‘What’s happening?’
‘This is unacceptable,’ Lopez said. ‘You have caused me great problems. When you called me, I was with him.’
‘You handled it OK.’
‘Maybe, but whatever. . I am no longer your informant. Our relationship is terminated.’
Even though Donaldson was half-expecting this, it still punched him like a fist in the solar plexus. Without Lopez, Mendoza would be far more difficult to bring down.
‘I don’t think so,’ Donaldson said. ‘You’re in too deep.’
Lopez shook his head. ‘It is over,’ he said, as though ending an affair. ‘I do not need it any more.’
Desperation made Donaldson say the next words. ‘What would Mendoza think if he knew you and I talked?’
Lopez grimaced. ‘Threat?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is this the way you treat informants if they begin to waver, if they wish to withdraw their services? Is this the way the FBI works?’
‘It’s the way I work.’
‘I have given you all I am going to give.’
‘Lopez. . I’m. . I need to get Mendoza and if you will not help me, then as far as I am concerned, you’re back on the shit pile with him. I can’t — or won’t — protect you any more.’
The expression in the Spaniard’s eyes almost froze Donaldson’s arteries.
‘I’m afraid, Karl, that I cannot afford for you to make threats like that. My own game plan is coming together now and I no longer need you. You were part of it once, but now it’s time to cut free. Coming out to Spain was a miscalculation on your part.’ He smiled the smile of a stingray.
Heavy rain suddenly began to fall on the street outside.
Donaldson shivered, heard a noise and turned quickly, plucked from his memories. A man walked out of the kitchen door and on to the terrace. Late fifties, he looked healthy and tanned, slim and fit. Donaldson stood up as the man thrust a hand at him.
‘John Elliot,’ he introduced himself.
‘Karl Donaldson.’
‘I think I may have just saved your life, Mr Donaldson.’
Two guys were behind Donaldson before he could react.
‘They are armed, Karl, and they will shoot you in the back without hesitation should I nod my head, or should you do anything idiotic.’
The men dragged Donaldson to his feet and quickly searched him, then forced him back on to the chair. ‘He’s clean,’ one said.
The men sat down at an empty table, maybe ten feet away. A manageable distance for a handgun — if that’s what they were armed with.
Lopez relaxed.
‘What’s this about?’ Donaldson asked, a wave of his hand indicating the new arrivals, but really meaning the whole situation.
Lopez looked pained. ‘Ambition, greed, power, lust, money, women. . you name it. . conspiracy of the highest order.’ He shrugged. ‘All those things.’
‘All in relation to you?’
‘Yes. . I either have them or crave them, I don’t mind admitting that. . and I have been conspiring to collect them all. It doesn’t really matter that you now know, because soon you will be dead and my words will go with you to your grave — if you can call it a grave.’
Outside, the rain beat down heavily.
‘Is this about you and Mendoza?’ Donaldson guessed, knowing it was a rhetorical and quite naff question, but he was working out how best to take on the two hoods sitting behind him.
‘Very much.’ Lopez warmed to it, shifting excitedly in his chair. ‘A bit like a Greek tragedy, only we are Spanish.’
‘So, a Spanish tragedy?’
Lopez laughed. Donaldson weighed up flight or fight options.
‘I have been scheming for years,’ Lopez admitted, ‘because I want what he has and now the time has come for me to make my move. I can hold back no longer.’
‘Is this a wise conversation?’ Donaldson gestured by tilting his head back towards the heavies behind him.
‘They were brought up on the streets of Madrid, fighting and killing for their very existence. They are merely brainless hoodlums, working conscientiously for whoever pays them at the time — and at the moment I pay them.’
‘Greed, lust, power, money. . my, my, my. . you have some things to tell me then?’
‘Nothing that will surprise you, I suspect.’
‘Try me.’
‘You were just a pawn in the game, to coin a phrase.’
‘Now to be dispensed with, I guess.’
‘I have been planning long-term the fall of Carlos Mendoza. . and you were simply one of the devices I used.’ Donaldson could see the eyes in Lopez’s head twinkling. Power-crazed bastard, he thought. ‘It’s been a long haul,’ the Spaniard sighed. ‘Planning, negotiating, influencing. . killing, even. It has taken time and guile to back Mendoza into this corner, one from which he will be unable to escape.’
‘I’m intrigued,’ Donaldson said genuinely. This was a story he wanted to hear before he worked out how to get free of this deadly situation — and take Lopez with him.
John Elliot had a pleasant expression, as though he was always on the verge of breaking into a grin of self-satisfaction. He seemed content and at peace with the world around him. Sitting next to Donaldson at the table on the terrace, the American found himself to be a little envious of the man who, it seemed, had everything he wanted out of life.
‘I’m a retired cop, actually. Been here since the day of my retirement, just over seven years ago. This place was really run down and it’s only in maybe the last eight, ten months that it’s all come together. Been real graft.’ Elliot sipped from his glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, a little misty-eyed at the memories.
‘You seem to have it sorted.’
‘Mm,’ he agreed, ‘but I couldn’t have done it without the pension behind me. I’ll never make any money from this place, unless I sell it, but that’s not the point, is it?’
‘Any regrets?’ Donaldson asked.
‘Maybe one. . the wife couldn’t stand it. The hard work and discomfort that renovating the place took. No shops within twenty miles. She upped and left four years ago. Haven’t heard from her since. Not even sure if I’m divorced or what.’
Donaldson regarded Elliot. Perhaps he hadn’t got everything.
‘Maria decided to stay. I couldn’t have pulled it together without her, but I think she’s restless now, which is fair enough. I don’t intend to hold her back if she wants to leave.’ He sighed wistfully.
‘How do you make money, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘Pension — as I said. Olives and lemons. I write articles occasionally about British ex-pat life on the Costas and I paint a little. Started selling the odd canvas. . it’s not much. Maria teaches English as a foreign language down in Torrevieja, so we make ends meet.’
‘Sounds a good life.’
‘It has its ups and downs like any other.’ Elliot finished his cold drink. ‘So, Mr Donaldson, now you’ve had a potted history of my life, how did you end up half-drowned in a flooded river bed?’ He turned to him, waited for an explanation.
Lopez had stepped on to an unstoppable train now as he shared his Machiavellian scheming.
Donaldson had witnessed this type of ‘opening the floodgates’ from felons before. At times when they felt comfortable, they would reveal all, hoping that the recipient would let them bask in the limelight and fuel their already outrageous egos. Lopez obviously felt he could blab to Donaldson, which he actually found very worrying. It was like the Bond villain explaining his master plan to the secret agent whilst Bond was pinned to the circular-saw table, because the villain knew that Bond was about to die a most horrible death.