The Zul Enigma (24 page)

In spite of, or was it
because of, the depth of his love for Elena, Drew never blamed her for going
back to Carlos. Deep down he’d known that was the way it would go. But it
didn’t stop him loving her; stop him from hoping that one day she’d come back
to him.

But he never felt any
guilt. Nor remorse. The dominant emotion had always been anger. Anger at Carlos
for not recognising the value of what he had.

Then there was the last time he’d spoken to Elena. Had she lived would she
really have left Carlos, knowing she was carrying his child? It was something
Drew never allowed himself to think about. Elena’s murder had been harrowing
enough to deal with, but living with any of the other scenarios that might have
panned out would have been impossible.

All the bottles were empty and Drew grabbed his coat muttering, ‘A couple of
beers isn’t going to get it.’ A long night stretched ahead and the only way he
could imagine getting through it was drunk. Blind drunk. He assumed, had they
been talking, Carlos would have agreed.

Drew left Carlos lying
on the bed with his shoes on and his arms folded over his face. When he
returned with two bottles of Black Label half an hour later Carlos hadn’t
moved. Drew found two grimy glasses in the bathroom and after giving them a
rinse planted them still dripping on the table. He opened the front door and broke
up some icicles hanging from the roof outside.

‘Whisky. Want some?’

Carlos didn’t reply.

‘Do you want some?’ Drew
repeated louder, nudging him on the shoulder with the bottle.

Carlos grunted.

Drew took that as a
“yes” and poured a slug into each glass. He put one on the bedside table and
lifted the other to his mouth. Narrowing his eyes against the fumes, he gulped
down half the measure. ‘Brrrrrrr,’ he shivered. He swallowed the rest and
refilled the glass.

‘Carlos?’

No reply

‘Come on mate,’ Drew
leaned over and shook him, but Carlos punched his arm away.

‘
¡Hijo de puta!
’
Carlos hissed.

‘Carlos, there’s
something I need to say.’

Carlos kept his arms
crossed over his face.

‘It sounds harsh but I
need to explain.’ Drew paused. ‘The truth is I don’t regret what happened.
Those few days with Elena, well, I’ve never known anything like it. I feel like
crap telling you but you need to know… she wasn’t like the others. It was no
casual affair. I was in love with her. I really was.’

Carlos sat up. ‘You took
advantage of my wife! She came to you as a friend. To talk. And you screwed
her.’

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘How was it like? She
forced you? She came to you because she was upset. For Christ’s sake, we’d had
a horrible argument.’

‘That’s all you ever did
Carlos – argue.’

‘You talk like it was
all
my
fault. It takes two you know.’

Drew shook his head.
‘You forget how well I knew you. I knew exactly how you operated, I’d watched
you often enough.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You used to goad her
into having a row to avoid talking about stuff you didn’t want to talk about.
And then you’d blame her for starting it.’

‘Not true!’

‘The day she died?
That’s exactly what you did, isn’t it? You lied about not wanting a baby. You
told me the other night all you really wanted was more time to get used to the
idea… but if that was true, why didn’t you just tell
her
? Huh?’

‘I…’

‘I’ll tell you why.
Because you wanted to wind her up, piss her off and have a blazing ruckus,
because it was a subject you didn’t want to discuss right then.’

‘I didn’t know she was
pregnant. Why didn’t she tell me? Why did she play that game with me? If I’d
known, I’d’ve taken her seriously.’

‘Why did you have to
know she was pregnant before you could take her seriously?’

‘I… don’t you see… don’t
you get it? I know. I know. It was bad enough that she was murdered. But
knowing she’d been raped and assaulted too? I’ve been beating myself up over it
ever since.’

He fell back onto the
bed, covered his face and wept.

‘Carlos. Don’t do this
to yourself. She’s been dead over three years. Nothing can change that.’

