The Cobra

CHAPTER 4

IN THE PLAZA DE BOLIVAR, NAMED AFTER THE GREAT Liberator, stand some of the oldest buildings not only in Bogota but in all South America. It is the center of Old Town.

The conquistadors were here, bringing with them, in their raging lust for God and gold, the first Catholic missionaries. Some of these, Jesuits all, founded in 1604 in one corner the school of San Bartolome, and not far away the Church of St. Ignatius, in honor of their founder, Loyola. In another corner stood the original national Provincialate of the Society of Jesus.

It had been some years since the Provincialate officially moved to a modern building in the newer part of the city. But in the blazing heat, despite the favors of new air-conditioning technology, the Father Provincial, Carlos Ruiz, still preferred the cool stones and paving flags of the old buildings.

It was here, on a humid December morning that year, that he had chosen to meet the American visitor. As he sat at his oak desk, brought many years ago from Spain and almost black with age, Fr. Carlos toyed again with the letter of introduction requesting this meeting. It came from his Brother in Christ, the dean of Boston College; it was impossible to refuse, but curiosity is not a sin. What could the man want?

Paul Devereaux was shown in by a young novice. The provincial rose and crossed the room to greet him. The visitor was close to his own age, the biblical three score and ten: lean, fastidious in silk shirt, club tie and cream tropical suit. No jeans, or hair at the throat. Fr. Ruiz thought he had never met a Yankee spy before, but the Boston letter had been very frank.

"Father, I hesitate to ask at the outset but I must. May we regard everything said in this room as coming under the seal of the confessional?"

Fr. Ruiz inclined his head and gestured his guest to a Castilian chair, seated and backed in rawhide. He resumed his place behind his desk.

"How can I help you, my son?"

"I have been asked by my President, no less, to try to destroy the cocaine industry that is causing grievous damage to my country."

There was no further need to explain why he was in Colombia. The word "cocaine" explained it all.

"That has been tried many times before," said Fr. Ruiz. "Many times. But the appetite in your country is enormous. If there were not such a grievous appetite for the white powder, there would be no production."

"True," admitted the American, "a demand will always produce a supply. But the reverse is also true. A supply will always create a demand. Eventually. If the supply dies, the appetite will wither away."

"It did not work with Prohibition."

Devereaux was accustomed to the feint. Prohibition had been a disaster. It had simply created a huge underworld, which, after repeal, had moved into every other possible criminal activity. Over the years, the cost to the U.S. could be measured in trillions.

"We believe the comparison fails, Father. There are a thousand sources of a glass of wine or a dram of whisky."

He meant, But cocaine comes only from here. There was no need to say it.

"My son, we in the Society of Jesus try to be a force for good. But we have found by terrible experience that involvement in politics or matters of state is usually disastrous."

Devereaux had spent his life in the trade of espionage. He had long ago come to the view that the greatest intelligence-gathering agency in the world was the Roman Catholic Church. Through its omnipresence, it saw everything; through the confessional, it heard everything. And the idea that over a millennium and a half it had never supported or opposed emperors and princes was simply amusing.

"But where you see evil, you seek to fight it," he said.

The provincial was far too wily to fall for that one.

"What do you seek of the Society, my son?"

"In Colombia, you are everywhere, Father. Your pastoral work takes your young priests into every corner of every town and city…"

"And you wish them to become informers? For you? Far away in Washington. They, too, practice the seal of the confessional. What is told to them in that small place can never be revealed."

"And if a ship is sailing with a cargo of poison to destroy many young lives and leave a trail of misery in its wake, that knowledge, too, is sacred?"

"We both know the confessional is sacrosanct."

"But a ship cannot confess, Father. I give you my word no seaman will ever die. Interception and confiscation is absolutely the limit I have in mind."

He knew that he, too, would now have to confess to the sin of lying. But to another priest faraway. Not here. Not now.

"What you ask could be extremely risky; the men behind this trade, foul as it is, are utterly vicious and very violent."

