‘Listen,’ I said. ‘The shit’s hit the fan.’
I told them the score, then said, ‘We’re to stay put for the moment. Then, if we find out where the hostages are, we’ll go in and get them out. Meanwhile, I’m going to phone Captain Jaime and tell him the course is suspended for a couple of days. I’m heading back to the embassy now. Tony’ll follow me, to man the secure phone. The rest of you are going to have to stick it out here in the hotel. OK?’
At the sniff of an operation their hangovers fell away, and everyone gladly ditched their plans to buy leather jackets. Those could wait. I had a shave and a shower and got some breakfast down me, then grabbed a taxi to the back of the embassy. Egerton was certainly well organized. His wife had come in, bringing his shaving kit and some weekend clothes.
‘Progress,’ he began. ‘We’ve got a lead. Word is that the party’s flown out to a brand-new refinery in the jungle on the Rio Caquetá.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Way down south, in the Amazonas, near the border with Peru.’
‘How do you get there?’
‘Not easy. There are no roads. The only way’s to fly.’
‘In that case we’re definitely going to need help from your friends in DAS. Will your friend fix things for us?’
‘I think so.’ He picked up a telephone, dialled and began speaking rapidly in Spanish. He glanced at me a couple of times as he was talking, and ended with, ‘Si, si. Muchas gracias.’
He turned to me. ‘He wants to see you.’
‘When?’
‘Now. A car will collect you in a few minutes.’
‘Does he speak English?’
‘Perfectly. He went to Harvard.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘General Felipe Nariño.’
At that moment the door-buzzer sounded and Tony arrived. ‘The guys are standing by to move,’ he announced. ‘I’ve called Captain Jaime at the camp and told him the course is suspended for the time being. Also, I spoke to Sparky and put him in the picture.’
‘We’d better get our arses back down there,’ I said.
Egerton cleared his throat. ‘I think you’ll find you’ve got air transport at your disposal. You’ll need to go back to get your kit and presumably the camp you’ve been at has a landing strip?’
‘Sure.’
‘Then it might pay you not to send anyone off by road. Hang on until you’ve seen the general.’
Five minutes later I was in the back of an air-conditioned Mercedes 500 with smoked-out windows, sweeping through the outskirts of the city towards the palatial establishments perched on the slopes of the mountain. I didn’t feel by any means secure. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that I was being lifted. But no — surely DAS were on our side? Not only were we training the bodyguard for them; we’d now got caught up in the fight against the narcos, and so were in a position to give them help.
This was not a peaceful environment. Outside the big condos, all protected by high wire fences, bodyguards openly flaunted sub-machine-guns. My driver — young, swarthy, grey-uniformed — handled the car well but with amazing arrogance. Twice he went straight over red lights, and at every opportunity he blasted pedestrians out of the way with his horn. No doubt he was immune from prosecution.
Soon we arrived at a pair of high wire gates, set in a twelve-foot wall of concrete blocks topped with broken glass. Except that I couldn’t see any closed-circuit TV cameras, the compound was unpleasantly similar to the RUC stations in Belfast. The gates were opened mechanically by some unseen person, and we drew up outside a brand-new office block. The Merc had hardly come to rest before a man stepped forward, opened the door beside me and ushered me into the building.
In the passage he muttered, ‘Disculpe,’ and ran his hands over me in a swift, skilled frisk, which instantly brought to light my Sig, which I was carrying in a pancake holster on my waist. ‘Disculpe,’ he repeated as he removed the weapon. Then he led the way up a shallow flight of stairs and knocked on a door.
General Nariño was short and stocky, with a broad forehead, greying hair swept across it, and slightly hooded eyes. His appearance immediately made me think of Marlon Brando — a dangerously sleek version of the actor, but a look-alike all the same. He was wearing an expensive-looking sky-blue suit and a black tie with a lightning strike down the centre. As I came in he got up from behind his desk and came forward to greet me. His hand was soft and gentle.
‘Sergeant Sharp? Pleased to meet you,’ he said. ‘Take a seat.’
‘Thanks.’
As Egerton had said, the General’s English — or rather, American — was perfect. But in spite of his superficial geniality I felt he was hard and cold.
Whatever else, he had a magnificent office. Because the building was perched high on the side of the mountain, the windows commanded a panoramic view of the city. His king-sized desk and long, oval conference table were both made from some fine, rich-coloured wood like mahogany, but not so dark. The floor was made of wood as well, with a couple of bright rugs to give colour. No linoleum or chrome or glasstopped tables here. As I sat down, a tray with a cup of coffee on it appeared at my elbow. Again it crossed my mind that the coffee could be laced with the drug we’d heard about in Hereford — burundanga — which removes your will to resist; but again I thought, No, this is all above board.
‘You have a problem, I think,’ the General began.
‘That’s right. These three people have been lifted.’
‘And you think the IRA is involved?’
‘I know it is.’ I gave him a short run-down on Farrell, without explaining my personal connection. I simply said that I’d worked in Belfast and seen him there.
‘Well, it sounds as if your group has been flown to a site on the Rio Caquetá.’
‘I gather that’s very remote.’
‘It sure is. Look.’ He stood up and went over to the end wall, where he switched on a spotlight to illuminate a huge map of the country. Using a billiard cue, he began to point out details.
‘We’re here, in Bogotá, nearly in the centre of Colombia. Away down south is this vast area known as Los Amazonas. It’s part of the Amazon basin. As you can see, it’s one hell of a size. Eight hundred kilometres from here to here. No roads, just thousands of square kilometres of rainforest.
‘Now, for some weeks past we’ve been getting rumours of a new laboratory on the bank of the Rio Caquetá — here.’ He ran the tip of the billiard cue along a river flowing in a big curve towards the Amazon itself. ‘It’s here —’ he drew a circle — ‘downstream of a settlement called Puerto Pizarro. A few days ago, American satellites picked up a new construction site.’
He came back and sat down again. ‘The reasons the narcos set up in places like that are simple. First, it gives them protection — we don’t have the resources to find them. Second, they can bring in their raw supplies by boat upriver from the Amazon. Third, they’re close to the Peruvian border, and in a few minutes they can flip across by light plane.
‘In the past they built the labs right beside airstrips, but lately they’ve gotten more sophisticated. Now they put the buildings some distance from the strip, which makes them harder to find. Communication between the two may be by road, but it could also be by water. Say by a tributary of the main waterway.