Eye of the Cobra (43 page)

‘For the same reason you work for an American television network - money. You will be given an opportunity to make a statement, Miss Tyson, and I suggest that you tell the truth. It will make things a little simpler.’

Vanessa closed her eyes. Who could have done this to her? It was unbelievable. She would have to get a good attorney to represent her, because it seemed she didn’t have a leg to stand on.

Chief Inspector John Tennant of New Scotland Yard put the phone down and gazed across the murky London sky. It was strange how a lead would develop when one least expected it. Tielemans was well-known to him, a man dedicated to ending the drug trade not only in Belgium but in the whole of Europe.

For Tennant, the news was a promising break after months of silence. Interpol had known for some time that someone was bringing large shipments of heroin, cocaine and other drugs into various countries in Europe, but no real pattern had emerged, and no leads.

Vanessa Tyson. Somehow he wouldn’t have expected her to be involved in such a business, but experience had left him cynical. She was the ideal person to engage in the transport of drugs, after all; her business took her to a different country every couple of weeks, and her journalistic credentials would put her above suspicion. She travelled with a camera crew and a lot of luggage, and because of her reputation customs officials would leave her alone. However, someone had turned on her.

What they had on her was damning: ten kilograms of heroin in her briefcase, and then another one hundred kilograms found after a more detailed search, in the camera cases of her crew. It was enough to put her away for eternity. But he guessed she must be working with someone - by merely snuffing out Vanessa Tyson, they wouldn’t stop the traffic.

Would she talk? he wondered. And if she did, how much did she really know? He knew in his gut that there was someone very powerful controlling the whole operation, some
one singularly ruthless, who was not afraid to dispose of anyone threatening their network. The publicity that followed Miss Tyson’s arrest would help, though. It would make whoever was behind her nervous, and nervous people made mistakes.

Ricardo hung over the toilet bowl, grasping the rim with his hands, and threw up again.

He wished he could die. He was in so deep he could never pull out now - and if he told Phelps he’d been found out, Phelps would destroy him. There were documents he had signed without thinking ... It was he who was in the position of king-pin: he had been manipulated and used, an ignorant player in a sophisticated game.

But at least Rod Talbot had promised him a light sentence. It was Talbot who’d asked him to entertain Vanessa Tyson the previous evening. Now he had just heard the news on the radio. She had been arrested: a major drug-bust. What the hell was going on?

The phone rang and he shivered. Reluctantly he answered

it.

‘Ricardo, good buddy, you did well.’

Talbot’s voice purred from the receiver.

‘Did you find drugs on her?’

‘Yes. You gave us the time to search her room. We knew she was one of Phelps’s main dealers,’ he lied, ‘but we’ve never been able to catch her.’

‘But Phelps hates her!’

‘The perfect cover.’

‘So now you expect Phelps to approach me?’

‘Exactly.’

Ricardo shivered again. He was caught between Talbot and Phelps. Either of them could destroy him.

‘What will happen to her?’ he asked in a small voice.

There was a moment’s silence.

‘First we will break her,’ Talbot said. ‘We will try to get her to confess Phelps’s involvement. She’ll only get twenty years . . . if she co-operates.’

Ricardo was shaking.

‘But what do you want me to do?’

‘Relax, buddy. You’re working for Interpol. You’re safe. I guarantee Phelps will make you take over where Vanessa Tyson left off. You will make the next delivery.’

The phone went dead.

Ricardo felt sick. What the hell was he involved in?

The new Shadow Two rolled out of the Calibre-Shensu workshops at Amersham that same morning. It was a glorious early spring day, the air crisp and fresh, the sun shining brightly. Vapour rose from the mouths of those who stood talking around the car.

Bruce de Villiers watched the official FISA scrutineers warily. The inspection lasted over an hour, with much note-taking and discussion amongst the officials. Bruce could feel himself getting more and more worked up. There was nothing he could do about it, he really wanted to race in Belgium and it all hung on whether the Shadow Two complied with the stiff regulations.

Eventually the most senior
official, a man with heavy-rimmed black glasses and unfashionably long side-burns, came up to him.

‘I’m pleased to inform you that the Shadow Two meets the regulations. I can also give you Mr Hugo’s word that there will be no comeback on this decision.’

Bruce wanted to say a lot of things, most of them rude, but he shook the man’s hand warmly. Then Don Morrison brought the press reporters onto the track and Bruce stood proudly next to the Shadow Two.

‘We intend to be at the front of the grid at Spa . . .’ he began.

The formalities over, Wyatt took the Shadow Two out for an hour around the test circuit. His times were good but not outstanding. Something was holding him back. Bruce hoped to hell it wasn’t the new chassis-design.

Both the Shadow Twos would be flown that evening direct to Belgium. The first practice was on the Thursday and the Grand Prix was on the Sunday. That gave them only three days to set both cars up. Worse, Charlie Ibuka would be competing in his first Formula One race in a car he hardly knew.

Later the same day, Bruce de Villiers experienced a curious feeling of quiet satisfaction at he looked at Vanessa Tyson’s picture on the front page of his newspaper. He was unsympathetic. The bitch deserved everything that was coming to her. And he hated the world of drugs; he had seen enough people on the circuit succumb to the attractions of narcotics.

Anyway, at least he didn’t have to worry about any more negative publicity.

He folded the paper up and turned to the file on his desk.
 
There was a lot of paperwork to clear before he set off for Belgium.

