David Gilman - The Devil's breath

His senses now sharpened, Max looked up and down the carriage, through the connecting doors. He noticed a middle-aged woman, quite smartly dressed, her expensive fashion bag over her shoulder. Max realized she had been about ten places in front of him in the taxi queue.

Someone must be after something he had. But what? Why would they have tried to kill him on Dartmoor if he had something important they wanted? It made no sense. Not yet, anyway. The important thing now was to make sure no one followed him to his father’s contact.

When the train arrived at Charing Cross Underground station there was the usual push-and-shove as those on the crowded platform tried to get on board. Max watched. iPod Man was trying to observe him, looking sideways so there was no direct eye contact. And Smart Bag Woman was doing the same. Half a dozen people managed to squeeze in just as Max pressed towards the doors and the throng on the platform. The doors were closing when he shouldered his way through, and as his feet touched the platform he turned and saw the man and woman push their way out. So, they were following him; it wasn’t a figment of his imagination. However, he’d already thought of a plan. As he stepped onto the platform he dropped his rucksack between the sliding doors so that when they closed they immediately sprang open again. In that instant he plucked the bag off the floor and edged his way back inside. He was strong enough to push aside a couple of heavier men; that was one thing about Dartmoor High, they made you use every muscle in your body-maybe it was so as to deal with traveling on the London Underground.

As the train pulled away he saw the look of surprise and panic on his watchers’ faces. He’d beaten them. How many more were there to get past before he could reach Farentino?

Outside the National Gallery he jumped on a tour bus full of foreign tourists and took a seat upstairs in the open-topped Routemaster. It was too cold for most people, but he wanted a clear view to see if he was still being followed-besides, he didn’t mind the cold; he was used to it.

As the bus made its way along the Embankment, the Thames seemed to be flowing faster than the traffic, so he jumped off, sprinted up the steps near the Courtauld Institute, dodged across the traffic snarled up in the Strand and into the fringe of Soho. At last he felt sure he had put enough distance between himself and whatever teams of watchers there might have been.

By the time he’d walked up towards Soho Square he’d listened to his father’s message again. Dad had always been so open with his feelings when they’d been together. Fathers and sons were always going to fall out at some stage, Dad told him once, but Max should understand that, no matter what happened, he loved him with all his heart. So, Max reasoned, if his dad was usually open about how he felt, why was he saying so little on a recording which he knew would be played if something happened to him? Perhaps it was because he feared someone else might have listened to it first-if that was the case, was there a hidden message Max hadn’t picked up on yet? He didn’t know, but he’d keep listening until he had exhausted that possibility.

Soho Square, its edges planted with shrubs and trees, made a welcome oasis among the city buildings. There were office workers grabbing a quick coffee or a sandwich as they took their lunch hour; a couple of people sleeping rough hogged the benches, while pigeons ducked and bobbed as they hunted for crumbs from the sandwich-eaters.

Max skirted the square, then cut across it diagonally. He was as certain as he could be that he was no longer being followed. He approached a black, high-gloss-painted door, which was crammed unobtrusively in between two other old buildings. One, the Zaragon Picture Company, was an independent filmmaking company, the other the head office for a wine merchant. Max checked the small brass plaque on the black door-FARENTINO-to make sure he’d remembered the location correctly; it had been a couple of years since he was here last. Farentino . That was all it said. No description of what business was conducted there. He pressed the intercom and told the voice that answered who he was. The door clicked open and he stepped into the quiet, safe world of his father’s most trusted friend.

Max could smell the musky odor of the animal’s skin. It seemed so out of place in the well-furnished rooms of Angelo Farentino. The animal pelt had never been properly cured, but it served its purpose of protecting the bundle of handwritten notes from the elements. As Max let his hands feel the texture of the animal skin and the papers it protected that he had just been given, Farentino paced back and forth, his expensive Italian shoes making hardly a sound on the marble floor. Max wanted to devour the words on the pages-they were his father’s field notes-so he skimmed across them, desperate to learn any information about what had happened to him in Africa.

“Your father knew something was very wrong,” Farentino said as he paused to pour himself a glass of red wine. “He always sent his notes by email and a disc copy by courier. This”-he wagged a finger at the bundled papers-“this is … extraordinary!”

Angelo Farentino was not a man to be taken by surprise. For thirty years he had been a publisher of books on environmental issues, and with Tom Gordon on his travels had helped draw attention to many of the most damning ecological disasters across the world. Max kept reading. The notations were neat but in places looked as though they were written in a hell of a hurry…. evidence of heavy machinery … borehole excavations should not be in this location … all indications are … Some of the pages were torn, denying the reader tantalizing conclusions that Max’s father had made.

Farentino sat, his arms resting on an antique walnut table, his fingers nervously fidgeting. “Max. I fear for your father and he is obviously frightened for you. That’s why he gave you so little information. He knew he could trust you to use your brains and not show anyone anything. Which is why he sent you to me.

“And this Canadian, Jack Ellerman? I’ve never heard of him.”

“Fictitious. To throw anyone interested off the scent. So I’m going to send you to very good friends of mine in northern Italy. You’ll be safe there until I can help you find your father.”

Max gazed at his father’s papers. They were pockmarked with grime, and grubby from dirty hands; some of the pages were stuck together and in one place an ugly brown stain crept like a squashed lizard across the paper. “Is this blood?” Max asked.

Farentino shrugged. He wasn’t sure, and even if he were he wouldn’t admit it. Max took another bite of the pizza Farentino had ordered in and sipped the peach smoothie the Italian was so good at making. Despite everything that had happened, Max was hungry and knew he had to keep his blood-sugar levels up if he was to concentrate and make any sense out of all this. “Dad sent his notes, wrapped in a gazelle skin, across two hundred kilometers of desert and wasteland in the care of a Bushman.”

“That’s right. The Kalahari Bushmen are nomadic; they’re the last indigenous people in Africa to live like that, and your father must have established a rapport with them. The Bushman took these notes to a farmer who runs a wildlife sanctuary, a sort of private game park, and who is, I suppose, someone either your father or the Bushman knew.”

“And he sent them to you.”

“To a literary agent I use in Johannesburg. That was the instruction Tom, I mean your father, had written. Max, he was so far out in the wilderness, there was no communication. There are so few people out there. He saw something he shouldn’t have, is my guess.” Farentino averted his eyes.