Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) (13 page)

LUKE PULLED UP
a chair for the lottery-ticket boy and made him sit down, his heart racing. ‘Let me buy you a Coke, a Merinda, a Sprite? Whatever you want.’ He knew exactly how this must look to everyone else in the bar but his explanations could come later. ‘Where did you get that pen?’ he asked the boy. ‘Who gave it to you?’

‘
No lo sé. Por qué?
I don’t know,’ said the boy, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Why? What’s it to you?’ His eyes darted around the bar, looking for a way out.

This was the most tangible lead Luke had had and he could not afford to blow it. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a single fifty-dollar bill. The boy’s eyes widened. ‘Listen,
chico
, you see this money?’ Luke told him. ‘Well, it’s all yours if you can take me to the man who gave you that pen, the one in your pocket. Can you do that?’

He could see the boy hesitating, sensing trouble. Smart kid, he thought. You don’t get to survive on the streets of Colombia without an antenna for danger. But the boy’s eyes kept flicking back to the banknote and eventually he nodded. Without another word he took Luke’s arm and led him away. As they left, Luke looked at his escort and inclined his head towards the exit. They would be following at a discreet distance.

As soon as they were outside, the boy quickened his pace.
People talked in these parts and Luke didn’t blame the kid for not wanting to be seen with a
gringo
. Word might get back to the cartel and that would not be good for either of them. They passed a solitary streetlamp that lit up the fine mist of rain that had begun to fall, then turned down a muddy, unpaved road. The night felt close and, far out to sea, jagged forks of purple lightning split the sky. Luke walked quickly, just behind the boy, who sidestepped neatly around the puddles, still holding his tray against his chest. Luke still had good night vision, a product of all his years in Special Forces, but this kid was almost supernatural – he seemed to know every inch of the road. Was he being led into an ambush? Luke was all too aware of the possibility, given the failed kidnap attempt. But he could feel the comforting bulk of the Sig Sauer pistol tucked into his waistband beneath his polo shirt, and a glance over his shoulder confirmed that his Jungla escort were shadowing them some distance back, one on either side of the road.

When the shot rang out from in front of them Luke dropped immediately to the ground, flattening himself against the rain-soaked mud of the track, the Sig already in his hand. ‘
Bajate!
’ he shouted to the boy. ‘Get down!’ But the boy just stood there, laughing. ‘
Es nada
,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing.’ Something was coming down the road towards them at speed now – Luke readied the weapon in his hand. And then he relaxed. A stray dog, half running, half limping, tore past them into the night. Luke stood up, his clothes soaked in mud. They pressed on.

At a fork in the road the boy steered them to the left and the track soon narrowed to a footpath. They were right on the edge of town now, leaving the lights of Tumaco behind, and Luke could hear the unwelcome whine of the first mosquitoes beginning to seek them out. His escort, he noticed, had closed the gap between them. They came to the outline of a large shed, pitch black against the night sky, and the boy pointed to a flight of steps that led down at the side to a basement. Luke wished he had his NVGs with him, but instead he took out a pencil torch with a red filter, standard military practice to avoid using a white light that can be seen for miles.

‘
Y entonces?
’ he asked the boy, pointing to the steps. ‘So what now?’

The boy went first, picking his way down. Luke could feel underfoot they were wet with slime, and in the shadows something scuttled away, abandoning a chicken carcass. Luke grimaced: the air reeked. At the bottom of the steps they came to a door, black with grime and mould. The boy knocked.

‘
Oye!
’ he called. ‘It’s Julio. I have someone with me.’ Now he turned to Luke, holding out his hand for the promised fifty dollars.

‘Whoa,’ said Luke. ‘Who’s behind that door?’

‘You ask me about your friend, the Englishman,’ said the boy, defensively. ‘He is a kind man. He give me a present. So,’ he pointed to the door, ‘this is his friend. Sometimes I bring him food.’

Together they pushed open the door to the basement and Luke’s torch probed the room with a dim beam of red light. There was a rustling in the corner, then silence. As the torch played over the detritus in the room it lit up broken chicken baskets, discarded plastic buckets and crumpled newspapers, and there was an overpowering smell of excrement. A foot was poking out from beneath the rubbish. Luke moved towards it, squatted and nudged it with the muzzle of the Sig. It recoiled, and its owner leaped into view, then huddled against the wall. His red-rimmed eyes were bright with terror, his hands pressed together, imploring. He had found Agent Fuentes.