Carlos put the phone down and walked out onto the balcony. Rain had fallen an hour before, but now the sky was a beautiful turquoise-blue. In the distance he could hear his horses whinnying. He loved the pampas; it was as flat as a billiard table, the long horizon broken only by the occasional windmill. He stood staring for some time at the intensely yellow poplars that marked the edge of the estancia’s grounds; then he left the balcony by a wooden staircase and walked through gardens filled with mock-orange and hibiscus to the drive, which was lined with blue-gums, their white trunks gleaming in the fading light.

He liked to be alone at this time of day. Estelle was sleeping. He had not told her the truth; she had enough to worry about.

Carlos looked back at the house, and the memories came flooding back. The laughter, the camaraderie. He had grown up here on the estancia with his brother. They had been best friends as well as brothers.

David had always been the thinker. Polo did not interest him. And to their father’s despair David had left the estancia, to become a lawyer. Years later, he had fallen in love with a Colombian woman and moved to Bogota. That was when he became interested in politics and government. But the brothers had remained friends during that time; they spent their holidays together.

God, it was as if David was standing next to him. How could he have been murdered in that way?

Carlos couldn’t let David’s death go unavenged. He thought about the film the Ortega Cartel had sent David’s wife - of David slowly hanging to death. She’d had to spend time in a mental hospital after that.

Carlos had always had the lingering suspicion that Emerson Ortega might still be around. Now, after the mysterious disappearance of Raoul in Brazil, he had become even more suspicious. It was as if events were leading him towards the Ortega Cartel.

The map he’d found in Raoul’s hotel room was in a safe in his study. Tomorrow he would meet a friend, an aerial surveyor who would perhaps know the place indicated on the map.

Carlos’s instincts told him that he might have stumbled on something that would lead him to the heart of the Ortega Cartel.

John Tennant looked wearily at the woman facing him. Even in the unattractive prison uniform, she was attractive. Dark-haired and voluptuous, she had penetrating brown eyes that unsettled him.

There was something wrong with this case, and he felt it more and more as he proceeded with his questioning. He’d first suspected a plant when Tielemans had given him the details of Tyson’s arrest: it had been just a little too easy . . . Still, bitter experience had taught him that nothing in the world of drug-trafficking was quite as it seemed.

‘Mr Tennant.’

Her voice caught him unawares - he had drifted off on his own train of thought. He stared back at her.

‘Do you realise what all this is doing to me, Mr Tennant?’

‘Miss Tyson, I suggest we keep the discussion to what is relevant.’

‘If my condition isn’t relevant, then I don’t know what is.’

He looked at her, but did not show pity. He could not afford to show weakness. Underworld contacts had indicated that there had been an enormous delivery of drugs in Monaco, and there was about to be one in Belgium.

He got up.

‘I must advise you that it is in your best interests to co-operate.’

‘Mr Tennant, I cannot tell you more than the truth. If you do not believe me, then that is your problem.’

He stormed out of the interrogation room. He was getting nowhere fast.

Ricardo reached for the compact for the second time that day. Talbot had given it to him and told him to take a snort if he was nervous. Talbot said he knew it wasn’t ethical, but he didn’t want Ricardo botching up the operation because of nerves. Ricardo found this ironic - that he should be taking drugs in order to help Talbot uncover a drug-trafficking racket. Still, if it worked . . .

Talbot had also told him to be very careful. He said that Ricardo was only to deal with himself; he must trust no one else, even if they claimed they were from Interpol. Talbot had repeated this instruction to him several times.

The rain was pattering against the outside window of his sumptuous hotel room - but at the moment he didn’t have a thought to spare for his surroundings. His whole body was literally shaking with tension.

As Talbot had said he would, Phelps had approached him. But what was strange was that Phelps hadn’t mentioned drugs. He’d just asked Ricardo to arrange the delivery of some merchandise for him.

Ricardo had made the contact - delivery would take place during the race.

Now he went into the bathroom and rested the compact on the top of the toilet cistern. He then poured out a thin white line of the precious powder - and looked down at it with satisfaction. The first snort he’d had made him feel a lot better. He could handle it. And he felt like he could handle some more.

He rolled up a dollar note and inserted it in his left nostril, then he bent
forward and quickly inhaled the powder.

It didn’t take long before he was feeling very much in control again. He had plenty of money, he was trusted by Phelps, and Talbot had told him he must just play the game. So what the hell did he really have to worry about?

Jack Phelps was very pleased at the way things were going. It was clear that Vanessa Tyson’s career was over. No longer would he have to listen to her tirades against tobacco com
panies and their involvement in Formula One. Also, Bruce would be entering two drivers in the Belgian Grand Prix, and Aito was especially happy that one of them was Japanese.

And, above all, he now had Ricardo completely under his control. There was nothing the man would not do for him.

Detective Inspector Tielemans went through the facts again. It was all very logical. A dealer had obviously decided to get even with Vanessa Tyson and had informed on her. Maybe she’d asked for too much money, or she’d been invading someone else’s turf.
He looked up to see John Tennant coming into the room.

‘Well, did you get anything out of her?’

Tennant sat down and rested his head on the desk.

‘Do you think I’ve gone soft, Andre?’

‘No. I consider you to be as professional as ever.’

Tennant leaned back, his face taut, his dark eyes restlessly scanning the walls and then zeroing in on Tielemans.

‘I believe her story,’ he said.

The smile left Tielemans’s face.

‘Don’t be an idiot! She’s going to get twenty years, of course she’s going to plead . . .’

He stopped, realising that John would already have taken that into account.