Eye of the Cobra (58 page)

She decided that a bit of the truth was all right.

‘With Carlos,’ she said.

‘And where’s Carlos?’

She moved closer to Phelps, anxious to see his face as she imparted her next piece of information.

‘This is for your ears only,’ she said softly, and Phelps leaned in towards her.

‘As you know, his brother David was the Minister of Justice in Colombia. He was killed by the Ortega Cartel. Carlos was planning to bring back the man who killed him, Emerson Ortega.’

Phelps’s face went white.

‘Ortega’s dead,’ he blurted out a little too quickly. Then he recovered his wits.

‘I’m sorry, Estelle, but that sounds like garbage.’

Estelle remained unruffled, watching the American.

‘Carlos,’ she said, ‘was certain that Ortega was still alive.’

Phelps staggered up.

‘Estelle, would you excuse me for a minute?’

He got up and strode away between the tables. Estelle gestured to a waiter, who was one of Tennant’s men.

‘Follow him. He’s up to something.’

‘But what?’

‘Just watch what he does. Now go!’

Phelps staggered into the toilets, wrenched open one of the cubicle doors, hung over the bowl and vomited. Ortega still alive - it was too terrible to contemplate! Everything would come out!

It must have been Carlos with Wyatt, Carlos who’d captured the helicopter and rescued Suzie. But what had happened to Emerson Ortega? Was he still alive? Had they all survived? The pilot had assured him that no one could have got out alive from the chopper when it was rocketed.

He went over to the washbasins and cleaned himself up. One of the waiters from the coffee shop was busy washing his hands, and seemed to take forever - they left the toilets together.

Phelps went over to the maitre d’hotel.

‘I need to make an international call immediately.’

He was shown to a private cubicle and handed a phone, and in five minutes he was through to a contact at the Pentagon. He barked out a series of instructions rapid-fire, and then slammed the phone down.

Estelle looked at her watch. He had been gone ten minutes. She looked up to see him hurrying back.

‘Estelle. I’m terribly sorry but I bumped into an old business associate who wouldn’t leave me alone.’

He rested his hand on hers.

‘Please, when you know where Wyatt is, get him to contact me.’

Then he was gone.

Tennant’s man came up to her and recounted Phelp’s behaviour over the previous ten minutes.

‘You are sure that he did not meet an old friend?’

‘The only person he spoke to was the maitre d’hotel.’

Out in the lobby, Tennant’s man showed the hotel manager his police identity, and the manager got a print-out of the number Phelps had direct-dialled from reception.

It was a United States number. Back in her room with Tennant’s man, Estelle asked the telephonist to put her through to the same number.

‘Good afternoon,’ said a woman with an American accent. ‘Who is that?’

‘Who do you wish to speak to?’

‘I want to know if I’m through to the right number.’

‘Who do you wish to speak to?’

‘Someone in authority.’

The phone went dead.

When the call came through, Jack Phelps was still trying to persuade himself that Estelle had been bluffing.

‘Yes?’ he said into the receiver. ‘From the Dorchester? What? Estelle Ramirez, yes. She rang the number?’

He put the phone down and dialled another number. He barked a series of commands down the line.

‘Talbot, I don’t care how bad you are, you sort it out.’

Estelle met Tennant himself a little later, and he scribbled down the number she’d dialled.

‘It’s probably some financial brokerage service that has private lines for its more exclusive clients.’

‘So you don’t believe he’s the one?’

‘Mrs Ramirez, people always have a motive. Now why should Jack Phelps, already one of the wealthiest men in the world, want to get involved in drugs? Besides, the cocaine business is pretty much dead after the coup in Colombia.’

‘But he lied to me.’

‘I’m sure a man like Phelps is under constant stress. He’s probably got an ulcer he’s not talking about. And as for the phone call, well, he probably doesn’t like to let anybody know what he’s up to most of the time.’

‘Perhaps I’ve been letting my imagination run riot.’

‘I think we’ve been taking Vanessa Tyson too much at her word.’

Estelle got back to the Dorchester just after midnight. She took her key from reception and went up to her room. She remembered she’d left the light on, but now it was off. She searched for the switch and put it on.

A man with a bandaged face held a gun to her head.

‘Good evening, Mrs Ramirez. One word, one gasp, and I’ll put a bullet through your head. This gun is silenced, so don’t make the mistake of trying me out.’