Carlos took his hands
away from his face revealing eyes tormented with agony. ‘But you changed
something tonight. All the years Elena and I were together I never once
questioned her loyalty. But you just ruined all that. Didn’t you? You poisoned
the way I think about her. You couldn’t even leave me that, could you?
¡Hijo
de puta!
’

Drew turned his face to
the wall.

***

Five men burst in the door just after four in the morning. Two startled Carlos
awake by ripping the bed cover off him. They rolled him onto his stomach and
wrenched his arms behind his back. He felt something being twisted round his
wrists and jerked tight.

‘What’s going…’ he
mumbled into the pillow, but was silenced by cold metal pressing into the side
of his head.

An unfamiliar voice
drifted down.

‘Good morning Dr Maiz.
It’s your early morning call.’

Muffled noises came from
the other bed and the same voice said, ‘Now gentlemen, it’s pointless
struggling so don’t even bother.’

As Carlos was hoisted
upright he became aware of a fearful pounding in his head. He felt dizzy,
dehydrated and disorientated. Then the fog in his mind cleared to be replaced
by memories of the previous night. Once again he felt that sickening sinking
feeling in the pit of his stomach. He closed his eyes, willing everything to be
a bad dream, although he knew very well it wasn’t.

An icy wind blew in the
doorway where a man dressed in black was standing with a pump action shotgun.
It was dark outside. One lone, dim bedside light lit the room and Carlos could
see Drew being held face down on his bed by two other men.

Carlos looked at the
empty bottles strewn over the floor and the curled up remains of last night’s
sandwiches littering the cracked glass top table. The room stank of stale food
and beer and whisky and shards of glass glittered in the loops of the carpet.

In front of him stood a
man with a Glock semi-automatic. In spite of the gun he was holding, he smiled
and said in a cheery voice, ‘Sorry to wake you so early, but I need you both to
come with me.’

‘For Christ’s sake, give
me a moment.’

‘You’re not going to try
and pull another fast one, are you Dr Maiz?’

Drew’s voice, ragged
from booze, came from the other bed. ‘Look at the poor bugger for pity’s sake.
He’s in no state to pull a curtain…’ his sentence cut short when he was yanked
to standing.

After four of the men
had secured Carlos and Drew, the fifth searched the room and after giving the
all clear, took up his position in the doorway again.

‘So you had a bit of a
party last night?’ the chatty man said, appraising the mess. ‘I didn’t know you
swung both ways Doctors,’ and he grinned looking first at Carlos and then at
Drew.

‘If you’re trying to be
funny, you’re doing a piss awful job,’ Drew replied.

 
The man laughed. ‘You Limeys! You have a
quaint way of putting things. Anyhow, I sure hope you both had a good time,
because it’s the last party you’ll be attending for a quite a while.’

Carlos couldn’t stand
listening to more inane banter. He went to move towards the bathroom but the
man barred his way.

‘And where do you think
you’re going?’

‘I need the toilet.’

‘Listen, buddy, you’re
wearing plasticuffs and no one’s going to volunteer fishing around in there on
your behalf,’ he nodded at Carlos’s crotch, ‘with the possible exception of
your good doctor friend. So you can just forget it and get a move on outside.’

He grabbed Carlos’s
coat, flung it over his shoulders back to front and did up the top button
behind him. Another man did the same to Drew. Then they pushed them stumbling
out of the room across the icy path and over the gravel car park into two
separate cars.

Thelma, wearing a mauve
nylon quilted dressing gown, was standing by the doorway to the office. Drew
caught a glimpse of her before his eyes were duck taped and he wished he hadn’t
thrown the bottle at the wall.

CHAPTER 14

‘You’re confident there’s nothing more to it?’ Bob leaned back in his chair,
elbows on the armrests, fingers steepled together and rocked himself back and
forth. On the opposite side of the desk Anita sat as stiff as a mannequin,
while Barbara Lord gathered up her files.

