Black Coke (17 page)

‘You sure this will hold?’ Elijah said.

Beard nodded as he reached for another container.

‘Why you not using your subs and planes?’ Elijah said.

‘The DEA captures them.’

The young man broke the surface. Beard handed him the second container.

‘Amonite says you’ve got 950 keys for us,’ Elijah said.

Beard grunted. He opened a hatch leading to a hidden compartment and pulled out a third container as the diver disappeared again below the water.

‘Open it up,’ Elijah said.

‘Huh?’

‘That box. I want to check it.’

Beard eyed Elijah dubiously. For a second, Elijah thought he was going to have to repeat his order. And he hated repeating himself. But then Beard pulled the lid open with a sharp yank. The container was brimming with small black cubes packed tightly together.

‘What the hell?’ Elijah’s frown turned into a smile as realisation dawned. ‘Hand one over.’

Beard plucked a cube and tossed it to Elijah. He fumbled with it, dropped it to the floor and bent down to pick it up, noticing how stiff his back felt.

‘Keep an eye on them,’ he said to Patrice as he undid the top button of his shirt collar. His neck felt as though someone had slung a rope round it and was tugging it tighter.

He went below deck, poured himself another rum and downed it with a swift flick of his wrist. He held the cube up against the light and studied it, enthralled by the depth of its blackness, by its promise of perpetual happiness and bliss. How could anything be so indescribably pleasurable?

He scraped the cube with a knife, extracting a thin layer of powder onto the mirror on the table. He sliced three rough lines of approximately equal length, feeling as excited and desperate as a young man about to have sex for the first time. He dug frantically around in his trouser pockets. Coins, condoms, stolen credit cards, and a fat wad of $100 notes. That would do the trick. He peeled out a note, rolled it up, knelt down, and snorted the lines in quick succession with a trembling jerk of his elbow.

Within seconds, his nose, the front of his face and the back of his throat lost all feeling. He took another generous shot of rum and unfolded his long body onto the bottom bunkbed. His back felt fine now. An enormous, magnificent, beautiful smile materialised on his face: a smile of copious love, of bountiful peace, of immense gratitude as the tingling turned into a rush that swept through his arms, chest, groin, legs, fingers and toes like a God-ordained wave of joy from the seventh heaven.

Patrice peered into the cabin. ‘All just about set, boss.’ He glanced at the mirror, cube and $100 note on the table. He grimaced, then turned back to Elijah. ‘We can leave in a few minutes.’

‘Don’t worry, about a thing,’ Elijah crooned. ‘Cos every little thing’s gonna be alright.’

‘Boss? I said they’re nearly done.’

‘Singin’ don’t worry—’

‘Hey, boss.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, where’s the diver?’

‘Still down there. Making sure all them packages are properly clipped on.’

Kill them.

Elijah blinked and looked around. Had he just imagined it?

‘Should I start the engine, boss?’

Kill them.

Elijah wiped his forehead. Was that voice God, or the devil?

‘Boss, are you listening?’

Kill them. Now!

Elijah waved his hand. ‘Finish them off.’

A questioning look crossed Patrice’s youthful face.

‘You heard what I said?’ Elijah snapped. ‘Kill them!’

‘But there’s two of them.’

‘Then get a move on.’

Elijah bounced to his feet and glided after Patrice. Beard was leaning over the side of his boat, surveying the water below. He glanced up.

‘All okay?’ Elijah said with a broad, friendly smile.

Beard nodded.

‘Then it’s time to say goodbye.’

Patrice whipped out a gun that was tucked in the back of his trousers. Beard lunged for his rifle, but Patrice shot him twice in the chest. Beard spun sideways, his arms flailing out to either side like a spinning top, then collapsed over one of the wooden benches with a raspy groan, face down, legs twitching spasmodically. Patrice took careful aim and fired two more shots into the back of Beard’s head.

‘Hey, use this for the other guy.’ Elijah pointed at the harpoon gun hanging on the hook on the wall next to the steering wheel. ‘It’s more fun.’

The diver broke the surface. His mouthpiece dropped out when he saw the harpoon pointed straight at him. He put his hands out to protect himself then tried to duck back down. The harpoon shot out with a whir, slicing through his left hand and embedding itself into his neck. He clutched it with his right hand, then sank back into the water amid a growing pool of blood and bubbles.

Patrice pulled out a knife and cut the harpoon’s rope as calmly as if he’d just shot a fish. He placed another harpoon into the gun and hung it back on the wall.

A grin swept Elijah’s face as he felt another rush.

The radio crackled. Amonite’s deep voice came through. ‘All okay?’

Elijah jumped. He stared at the radio as though it was a strange beast.

‘I repeat: all okay?’ Amonite said.

Patrice handed Elijah the microphone.

‘All done,’ Elijah said. ‘Just had a few things to deal with.’

‘Problems?’

‘No problems. Just solutions.’

Amonite didn’t reply. Elijah felt the blood pound in his temples. Was Amonite about to have one of her infamous bursts of anger? Elijah looked around him, suddenly fearful that an assassin would drop out of the sky and strike him down. All he saw was the jungle and the body of the dead Colombian in the go-fast boat drifting away.

Patrice was giving him an odd look.

‘Everything’s fine.’ Elijah took a deep breath. ‘All fine.’

‘Let me speak to the Colombians.’

‘They’ve just set off.’

‘Okay, never mind. Here are the GPS coordinates of the drop-off.’

Elijah nodded to Patrice, who grabbed a paper and pen and a map of the Caribbean from a ledge next to the steering wheel. ‘Yeah, sure. Fire away.’