For an answer, the American produced an item from his pocket. It was a small and very compact cell phone.

"Father, we were both raised long before these were invented. Now all the young have them, and most who are no longer young. To send a short message, there is no need to speak…"

"I know about texting, my son."

"Then you will know about encryption. These are encrypted far beyond the powers of the cartel ever to intercept. All I ask is the name of the ship with the poison onboard, heading for my homeland to destroy its young people. For profit. For money."

The Father Provincial permitted himself a thin smile.

"You are a good advocate, my son."

The Cobra had one last card to play.

"In the city of Cartagena is a statue to Saint Peter Claver of the Society of Jesus."

"Of course. We revere him."

"Hundreds of years ago, he fought against the evil of slavery. And the slave traders martyred him. Father, I beseech you. This trade in drugs is as evil as that in slaves. Both merchandise human misery. That which enslaves need not always be a man; it can be a narcotic. The slavers took the bodies of young people and abused them. Narcotics take the soul."

The Father Provincial stared for several minutes out of the window across the square of Simon Bolivar, a man who set people free.

"I wish to pray, my son. Can you return in two hours?"

Devereaux took a light lunch under the awning of a cafe in a street running off the square. When he returned, the leader of all Colombia's Jesuits had made his decision.

"I cannot order what you ask. But I can explain to my parish priests what you ask. So long as the seal of confession is never broken, they may decide for themselves. You may distribute your little machines." OF ALL his colleagues in the cartel, the one Alfredo Suarez had to work with most closely was Jose-Maria Largo, in charge of merchandising. It was a question of keeping track of every cargo, down to the last kilogram. Suarez could dispatch them, consignment by consignment, but it was vital to know how much arrived at the point of handover to the purchasing mafia and how much was intercepted by the forces of law and order.

Fortunately, every major intercept was immediately blazoned across the media by the FLO. They wanted the credit, kudos from their governments, always angling for larger budgets. Largo's rules were simple and ironclad. Big customers were allowed to pay fifty percent of the price of the cargo (and that was the cartel's price) on placement of an order. The balance would be owed after handover, which marked change of ownership. Smaller players had to provide one hundred percent as a single nonnegotiable deposit.

If the national gangs and mafias could charge astronomical fees at street level, that was their business. If they were careless or penetrated by police informants and lost their purchase, that, too, was their business. But confiscation of the cargo after delivery did not absolve them of the need to settle up.

It was when a foreign gang still owed the fifty percent balance, had lost their purchase to the police and refused to pay up, that enforcement was necessary. The Don was adamant about the value of terrible examples being set. And the cartel was truly paranoid about two things: theft of assets and informant betrayal. Neither was forgivable or forgettable, no matter what the cost of retribution. It had to be inflicted. That was the law of the Don… and it worked.

Only by conferring with his colleague Largo could Suarez know to the last kilo how much of what he shipped was intercepted before the point of handover.

Only this would show him what shipment methods had the highest chances of getting through and which the least.

Toward the end of 2010, he calculated that interception was running much as ever; between ten and fifteen percent. Given the telephone-number profits, this was quite acceptable. But he always lusted to bring the interception level down to single figures. If cocaine was intercepted while still in the possession of the cartel, the loss was wholly theirs. The Don did not like that.

Suarez's predecessor, now dismembered and decomposing under a new apartment block, had thrown his entire judgment, after the turn of the century a decade earlier, behind submarines. This ingenious idea involved the construction up hidden rivers of submersible hulls that, powered by a diesel engine, could take a crew of four, a cargo of up to ten tons, along with food and fuel, and then sink to periscope depth.

Even the best of them never went deep. They did not need to. All that showed above the water was a Perspex blister dome, with the captain's head peering out so that he could steer, and a tube to suck in fresh air for the engine and crew.

The idea was for these invisible submersibles to creep slowly but safely up the Pacific Coast from Colombia to northern Mexico and deliver huge quantities to the Mexican mafias, leaving them to smuggle it the rest of the way across the border into the USA. And they had worked… for a while. Then came the disaster.