THREE HOURS LATER
Fuentes had showered, shaved and put on a green military-issue tracksuit. Now he was nursing a glass of Fanta Orange and was ready for his debrief.

A radio call back to the Jungla base that night had summoned a nondescript pickup truck to extract him and Luke from the warehouse cellar, while the boy with the lottery tickets was dropped off on the edge of town. The Jungla police commandos were taking no chances and they made Fuentes lie down behind the front seats with a blanket over him. He was a marked man.

Luke was pacing up and down outside the debriefing room, running through all the questions he needed answers to. Do not cock this up, he told himself. He took a deep breath and pushed open the door. Fuentes barely looked up when he walked in. He had, Luke noted, the thousand-yard stare, which was hardly surprising, given what he must have seen and heard. His hair was black, short and curly, there were worry lines across his forehead and his face had deep, open pores. To Luke, he looked about forty-five but was probably ten years younger. The strain of being an agent, an informant, inside one of the most dangerous cartels in Latin America would be taking its toll.

‘OK,’ began Luke. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. How long were you working with Señor Benton?’

Fuentes looked up sharply, his mouth half open. ‘I thought you
said you worked with him?’ he said. ‘You are from British intelligence, no?’

‘Yes, I am,’ Luke reassured him. ‘And I have most of his reports here.’ He gestured to the thin file in his hand. ‘But I still need to hear it in your own words. What, exactly, was your position within the cartel? How far did they trust you? What were they planning?’

Fuentes answered slowly at first, his comments interspersed with long pauses, but Luke didn’t hurry him. This man was a classic candidate for PTSD – post-traumatic stress disorder – and he would certainly need counselling. But now, his words were coming faster, like a dam bursting on a mountain stream, coursing through the narrative of what had happened that dreadful night when Benton had been caught and killed. Fuentes recalled the beach-bar rendezvous with Benton, the night-vision goggles, the camera, the ambush, the screams. Luke watched Fuentes and made notes as he recounted all this, reliving every detail. When the agent had finished, Luke got up, walked round to the fridge by the window and took out two more Fantas, one for each of them. He sat down again, handed one to Fuentes, then held his own can against his forehead, savouring the cool, moist metal surface against his hot skin. Fuentes watched him, bemused, then broke into a laugh and did the same with his. It was the first time Luke had seen him relax.

‘So,’ Luke continued, ‘my Service needs to know – and this is why they’ve sent me all the way down here – what you and Benton were chasing that night that made you take such a big risk. You went into the jungle with no back-up and there’s nothing in Benton’s last report that gives any hint of that. What . . .’ Luke searched for the right Spanish phrase ‘. . . what were you on to?’

Fuentes took a long swig of his drink. ‘Señor Jerry – excuse me, Señor Benton – he was my friend. He was like family to me. Even my wife, she cooked for him in my house. I trusted him and he trusted me. We took every decision together.’

‘So what made you take this one?’ Luke regretted his abrupt tone. This was meant to be a debrief, not an interrogation.

‘Just one day before I was in the Café San Andres, here in Tumaco. You know it?’

Luke shook his head.

‘I am there with my wife when this guy comes in. He’s a big shot in the cartel, like an enforcer. Nobody likes him. And he beckons me over. I’m like, “Hey, I’m with my wife, you know?” But he just gives me that look and I know what that means. You don’t argue with this guy. So he sits me down next to him and looks me in the eye and says it right out. “Giraldo,” he says, “I think we have an informer in our ranks.” ’

‘Jesus,’ whispered Luke.

‘
Hombre
, you have no idea!’ Fuentes was smiling now as he remembered the encounter. ‘I tell you, man, I was shitting my pants.’

‘But he obviously didn’t think it was you?’

‘No,
gracias a Dios
. They caught one of the drivers, got him through his cell phone. Turns out he was moonlighting for another cartel. Anyway, this big shot tells me they’ve got visitors coming in from somewhere in Asia. China, maybe, somewhere like that. Really important visitors, he says, with a lot of money involved. Then he tells me there’s a meeting at the Tree House the next evening.’