She turned for the door, and he gripped her arm and twisted it hard up her back.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘It’s time for your bath. Take off your clothes.’

She undressed as the gunman looked on. After all she’d been through, she thought, she now had to run into a rapist . . . She pressed the panic-button the police had given her, then hid it under her discarded dress.

‘Very good. Now I’ve run the bath for you and the water’s nice and hot.’

As she moved to the bathroom door, his leg shot out and he pushed her forward so that she fell head-first into the water. She tried to scream - and then the door to her room burst open and two policemen ran in. The man with the gun swivelled, pumped shots into each of them. Estelle rolled into the bathroom and locked the door.

Bullets smashed through the wood, narrowly missing her. Then she heard sirens outside, and the shooting stopped.

John Tennant replaced the phone with a grim expression on his face. He thanked God he’d given her the panic-button - but he felt sick when he thought of the two men who’d died saving her life.

Then he remembered the number she’d given him, and phoned headquarters and dictated it over the phone. Five minutes later he had an answer.

It was classified. A direct line to a general in the Pentagon.

John Tennant opened and closed his hands. It was worse, far worse than he’d dreamed.

The shadow crawled over the green carpet of foliage and threw up a whirlwind of leaves - and Wyatt buried his face in the mud and prayed to God they hadn’t been seen. He gripped Emerson’s hand, forcing the Colombian down; Carlos was out front, scouting ahead. He guessed the chopper was conducting a grid-pattern search, moving out from where they’d spotted the helicopter wreckage.

The three of them had been on the move for five days now, living off fish from the river they were following upstream. It would have been easy to construct a log raft and paddle their way along, but it would also have been suicide, because the helicopter conducting the search would have picked them up in minutes.

The helicopter disappeared into the distance. Emerson laughed out loud.

‘You think you will get away from them?’ he grinned. ‘You are crazy. I tried to get away from the Yankees. Then I let them think they’d killed me and had plastic surgery.’

Wyatt yanked Emerson to his feet. In the distance he could see Carlos staggering towards them. He looked completely different now that a dark beard covered his face, almost like the legendary guerrilla, Che Guevara.

‘We are there. Manaus is over the rise,’ he gasped, and sank to the ground.

‘We will wait for darkness and then take a boat from the harbour.’

‘You will never get away,’ Emerson mumbled.

‘Carlos, maybe we should kill this bastard.’

‘Wyatt, killing is
their
way.’

Wyatt stared across the flowing waters of the Amazon and thought that maybe killing was the only way.

Phelps looked out at the Calibre-Shensu test circuit and watched a flock of geese fly over the tree-line. He breathed out, watching his breath hang on the cold air. He felt very secure. After a thorough search lasting five days, there seemed to be no trace of the three fugitives. If his men found Wyatt, Ramirez or Ortega alive, there would be a short interrogation and then they would be killed.

A police van drew up outside the offices and Phelps watched two constables step out. They went round to the back of the vehicle, and two Alsatians emerged.

Bruce de Villiers walked up to him.

‘Jack, I know this may seem ridiculous, but we’ve got to cover every possibility. Morale is pretty low amongst the team members. Perhaps we’ll find it was someone at Carvalho who was taking drugs.’

Ricardo came out of the building just as Jack put his arm around Bruce’s shoulder.

‘Well, buddy, if there’s anything in there, I’m sure those dogs will find it.’ He turned to Ricardo.

‘Open the door up and let them in.’

Ricardo felt his heart fluttering as the sniffer-dogs moved into the tyre-fitting area and then into the warehouse behind. He realised that even the minutest amount of cocaine would be enough to alert the dogs.

Jack was trying to relax, trying not to show how tense he was. His team had been over the premises a week before with high-pressure vacuum cleaners; then they’d used their own techniques to make sure the place was clean. But there was always the chance they’d missed something.

The dogs started barking furiously in one corner. Bruce ran over and pulled back a case to reveal a comatose rat on the floor. The policeman closest to him shrugged his shoulders.

‘Mr Villiers, I think you can relax. There have never been any drugs in this place. Towser’s a good dog, he would have picked them up in a flash.’

The Alsatian barked as his name was mentioned.

‘Will that be all, sir?’

De Villiers nodded.

Ricardo locked the doors to the warehouse as the police van disappeared into the distance. He felt the sweat on his hands. Phelps was a sharp operator, he must have had the place cleaned out - though he hadn’t told him about it.