The guiding genius behind their design and construction was Enrique Portocarrero, who masqueraded as a harmless shrimp fisherman out of Buenaventura down in the south on the Pacific Coast. Then Colonel Dos Santos had got him.

Whether he squealed under "pressure" or whether a search of his premises revealed traces, the main base of the submarine construction yards was discovered, and the Navy moved in. By the time Captain German Borrero had finished, sixty hulls in various stages of construction were smoking ruins. The loss to the cartel had been enormous.

The second mistake of Suarez's predecessor had been to send extremely high percentages of cargo to the U.S. and Europe by single mules, carrying one or two kilos each. It meant using thousands to carry just a couple of tons.

As Islamist fundamentalism caused the tightening of security in the Western world, more and more passenger suitcases were X-rayed and their illegal contents discovered. This led to a switch to belly cargoes. Idiots prepared to take the risk would numb their gullets with novocaine and then swallow up to a hundred pellets containing about ten grams each.

Some sustained an internal burst and ended their lives frothing on the airport concourse floor. Others were reported by sharp-eyed stewardesses as being unable to take food or drink on a long-haul flight. They were taken aside, given syrup of figs and given a lavatory with a filter screen at the bottom. American and European jails were filled to bursting with them. Still, over eighty percent got through by sheer volume of numbers and the West's obsession with civil rights. Then the predecessor to Suarez had his second stroke of bad luck.

It was pioneered in Manchester, England, and it worked. It was a new "virtual strip search" X-ray machine that would not only reveal the passenger as if naked but also reveal implants, insertions into the anus and the contents of the entrails. The machine was so silent that it could be installed below the guichet occupied by the passport control officer so that the presenter of the passport could be observed from thorax to calves by another officer in another room. As more and more Western airports and sea terminals installed them, the rate of intercept of the mules shot upward.

Finally, the Don had had enough. He ordered a change of chief executive of that division-permanently. Suarez had taken over.

He was a dedicated big-cargo man, and his figures showed clearly which were the best routes. For the U.S. it was by surface craft or aircraft up through the Caribbean to deliver to northern Mexico or the southern littoral of the U.S., with the cargoes carried mainly by merchant marine freighters for most of the way, and a final, at-sea transfer to private craft of the sort that teem along both coasts, from fishermen to speedboats to private yachts to leisure boats.

For Europe, he hugely favored the new routes; not direct from the Caribbean to Western and Northern Europe, where interceptions topped twenty percent, but due east to the ring of failed states that comprised the West African coast. With the cargoes changing hands there and the cartel paid off, it was up to the buyers to break the consignments down and filter them north over the deserts to the Mediterranean shore and then over to Southern Europe. And the destination he favored most was the small, ex-Portuguese, civil-war-ravaged failed state and narco-hellhole of Guinea-Bissau. THIS WAS exactly the conclusion Cal Dexter was coming to as he sat in Vienna with the Canadian narco-hunter Walter Kemp of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The figures on UNODC tallied very closely with those of Tim Manhire down in Lisbon.

Starting only a few years earlier as the recipient of twenty percent of Colombian cocaine heading for Europe, West Africa was now taking over fifty. What neither man sharing a cafe table in the Prater Park sun could know was that Alfredo Suarez had increased that percentage to seventy.

There were seven coastal republics in West Africa that qualified for the police description "of interest": Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Conakry (ex-French), Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ghana.

After being flown or sailed across the Atlantic to West Africa, the cocaine filtered north by a hundred different routes and ruses. Some came by fishing boat, up the coast to Morocco, and then followed the old cannabis run. Other cargoes were flown across the Sahara to the North African coast and thence by small craft to the Spanish mafia across the Pillars of Hercules or to the Calabrian Ndrangheta waiting at the port of Gioia.

