Black Coke (30 page)

‘Yes, sir,’ she said.

As George left the room, her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was Dex.

‘What d’you want again?’ Amonite hissed. ‘You found the reverend?’

‘Got some real bad news.’

‘Spit it out then.’

‘He ko’ed the guard.’

‘Who did?’

‘Nathan,’ Dex said. ‘He’s escaped.’

Bogotá, Colombia
14 April 2011

N
athan knew they were after him the instant he dropped through the metal manhole into the darkness below. Shouts echoed and bullets ricocheted against the concrete walls. He landed waist deep in a stream of waste, the force of the impact shooting pain through his legs.

He stumbled. Regained his balance. Stumbled again.

The faint light from the manhole dimly lit the tunnel, which stretched off into the murky gloom. He waded forward, paddling with his hands. Empty wine bottles, crushed beer cans, plastic bags, broken sticks and other debris floated around him amid a sea of excrement. Rats scurried up walls covered in grime and plunged head-first into small holes.

A flashlight spilled into the opening.

‘Aqui! Aqui! El prisoniero se escapa aqui.’

Bullets splattered behind him. Nathan pushed on, expecting at any moment to hear the splash of guards jumping into the sewer. Adrenaline surged through him, wiping out any pain from the beatings he’d endured.

‘Atención! Granada!’

An explosion tore through the confined tunnel. The walls shuddered. The blast sent Nathan reeling forwards, head first into the slime. He spluttered and pushed himself back up. Fragments of stone and concrete rained around him. He kept going, driven by an odd mix of desperation and elation at having managed to escape from Amonite yet again. He pictured her ugly face twisting with fury, shouting with frustration.

The shouting and gunfire faded. He lost himself in the blackness, his hands stretched in front like a blind man without his cane. Silence descended, broken only by the occasional scuttle of rodents and the drip-drip of water from the ceiling. Maybe the guards knew where this led and were heading for the exit, ready to pluck him like a low-hanging apple.

Minutes stretched into what felt like hours. The depth of the sludge shifted treacherously: sometimes waist height, other times dropping to his ankles, but always thick, greasy, viscous, tugging at his clothes and leaving them soaked and weighty and sticky.

He bumped into something. A wall. He groped around. The tunnel was making a sharp bend to the left. He followed it for several hundred metres, then stopped to listen.

A whispering of scheming voices.

The guards?

He pushed ahead, increasingly desperate, breathing heavily. For all he knew, this could lead further and further underground. If this was anything like other sewer systems he’d heard about, it was an underground labyrinth. He’d once read about teenagers who’d found an entrance into the Paris sewer system and got lost. They were found months later, dead from starvation, their corpses gnawed to the bone by rodents.

High-pitched screeches erupted, like a freight train going round a bend in the tracks. Nathan froze, listening hard. What the hell was it?

Something brushed past him. He grunted and pushed himself against the wall. Creatures, probably rats, by the dozens, no hundreds, even thousands by the sound of it, swarmed past. He covered his head with his arms, brushing away rats that slipped from the ceiling onto him, their claws digging into his clothes. He heard them struggle and squeak and drown in the sewer, abandoned by the escaping horde, which vanished as quickly as it had come.

Just the water dripping.

He stood.

Shaking.

Cold.

Alone.

Then he heard the whispering again.

And suddenly he knew why the rats had fled.

Bogotá, Colombia
14 April 2011

L
ucia sauntered past the fat man in the crumpled suit, swaying her hips. She threw him a suggestive glance, a flutter of false eyelashes, a flash of a white smile. He gawked at her over the rim of his beer bottle with small, ravenous eyes that were just visible amid the rolls of flab that made up his cheeks. A half undone grey tie hung loosely from his open shirt collar like a hangman’s noose. Sweat patches spread from his armpits to his belly.

Club music thumped in the background of the open air rooftop lounge. The strip joint was packed with drug dealers, gorgeous girls and gomelos, the capital’s upwardly mobile and well-heeled young elite, easing into their night out. Shot glasses of aguardiente, the country’s beloved anise liqueur, clinked. Laughter rippled. The buzzing excitement of a big night just kicking off was nearly palpable.

Lucia pushed open the door to the bathroom. Young women in leggings and boots milled around, powdering themselves, chatting and giggling about their pimps and clients.

She planted herself in front of the washbasin and studied herself in the mirror. Her full lips were dark red with lipstick, her eyes sharpened with black eyeliner. She tried to remember what it was like when she was a young adolescent attempting to imitate her friends’ obsession with revealing clothes and makeup. She pulled up her black leather mini-skirt, adjusted her white tube top to draw attention to her cleavage.

‘This isn’t going to work,’ she muttered to herself, shoulders sagging.

A woman with breasts bursting from a tight black top emerged from a cubicle.

‘Sexy, sexy,’ she said as she cast an appreciative glance at Lucia and sniffed with her nose as though she’d just been snorting cocaine off the rim of the toilet seat.

Lucia stuffed the make-up into her leather hand-bag. She shoved past the woman and into the cubicle, slamming shut the door behind her. She locked the latch, flicked down the toilet lid and plonked herself on it.

‘Cabrona loca,’ came the woman’s voice.

‘What am I doing?’ Lucia put her head in her hands. ‘Maybe I have gone completely crazy?’

She took a deep breath, suddenly wishing this was all a bad dream, that she’d wake up in her warm, soft quilt in her blue bedroom in her parents’ mansion, that the past years of pain and anguish would vanish in a blink as she’d rub the sleep from her eyes, stretch her arms, and gaze at the posters of Che Guevara that plastered her teenage walls.

