LITMIR.BIZ

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A recognizable island.

      Her drink finished, she asked the barman directions to the nearest bookshop. He looked at her blankly, as if the idea of buying a book had not occurred to him before, and she had to be rescued by one of the men she had ignored. He gave her directions to a shop two blocks distant.

      She walked down the palm-lined street and found it. An assistant showed her the atlases and hovered beside her until another customer pulled him away. She found the right page, and pushed her finger northwards across the blue Caribbean from the Colombian coast. The first island it reached was San Andrés, the second Providencia – both of them Colombian. The former was long and thin, the latter could have been egg-shaped. She needed a bigger map, and found it in a guidebook to her native country. Providencia was egg-shaped, with a mountain at its heart. And, she noticed triumphantly, there was a small adjoining island at its northern end. A bridge ran between them.

      At around a quarter to nine the taxi deposited Shepreth by the sea-front monument to Balboa, and after a few minutes’ contemplation of the dark ocean he crossed the busy main road and headed inland up Calle 35. The building he wanted was a couple of hundred metres up on the left – a nondescript modern construction, six storeys of steel and glass. Through the glass doors he could see a liveried guard reading something at his otherwise bare desk.

      It was a porn comic – Shepreth had a fleeting glimpse of the usual giantess straddling the usual giant before the guard innocently slipped it under the desk.

      ‘I’ve got an appointment with someone at Azul Travel,’ Shepreth told him. ‘My name’s Bates,’ he added.

      The guard picked up his phone to confirm it, and after a few words with someone nodded Shepreth in the direction of the lift. ‘Fifth floor,’ he said grudgingly, reaching for his comic.

      It seemed unlikely that he’d be watching the lighted floor numbers above the lift, but Shepreth went all the way to five just in case. On his way to the stairs he passed the door of the travel agency, with whom he had earlier arranged the necessary appointment. He hoped they would wait at least ten minutes before phoning down to find out what had happened to him.

      The office he was interested in was on the third floor. There was no writing on the glass door, and he didn’t expect to find a happy bunch of workers inside. Certainly, whoever was renting the space hadn’t taken much trouble to protect any contents – the door yielded to Shepreth’s lock-picking expertise with almost insulting ease.

      The room proved even emptier than he had expected. The fluorescent light revealed no desk, no chairs, no filing cabinets – just a fax machine and a shredder floating on an ocean of burgundy-coloured carpet. ‘Snap,’ Shepreth murmured as he read the fax’s number.

      Now all they needed was evidence linking this office with the prison on Providencia. Which wouldn’t be easy. Presumably each missive from the island was consigned to the shredder the moment it had been read. He would have to try to set up an intercept of some sort, Americans or no…

      As if in answer to a prayer the fax clicked into life. Shepreth stood over it, hoping it wouldn’t be someone trying to sell Bazua double glazing for his prison.

      It wasn’t. The fax, emanating from a number which Shepreth recognized as including the prefix for Colombia’s two Caribbean islands, contained the usual list of buyers, together with amounts, beeper numbers and instructions for onward transmission to the organization’s cell head in northern Mexico. The Americans wouldn’t be able to ignore this, Shepreth thought. They would either have to add Bazua to their precious list of kingpins or come up with an honest reason for refusing.

      He detached the sheet from the machine, folded it twice and put it in his back pocket, then headed for the door. He listened for a moment before inching it open. The corridor was empty. Relocking the door seemed more difficult than unlocking it had been, and he was still struggling to engage the catch when the lift doors suddenly opened behind him and two men emerged, guns in hand. He had no time to do anything but stare sheepishly at them.

      ‘Looking for Azul Travel?’ one of the men asked. He was probably in his mid-thirties, with a pencil moustache and uneven teeth.

      The other man, who was younger and wearing tinted glasses above his pitted cheeks, sniggered.

      They advanced, one man pushing into the unlocked office while the other kept him covered.

      Shepreth just stared at him, willing his mind to keep on working through the fear that was threatening to choke it off. If it didn’t his chances of living past midnight were remote. Even if he stayed James Bond-cool they were less than good. The thought plunged him further into shock – in eight years of working for MI6 he had not often found himself at the mercy of people with so little interest in his living and so little fear that they would have to pay for his death.

      The one with the moustache pushed Shepreth into the office, closing the door behind himself, and then stood with his gun in the Englishman’s ear while his partner did the frisking. This didn’t take long. Pitted Cheeks stepped back, shoved Shepreth’s automatic into his waistband, unfolded and read the stolen fax, then examined the wallet.

      ‘You’re a long way from home, English,’ he said in conversational Spanish.

      ‘So are you,’ Shepreth replied in the same language, recognizing the man’s Colombian accent. He wondered if his voice sounded as brittle to them as it did to him.

      ‘Panama used to be a part of Colombia,’ Moustache told him.

      ‘It still is,’ his partner said, and both men laughed.

      Shepreth said nothing.

      ‘You have probably come to Panama to see the Canal, yes?’ Pitted Cheeks asked playfully.

      ‘I’ve seen it,’ Shepreth said.

      ‘Not from underwater,’ Moustache said almost perfunctorily, leaving Shepreth with the stomach-sinking realization that the two of them had been through this particular sketch several times before.

      Pitted Cheeks, meanwhile, was picking out a number on the phone. ‘I need to speak to the Chief,’ he said when someone answered, and a few moments later, smiling all the while at Shepreth, he was reporting what had happened. He then listened for a while before signing off and putting the phone back down on the carpet. ‘The Chief has a few questions for you,’ he said.

      Shepreth found himself taking a deep breath of relief.

      ‘But not too many,’ Pitted Cheeks added, reading his mind. ‘We’ll probably still have time to show you the Canal tonight.’

      The ludicrous thought flashed through Shepreth’s mind that he would never know who won Euro 96. Get a grip, he told himself. This was life and death.

      They led him down the deserted stairs and out into an empty alley, and Moustache kept a gun on him while Pitted Cheeks went off, presumably to collect their car. This might be his only chance, Shepreth thought, but really it was no chance at all. Moustache was too far away for a lunge and there was no reason to suppose the Colombian would do anything other than put a bullet in Shepreth’s kneecap if he tried. And then he’d never get another chance.

      Despite the training, despite what his head told him, it all seemed unreal somehow, standing there so helplessly in an alley in Panama City, with a man who’d more or less promised that he’d never see another dawn. The sounds of the city were all around them, but strangely distant, as if the alley was enclosed in thick but invisible glass.

      The Colombians’ car bumped its way towards them, shattering the spell.

      Pitted Cheeks got out and the two of them discussed whether or not to put him in the boot. They decided against, reasoning that if they knocked him out the questioning might be delayed, but if they didn’t he might drum on the lid at the wrong moment. They both clearly enjoyed this discussion – such attention to detail, Shepreth realized, was their proof of professionalism. These men might be lacking in humanity, but not in job satisfaction.

      He was ordered into the wide back seat of the car,

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