Some shipments went by exhausting land train right across the Sahara from south to north. Of extreme interest was the Libyan airline Afriqiyah, which links twelve major West African cities to Tripoli, just across the water from Europe.

"When it comes to freighting northward to Europe," said Kemp, "they are all in it together. But when it comes to receiving from across the Atlantic, Guinea-Bissau is premier league."

"Perhaps I should go and have a look," mused Dexter.

"If you do go," said the Canadian, "be careful. Have a good cover story. And it might be wise to take some muscle. Of course, the best camouflage is to be black. Can you provide that?"

"No, not this side of the pond."

Kemp scribbled a name and number on a paper napkin.

"Try him in London. A friend of mine. He's with SOCA. And good luck. You'll need it."

Cal Dexter had not heard of the British Serious and Organised Crime Agency, but he was about to. He was back at the Montcalm Hotel by sundown. BECAUSE OF the former colonial connection, the Portuguese airline TAP is the only convenient carrier. Duly visaed, vaccinated and injected against everything the School of Tropical Medicine could think of and attested to by letter from BirdLife International as a foremost ornithologist specializing in the study of wading birds that winter in West Africa, "Dr." Calvin Dexter was a week later flying out of Lisbon on the TAP night flight to Guinea-Bissau.

Sitting behind him were two corporals of the British Parachute Regiment. SOCA, he had learned, grouped just about every agency concerned with big crime and antiterrorism under one banner. Within the network of contacts available to a friend of Walter Kemp's was a senior soldier who had spent most of his career with the regiment's Third Battalion, Three Para. It was he who had found Jerry and Bill based at the Colchester HQ. They had volunteered.

They were not Jerry and Bill anymore. They were Kwame and Kofi. Their passports said they were firmly Ghanaian, and further paperwork swore they worked with BirdLife International in Accra. In fact, they were as British as Windsor Castle, but both had parents who hailed from Grenada. So long as no one interrogated them in fluent ga or ewe or Ashanti, they would do fine. They also spoke no Creole or Portuguese, but they were definitely African to look at.

It was after midnight and pitch-black when the TAP airliner touched down at Bissau Airport. Most passengers were going on to Sao Tome and only a tiny trickle veered away from the transit lounge for passport control. Dexter led the way.

The passport officer scanned every page in the new Canadian passport, noted the Guinea visa, palmed the twenty-euro note and nodded him through. He gestured at his two companions.

"Avec moi," he said, adding, "Con migo."

French is not Portuguese, and neither is Spanish, but the meaning was clear. And he beamed good humor all around. Beaming usually works. A senior officer stepped forward.

"Qu'est-que vous faites en Guinee?" he asked.

Dexter feigned delight. He delved in his shoulder bag for a fistful of brochures featuring herons, spoonbills and others of the seven hundred thousand waterbirds that overwinter in Guinea-Bissau's vast swamps and wetlands. The officer's eyes glazed over with boredom. He waved them all through.

Outside there were no taxis. But there was a truck and a driver, and a fifty-euro note goes a long way down there.

"Hotel Malaika?" said Dexter hopefully. The driver nodded.

As they approached the city, Dexter noticed it was almost entirely black. Only a few points of light showed. Army curfew? No; there is no electricity. Only buildings with private generators have light after dark or power at any time. Happily, the Malaika Hotel was one. The three checked in and retired for what was left of the night. Just before dawn, someone shot the President. IT WAS Project Cobra's computer expert Jeremy Bishop who first spotted the name. Just as those obsessed by general-knowledge quizzes will prowl through dictionaries, encyclopedias and atlases vacuuming up facts they will never be asked, Bishop, who had no social life, spent his spare time prowling through cyberspace. Not surfing the Internet-that was far too simple. He had the habit of hacking effortlessly and invisibly into other people's databases to see what was there.

On a late Saturday evening when most of Washington was out enjoying the start of the festive season, he sat in front of a console and penetrated the arrivals and departures lists logged at Bogota Airport. There was a name that cropped up repeatedly. Whoever he was, he flew from Bogota to Madrid regularly, every fortnight.