‘Bruce,’ Jack said now, ‘I think you should stop worrying about Wyatt Chase. The police will get him. There won’t be any more problems with drugs now.’

Bruce had organised the police search because he thought there might be more drugs hidden on the Calibre-Shensu premises. Earlier that morning, the sniffer-dogs had been right through the headquarters and workshops. Nothing had been found. Maybe, he thought, Dr Weiss had made a mistake.

‘I think you should concentrate on racing,’ Jack added unnecessarily. ‘Silverstone is a big crowd-puller, and another Calibre-Shensu victory will put paid to the rumours that Ricardo has lost his nerve.’

Wyatt moved along the wharf like a cat and found a small fishing-boat lying tied up, in amongst the larger vessels. It looked ideal for their purpose. He climbed down the side of the pier and stepped onto the rocking deck. At once a man sprang from the shadows, and Wyatt saw a blade flash in the moonlight. Wyatt dropped back, took the man’s arm and pulled him forward, chopping his right hand down hard on the man’s neck. He toppled forward, hitting his forehead on the front of the boat, and collapsed on the deck. Wyatt checked his pulse - good - he was out, but still alive.

Wyatt climbed back up to the top of the wharf and whistled, and Carlos came out of the shadows, frog-marching Emerson. In a minute they were down in the boat, with Wyatt staring at the unconscious fisherman. He pulled out the oars and cast off, rowing steadily into the middle of the water. The force of the current pulled them away from Manaus, and as soon as they were well clear Wyatt fired the outboard motor.

The prow of the boat cut smoothly through the water as they headed upstream.

Wyatt was half-asleep when the first light of dawn broke across the boat. Carlos was sleeping on the deck, and Emerson lay wide awake against a pile of coiled rope. His eyes darted around nervously.

‘Where are we going?’

‘To repay some debts,’ Wyatt answered quietly.

June

Ricardo could not remember the last time he had been to church, the last time he had made confession. But as he walked away from the austere building, he felt a kind of peace.

He was at the heliport within fifteen minutes, and took the chopper up on his own. He did not want the pilot with him. He looked down over the sprawling expanse of Silverstone and saw the long queues of cars snaking off into the distance. It would be a good race for them, he thought, and he would be in a fine position to win it, starting in pole position.

Silverstone was one of his favourite circuits. An old airfield, it looked unremarkable from above, but on the ground it was a totally different story. Most of the corners were very quick and could be taken in top gear at speeds between 150 and 165 mph.

He did not move immediately towards the landing area, but instead swept around the circuit, his eyes searching carefully. He passed over the Express Bridge.

Eventually, he put the chopper down in the landing area in the centre of the circuit. He made his way quickly to the Calibre-Shensu garage and was greeted by Bruce de Villiers.

‘How’re you feeling, Ricardo?’

‘Very confident. It’ll be a good race.’

Bruce nodded, watching him closely.

‘I think the Shadow will come into her own here. Are you still worried about what happened at Monza?’

‘No. It will not happen again.’

No, it will not happen thought Ricardo. Only I know why Ibuka died. Only I have to live with that.

‘Jack would like to have a word with you,’ Bruce said. ‘He’s in the motorvan.’

Ricardo walked over to the huge mobile palace decorated in the arresting black Calibre-Shensu livery. He wondered, not for the first time, where Suzie von Falkenhyn had disappeared to. He had a funny feeling that Phelps might know. Anyway, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered any longer.

He stepped into the air-conditioned silence of the motorvan and made his way down the thickly carpeted aisle to the lounge. Phelps was sitting on a couch in front of the rear window.

‘Ricardo, it’s good to see you.’

They did not shake hands, and Ricardo remained standing.

‘Sit down, my friend, we need to talk.’

Ricardo sat on the edge of the couch.

‘What is it you want to know?’ he asked.

‘I wondered, maybe, if Chase had been in touch with you?’

‘Chase? He hates me.’

Phelps smiled.

‘I don’t want you involved in any of this drugs business,’ he said.

Ricardo leaned against the back of the couch. God, what was Phelps playing at? What would happen if Phelps found out about Talbot?

‘Have a good race, my friend.’

‘It will be my greatest victory, you will see, eh?

Ricardo left the motorvan with his mind in turmoil. What the hell was Phelps getting at?

Bruce de Villiers waved to him.

