Breakout: A Heart-Pounding Lex Harper Thriller Read online

  ‘I have to say I’m surprised that you found Scouse Davies suitable to be hired as a bagman.’

  The manager raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? He had the right background. You need ice in the blood for that kind of work. Carrying a few hundred thousand dollars in cash around London or New York would give most people palpitations, but taking it into South American bandit country is something else again. You’ve got to have the presence - the balls, if you’ll pardon the phrase - to do it and you also have to be streetwise, with all the fighting skills needed to get out of there if things turn ugly. That’s why we only use ex-SAS men. They have the right skill-set, including the ability to think on their feet.’

  ‘And you thought Scouse was ex-SAS?’ Harper said.

  Parker-Phillips frowned. ‘Are you implying that he’s not?’

  Harper gave him a quizzical look. ‘Did the discharge book specifically mention service in the SAS?’

  Parker-Phillips unlocked a filing cabinet behind him, riffled through the file drawers and then pulled out a slim folder. He scanned the contents and then said ‘As a matter of fact, it actually says Hereford Garrison, but I took that to mean SAS. I mean no one else is garrisoned there, are they?’

  ‘Plenty of people are, actually, but never mind, you aren’t the first to be hoodwinked by a Walter Mitty pretending to have served in the Regiment and you certainly won’t be the last.’ He gave a sly smile. ‘I guess that’s what happens when you don’t follow the protocol.’

  He watched as Parker-Phillips’s face reddened with anger. ‘I’m ex-military myself,’ he said. ‘I was a superintendent clerk in the Rifle Brigade and I’ve come to expect a certain level of honesty from military men. Evidently I was wrong in this case.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Harper said, ‘your secret’s safe with me. However, I will need to talk to someone further up the food chain who can give me more details on where Scouse was sent.’

  ‘I’m the most senior person in London.’

  ‘Then I’ll obviously need to be in Geneva, bearing a letter of introduction that I’m sure you’ll be happy to provide for me.’ As he saw the manager hesitate, he added ‘That way, no one at head office need ever know that you hired a fake SAS man.’

  Parker-Phillips scowled at him but then bowed his head. ‘Very well, tell my PA what you want it to say and she’ll type it for you.’ He glanced at his watch and shuffled the papers on his desk together. ‘Now, unless there’s anything else?’

  ‘We’re good,’ said Harper.

  CHAPTER 4

  Harper flew to Geneva that afternoon, taking with him the letter of introduction to the chairman of the company that he’d been given by Parker-Phillips, and at just before four o’clock, he presented himself at Risk Reduction’s corporate headquarters, a low, ultramodern glass and stainless-steel building in a fashionable area of the city. He was kept waiting in the lobby for a minimal amount of time while he was issued with a visitor’s security pass, but it was long enough for him to be able to observe the security systems. A couple of uniformed, armed guards patrolled the entrance, while CCTV cameras covered the interior and exterior of the building and the approaches to it, but there was also much more sophisticated protection: an airlock walled with bullet-proof glass through which all visitors to the building had to pass. When a visitor entered, the glass doors behind him closed, but the ones in front of him remained shut until sensors had sniffed the air for any trace of explosives or firearms. Only then did the doors slide open and allow the visitor into the interior of the building.

  Having passed though the airlock, he was escorted to the lifts by the chairman’s mini-skirted blonde PA. They took the lift to the top floor and she led him past a cavernous room with dozens of employees staring at monitors and computer screens, and a glass-fronted conference room, before reaching the chairman’s office. It occupied a corner suite with wall-to-ceiling windows giving magnificent views over the city and Lake Geneva.

  The chairman, a large and serious-looking middle-aged Swiss man in an immaculate Savile Row suit, greeted him in almost accentless English, and after shaking his hand and sending his PA off to bring coffee, he gave Harper an appraising look. ‘Mr Harper, so how can I help you today? The letter of introduction from our London office is rather short on detail.’

  Harper smiled. ‘I hope you’ll be able to help me trace a colleague and friend of mine, who has done some specialist work for you in Latin America. And by the way,’ he gestured to the bank of CCTV monitors on the wall, ‘I didn’t realise that security would be such an issue here in Switzerland.’

  The chairman laughed. ‘As I’m sure you know, it isn’t really. If you so much as snatch a purse in this country, you will probably find yourself locked up before you’ve had time to count the money. No, this is all for the benefit of our visiting clients. When they arrive here, it is usually because they are nervous and in need of reassurance about the safety of themselves, their families and employees-’ He paused and permitted himself another smile. ‘Not forgetting their wealth, of course. So we want them to understand that all the money they have will not keep them safe unless they make use of our expertise. The subliminal message we hope that our clients will take away is that we are leaders in our field and we can keep them safe, not just in the First World but in the Third World too. And if the unthinkable happens and they are actually kidnapped, we have the expertise, skill and experience to secure their prompt release. So this colleague, what was his name again?’

  ‘Pete Davies. He went by the name Scouse.’

  The chairman buzzed for his PA on the intercom. ‘Could you bring me our file on a contractor called Mr Pete Davies please?’