His returns were less than three days later, giving him no more than fifty hours in the Spanish capital. Not enough for a vacation, too much for a stopover toward a further destination.

Bishop ran his name against the compendium of those known to be involved in any possible aspect of cocaine as supplied by the Colombian police to the DEA and copied to Cobra HQ. It was not there.

He broke into the database of Iberia Airlines, which the man used every time he traveled. The name came up under "frequent flier," with special privileges like priority status on overbooked flights. He always traveled first class and his return flight reservations were prebooked automatically unless canceled by him.

Bishop used his overriding clearance to contact the DEA people in Bogota and even the British SOCA team in the same city. Neither knew him, but the DEA helpfully added that, from local reference books, he was a lawyer with an upscale practice that never did criminal-court work. Having run into the wall, but still curious, Bishop told Devereaux.

The Cobra absorbed the information, but did not think it merited the expenditure of much further effort. As a long shot, it was a mite too long. Still, a simple inquiry in Madrid would do no harm. Acting via the DEA team in Spain, Devereaux placed a request that on the man's next visit he be discreetly tailed. He, the Cobra, would appreciate knowing where he stayed, where he went, what he did and whom he met. With much rolling of eyeballs, the Americans in Madrid agreed to call in a favor from their Spanish colleagues.

The anti-drug unit in Madrid is the Unidad de Droga y Crimen Organizado, or UDYCO. The request was dumped on the desk of Inspector Francisco "Paco" Ortega.

Like all police, Ortega reckoned he was overworked, under-equipped and definitely underpaid. Still, if the Yanquis wanted a Colombian tailed, he could hardly refuse. If the UK was the biggest single user of cocaine in Europe, Spain was the biggest arrival point and was equipped with a huge and vicious underworld. With their enormous resources, the Americans sometimes intercepted a piece of pure gold and shared it with UDYCO. A note was made that when, in ten days, the Colombian arrived again, he would be quietly tailed.

Neither Bishop, Devereaux nor Ortega could know that Julio Luz was the single member of the Hermandad who had never come to the attention of the Colombian police. Colonel Dos Santos knew exactly who all the others were, but not the lawyer and money launderer. BY MIDDAY, after the arrival of Cal Dexter and his team in Bissau city, the affair of the dead President had been cleared up and the panic subsided. It was not another coup d'etat after all.

The shooter had been the lover of the old tyrant's much younger wife. By midmorning both had disappeared into the bush far upcountry, never to be seen again. Tribal solidarity would protect them as if they had never existed.

The President had been of the Papel tribe; his trophy wife was Balanta and so was her boyfriend. The Army was also mainly Balanta and had no intention of hunting down one of its own. The President had not been very popular. Another would eventually be chosen. It was the Army commander and chief of staff who held the real power.

Dexter rented a white SUV from Mavegro Trading, whose helpful Dutch proprietor put him in touch with a man with a small cabin cruiser to rent. It came with outboard engine and trailer. It would certainly be capable of cruising the creeks and inlets of the offshore Bijagos Archipelago looking for wading birds.

Finally, Dexter managed to rent a detached bungalow opposite the sports stadium recently erected by China, which was quietly recolonizing great tracts of Africa. He and his two helpers moved out of the Malaika and into their cottage.

On the drive from one to the other, they were caught up by a Jeep Wrangler which swerved across their path at an intersection. In just two days, Dexter had learned there were no traffic police and the lights rarely functioned.

As the SUV and the Jeep swerved within inches of each other, the front passenger in the Wrangler stared at Dexter from a few inches away but behind wraparound black shades. Like the driver, he was not African nor European. Swarthy, black-haired, with a pigtail and chains of gold "bling" around the neck. Colombian.

The Jeep had a chrome frame above the cab on which was mounted a rack of four powerful searchlights. Dexter knew the explanation. Many cocaine carriers came in by sea, never reaching the shabby little port of Bissau itself but transferring the bales out in the creeks among the mangrove islands.

