Stephen Leather - Breakout

Harper and Ricardo steered him away from the entrance to the terminal and backed him up against the steel and glass facade of the building. Then with Lupa translating for him, Harper began interrogating him. ‘I’m with Risk Reduction,’ he said, not all together truthfully. ‘I want to know what happened when Scouse Davies came through here a few weeks ago.’

Alvaro shot a nervous glance to either side as if seeking an escape route, but said ‘I already told the company about this. I was on duty, but it was very busy - his flight was one of three that had all just arrived - and he didn’t come to my desk at all. So I didn’t see him and I really don’t know what happened to him.’

Harper said nothing, studying the bead of sweat trickling down Alvaro’s forehead. He knew that in interrogations it was often better to stay quiet and let the tension build because often the victim would then begin to blurt out information, just to break the oppressive silence.

‘I swear that’s all I know,’ Alvaro said.

Harper waited a few more moments and then gave a slow shake of his head. ‘Okay. I don’t believe you, so there are two ways this can go. Firstly, I give you your usual payment.’ He pulled a $500 bill from his pocket and showed it to him. ‘And you tell me what really happened. Or…’ He tightened his grip on Alvaro’s arm, keeping his voice low and level, but there was no mistaking the menace in his eyes. ‘Or my friends and I will take you for a walk into that car park over there. And if we do, you won’t get your $500 and by the time you get home tonight, your wife and your children will have difficulty in recognising you - and that’s always assuming you get home at all. So, one way or the other, you are going to tell me what I want to know, aren’t you? So which is it going to be?’

Alvaro looked into Harper’s eyes and what he saw there was enough to persuade him. ‘All right, I did see Señor Davies that day,’ he said, his words falling over each other in his desperation to placate Harper. ‘He came to my desk as normal, but at once my supervisor stepped in and told me to take a coffee break. I told him that I wasn’t due a break for another hour but he ignored me and told me it was an order and that I had to go.’ He gave Harper a pleading look. ‘He is my boss, what else could I do? When I got back there was no sign of Señor Davies or my supervisor. That is all I know, you must believe me.’

‘What is your supervisor’s name and where does he live?’

‘He is called Javier Flores. He has a house in Calle 15 in Calacoto in La Zona Sur - the Southern District of La Paz.’

Lupa gave a low whistle. ‘That’s a very fancy address for a man on a customs officer’s salary,’ she said.

‘Perhaps he comes from a wealthy family,’ Harper said, dripping sarcasm. ‘But let’s find out, shall we?’

He released his grip on Alvaro’s arm and handed him the $500. ‘This will be the last time we meet, Alvaro, unless someone tips off your boss that we’re going to pay him a visit tonight. Do we understand each other? Good. Vamos !’

Rather than hire a car, which would have required paperwork and records being kept by the hire company, Harper followed his usual practice of finding a second-hand car lot in a down-market district and then buying a car for cash. He found a Mercedes saloon that seemed to fit the bill. The bodywork was scraped and dented but the engine and gearbox were still in good nick, the tyres had some tread left on them and, best of all, the brakes worked, so he decided it would be easily reliable enough for the limited use he’d be putting it to. Lupa haggled the salesman down a couple of hundred Bolvianos before Harper handed over the cash from his backpack.

Ricardo drove them out to the Southern District. The narrow streets, industrial buildings and cramped-looking apartments and mud brick houses in the inner suburbs of La Paz slowly gave way to broad, tree-lined avenues and large houses with high stone walls. They parked fifty metres down the street from the address Alvaro had given them and then settled down to wait.

CHAPTER 8

It was dusk when Javier Flores drove along Calle 15 that evening and pressed the button to open the steel security gates at the entrance to his property. Mariachi music was blaring from his car radio and he neither heard nor saw the black-clad masked figures that emerged from the shadows on the opposite side of the street and ran towards him. He only became aware of the danger when the driver’s door was suddenly thrown open. He was dragged out of the car and as he opened his mouth to shout for help, he was silenced and knocked to the ground by a fierce blow. A ball of cloth was forced into his mouth and a hood was placed over his head. His assailants pinned him face down in the street, lashed his wrists and ankles together with plastic ties, and then threw him into the back of his own car. Someone jumped into the back seat next to him, the others - there must have been two more, because he heard both front doors slam shut - got into the front, and then they were driving off up the street. The whole thing had taken less than fifteen seconds.

They drove for what seemed to him like an hour, first on tarmac city streets and then on increasingly rough and rutted dirt roads before finally coming to a halt. Flesh creeping and his pulse rising as panic gripped him, he heard his captors get out of the car. There were a few moments of silence, broken only by the metallic tick of the cooling engine, and then the door next to his head was opened and he was dragged out of the car. He felt dry, gritty soil beneath him as he was dropped to the ground and he shivered as the cold wind of the open Altiplano knifed through him.

Through the thick material of the hood covering his head, he heard a woman’s voice. ‘ Señor Flores , we are going to ask you some questions. On your answers rests whether you will live or die. Please believe me that we already know many of the answers, so if you lie, we will know that and you will die. Entiendes ?’

‘ Si, entiendo - I understand.’

He heard a man’s voice then, speaking English, and the woman then translated his words into Spanish. ‘Some weeks ago, an Englishman called Scouse Davies flew into La Paz on a flight from Madrid via Lima. He had made a similar journey several times before. In his flight case was a $50,000 ransom payment for a kidnapping and in his back-pack was the usual $500 bribe for the customs officer to chalk his bags and wave him through. However, on this occasion, you intervened. You made that customs man take a break and dealt with the passenger yourself. He did not arrive at his destination and has not been seen since then. Now, please understand me: we do not care about the money he was carrying - what happened to it is your business - but we do care very much about what happened to Scouse Davies. So think very carefully before you reply to my next question, because there will be no second chances. If you lie even once, then we will kill you and leave you here, and when the sun comes up in the morning, the condors will find that they have some fresh carrion to feast on.’

‘Please, I beg you, I have a wife and children.’

‘Not to mention a house that must have needed a lot of bribes to pay for. So tell us the truth and you will see them all again tonight. Lie and no one will ever even know what happened to you.’

‘It was the Brazilian cartel, the Red Command.’ His voice cracked with fright. ‘I was forced to do it. They said…’

The woman interrupted him at once. ‘ Señor Flores , please do not waste your breath or our time. We do not care why you did it. We only want to know what happened to Scouse Davies.’