Black Coke (12 page)

A thought crossed her mind. She turned back to Lucia, but she’d gone. She looked around and caught sight of Lucia’s slender figure leaving the room via a set of double doors. Amonite flashed her badge at a security guard who was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.

‘That lady, over there.’ She pointed at Lucia. ‘She shouldn’t be here.’

The guard frowned.

‘Check her out,’ Amonite said. ‘You’ll see.’

The guard hesitated.

‘Quick, you dumb-ass.’

The guard scurried off.

Amonite sent a text message to Sir George. Then she grabbed an espresso from the table at the back. She downed it and dumped the cup on the tray of a waiter who was walking by, nearly knocking him over.

George was winding his way through the tables towards her. With his carefully combed silver hair, high cheek bones and designer suit with bright red tie, he looked more like a rich aristocratic playboy than an ageing government bureaucrat.

‘What the hell are you doing here,’ he hissed, leading her to the adjoining lounge area where floor to ceiling windows gave a sweeping view of London. ‘Someone might recognise you.’

‘Nobody will. My cover’s watertight.’

‘When I send my boys to meet you, I expect you to go with them.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘City airport.’

‘I work best alone.’

‘You do as I say. That’s the deal. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.’

‘I got a tip-off they were onto Tony.’

George’s eyes narrowed.

‘He’s dead,’ Amonite said, her palms sweaty. Why did George always make her feel so inferior? ‘Some cop shot him.’

‘A cop? You sure it wasn’t Nathan Kershner?’

‘What? I thought you said there was no way Kershner would get anywhere near this case.’

George didn’t seem to hear her. He just rubbed his chin. ‘That chap’s getting far too big for his boots.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s just been to Putumayo. Found one of the labs and a stock of Black Coke.’

‘How?’

‘Cedric sent him there. The two-faced bastard. Without telling me.’

‘I wonder if—’

‘If what?’

‘No, nothing.’

‘If he knows about you?’ George patted Amonite’s shoulder. ‘I doubt it. Unless you’ve been careless, my dear.’

Amonite had heard rumours of a white NGO man investigating human rights abuses in Putumayo. She’d even caught a glimpse of a white man in the forest, when she was hunting down survivors of the assault on the village. She’d tried to shoot him. Could it have been Nathan Kershner?

‘What happened exactly?’ George said.

Amonite summarised what her source at Islington police station had whispered to her during a quick phone call earlier on.

‘Tony knifed the cop?’ George said. ‘That’ll be useful.’ He leaned closer. ‘I’m sure it was Nathan Kershner who was with him. He’s always been a loose cannon. If you speak to El Patrón, tell him not to worry. I’m going to shake things up a tad on my end. In the meantime, I want you to take action.’

‘Against Kershner?’

‘No, that would be far too bleedingly obvious. Use your brain, my dear. I could never bury that one. Even Cedric would go ballistic.’

‘Someone close to Kershner?’

‘Precisely. Ruffle them up. Give our friend a jolly good fright.’

George patted her on the shoulder again. Amonite went rigid. How dare he treat her so condescendingly. She felt like smashing his pointy nose into a flat pulp.

‘How was Jamaica?’ George said. ‘How’s the reverend?’

‘Fine.’

‘He can’t afford to mess this up. You know that?’

‘The reverend’s one hundred per cent trustworthy. He’s always delivered.’

‘Jamaicans, trustworthy…’ George checked his watch. Amonite knew the conversation was coming to an end.

‘Just another thing,’ she said.

‘Hmm?’

‘When do you go to Bogotá?’

‘Tonight.’

‘I need more hardware. Some Lynx. A couple more Apaches. Trucks.’

‘Consider it done.’ George’s phone buzzed. Without another word to Amonite, he flicked it to his ear and sauntered away. He sat at a table near the front, right next to Zathanaís, who had finished his speech.

Amonite downed another espresso. It tasted as bitter as she felt. She glanced back at the conference. George and Zathanaís were deep in conversation, heads so close they looked like lovers at a romantic dinner. Were they on speaking terms after their public spat a few weeks ago over Plan Colombia?

Amonite brushed a speck of dust from her black shirt. The world of politics didn’t make sense to her. She rode the escalator down to the lobby. She crossed Lucia, who was arguing with the security guard. He was holding her pass out of reach and pushing her towards the exit. Lucia was gesticulating.

Amonite found a quiet corner. She rang Dex.

‘Hey, boss,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’

‘Find out everything you can about Nathan Kershner. Where he lives, who he hangs out with, who he screws. Then ping it over.’

‘Okay, gotcha, by when?’

She glanced at her watch. ‘Sixteen hundred.’

North London, UK
9 April 2011

I
t was past 1pm when Nathan stumbled through the door of his apartment. Caitlin was sitting in the kitchen, her fingers curled round a mug of coffee, her eyes staring into the distance. She was still in her dressing gown and her hair was unkempt. Nathan mumbled a hello and went straight into his bedroom. He kicked off his shoes, flung his jacket over the back of his chair, and threw himself onto his bed.

Steve wasn’t dead. When the medics came, they detected a tiny pulse, nearly imperceptible, which was why Nathan had missed it. But he was in a critical condition: an abdominal puncture with profuse internal bleeding and a chest wound that had just missed the heart. The medics said he was lucky to be alive.

Nathan had called Steve’s girlfriend and waited by his side at University College London Hospital until she turned up. She’d burst into tears at the sight of Steve, all pale, unconscious, and breathing with difficulty on the ventilator. Nathan had held back tears himself, the exhaustion washing over him. He’d jumped into a black cab and gone home. On the way, he’d thought about contacting Cedric, but decided against it. He needed time to think, rest, and plan his next steps.