Other carriers came by air, either to be dropped into the sea close to a waiting fishing boat or flown on into the hinterland. Guinea-Bissau's twenty-year guerrilla fight for independence from Portugal and fifteen-year civil war had bequeathed up to fifty airstrips cut out of the bush. Sometimes the coke planes landed there before flying back to the airport, empty and "clean," to refuel.

A night landing was safer, but as none of the bush strips had any laid-on power, they had no lights. But a receiving party of four or five pickups could use their roof-rack lighting to provide a brilliantly illuminated landing path for the few minutes needed. That was what Dexter could explain to his two paratroop escorts. AT THE pestilential Kapoor shipyard south of Goa, the work on the two grain ships was in full flow. The man in charge was a Canadian-Scot named Duncan McGregor who had spent a lifetime in the shipyards of the tropics and had a skin like terminal jaundice with eyes to match. One day, if the swamp fever did not get him, the whisky would.

The Cobra liked retired experts as hirelings. They tended to have forty years on the job, no family ties and needed the money. McGregor knew what was wanted but not why. With the fee he was getting, he had no intention of speculating, and certainly not of asking.

His welders and cutters were local, his outfitter imported Singaporeans, whom he knew well. For their accommodation, he had leased and brought down a row of motor homes; they would certainly not tolerate the hovels of the local Goans.

The exteriors of both grain ships were to remain, he had been instructed. Only the interiors of the five enormous holds were to be converted. The farthest forward was to be a brig for prisoners, though he did not know that. It would have bunks, latrines, a galley for cooking, showers, and a wardroom with air-conditioning and even TV.

Next was another living area with the same but better. One day, either British Special Boat Service commandos or American Navy SEALs would live here.

The third hold needed to be smaller so that its neighbor could be large. The steel bulkhead between holds 3 and 4 had to be cut out and moved. This was being fitted out as an all-purpose workshop. The second-to-last hold, up against the sterncastle, was left bare. It would contain very fast inflatable RIB raiding craft powered by huge motors. This hold would have the only derrick above it.

The largest hold was taking the most work. On its floor, a steel plate was being made, which would be hoisted vertically by four hydraulic winches, one at each corner, until it was level with the deck above. Whatever would be strapped to that rising floor would then be out in the fresh air. In fact, it would be the unit's attack helicopter.

All through the winter under the still-blazing Karnatakan sun, the torches hissed, drills bored, metal clanged, hammers smashed and two harmless grain ships were turned into floating death traps. And far away, the names were changed as ownership passed to an invisible company managed by Thame of Singapore. Just before completion, those names would go on each stern, the crews would be flown back to take them over and they would steam away to whatever work awaited them on the other side of the world. CAL DEXTER spent a week acclimatizing before he took the boat into the heart of the Bijagos. He plastered the SUV with decals he had brought with him, advertising BirdLife International and the American Audubon Society. Lying prominently on the backseat for any passing observer to see were copies of the latest reports from the Ghana Wildlife Society and the can't-do-without Birds of Western Africa by Borrow and Demey.

In fact, after the brush with the Wrangler at the intersection, two swarthy men were indeed sent to the bungalow to snoop. They returned to tell their masters the bird-watchers were harmless idiots. In the heart of enemy territory, "idiot" is the best cover there is.

Dexter's first chore was to find a place for his boat. He took his team west of Bissau city deep into the bush toward Quinhamel, the capital of the Papel tribe. Beyond Quinhamel, he found the Mansoa River leading down to the sea, and, on its bank, the hotel and restaurant Mar Azul. Here he slipped the cabin cruiser into the river and billeted Jerry in the hotel to look after it. Before he and Bill left, they had a sumptuous lobster lunch with Portuguese wine.

"Beats Colchester in winter," agreed the two paras. The spying on the offshore islands began the next day.

