After that, it was just noise. Bryant layered on the apologies, with a couple of wheeled-in words from Makin. Echevarria junior growled and snapped at intervals, always brought to heel by his father who just looked thoughtful throughout. Goodbyes were said cordially enough. Mike came storming back into the viewing chambers and slammed the door behind him.
‘Get on to Lopez. I want contact with the rebels by the end of the week. This motherfucker is going to turn on us.’
Chris blinked. ‘I thought you’d hooked him.’
‘Yeah, for the moment. The military stuff ought to hold him for a while, and that smear about US involvement will stave off junior’s Miami connections. But in the end, it’s a slum block waiting to come down. Old Hernan doesn’t really buy anything we said in there, he’s just biding his time to see what he can get out of us. And he’s not going to stay bribed with a handful of cheap cluster bombs, which is about all we can afford right now, the state things are in. No, the Americans are going to get him, sooner or later, and I want a player of our own in position before that happens.’
‘Yeah, but who?’ Chris gestured out through the glass to where Makin still sat at the table, staring into the middle distance. ‘Fuckhead there’s managed to trash Diaz. Who does that leave us?’
‘We’ll have to go with Barranco.’
‘Barranco? ’
‘Chris, he’s what we’ve got. You said yourself, Arbenz isn’t going to be in any position to lead an armed insurrection this year.’
‘Yeah, but Barranco. He’s committed, Mike.’
‘Ah, come on. They all start out that way.’
‘No, he’s a real fucking Guevara, Mike. I don’t think we’re going to be able to control him.’
Bryant grinned. ‘Yeah, we will. You will.’ He glanced back through at Makin. The other executive hadn’t moved. ‘I’m going to take this shit to Hewitt and get Nick reassigned. It’s high fucking time. Meanwhile, you get Barranco to sit down. I don’t care what it takes. Fly out there yourself if you have to, but get him to a table.’
There was a brief rush off the words, an image from the Hammett McColl visit, a Caribbean night sky shingled with stars, the warm darkness beneath and the noises of the night time street.
‘You want me to go out to Panama?’
‘If that’s what it takes.’
‘Hewitt isn’t going to like this. She gave the account to Makin in the first place. It isn’t going to look good if he’s written off as the wrong choice. And that’s without her feelings about me. She’s hardly a fan.’
‘Chris, you’re fucking paranoid. I told you before. Hewitt’s a fan of money, and right now you’re making plenty of it. Bottom line, that’s what counts.’ Mike grinned again. ‘And anyway, she gives me any static, I’ll go talk to Notley. You are in, my friend, like it or not. Welcome to the NAME account.’
Out in the conference room, Makin stirred in his chair and turned to look towards them. It was as if he’d heard the conversation. He looked beaten and betrayed. Chris stared back at him, trying to chase out a faint disquiet that would not go away.
‘Thanks.’
‘Hey, you earned it. Run with it.’ Bryant slung an arm around his shoulders. ‘Besides, we’re a fucking team. Now let’s kick Hernan Echevarria into touch and make some fucking money.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Someone had tied up a damaged speedboat beside the jetty and then left it to drown. The boat’s prow was raised, roped tightly to a mooring iron, but behind the fly-specked windscreen, the water was up over the pale leather upholstered interior almost to the dashboard. Chris saw a fish hanging suspended below the surface like a tiny zeppelin, nibbling at something on the lower arc of the submerged steering wheel. Twigs and decaying leaf matter floated around the sunken stern, shifting sloppily back and forth as the wake of a passing water taxi rolled up to the jetty. Wavelets slapped at the wooden supports. Out across the lagoon, low cloud adhered like grey candyfloss to trees on the islands, and drifted across the seaward view, trailing rain. The sun was a vague blot on the lighter grey overhead. The air was warm and clammy.
Chris turned away. It wasn’t the Caribbean as he remembered it. He went back to where Joaquin Lopez sat with his back to the wooden shack that justified the jetty’s existence.
‘You sure he’s coming?’
Lopez shrugged. He was a tall, tightly-muscled man, mostly Afro-Caribbean, and he radiated a calm at odds with the panic he’d shown over the phone from Medellín. ‘He has every reason to. I wouldn’t have brought you for nothing, man. Smoke?’
Chris shook his head. Lopez lit a cigarette for himself and plumed smoke out across the water. He scratched absently at a scar on his forehead.
‘It will not have been easy for him. There’s a lot of heat along this part of the coast. The turtle patrols have authority to stop and search anyone they think is poaching. And you sometimes got US drug enforcement boats up from the Darien. They don’t have any authority, but…’
He shrugged again. Chris nodded.
‘When did that ever stop them, right?’
‘Right.’ Lopez looked away and grinned.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. You don’t talk like a gringo.’
Chris yawned. He hadn’t slept much in the last couple of days. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘Keep it up. It may help with Barranco.’
It was piling up behind his eyes now. London, Madrid, San Jose Costa Rica. A blur of airports, executive lounges in muted pastel shades, the grey whisper of air-conditioned flight. Chasing down the sun, gaining a day. Helicoptered out of San Jose at dawn and across the border into Panama. Touchdown on a sun-drenched airfield outside David, where Lopez had sneaked out of Panama City and west to meet him. Another short hop north to Bocas del Toro, a series of shacks and people Lopez knew, a gun on loan, a water taxi out here, wherever exactly it was, and waiting, waiting for Barranco.
‘You ever meet him?’
Lopez shook his head. ‘Spoke to him on the videophone a couple of days ago. He’s looking tired, not like the pinups they did of him back in ’41. He needs this, Chris. This is his last throw.’
The year echoed in his head. In ’41, Edward Quain had died in smeared fragments on the cold asphalt of the M20. At the time, it had seemed like some kind of ending. But Chris had woken the next day to find the world intact and nothing he’d begun at Hammett McColl even close to tidy, let alone finished. It had dawned on him only then that he’d have to go on living, and that he’d have to find some new reason to do it.
A soft snarling, out across the water.
‘Boat coming,’ said Lopez.
The vessel came into view around a forested headland, raising a bow wave to match the noise of its engines. It was a big, navy-grey vessel, built for speed and, judging by the twinned machine guns mounted behind an impact-glass cupola on the foredeck, for assault. A flag flapped at the stern, white design on a green background. Lopez breathed a sigh of relief when he saw it.
‘Turtle patrol,’ he said.
The powerboat slowed and settled in the water as the motors cut to an idle. It nosed into the jetty and someone dressed in khakis came up on the foredeck. Yells in Spanish. Lopez responded. The deckhand gathered up a line and jumped blithely to the jetty with it. He landed with a practised flex in the legs. A woman, similarly attired, came and leaned on the machine-gun cupola, staring at them. Chris felt caution creep through him.
‘You’re armed too, right?’ he muttered to Lopez.
‘Sure. But these are turtle guys, they aren’t—’