‘Ricardo, there’s someone to see you. He’s in the car park. You can’t miss him, he looks as if he’s just had a major head operation.’

He made his way out to the car park and saw a man sitting in a Mercedes-Benz with his head swathed in bandages.

‘You want me?’ Ricardo asked, going up to the window.

‘Get in, arsehole.’

Ricardo gripped the roof of the car as he heard Talbot’s distinctive voice.

‘Get in.’

Ricardo opened the passenger door and slid down onto the leather seat next to Talbot.

‘You read about the revolution in Colombia?

‘Yes?’

‘We organised it. We’ve just about cornered the market.’

‘But you, you are with Interpol.’

‘That was a lie. Interpol gathers, collates and disseminates information - it doesn’t have field operatives. Wise up, buster. You’re in deeper than you think.’

‘I want nothing to do with this.’ Ricardo was shaking. Talbot smiled. ‘The street price has doubled already.’ Ricardo tried to open the passenger door, but it was locked. ‘The genius of modern electronics, my friend. I decide when you leave the car.’

Ricardo was trembling. ‘I will not make another delivery,’ he stammered.

‘I have statements from two Carvalho employees that you arranged for Ibuka’s car to be fitted with defective tyres. A mistake was made, however, and one was fitted to your machine with near-fatal consequences.’

‘You lying bastard!’

‘Yes, that’s exactly what every motoring journalist in the world will be saying about you if they ever learn the truth.’

The 120,000-strong capacity crowd waited patiently for the start of the Foster’s British Grand Prix. Thousands of banners and flags were held high by the supporters of the different teams. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky - it was as perfect as only an English summer’s day can be.

The five-minute signal came up, and the race director checked that the cars were in their correct positions on the grid. Ricardo sat in the cockpit, waiting for the opportunity to prove himself again. To prove that he could still win.

The three-minute signal came up and everyone, except for the most important team members, cleared off the grid. Bruce whispered some last-minute instructions to him. The one- minute signal came up. There was the crazy roar of noise as all the cars on the grid fired into life.

The thirty-second board and the green flag were held up to indicate the commencement of the warm-up lap.

Ricardo pulled off, careful neither to over-rev nor to stall the engine. He liked this circuit. God, it felt good to be leading the pack.

The Shadow felt perfectly set up - just how Ricardo liked it. The Carvalho tyres were bedding in nicely - constructed from a slightly tougher compound than before. Ricardo knew that, with copybook driving, they would last the race.

The warm-up lap over, he lay in first position on the grid and observed that the race director was in position on the starter’s gantry. The overhead start-light changed to red. Ricardo felt his heart pounding.

The start-light turned to green. The Shensu V12 screamed out as he punched down hard on the accelerator and felt the tyres bite into the track.

A choir of twenty-six unleashed engines united in a single, deafening chorus. Their tyres gripped hard, leaving thick black smears across the track. The cars weaved and dodged their way towards the Foster’s Bridge.

De Rosner tried to out-accelerate him as they went under the Foster’s Bridge, but the McCabe was no match for the Shadow. Ricardo shot down the straight and headed into Copse, out in front of the pack.

It was an electrifying start.

Bruce felt the excitement growing. Ricardo’s lead was increasing all the time, and he was now six seconds in front of de Rosner’s McCabe. The Italian was driving flawlessly and had already broken the lap record by almost a second. He was taking a perfect line through the corners, obviously delighting in the performance of the Shensu automatic gearbox, and thrilled by the roars of applause from the crowd.

Bruce glanced down at the computer read-out. The Shadow was without fault, a testament to the perfect match of engine, gearbox and chassis achieved by Professor Katana and Mickey Dunstal.

By the fifty-ninth lap, Ricardo had lapped the second-placed McCabe driven by de Rosner and had twice lapped the rest of the pack. Calibre-Shensu’s chances of winning the constructor’s championship were looking good. To win it, the points of both drivers were added together to form a cumulative total. No other team had taken as many first places as Calibre- Shensu, and even with just one driver at Silverstone they were leading the points.

Ricardo came round Club, then through Abbey, and accelerated up to 132 mph as he closed on the Express Bridge. He sailed under, went into the Woodcote chicane, and took an easy line through Woodcote to cross the finish moments later.

Ricardo stepped down off the podium, flushed with success. He noticed John Tennant in the distance, and suddenly Alain Hugo appeared at his side.

‘Sorry to do this to you, Ricardo, but we believe you were driving under the influence of cocaine.’

