Taking Chances (7 page)

‘Richard Conway is looking pretty certain for the Tom Chambers role,’ Ellen answered.

Sandy was extremely impressed. ‘Well, when it comes
time
for the rest of the casting I hope you’re not going to forget McCann Paull’s clients here in London,’ she said. ‘After all, we’re supposed to be an international company and if you’re intending to sink 80 per cent of our resources into a project that doesn’t have a script …’

‘Your clients won’t be forgotten,’ Ellen cut in. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m already late for a meeting.’

As the line went dead Sandy muttered ‘bitch’ under her breath and hung up too. She almost always enjoyed talking to Ellen, mainly because she knew how little Ellen trusted her and how powerless Ellen was to do anything about it.

‘Jodi,’ she said, walking into the office next door, ‘are either of World Wide’s project researchers in today?’

Jodi, who was Michael’s assistant when he was in London and general office manager when he wasn’t, looked at the schedule board behind her. ‘No,’ she answered, as Sandy’s assistant, Stacy, came into the office, loaded down with scripts. ‘They’re due in tomorrow – Stace they’re going to fall!’

‘It’s OK, I’ve got them,’ Sandy said, catching half a dozen scripts as they toppled towards her. ‘Why don’t you get the chaps in the post room to do this? What are they, anyway?’

‘Rejects from the readers,’ Stacy answered, her flushed face showing only relief as she deposited the rest of the pile on her desk. ‘I brought them up in case you wanted to do a spot check,’ she added, flopping down in her chair. With her short, plump body and shiny brown hair she looked the picture of schoolgirl health, despite being a mere eight days from her thirtieth birthday.

‘Call downstairs to World Wide and find out if either of the researchers have put in an unexpected appearance,’ Sandy told her. ‘If not, find one of them and get him on the phone.’ She was about to leave, then suddenly turned back. ‘I’m going to talk to Zelda, but I’ll take the call in my office.’

Some ten minutes later she was back at her desk talking to Jeremy Whittaker, one of the World Wide researchers, on the phone. ‘I want you to find out everything you can about an American woman by the name of Rachel Carmedi,’ Sandy said. ‘She was shot and killed in Colombia three years ago. There was apparently quite a lot in the press about her at the time, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to get some background.’

‘I vaguely remember the story,’ he said. ‘Was she from New Orleans?’

‘I think so. Get back to me as soon as you can. Actually e-mail me whatever you come up with.’

As she rang off Craig Everett, the senior literary agent, put his handsome blond head round her door. ‘Fancy a screening tonight?’ he invited. ‘It’s at BAFTA. None of our clients, so it could be a bit of a relaxer. Zelda’s up for it. I’m about to ask the others.
OK, I’ll be right there
,’ he called back over his shoulder as someone yelled for him.

Sandy looked at her watch. ‘What time does it start?’ she asked.

‘Drinks at seven. Movie at eight.’

‘Sounds tempting,’ she responded, ‘but I’ve got a meeting at six over at the Beeb. I suppose I could make the movie.’

‘Try,’ Craig said. ‘You don’t get out enough. What it did to Jack it can do to Sandy.’

Sandy frowned and watched him go. Then, realizing he was referring to all work and no play, she started to smile. She really was fond of Craig, felt much more relaxed with him than any of the other agents, even though, amazingly, none of them ever appeared to have a problem with her. Hopefully none of them guessed how daunted she sometimes was by the fact she was their boss, but it wasn’t an insecurity she gave much rein to, mainly because there wasn’t the time – as Craig had just pointed out.

How many women’s hopes had he crushed over the
years
by being gay, she wondered. And when was the last time the two of them had sat down and had a good old gossip over dinner, putting the world, the industry and their complicated love lives to rights? Actually, his was much more complicated than hers, as the great love of his life was not only married with three kids, but just happened to be a highly respected cabinet minister too. For her part, since there wasn’t any love life to speak of, there weren’t any complications either.

Smiling ruefully to herself she thought of Ellen Shelby and her ill-disguised fears that Sandy was going to do something to disrupt the picture-book perfection she, Michael and Robbie were enjoying over there in Hollywood. It was whenever she thought of that cosiness that Sandy was thankful for how busy she was, because knowing that Michael was making love to another woman, when no-one was making love to her, was even worse than the forced abstinence itself. She fantasized regularly about Michael, reliving the night he had made love to her all over his apartment, taking her in every position and making her come like she never had before or since. She wasn’t sure what hurt the most now, the fact that they had never done it again, or that he had then turned round and fired her.