‘We’re positive. Maiz
may be suffering from some psychological disorder, but when he’s lucid he’s no
liar.’

‘And you believe he ran
on impulse?’

‘Sure. At the meeting
yesterday he refused to accept he could be suffering with depression let alone
anything more serious and quite frankly, by just talking to him, it’s hard to
believe he’s crazy enough to have cooked up the “Zul” scenario, even in his
unconscious mind. Whatever his problem is, it has to be very deep-seated.’

‘You believe he doesn’t
think he’s sick?’

‘Yes. He’s innocent of
any wilful wrong-doing.’

‘He could’ve torpedoed
my entire administration…’

‘When
we confronted him yesterday, it hit him hard. It’ll be a while before he’ll
accept it. We pushed him into a corner and for a man used to being head honcho
in his own world, it aggravated the hell out of him. I’ve spoken to the doctors
and they agree. His running was a predictable gut reaction.’

‘If that’s the case, why
weren’t we prepared?’

‘A
truck broadsided the car, sir. Both our men were knocked unconscious and
hospitalised. It was pure luck Maiz wasn’t injured as well. We can’t blame our
guys for Maiz escaping, any more than we can blame him for running.’

Bob grunted. ‘And you
believe Dr Roberts had no prior knowledge Dr Maiz would seek him out?’

‘Absolutely. Maiz felt
threatened, he wanted to talk to someone, so he called Roberts, the only friend
he’s got. Had he wanted to destroy your political career, he’d have headed
straight for the media. And had he meant to escape for good, he’d have tried to
get a helluva lot further away than that motel.’

‘So you’re sure he and
Dr Roberts weren’t conspiring last night?’

‘Positive.
They were in a shocking state when our guys brought them in. They stank of
whisky and beer. They’d slept in their clothes. There’s no conspiracy going on.
Just a knee jerk reaction, some talking and hard drinking.’

‘And their stories match
up?’

‘Completely.’

‘And you wanna let Dr
Roberts go.’

‘Correct. He’s no
threat. He knows his friend’s sick. He
wants
him to get help. We’ll keep
an eye on Roberts till Maiz is dealt with. But I don’t foresee any problems.’

‘So Dr Maiz has until
midday to make up his mind.’

‘Correct.’

‘Run it by me again… why
we suggested a hospital in Spain?’

‘It’s a diplomatic
decision. We want to keep our relationship with the Secretary-General as sweet
as possible. Suggesting Maiz goes to Madrid near his family makes us look good.
And we’ve got a solid network there so it won’t cost us.’

‘We endorse this
suggestion sir,’ Anita added. ‘We have to tread carefully around Mr Howard
right now. With the increased likelihood of the Russian situation worsening,
it’s a shrewd move to keep the UN onside and we also don’t want to provoke any
more public accusations of unilateralism that might damage our popularity
before the election.’

‘Any other reasons?’ Bob
asked Barbara.

‘In the unlikely event
we
are
wrong about Maiz having an accomplice or being a pawn in someone
else’s hoax, it gets him well away from Washington.’

‘Assuming Dr Maiz
agrees, how’re we gonna handle it?’

‘We’ll assess him and
refer him to Hospital Psiquiátrico. We’ll transport him accompanied by one of
our doctors to handle the admission procedures. He’ll stick around to make sure
Maiz is receiving the appropriate treatment and evaluate his response.’

‘He won’t be able to
check himself out?’

‘Not without our prior
knowledge and agreement, no.’

‘Nor his family?’

‘No sir.’

‘That’s the beauty of
your recommendation Barbara,’ Anita commented in her quiet, even voice,
doodling a daisy on her notepad. ‘Dr Maiz is clearly unwell and hospital is the
best place for him until he recovers. But, should later evidence surface
indicating we’ve made any wrong assumptions, it will also keep him safely under
our control.’

Barbara bowed her head
towards Anita, acknowledging the compliment. The dig, she knew from experience,
was best ignored.