible. Last night Marius had made love to her; gentle, tender but passionate sex, made all the more enjoyable for both of them after their two years of abstinence. She had felt a change in him, perhaps the two year separation and the difficulties with his business had taken the edge off his rather arrogant macho persona. The hard, disciplined, military side of his nature seemed to have been replaced with a softer, more feeling disposition. She was falling in love with him all over again.

  For once she agreed to put the TV on while they had their meal. It was usually not allowed but he wanted to see if there were any reports about the recent events, he was still nervous that Nwosu would try to cause him problems. Coetzee had learned the hard way that paranoid psychopathic sadists never gave up causing problems for those unlucky enough to be around them. But his fears were wrongly directed.

  They watched a repeat of Hendricks’ press conference in silence, all of them leaving their food to get cold on the plates. Coetzee was trying to work out what part Espinoza had played in the investigation. He was astonished by the revelation of Blethin’s real identity but doubted that the Johannesburg police could have discovered it, he hadn’t even known it himself. All he’d known was that he was French. The Spaniard was obviously a lot smarter than he looked. Short and red-haired, Coetzee had not been impressed by him at first sight.

  What was also obvious was that it was Nwosu who had been murdered and it couldn’t have been by Jamie, the kid wouldn’t hurt a fly. It seemed though, that Hendricks was closing the case with runaway Jamie as the culprit. He can only be in one place, Zimbabwe. That means the Voice sent in another team to grab Leo and get rid of any unnecessary witnesses. Jamie was there and they took him by mistake. The poor kid. He doesn’t deserve to be abducted to Zimbabwe, if that’s what happened.

  “What’s that all about? And please eat your eggs.” Karen and Abby started on their meal.

  He decided to give them a sanitised version of events. “It means that this business was more complicated than I thought. Dr Blethin turns out to be a Frenchman called Constance and Nwosu has been killed by Jamie who has run away to Zimbabwe. The main point though, is that they haven’t mentioned Leo or his kidnapping and the investigation seems to be closed.”

  “So it’s over?”

  “It seems like it. I think we can get back to normal life and forget the whole thing,” Coetzee said confidently and turned his attention to his breakfast. He wasn’t as confident as he sounded. If the Voice had sent down some more gorillas to get Leo and they had failed, then they were likely to come back. They would also be trying to find out what happened to the first pair of goons. And they knew where he and his family lived. He decided to prepare for the worst.

  Kloten Airport, Zurich, Switzerland

  Espinoza switched on his mobile as the Swiss Airbus A340-300 taxied to its bay, fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. Both he and Leo had slept well during the flight and were feeling fresh and alert. There was a message from his friend Mac, in Australia. He had more news and wanted him to call back. He checked his watch, it was just before nine, seven in the evening in Sydney, not too late. There was no queue at security and they were in the departure lounge in less than fifteen minutes. He called the number.

  “Good evening, Mac. I hope I’m not too late in calling.”

  “Pedro, where the hell have you been? I’ve got more information than the seven o’clock news bulletin.” DS MacCallister had been running out of patience. He couldn’t wait to share his findings with the Spaniard.

  “I just arrived back in Europe. I got your message a few minutes ago.”

  “Right then. Get a giant size note pad.”

  It took the Australian twenty minutes to repeat the news from his colleague in Perth, interspersed by Espinoza’s questions. The Spaniard made detailed notes and became more and more animated as his friend finished the report.

  “Thanks Mac. You’ve given me a few new lines of enquiry. I’ll get back to you when I have some kind of confirmation, it shouldn’t be long. If you’ve got a photograph could you scan it and send it to my email address? You have, excellent.” He thanked the policeman and rang off.

  “You look a bit excited, Pedro. What’s going on?”

  “It’s nothing to do with South Africa, Leo. Just another line of enquiry I’m following up.” Espinoza was now wary of what he told the boy. Over breakfast he had attempted to interrogate him further about the circumstances of the abduction, Constance’s death and the reason for the trips to Phalaborwa and the hotel in Vereeniging. Instead, he had somehow fallen into the trap of giving an autobiographical account of his police career in Spain. He had learned absolutely nothing about the abduction and he was certain that was Leo’s objective. It won’t happen on the next flight, he told himself. Two can play at that game.

  He took out his jigsaw puzzle sheet, ticked off several more items on his list and drew two more boxes. Then he made two phone calls, one to France and one to Switzerland. He spoke French each time, in case Leo was listening.

  The flight was called and they boarded the plane and took their business class seats. As the aircraft was taxiing away, he sent a text to Emma. On Malaga flight with Leo. Everything OK and on time. See you soon.

  London, England

  The time was coming up to eight thirty as Esther walked from Piccadilly underground station to Lord Dudley’s apartment. It was already a warm day under an overcast sky and she was sweating slightly in her blazer and jeans, pulling a wheelie case along behind her and carrying a large shopping bag. She didn’t want to pay for a check-in bag if she had to take the flight to Belfast.

  She pressed the bell beside the unnamed letterbox at the side of the plain black windowless door. After a few seconds she rang again. A few seconds later she rang once more, keeping the bell presse
d down whilst simultaneously knocking with her knuckles. “Arthur, it’s Esther. Please open up, I need to speak to you.” There was no letter box to shout through and the only window on the street façade was grilled so she couldn’t bang on it or look inside. After knocking and calling several times more there was still no response from the occupant of the flat

  Finally, she called his number, but like the previous evening there was no reply. If Arthur Dudley was at home he clearly didn’t want to see her. Esther turned and walked away from the building, her head held high. As she had decided last night, she would take the tube to Paddington and then the express train to Heathrow. Book her Belfast flight on the train journey while she considered what to do with the dossier in her bag and the recordings on her iPad. Her mobile rang and she looked at the caller’s name then replaced it in her pocket without answering.

  From behind the curtain of the kitchen window, Lord Dudley watched Esther walk away from the flat towards the tube station. He looked at her lithe sensual figure and swinging hips with genuine anguish. Realising he would probably never see her again, his eyes welled up with tears. It had taken all the strength of mind he could muster to refrain from opening the door. After her display of affection for him yesterday in the hotel he had nurtured high hopes. She had called him, ‘the most resourceful man I have ever met’ and kissed him and he had almost swooned with emotion. But that was before he had learned that the boy who had been taken to Zimbabwe was not Leo Stewart. He didn’t know who it was, but it was irrelevant. Leo was gone, God knew where, and his reputation, at least with Esther, was gone as well. There was no point in wasting his time, she obviously had a penchant for Frenchmen anyway. He had other fish to fry. He went into his office and consulted his phone list.

  Marbella, Spain