‘Hello, Michael?’ she said into the phone much later that night.

‘Sandy?’ he responded. ‘How are you? Burning the midnight oil again?’

She smiled and looked at the e-mail on the screen in front of her. ‘I wanted to talk to you about the Untitled Feature,’ she said. ‘If it’s what I think it is, you’ve got me really excited.’

Michael laughed, and she felt the pleasure steal through her. ‘Then I hope it’s what you think it is,’ he answered.

‘The story of Rachel Carmedi?’ she asked. ‘And her kidnap and shooting by a Colombian drug cartel? I think
it’s
brilliant. It’s got everything. Drugs, sex, love, terrorism, street children and truth. Ellen tells me there’s no script yet.’

‘Tom Chambers is writing it. He’s in Colombia right now, but I’m hoping he’ll be back in the next couple of weeks. We should have the first draft shortly after.’

‘Can I see it, when it comes? I’d really like to get behind this. If you’re looking for more finance, then I’d be happy to do what I can over here. We’ve built up some good contacts in the past six months.’

‘Sandy, you don’t know how wonderful it is to hear you say that,’ he told her, ‘because I certainly will be asking you to call on your contacts. I’ve got to warn you though, the kind of investments we’ll be looking for aren’t going to be in the tens of thousands. They’re more likely to be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.’

‘Wow!’ Sandy responded. ‘You really are thinking big. But having Richard Conway attached should certainly help smooth the way. In fact, I can hardly wait to see my backers’ faces when I start dropping Conway’s name.’

Michael laughed. ‘You know, it’s really good to hear your enthusiasm,’ he said. ‘Ellen seems to have developed a bit of a down on it lately. I mean, she knows it’s a great story, but she’s started thinking we’re in danger of upsetting the Colombian cartels, and considering their propensity for kidnap and murder … Well, to quote her, Robbie went through enough in Rio, we shouldn’t be putting him in the firing-line again.’

‘She’s got a good point,’ Sandy responded. ‘It takes real courage to make this sort of film …’ She let those words hang for a moment, then said, ‘Who are you thinking of for the female lead?’

‘It’s still under discussion,’ Michael answered.

‘Directing?’

‘Hopefully Vic Warren. He’s got a conflict at the moment, but he’s working on it.’

‘And producing? Apart from you, obviously.’

‘Ellen and I are the executives. She’ll concentrate more on the creative side, while I take on the finance. The actual hands-on producers have yet to be hired, Ellen’s currently working on that. We reckon the team will number around eight, including associates, by the time we’re ready to roll. Tom’s down as a producer too …’

‘I’d like to be included, if I come up with some of the funding,’ Sandy interrupted.

‘I don’t see any problem with that,’ he replied. ‘Hey listen, my other line’s ringing. It’s one of the ones I had set up for Chambers. I’ll catch you later, OK?’

Sandy rang off and after hitting a button on her computer to print out some documents she needed she began packing up to go home. Inside she was glowing, the way she often did after speaking to Michael, though tonight she was feeling a particular elation at how readily he had accepted the idea of her being included as a producer. She tried to imagine how Ellen would react when she was informed, and spent some time enjoying the various effects it would probably have.

Chapter 4

FOR THE PAST
five days Chambers had had one hell of a time trying to figure out where he should be from one minute to the next. Nowhere, it seemed, was safe, yet anywhere was a haven. Since abandoning Cartagena, over a week ago, he had slept in ditches, ridden on mules, eaten from banana leaves and bathed in slimy lakes. Each day brought a totally new and unexpected experience, from having his face shaved by a cutthroat’s apprentice, to secretly watching the harvest of a coca crop, heavily guarded by one of the nation’s most notorious paramilitary groups – men who were known to clear villages by decapitating peasants and using their heads as footballs, a sure-fire way of getting the rest to flee.

Deciding whom to trust was like a game of Russian roulette with only one empty barrel. When Orlando Morales, his former contact from the Cali Cartel, had visited him in the dead of night in Cartagena, the man had been easy to believe. After all, Morales had proved himself in the past, so why not trust him again? And Pacho Martínez, the notorious Mr Fixit and friend to the cutting edge of Colombian society, was no more invincible than any other man with a passion for survival. Chambers knew that Pacho wouldn’t willingly sell him down the river, but he knew too that if it came to his skin or Pacho’s, then the Colombian’s masseuse was in a pretty safe job.

