My feelings towards Jamie were confused. I was angry with him. Angry that he had turned his back on me in favour of Ricardo. And angry that he had been so callously unfaithful to Kate with Luciana. I could imagine him justifying it now: ‘It was just a bit of fun, a bit of adventure,’ he’d say. ‘I don’t even really like Luciana, but I love Kate.’ Yuk.
But I also felt guilty. About plotting against Dekker from his house, and about making his wife my accomplice. I bore my responsibility for the destruction of ten years of friendship.
Still, now I was down here, I had to put all that behind me, and focus on one thing: setting Isabel free. It would be hard to find her by next Wednesday, but I had an idea that just might extend the deadline further. We would see.
Luís met me at the airport with a smile and an embrace, and his chauffeur drove us back to his apartment in Ipanema. There, Nelson, Cordelia and her husband Fernando were waiting. Cordelia was noticeably larger; I was relieved that Isabel’s disappearance hadn’t disrupted her pregnancy.
They greeted me with handshakes and smiles, and I was pleased to be among them again. We sat in the living room, and despite the difficulty of our task, there was an almost palpable feeling of optimism among us. It was as though now we were together again our collective determination to find her would succeed, despite the odds.
‘So, what do you think, Nick?’ Luís asked.
‘I’m pretty sure I can guess who’s behind Isabel’s kidnapping.’
‘Who?’ asked Cordelia, leaning forward.
‘Francisco Aragão.’
‘Francisco Aragão? Ricardo Ross’s brother-in-law? I wouldn’t be surprised,’ muttered Luís.
‘I think he’s working together with Ricardo and Eduardo Ross. I don’t know who’s calling the shots, but my best guess is that between the three of them they had Martin Beldecos murdered, and Isabel kidnapped.’
‘But why?’ asked Luís.
‘I think Dekker Ward is laundering drug money for Francisco. He approached Dekker through his sister Luciana, who is, of course, Ricardo’s wife.’
‘Have you spoken to Luciana?’ Luís asked.
‘Yes, I have.’ I coughed. I didn’t want to go into the details of that conversation. ‘She didn’t actually admit it, but the idea didn’t seem to surprise her either.’
Luís nodded, and I continued. ‘Francisco set up accounts at Dekker Trust in the Cayman Islands with the help of an American attorney in Miami named Tony Hempel. They’re both under investigation by the American Drug Enforcement Agency. Martin Beldecos was on the point of uncovering this arrangement, so he was murdered in Caracas. I might have been attacked for the same reason.’ I paused and looked out of the window towards Ipanema beach and the sea. The stretch of sand where I had been knifed was just out of view. ‘Over there.’
The four of them were listening to my words closely.
‘OK, but what has Isabel’s kidnapping to do with this?’ Luís asked.
‘I can’t be sure, exactly. At first it looked like a standard Rio kidnapping. For money. We all assumed that Isabel was kidnapped so that you would have to pay a ransom.’
Luís nodded.
‘But now it looks as though that wasn’t the real motive. The kidnappers seem more interested in protecting Dekker than in extorting money.’
‘So why did they kidnap her in the first place?’
I had given this much thought on the plane journey down, and I believed I had an answer. ‘Well, it wasn’t just her that was snatched. They took me as well. Perhaps they thought that I had some knowledge about Martin or Francisco that would compromise them. They wanted me out of the way. Even when I escaped, they kept me distracted by launching into negotiations for Isabel’s ransom, and, of course, I left Dekker soon after I returned to England.’
‘So why didn’t they just kill her, like they did Martin Beldecos?’ asked Nelson.
‘Good question. I don’t know the answer.’ Actually, I could guess at why Isabel hadn’t been killed, especially if Ricardo was involved in the operation in some way. But I didn’t want to tell Luís about his daughter’s affair with Ricardo if I could help it. I knew she wouldn’t want me to. ‘For some reason they wanted us to believe she was dead. That’s why they dropped the ransom so suddenly, and didn’t respond to the proof-of-life question. But they obviously decided to keep her alive. Thank God.’
‘Do you have proof of all this?’ asked Nelson.
‘No, I don’t, but it all adds up. What do you think, Luís?’
Luís rubbed his chin. ‘I think you might be right. What you say makes sense.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Francisco? No. I mean, I’ve met him once or twice but we’ve never done business together.’
‘What does he do? All I know is he’s some kind of financier.’
‘His father is a senator, and so was his grandfather. His elder brother runs a contracting company that makes good profits from government contracts. But in Brazil, that’s normal.’
‘And Francisco himself?’
‘He made a lot of money in the eighties through offshore investment companies. It was easy, and very profitable. A lot of people did it. It involved currency speculation against the various government exchange-rate programmes. It had to be offshore to avoid exchange controls.’
‘By offshore, do you mean Panama?’ I asked. I remembered Tony Hempel and International Trading and Transport (Panama) Ltd.
‘Panama, certainly. And the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, even Miami. People made a lot of money. Then many of them lost it all.’
‘How?’
‘The Real Plan. It was introduced in nineteen ninety-four, and linked the new currency, the real, to the dollar. Interest rates were high, and for the first time inflation was under control. The easy money was over. Banks and finance companies went bankrupt all over the place.’
‘But not Francisco?’
Luís shrugged. ‘Not as far as I’ve heard. It looks as if he diversified into real estate and commodities trading. And he is supposed to deal with the narco-traffickers. If they bankrolled him, he would be OK.’
Luís paused. His mouth tightened. ‘If that bastard has harmed my daughter, I’ll kill him,’ he whispered.
‘So what do we do now?’ asked Cordelia.
‘Tell him to give my daughter back!’ growled Luís. It was as though the anger he had felt at the loss of his daughter was emerging, now that he had someone to direct it against.
‘What will you say to him?’ asked Nelson.
‘I’ll tell him he’s the son of a whore,’ said Luís, reddening. ‘I’ll tell him that if he doesn’t give my daughter back I will tear off his...’ he searched for the English word ‘... testicles and shove them down his throat.’ Luís’s chest was heaving as he said this. The control he had shown over the last few weeks was finally in danger of breaking down.
‘I don’t think that will work,’ said Nelson, quietly.
‘Why not?’ Luís glared at him.
‘Because Francisco will deny he has Isabel,’ said Nelson. ‘And we have no proof. So he won’t let her go, and we won’t know where she is. On the other hand, it will warn him that we have figured out what he’s up to, and he and whoever are his accomplices will be able to cover their tracks.’
Luís stood up from his chair, and began pacing up and down. We all watched him in silence. He was breathing heavily, trying to regain control. Eventually he stopped and turned to Nelson. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. This is not the time for anger. This is the time to be clear-headed. So what can we do?’
‘Find out a bit more about Francisco,’ I suggested. ‘What he’s up to now. Who he deals with. If he does deal with drug gangs, which ones.’