The Armada Legacy

Chapter Thirty-Four

‘That’s one beautiful looking woman, no?’ Nico said wistfully.

Ben thumbed the phone’s tiny keys to zoom closer in, but the picture quickly lost resolution and the focus dissolved into blocks of pixels like a Cubist painting. He zoomed out again and stared hard.

No, wait. It wasn’t Brooke. The woman’s features were slightly different; the cheekbones higher, the lips fuller, the nose a tiny fraction longer.

They could have been twins.

Ben’s mouth had gone dry and his head was spinning. He looked up at Nico in confusion.

‘Her name was Alicia Cabrera,’ Nico explained. ‘She was an actress in Colombia’s most popular soap opera and before that, as you can see, she was a model. At the age of twenty-nine she gave up her acting career to become Señora Alicia Serrato.’

‘She was Serrato’s wife?’

‘He was crazy for her. And I mean crazy. He chased after her with flowers and gifts until she said yes. He owned her like some kind of trophy until the day she took a bullet that was meant for him.’

‘Fired by you,’ Ben said.

‘Yeah, fired by me. I tell myself that short of killing the fucker it was the best way I could hurt him. It was a quick death for her, and that’s more than he gave to my kids.’ Nico paused. ‘But an innocent woman died because of my mistake, and that’s something I don’t forgive myself for. I know God don’t forgive me for it either. I’ll pay for it all through this life and into the next.’

Ben said nothing. He could see the genuine pain in Nico’s eyes.

‘But you understand now, right? Why I asked you what your woman looks like?’ Nico pointed at the image on the phone. ‘This is how I know she’s got to be still alive. Serrato could have killed her with the others, but he didn’t. Why? Because he wants his Alicia back. He wants things the way they were before. You see now?’

‘So Brooke is … in Peru? With Serrato?’

‘Bet your life.’

‘That’s insane,’ Ben said. But the look of absolute sincerity on Nico’s face was making him feel very cold.

‘Insane, sure. But I know this fucker as well as I know myself. Better. Serrato’s a lunatic. A very smart, very devious lunatic. This is his fantasy. He’ll never let her go. He’ll use all his power to make her his woman.’

‘Make her his woman,’ Ben repeated.

‘You know what I’m talking about,’ Nico said, looking Ben in the eye. ‘If she lets him have her, he’ll just keep her there like a pet. But if she refuses him, and goes on refusing him, then sooner or later he’s going to lose patience. And when Ramon Serrato loses patience with you, you’re worse than dead, man.’

Ben was silent for a long time. His blood felt like ice water in his veins.

‘Trust me. I know this guy. You have to believe what I’m telling you.’

As terrifyingly crazy as it sounded, Ben did believe it. The only question now was what to do.

‘Give me back the phone,’ Nico said. ‘I got to check on Cabeza.’ The tiny image of Alicia Serrato vanished from the screen as Nico punched out a number. He pressed the phone to his ear, listened and frowned. ‘Not answering. Damn it, I told him to stay close to the phone.’ After waiting a few more moments he left a message. ‘Professor Cabeza, this is Nico. I thought we agreed you’d stay put? Call me back as soon as you get this, okay?’

‘Where is he?’ Ben asked when Nico gave him back the phone.

‘In this cheap holiday place I rented near Granada, in a village called Montefrio. It was somewhere safe for him to lie low while I came back here to wait for the next bastard Serrato sent to kill him. I took care of the guy, made sure he was okay, and now he goes wandering off somewhere like a goddamn fool.’ Nico stood up impatiently and went over to the fireplace to check his hanging clothes. Satisfied they were dry, he tossed away his towel and hauled on his black combat trousers, then the military cold-weather shirt.

‘I’m trying to put all this together,’ Ben said. ‘What makes Cabeza a target? What’s he done?’

‘I’ll tell you everything. But not here. I’m worried that he’s not returning my call. I gotta go back to Montefrio.’

They didn’t speak much as they trekked back across the lake, keeping to the thicker ice and skirting round the hole that the snowmobile had vanished into. Then it was the long, difficult hike back up the steep wooded slope and through the forest back to Cabeza’s house. Ben went first, picking the best path and letting Nico follow up behind with the gun.

The snow around the base of Cabeza’s walls was puckered with little oblong holes where hot cartridge cases had melted through. The garage doors were wide open and swaying in the wind. ‘The snowmobile was his,’ Nico explained, walking inside the shadowy space underneath the house. Two cars were parked there, one a shiny Nissan soft-roader that looked exactly like the kind of car a mild-mannered academic would own, and next to it an ancient Subaru four-wheel-drive with all-terrain tyres, a torn canvas soft top, a roll cage and a motor winch mounted on the front. ‘That piece of shit there is mine,’ Nico said. ‘Now let’s move. We got no time to waste.’

It was clear enough to see that Nico was operating on a tight budget. As the Colombian drove the dented, rusty Subaru out into the daylight, blue smoke belching from its exhaust, Ben gazed at the bullet-riddled ruin of his rental Volkswagen and wondered how they were ever going to get back down the mountain in Nico’s banger. Somewhere far in the back of his mind he was also wondering whether any rental firm in Europe would ever let him have a car again – he’d lost count of the number he’d wrecked.

But more than anything else, he was wondering where Brooke was at this moment: what she was doing; what might be happening to her. The thought of her trapped in the personal lair of some half-crazy drug lord wouldn’t stop whirling around his mind. He was desperately anxious to get off this mountain.

‘Sorry about your car,’ Nico muttered, then drove the Subaru over the snow to where the fallen tree trunk had blocked Ben’s way and made him walk the rest of the distance to the house. Only now did Ben notice that the tree had been deliberately sawn partway through. ‘You put that there, didn’t you?’

‘Now we got to move the fucker,’ Nico said from the cab, flinging open his door and pointing at the winch. ‘Grab that hook, man.’

Ben looped the thick steel winch cable round the tree and the grinding, creaking motor hauled it across the snow until there was a gap wide enough to drive through. Ben retrieved his bag from the wrecked Volkswagen, climbed into the Subaru and they set off down the track.

Nico was set on making maximum progress despite the conditions. As the car ploughed through snow and slewed from side to side on sheet ice, he used Ben’s phone one more time to check on Cabeza. There was still no answer. Nico frowned, shook his head and then began to fill Ben in on the rest of his story.