So he’d opted to go with Morales, whose past allegiance to the Tolima Cartel was a big chapter in the little man’s history. That Morales was still alive could only be down to the protection he received from the Cali Cartel, and, if the past five days were anything to go by, there were more than a few debts owed to the FARC – one of the country’s leading guerrilla groups, and arguably the most dangerous – for more often than not it was they who had escorted them over some of the most dangerous and bitterly contested terrain of the Colombian interior.

Chambers still didn’t know how Morales had come to find out he was in Colombia, but the fact that he’d shown up just hours after a call was made to the Santa Clara hotel looking for Chambers, had been enough to confirm that word of his arrival was out. Morales hadn’t made the call to the hotel, but, as he’d pointed out later, he hadn’t had much trouble locating Chambers once he’d known he was in Cartagena. And if Morales could find him that fast, so could others. Which was why Chambers had driven out of the city with Morales and two others in the early hours of Friday morning, and travelled with them over the next five days to this remote border village that time had clean forgot.

It was certainly the most peaceful place Chambers had visited in this war-torn land, with barely a car to be seen on the narrow dirt roads that were edged with decrepit old houses and ran with mud for the best part of the year. The rain came every day, sweeping in a fine, gauze-like mist down over the gloriously rich green mountains of the Magdalena valley, washing the huge, succulent leaves of the banana trees and glimmering on the red-tiled roofs of the village. Dry or wet, the humidity was stifling, and the sun so bright on the whitewashed walls it stung the eyes and drowned the streets in dazzling light.

Chambers and Morales had taken over a small
two-storey
house at the far end of the main street. No-one paid them much attention, and they rarely went out. Throughout the day locals trotted by on their trusty steeds, while others postured and swaggered about street corners in their wide-brimmed hats and thick checked ponchos. Every one of them smoked tobacco, or chewed coca leaves, indulging in rowdy games with unfathomable rules, while the women inspected hanging slabs of meat for supper and kids scuffed around in the dirt.

It had been a quiet and easy couple of days after the ordeal of the journey, and should remain that way until Morales’s cohorts returned with word from
El Patron
that it was safe to move on, or necessary to stay put a while longer.
El Patron
– the boss – was a man without a name, though Chambers knew he was very probably paramilitary, for that was how members of such groups referred to their ranking officer.

Thanks to Morales he now knew the name of one of Rachel’s killers. Gustavo Zapata. It had come as no surprise to learn that the kid, for he was barely in his twenties, was a near relative of Hernán Galeano’s: this would account for the older man’s refusal to hand anyone over at the time the pressure was on. Morales had obtained Zapata’s identity from one of his ‘sleepers’ inside the Tolima Cartel, but so far the other two names were proving hard to come by. But there were ways of finding out, and Chambers wanted to be around when the Zapata kid squealed.

Morales was putting up no objection to that; he understood the need to look a killer in the eye and let him know how much worse it was going to be for him. What he didn’t understand was Chambers’s professed reluctance to execute the scumsuckers who had carried out the job on his girlfriend. But Morales was losing no sleep over it. It was Chambers’s call, he was only there to continue the payback for what the Galeanos had done to
his
son after the boy had been seduced by Galeano’s bitch of a cockteasing wife.

It was evening now, a time when the veil of rain was absorbed by the humid air and the strange stone statues on the hillsides, carved by the hands of long-dead craftsmen, basked in the fiery glow of sunset. Chambers was standing before one now, gazing at the curiously monstrous face and stout cribbed body. He wondered about its origins, its creator, its link to the long-lost civilization that had once inhabited these hills. He felt a sense of timelessness stirring inside him, connecting him to the past, or maybe the future. Rachel was never far from his mind. He wondered if she was with him now, looking at this ancient symbol of indecipherable meaning. Her presence felt so real, he was sure if he turned he would find her there. Would she speak to him? Would she tell him to give up on this earthly torment and come join her in a place where vengeance had no meaning or purpose? Or would she guide him to those who had wrenched her from the bonds of their love and consigned them to this hell of divided worlds?