‘The Tree House?’

‘It’s what they call the cabin out on the edge of the jungle. It’s miles from anywhere. The cartel uses it when it wants total privacy.’

‘So hang on,’ said Luke. ‘Why’s he telling you all this? Was it a test?’

‘That’s what I’m thinking too,’ said Fuentes, ‘but then he tells me I have a role to play. He wants me take care of these visitors during the day, house them somewhere safe, show them round but keep it discreet.’

‘How soon could you alert Señor Benton?’

‘It wasn’t easy. There was so little time. I had to use the emergency frequency.’ Fuentes suddenly placed his hands flat on the table and stood up. ‘Hey, I need the toilet. It’s all that Fanta!’

‘Of course.’

Alone in the room, Luke went over what he had just heard. Asian visitors, a jungle rendezvous and the notebook recovered from Benton’s body with that single word, ‘Hungnam’, the name of a North Korean port. What was all this stacking up to? He should probably get word out to the Colombians to pick up the Asian men but they would be long gone, slipped out of the country by sea to avoid detection.

‘Tell me about those visitors,’ he asked Fuentes, when he came back into the room.

‘
Ayy . . .
Well, they didn’t talk much, not to me anyway. They brought an interpreter with them but his Spanish was terrible. They looked kind of military but were dressed in very dull clothes, almost like factory overfalls.’

Luke was having trouble picturing them but he needed to understand what had happened next that night in the jungle. ‘How did you know where to go to shadow that meeting they held at the Tree House?’

‘Tracking beacon. Magnetic, GPS. Señor Benton showed me how to use them after he recruited me. There was an opportunity and I took it. When I handed over the visitors to the others I placed it under one of their pickup trucks.’

Luke nodded, impressed, then leaned forward, his arms on the flimsy table, which creaked under the pressure. ‘Do you still have the receiver?’

Fuentes gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘Are you serious? I fled for my life from that
infierno.
I knew what they were doing to him – I could hear it.’ He shivered at the memory, still uncomfortably fresh. ‘I left that place with nothing but my life.’

His words hung in the room. Then the silence was broken by the revving of a lorry outside. Luke leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingers on the table, thinking. ‘You should know,’ he said finally, ‘that my Service is incredibly grateful for the work you’ve done here. You’ll be looked after now, I can promise you. And I’m sorry about Benton. He was a brave man and he’s going to be missed by a lot of people back home, believe me. But we owe it to him, don’t we, to get to the bottom of this?’

Once more Fuentes looked hunted.
He probably thinks I’m going to ask him to risk his life again.
‘It’s all right,’ said Luke. ‘I’m not going to ask you to do anything more for us. But I do need to know what’s in your head. Let’s suppose that this deal, whatever it was, has gone down between the cartel and the Asian men you looked after. Which way is it going?’

‘I don’t follow you?’

‘I mean who’s buying what? Is the cartel exporting their product into Asia? Or is there something they want from the Asians?’

‘I see.’ Fuentes lowered his head, ran thick fingers through his curly hair and scratched the back of his head. He suddenly looked very tired. Luke knew he should probably let the man get some rest but if he had a personal motto it was
carpe diem –
seize the day. He had to assume the cartel would stop at nothing to find Fuentes and finish him off. He also knew that, on a medium-sized military base like this, there was a fair chance the cartel had dickers on the inside reporting back. He had to get Fuentes out of there first thing in the morning and preferably on a plane out of the country. This might be his one and only chance to question him.

When Fuentes spoke he looked Luke straight in the eye and enunciated his words very carefully. ‘
Cigarros mojados
,’ he said.

‘Wet cigars?’

‘Yes. It’s what the cartel call their miniature submarines. I think you call them mini-subs. They launch them out of the swamps up the coast from here, near Buenaventura. Normally they’re taking the coke shipments up to Mexico or wherever but this month I’ve heard them talking about something else, some kind of special delivery.’

‘From the cartel to Asia?’

‘No,’ replied Fuentes. ‘The other way round. They are bringing something in, I think, from across the Pacific.’

Luke’s mind was racing. What could the Colombian cartel possibly want from North Korea – if it was North Korea? They already had all the weapons they could buy, didn’t they? ‘Did you tell this to Benton?’