There are fourteen main Bijagos, but the entire archipelago comprises eighty-eight small blobs of land between twenty and thirty miles off the Guinea-Bissau coast. Anti-cocaine agencies had photographed them from space, but no one had ever penetrated them in a small boat.

Dexter discovered they were all swampy, hot, mangrove filled and feverish, but four or five, facing farthest out to sea, had been graced with luxurious snow-white villas on gleaming beaches, each with large dish aerials, state-of-the-art technology and radio masts to pick up signals from the faraway MTN service provider for mobile phones. Each villa had a dock and a speedboat. These were the exile residences of the Colombians.

For the rest, he counted twenty-three hamlets of fishermen, pigs and goats, leading a subsistence existence. But there were also fishing camps where foreigners came to rape the country's teeming fish reserves. There were twenty-meter canoes from Guinea-Conakry, Sierra Leone and Senegal with ice, food and fuel for fifteen days away from base.

These served South Korean and Chinese mother ships whose refrigerators could freeze the catch all the way back to the East. He watched up to forty canoes serving a single mother ship. But the cargo he really wanted to watch came on the sixth night.

He had berthed the cruiser up a narrow creek, crossed an island on foot and hidden himself in the mangroves by the shore. The American and the two British paras lay covered in camouflage scrim with powerful binoculars as the sun went down ahead of them in the west. Out of the last red rays came a freighter that was most definitely not a fishing mother ship. She slipped between two islands, and the chain clattered as her anchor went down. Then the canoes appeared.

They were local, not foreign, and not rigged for fishing. Five of them, each with a crew of four natives, and an Hispanic in the stern of two of them.

On the side rail of the freighter, men appeared lugging bales bound with stout cord. The bales were heavy enough that it needed four men to lift just one over the side and lower it to a waiting canoe, which rocked and sagged as it took the weight.

There was no need for secrecy. The crew laughed and shouted in the high piping tones of the East. One of the Hispanics clambered aboard to converse with the captain. A suitcase of money changed hands, the fee for the Atlantic crossing, but a mere fraction of the eventual yield in Europe.

Guessing the weight of the bales and counting the number, Cal Dexter calculated two tons of Colombian pure had been unloaded as he watched through his binoculars. The darkness deepened. The freighter put on some of her lights. Lanterns appeared on the canoes. Finally, the transaction done, the canoes gunned up their outboards and chugged away. The freighter hauled up her anchor and swung on the ebb tide before turning for sea.

Dexter caught sight of the red/blue flag of South Korea and her name. The Hae Shin. He gave them all an hour to get clear, then motored back upriver to the Mar Azul.

"Ever seen a hundred million sterling, guys?"

"No, boss," said Bill, using the paratroop vernacular of a corporal to an officer.

"Well, you have now. That was the value of two tons of coke." They looked glum.

"Lobster supper. Our last night."

That cheered them up. Twenty-four hours later, they had returned the cottage, boat and SUV and flown out, via Lisbon for London. The night they left, men in black balaclavas raided their villa, ransacked and then torched it. One of the Bijagos natives had seen a white man among the mangroves. THE REPORT of Inspector Ortega was succinct and confined to the facts. It was therefore excellent. He referred to the Colombian lawyer Julio Luz only as "the target" throughout.

"The target arrived on the daily scheduled Iberia flight landing at 10:00. He was identified in the jetway from the first-class cabin door to the underground shuttle train running from Terminal 4 to the main concourse. One of my men in Iberia cabin-crew uniform tailed him all the way. Target took no notice of him nor took any precautions at being followed. He carried one attache case and one grip. No main baggage.

"He checked through passport control and the Green Channel in customs and was not stopped. A limousine was waiting for him; a driver outside the customs hall with a notice saying 'Villa Real.' This is a major Madrid hotel. It sends limousines to the airport for privileged guests.

"A plainclothes colleague of mine was with him all the way and in the car that tailed the hotel limo. He met no one and spoke to no one until arrival at the Villa Real, Plaza de las Cortes 10.