He drifted off to sleep within seconds of lying down. He vaguely heard the front door slamming. Probably Caitlin leaving for the afternoon. He dreamt he was back in Mexico. He was trekking through the back streets of Juárez in an unmarked beaten-up van. The sun was blazing and the tyres crunched the dirt. In the back were four special forces operatives in civilian gear, all kitted up with Minimi 5.56mm light machine guns, Sig 230 pistols and fragmentation grenades. One of them was Steve, grinning and joking and slapping the others on the back. What was he doing in Mexico? He hadn’t been part of the team. Wasn’t he meant to be in hospital somewhere?

They were heading for the compound that an informer had told them housed Amonite and Don Camplones. They pulled up outside, its nine-foot high whitewashed walls, nibbled with bullet holes, staring down at them. It looked uninhabited. It was deathly quiet. The sky darkened, became black. The special forces guys became smaller and smaller, until they vanished in a blink. The walls of the compound loomed higher and higher, towering over Nathan, who was filled with dread. He wanted to run, but his shoes were stuck to the ground. He realised he’d fallen into a trap, that Amonite was going to appear any second, that the torture and pain was about to begin.

He screamed.

He sat up in bed, sweating, his heart racing. He ripped off his shirt, fumbled for the bottle of water on his desk and gulped it down. He glanced at his bedside clock: 11.12am.

The door to the bedroom burst open.

‘What the hell was that?’ Caitlin said.

Nathan couldn’t answer. He waited for his breathing to settle.

‘What happened yesterday, Nathan? You looked like you’d seen a ghost.’

Nathan shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about it.

‘You’ve slept nearly 24 hours.’ Caitlin leaned against the wall. ‘You must’ve been shattered.’

Nathan lay back in bed and closed his eyes. He heard Caitlin sigh and leave the room. He rolled over onto his side and switched on his mobile. No messages. He got up and stumbled into the shower, then got dressed and went into the kitchen. He still felt fuzzy and drained, so he made himself a strong cup of coffee and fried egg on toast.

‘Caitlin?’

No reply.

He peered into the entrance area. Her coat and handbag weren’t in their usual place. She must have gone out for the day. He chomped his food while listening to the radio. The news was all about the Middle East, where riots were spreading from country to country. It looked like the Front was no longer in the headlines. There was a passing mention about a police investigation into gunfights in North London crack houses, but that was it.

He rang up the hospital and managed to get through to Steve’s girlfriend. She was slightly more coherent today. Steve was in a coma but had survived the critical hours. He’d live, although it would take him weeks, if not months, to fully recover.

Nathan wondered whether to call Cedric. No, that could wait. He needed more time to rest, and anyway, it was Sunday today. He tried to push the events of the crack house out of his mind. He felt too guilty about it. He should never have let Steve take them there. There’d be lots of explanations to give back at Soca.

He needed to keep his mind busy. He went back to his bedroom and went online to search for information on Jamaica’s drugs trade—anything that might give a clue or even just background information. The BBC website had a story about the Jamaican yardies—a slang name originally given to the inhabitants of the government yards in Kingston’s Trenchtown—launching a pitched battle against a crack gang from North London a few weeks ago over distribution of drugs.

A crack gang from North London?

Was that Tony’s gang?

Had Amonite been involved?

There was very little other news about it, just the same story rehashed in different versions across the numerous news websites. Journalists weren’t great at investigations these days. They just recycled the same old stuff over and over again.

He came across a report on crime, violence and development in the Caribbean by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Bank. It admitted that the strongest explanation for the high and rising levels of crime and violence in the region was narcotics trafficking. That seemed pretty obvious. Nathan had been to Kingston once before as part of a Soca training course. He’d seen the vast mansions of the drug dons that littered the rising slopes of the Blue Mountains around the city. He’d visited the crime-ridden slum of Tivoli Gardens where each morning sunrise revealed a few more corpses lying in the road, victims of the gang wars over drugs. He’d spoken to the overwhelmed and demoralised police forces, incapable and often unwilling to intervene.

He started reading up on Colombia, which everyone was trumpeting as a major success in the war on drugs. There was an article with a quote from the UNODC director from the previous June saying that the Colombian government’s strategy of combining security and development was paying off. They’d seized 200 tons of cocaine in 2009, which they claimed was a significant achievement. Just a month ago, the International Narcotics Control Board dropped Colombia from its list of countries requiring special observation, saying that it had made significant progress. The UN claimed that large scale eradication had led to a reduction in coca cultivation of 58 per cent in Colombia between 2000 and 2009. But there were conflicting reports over cocaine production, some saying it was dropping, others saying it was surging. Crime was on the rise in the cities, fuelled by an increase in domestic consumption of cocaine.

Nathan put his head in his hands. The futility of it all was depressing. The Front’s rapid growth was a clear indication that Colombia’s drugs strategy was a failure. Yet there was no news recognising that. Just more scaremongering from the authorities.

He leant back in his chair.

Up until this year, he’d been convinced that fighting drugs was the right thing to do. So what had changed?

He got up and went for a walk in the local park near Caledonian Road tube station. A few alcoholics skulked around the benches, shouting at each other and waving their bottles of booze around. A sudden movement caught his attention. A tall man in a leather jacket turned away.

Was it his nerves making him paranoid?

He went back to the flat. Caitlin was still not home. He cooked himself a plate of spaghetti bolognese and sat in front of the TV, watching a mindless action movie. Caitlin stumbled in at 10pm, half drunk, and went straight to her bedroom.