Her mind went back to the events at El Tiempo the previous day. She’d hidden behind a large van and watched, helpless, as the police arrived in their armoured trucks and dragged Nathan, unconscious, from the building. She’d wanted to intervene, to yank Nathan from their clutch, but knew they’d have captured her too. She had no idea where they’re taken him, yet she suspected that the Front was involved.

Which was why she was here, in the Front’s most stylish strip joint, trying to set up what she’d once heard an American call a ‘honey trap’. If she could get that fat man to fall for her, if he was a Front member, if she could get him to a quiet place, if she could overpower him, if she could extract information from him, then she might stand a chance of finding Nathan.

So many ifs…

‘Hey, wake up in there.’ There was banging on the door to the cubicle. ‘No drugs allowed.’

She flung the door open and glared at the woman in the black top. She shoved past her and went back into the bar area, pushing through the well-groomed bodies that writhed and danced in the subdued red, pink and yellow lighting. A topless dancer was gyrating round a pole to one side, drawing appreciative looks from a group of men at a table.

The fat man was deep in conversation with two men in jeans and white t-shirts. The back of his bald head gleamed like polished marble.

Lucia slid onto a tall stool at the bar. She ordered herself a tonic and sipped from the straw. She glanced at the fat man. He was gesticulating with his hands. The men in jeans were frowning. One of them looked up.

It was Scarface, the man she’d drenched in beer in that bar. He was scanning the room with his burning gaze. She twisted round, head down in her drink, hair hanging loosely to either side of her face, and took a long sip.

‘Another drink?’

She froze.

‘Would you like another drink?’

She gripped the glass, ready to spin round and throw it at Scarface.

‘Is it gin and tonic?’

The voice was Colombian and too gentle. She dared a peek. A man was leaning on the bar and pointing at her half-empty glass. He was mid-twenties, well-built, attractive, with a mop of perfectly styled hair, a meticulously ironed shirt and several days’ stubble.

‘No thanks,’ she said.

‘Do I recognise you from somewhere?’

‘I doubt it,’ Lucia said, realising that millions would have seen her on TV.

‘You just started here?’

‘Yes. I mean no. I mean, it’s not important.’

‘You okay?’

‘I’m expecting someone.’

‘I can speak to you in the meantime.’

‘I said no.’

‘How much for a dance?’

‘Just fuck off, will you?’

‘Okay, okay, okay.’ He raised his hands and scowled. ‘I get the message.’

She swizzled the straw around in her empty glass, not daring to turn round. Maybe she should change tactic. This was all proving too difficult. She was about to pay and leave the bar when she felt a presence next to her.

‘Can I get you a drink?’

This voice in her ear wasn’t gentle at all. She looked round. It was the fat man. He was standing too close, the tip of his belly touching her hips. The stubble on his chin was yellow and his breath was stale. Scarface and the other man in jeans were nowhere to be seen.

‘I’d love one.’ Lucia tried to flash a smile. ‘Gin and tonic.’

The fat man barked an order at the bartender, then turned back to Lucia. ‘You come here often?’

‘I live down the road.’

‘What d’you do?’

‘I’m a student.’

‘Ah, a poor student.’ The man blinked one eye in what must have been a wink. ‘What do you study?’

‘Literature.’

The bartender plonked the drinks next to them. The fat man downed his double whiskey and ordered another one. Lucia’s heart was beating so fast her hands were trembling.

‘And you are?’ she said.

‘Alberto. I’m a contractor for a big company.’

‘A contractor?’

‘Government business.’ He winked again, lighting a cigarette. ‘Top secret.’

Lucia smiled stupidly. She twisted round to face him, clasping her hands. ‘Tonight’s your night off?’

‘Sure is.’ Alberto downed another whiskey and snapped his fingers for a third one.

‘Oh good.’

Alberto clasped her knee with his sweaty hand, just below the hem of her skirt. She tried not to recoil.

‘Then I’m sure we can have some fun together,’ Alberto said, leering at her cleavage through the swirling haze of cigarette smoke.

Bogotá, Colombia
14 April 2011

T
he whispering swelled into a rumbling, like a waterfall or rapids hurling themselves off a cliff in the distance. The water surged past Nathan’s knees, pulling at him, first gently, then insistently, then violently.

Nathan waded to the side of the tunnel. He fumbled around for something to grasp. His fingers dug into cracks in the slimy wall, but couldn’t find a hold. The current dragged him forwards as the water rose rapidly to his waist, roaring through the narrow tunnel like a steam engine.

Nathan took a deep breath, nearly gagging on the acrid stench. The water was up to his ribcage. His feet slipped, touched the floor, then slipped again, until he could no longer feel the ground. He wanted to scream for help, but knew it was useless.

The sewer became a river, tugging him forwards, threatening to yank him under and drown him like one of the rats. He lashed out with his hands again, but only clasped emptiness. His head dipped below. He surfaced, gasping for breath. He paddled with his hands to stay afloat. His head smashed against the ceiling. Pin-points of white light twinkled before his eyes.

The current snatched him under again. He sealed his eyes and mouth. His heart pounded in his temples. He kicked with his feet.

He surfaced. Another big gulp of air. Debris struck him in the cheek, dazing him. He shoved it away. His fingers brushed a metal bar. He clasped it with both hands. It was fixed to the wall. More debris whacked him, but he clung to the bar, arms tired, legs weak, chest heaving, frantically trying to get his breath back and overcome the terror surging through him.