Amonite rattled out a bunch of numbers. Patrice scribbled them down and made a cross on the map. Amonite’d assured them the radio link was secure. She’d better be right, or they’d have half the coast guard turning up as a welcome party. Elijah tried to study the map, but his eyes couldn’t focus.

‘Where is it?’ he asked Patrice.

‘Just there. Turks and Caicos Islands.’

‘That’s miles away.’

Patrice nodded.

Elijah rubbed his head. The Turks and Caicos Islands were a collection of 40 islands and cays north-east of Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti. Perfect for smugglers on their way to Florida, but surrounded by shark-infested waters and fierce tropical storms.

Patrice nudged Elijah. ‘Amonite just said something.’

Elijah lifted the mike. ‘Yeah?’

‘I said how’s the church going? Still making converts?’

‘Pretty good, pretty good. Thanks for asking. Hey, while you’re here. What happened in Brixton?’

‘Whoever mentioned Brixton?’

‘Any idea who the snitch was?’

‘What snitch?’

‘Wasn’t me, mon,’ Elijah said, switching into patois. ‘Them yardies. They fuck it up.’

‘Well they’re all dead now. And so will you if you screw this up.’

Amonite clicked off. Elijah rubbed his temples hard. His head felt like it was being slowly cooked in a large pot of his late mother’s famous steamed cabbage.

Patrice was staring at him. ‘Why did you say that?’

‘Relax, mon. It’s all fine.’ He tried to wink, but found it difficult to coordinate. ‘The Lord’s on our side.’

‘What do we do now?’

‘Let’s go pick up the boys.’ Elijah dropped the mike next to the radio. ‘We got a job to do.’

Bogotá, Colombia
11 April 2011

‘A
ren’t you just being irresponsible?’ said Sylvia Lituni, the permed and heavily made-up anchorwoman. She had bright green eyes and a matching green suit with eighties-style shoulder pads. She fixed Lucia with the intensity of the medusa about to turn her captive to stone. A raft of scents oozed from her, filling the Caracol TV news set like a beauty salon.

Lucia looked around, wishing she was somewhere else. The cameraman, the sound engineer, the news director—all of them seemed to be holding their breath.

She launched in. ‘Plan Colombia’s a disaster.

Fumigation wipes out legal as well as illegal crops and causes environmental devastation. The barrios are overflowing with jobless peasants. Front 154 gets stronger every day and is now massacring whole villages. Yet neither the Americans, the British, nor our government are showing any change of strategy. Quite the opposite. It’s all gung-ho, shoot-em-up, Rambo-style tough talk. That’s what I call irresponsible.’

‘If you legalised cocaine, everybody would be taking it,’ Sylvia said. ‘We’d have a national epidemic. An international pandemic.’

‘Ha! We already do. Look, legalisation would mean the end of our civil war. No cash for the Front, the rebels, the cartels.’ Lucia paused. ‘Or the government, for that matter.’

There was an audible intake of breath in the studio.

‘I’m not sure you should put the Front and the government in the same boat.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ Lucia smiled, then realised she was coming across as too smug. She grabbed a sheet of paper from in front of her. ‘Here’s an article in the New York Times. It says, and I quote, that “Front 154’s rise to power has been enabled by an implicit collusion with certain elements within state agencies, according to a senior source from the Colombian government.”’

She picked up another paper. ‘What about this one: “The Colombian president’s new policy of full-on attack against Front 154 is being undermined by his very own secret service.”’ She looked up. ‘That was the Wall Street Journal.’ She leaned back in her chair. ‘Let’s get real. Front 154 didn’t burst onto the global scene just like that. Our own investigation into links between the Agency for Security and Intelligence and the Front has revealed that—’

Sylvia cut Lucia off with a flick of her hand. ‘Sir George Lloyd-Wanless,’ she said to the sharp-dressed man on her other side, ‘as the newly appointed British ambassador, what’s your considered view of our government’s policy on drugs and armed groups?’

Lucia groaned inwardly. As if this plastic-faced British aristocrat was going to give a considered viewpoint. She looked at Joanna, her PR manager, who was standing in a corner of the TV studio in her neat grey skirt and cream blouse, clutching a clipboard to her generous chest. Her pretty little face was scrunched into a frown. Again.

‘I’m not that new,’ George said. ‘I expect Miss Carlisla was still at nursery school at the time, so she won’t remember that I was ambassador here in the early nineties. In the days of Pablo Escobar himself.’

‘I’m guessing your tremendous experience in this area is why your government appointed you again, Sir George?’

‘Precisely.’

‘So what is your view on Front 154?’

George stared straight into the camera as though trying to hypnotise it. Dark eyes hovered above a cinder block jaw.

‘Legalisation is a despicable concept. It would give free rein to drug cartels to expand globally. Just observe the situation in the Netherlands.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Lucia cut in with a derisive laugh. ‘If we legalise, there’ll be no more drug cartels. The Front will go out of business. It’ll become a regulated and safer industry.’ She picked up another sheet of paper. ‘Listen to this: “ending drug prohibition is the only way to reduce violence in Latin America.” That was The Guardian newspaper. And what about this—’

Sylvia held up her hand again. ‘Miss Carlisla, please, let Sir George finish.’

Lucia sighed. George started again. ‘As for Front 154, the situation is under control. Fears of its influence are greatly exaggerated. Nevertheless, I’m pleased to announce that my government has approved an extra one hundred million pounds to support Colombia’s fight against drugs, terrorism, crime—and Front 154, of course. We are now the second largest donor of military aid to Colombia. This will mean more special forces training, more fumigation, more attacks on cartels, more—’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, you are so full of shit.’ Lucia slammed her fist on the desk. ‘Can’t you accept that you’ve failed? That this whole thing is a catastrophic mess?’

Silence descended. Sylvia’s eyes were wide.