There was nothing he could say. Tennant stepped forward, guiding him by the arm. The press moved in, thrusting microphones towards him, focusing their lenses on his tense face.

He was shown to a small room at the back of the pits, and Tennant, Halliday, de Villiers and another man wearing a white coat, entered with him.

‘Dr Weiss, will you examine Ricardo Sartori? We suspect he took cocaine just before the commencement of today’s race,’ Alain Hugo said coldly.

De Weiss conducted his examination with detachment. Ricardo could sense compassion in the doctor’s eyes.

‘He was driving under the influence of cocaine,’ Dr Weiss said quietly.

Ricardo broke down.

‘They forced me! Phelps, Talbot, they used me to smuggle in the cocaine. I couldn’t do without it . . .’

Tennant looked on with horror. Every turn unfolded a new dimension to the business.

They scuttled the boat at the port of Obidos and waited for darkness before heading for the airfield.

It took Wyatt the whole night to commandeer a suitable plane, and an hour before the sun rose, with Emerson securely gagged and tied up in the back, they took off and headed south. They refuelled in Salvador and landed in Rio that evening.

Carlos booked two rooms for them in a backstreet hotel - as anonymous a place as possible. They trussed Emerson up and left him on the bed in one room, then they went into the other room and Carlos called his bank and asked them to advance him some money through their Brazilian associate. Then he called his estancia. He felt terrible at having left Estelle without news of him for so long.

Almost at once Wyatt could see that something was very wrong, for Carlos’s face went white. Eventually, he put down the phone.

‘Estelle is in London,’ he said. ‘She has been in contact with the detective who was investigating Vanessa Tyson. Someone tried to kill her.’

Jack Phelps read the morning paper with growing concern. True, Vanessa Tyson had been found guilty of trafficking heroin and was now awaiting sentence, but Ri
cardo’s Silverstone Grand Prix win had been taken away and given to Roger de Rosner, the second-placed driver. An independent jury coordinated by FISA had found that Ricardo Sartori had been using cocaine, and further that, as the official representative of Carvalho, he had been negligent in the supply of tyres for the Italian Grand Prix. This negligence was found to have caused the fitting of defective tyres to his own and Ibuka’s machine halfway through the Italian Grand Prix.

CONI, the controlling body of Italian sport, had suspended Ricardo from driving indefinitely. He was being held for questioning by the British police.

The Calibre-Shensu team were now fielding two new drivers for the French Grand Prix: Mike Young, sponsored by Calibre Lights, a top American driver, and Danny Yoshida, sponsored by Shensu.

Jack noted that the new government in Colombia had already signed a diplomatic accord with the United States government. A key member of the Ortega Cartel had been abducted and sent to the United States to face drug manufac
turing and smuggling charges. His name could not be released for fear that attempts would be made on his life.

Jack put the paper down and decided that he would instruct Talbot to resume supply through Carvalho in another two months’ time. By that time the factory in the Amazon should be producing at full capacity.

He changed quickly and dived into his swimming pool. He swam a length, looking out across the New York skyline, then turned - and saw Wyatt Chase staring at him from the edge of the pool, dressed in climbing-gear.

Jack started to swim back to the side of the pool. His mind was in turmoil. Chase was supposed to be dead! He moved to pull himself out - and a rubber boot pressed against his fingers. He moved away from the side and began to tread water. Above him, another man appeared next to Chase, a dark-skinned man with a long pony-tail - Carlos Ramirez. The Argentinian smiled and adjusted one of the bronze bracelets on his wrist.

‘Mr Phelps, I think we have met. But let me introduce myself again, in case you have forgotten. Carlos Ramirez.’ Wyatt stepped forward to the edge of the pool.

Phelps discreetly pushed a button on his wristwatch.

‘I think you might be surprised to know,’ Wyatt said, ‘that we have captured Emerson Ortega, alias Antonio Vargas, alive. I remember you paying a visit to his factory in the Amazon basin.’

Phelps lay back in the water and laughed.

‘What is it you want, Wyatt? You can have your drive back if you want it.’

‘I want revenge.’

‘Touch me and you’ll die.’

‘Your threats are meaningless, Phelps.’

Jack was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Like your father, you now know too much. Like your father, you are a little soft on certain issues. He threatened me, as you are threatening me now. I sorted him out in Monaco and I’m going to sort you out now.’