"He checked in to a warm welcome and was heard to ask for his 'usual room,' which he was assured was ready for him. He retired to it, ordered a light salad lunch from room service at midday and appeared to sleep off the effects of the overnight flight. He took tea in the guests' cafe called East 47 and at one point was greeted by the hotel director Senor Felix Garcia.

"He retired to his room again, but was overheard to ask for a table for dinner in the gourmet restaurant on the first floor. One of my men, listening at his door, heard the sound of a football match, which he seemed to be watching on TV. As we were instructed under no circumstances to alert him, we were not able to check on phone calls in or out. (We could of course obtain these, but that would alert the staff.)

"At nine he descended for dinner. He was joined by a young woman, aged early twenties, student type. It was suspected she might be what you call a 'party girl,' but there was no hint of this between them. He produced a letter from his inside breast pocket. High-quality cream paper. She thanked him, lodged it in her purse and left. He returned to his room and spent the night alone.

"He took breakfast in the interior patio, also on the first floor, at eight, and was joined by the same young woman (see below). This time, she did not stay but handed over another letter, took one coffee and left.

"I had assigned an extra man, and he followed the young woman. She is a certain Letizia Arenal, aged twenty-three, studying fine arts at the Universidad Complutense. She has a modest studio flat in Moncloa, near the campus, lives alone on a modest allowance and seems to be completely respectable.

"The target left the hotel by cab at ten a.m. and was taken to the Banco Guzman on Calle Serrano. This is a small private bank serving high-end clients of which nothing bad is (or was) known. Target spent the morning inside and seemingly lunched with the directors. He left at three p.m., but at the door the bank staff helped him with two large hard-framed Samsonite suitcases. He could not carry them, but he did not need to.

"A black Mercedes arrived as if summoned and two men got out. They stowed both heavy cases in the trunk and drove off. Target did not accompany them but hailed a cab. My man did manage to photograph both men with his mobile phone. These have been identified. Both are known gangsters. We were not able to tail the Mercedes, because it was not expected and my man was on foot. His car was waiting around the corner. So he stayed with the target.

"Target returned to his hotel, took tea again, watched TV again, dined again (this time alone, attended only by the maitre d'hotel Francisco Paton). He slept alone and left for the airport by hotel limousine at nine. He bought a liter of best-quality cognac in the duty-free, waited in the first-class lounge, boarded his flight and took off for Bogota at 12:20 on schedule.

"In view of the appearance of two thugs from the Galicia gang, we would now like to take a keen interest in Senor Luz as and when he appears again. Clearly, the suitcases could contain enough five-hundred-euro notes to represent a settlement of accounts between Colombia and our own major importers. Please advise."

"What do you think, Calvin?" asked Devereaux, as he welcomed Dexter back from Africa.

"It's a slam dunk the lawyer is part of the cartel's money-laundering operation, but it would seem only for Spain. Or maybe other European gangs bring their dues to Serrano Street for debt settlement. But I would prefer the UDYCO to hold fire for one last trip next time."

"They could take the two gangsters, the bent lawyer, the money and corrupt bank in one swoop. Why not?"

"Loose ends. That letter, that girl. Why is he playing postman? And for whom?" Dexter mused.

"Someone's niece. A favor for a friend."

"No, Mr. Devereaux. There are mails, recorded delivery if you insist, or e-mails, faxes, texts, phone calls. This is personal, highly secretive. Next time friend Luz lands in Madrid, I'd like to be there. With a small team."

"So we ask our Spanish friends to hold off until you are ready? Why so cautious?"

"Never frighten shy game," said the former soldier. "Take the animal with one shot through the forehead. No mess. No misses. No half shots. No wounding. If we take Luz now, we will never know who is sending cream manila envelopes to whom and why. That would worry me for a long time."

Paul Devereaux regarded the former Tunnel Rat thoughtfully.

"I am beginning to understand why the Vietcong never got you in the Iron Triangle. You still think like a jungle creature."