  She brought the file through and after studying it for a few moments, he nodded. ‘Well, it seems your friend Mr Davies was recruited via our London office and initially employed by us to act as a courier of a large sum in US dollars from here to Bogotá in Colombia. We have him listed as Peter Davies. That was successfully accomplished and he carried out - let me see - four, no, five more courier assignments for us, first to Colombia and latterly to Bolivia, which has become the new focus of cocaine trafficking and kidnap and ransom. They grow a huge amount of coca leaves in the Chapare and Benir regions and Bolivian drug lords have long been supplying raw cocaine base to the Colombian cartels, particularly Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel before they imploded. When a coca grower, Evo Morales, became President, one of his first actions was to kick the DEA out of the country, and even though he was eventually deposed, the Bolivian cocaine trade has boomed ever since. The Colombians are no longer such big players - Medellin is a tourist town these days - but the Mexican cartels and their allies have replaced them and Bolivia is now the main transhipment point for cocaine from Peru, Colombia and Bolivia itself. There are scores of drug gangs operating in La Paz, Cochabamba and particularly, Santa Cruz de la Sierra in the east of the country. Cocaine is carried by planes taking off from primitive strips deep in the jungle, or boats using tributaries of the Amazon like the Chapare river, or human pack mules following narrow tracks through the rainforest into the Mato Grosso and Rondonia in Brazil. The cocaine is then shipped from Brazil to every part of the world: North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.’

  ‘And Scouse?’ Harper said, trying to drag the chairman back to the point.

  The chairman again consulted the file. ‘In between his assignments as a courier, he was also apparently employed on some lower grade work by one of our representatives out there, but I don’t have the details of it, I’m afraid.’

  Harper gave a slow shake of his head. ‘I must confess I’m having a bit of difficulty getting my head around the fact that you use people like my friend Mr Davies to courier large amounts of cash, alone and unescorted, to some of the most high-risk areas of the world. Why, in this day and age, can’t it be done electronically?’

  ‘With the exception of South America, that is exactly what we try to do. We invite the parties involved to Switzerland,
and the transaction often simply involves the transfer of the ransom payment from one numbered account to another. For obvious reasons, that is our much-preferred method. We even managed to move the Somalian pirates online. But in South America, cash is still king. There tend to be so many different interested and involved partners in a kidnapping, with a complete lack of trust between them, that it would be impossible for the payment to be anything other than cash. As for the couriers being alone and unescorted, as you put it, they are as closely monitored as possible from leaving here to arriving at the distribution point, usually Bogotá in Colombia or La Paz in Bolivia. The system seems to work, we have only ever lost one shipment or courier in transit.’ He fixed Harper with his gaze. ‘The one your friend Mr Davies was carrying when he disappeared.’

  ‘And what was his last job?

  ‘A delivery of a ransom payment to Bolivia. He was to take the money to La Paz. As well as the cartels, there are still a few renegade guerrilla groups there, like exiles from FARC in Colombia, who see kidnapping as an easier way to make a living than fighting the government or trafficking cocaine, though most of them do that too.’

  ‘And was the payment delivered?’

  ‘We don’t know. According to the airline, he arrived at La Paz but the kidnappers said they never received the money, which may or may not have been true, but in the end we paid out another ransom; it was a fairly modest payment by normal standards.’

  ‘And what about Scouse?’

  ‘We never heard from him. To be honest, we don’t know what happened to him. He simply vanished.’

  ‘So he could have been killed or kidnapped himself?’

  ‘The latter is not likely, because no ransom demand has been received. As to the former…’ He spread his hands. ‘Who knows? I’m sorry we can’t offer you more definite information.’

  ‘Well I hope to discover what happened to him and the money,’ Harper said, ‘and it would help me if you could run me through the courier system you use.’

  The chairman nodded. ‘First, we do regular dummy runs to test that the system is working as it should, and second, we do not let the courier wander where he wishes. He is required to follow a fixed route and timetable, which we monitor as closely as we can, and we always have a tiny locator beacon concealed in the wall of the case containing the money, operating on a frequency that we can monitor from our control room here. As an important commercial bank, we have some influence here in Switzerland, so we have the co-operation of the customs and immigration authorities at Geneva airport, easing the courier’s path through security here. From here he takes a SWISS flight to Madrid, connecting with one of the South American airlines’ overnight flights either to Bogotá, if the payment is to be made in Colombia, or via Santiago or Lima to La Paz, if the kidnapping case is in Bolivia. Similar arrangements to Switzerland are in place with customs and immigration in those countries.’ He gave a bleak smile. ‘The courier’s arrival is expected and he will be briefed as to which immigration desk and customs desk to use. Once he is on the ground-side of Arrivals, he will be met and escorted to his hotel where he will be debriefed and the contents of the suitcase checked before the operation moves onto its next phase. The courier transports the cash but he does not become involved in the negotiations or hand over the cash to the kidnappers himself. We use go-betweens to deal with them, maintaining a degree of separation between us and the criminals.’

  ‘Because there is always the danger that the courier might himself become a kidnap victim?’

  ‘Exactly. Anyway, when the courier reaches his destination, once he has passed through customs and immigration - and obviously we have people on our payroll there to ensure his bags are not searched or impounded - he is normally met by a company employee who transfers the cash into another flight case fitted with two different locks. The employee keeps one of the keys and the courier has the other. Any attempt to force the case or open it using only one of the keys triggers a device that renders the money worthless. The courier then proceeds to the holding point - usually a hotel with good security - and waits there until the go-between arrives, ready to collect the cash and make the handover. The courier gives the go-between his key and the company employee provides the other one when he is satisfied that the deal will go through without a hitch. Once the ransom is paid, the victim is released alive. Hopefully.’

  ‘But Scouse never got that far, did he? He just dropped off the map.’

  ‘As I said, we sent another courier and the ransom was paid and the hostage released.’

  Harper sat back in his chair and sighed.

  ‘I can see you’re not getting the information you hoped for,’ said the chairman. ‘You are welcome to go to South America yourself. I will ask our representatives there to make themselves available.’

  ‘Where would be best to start? La Paz, where Scouse went missing?’

  ‘I would suggest you first talk to one of our people in Bogotá. He knew your friend and worked with him. Sam Standish.’

  ‘Sam Standish? Samuel Arthur Standish?’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Small world,’ said Harper. ‘He was a Para when I was in. We were together in the Balkans, back in the day. We called him Sass, because of his initials. SAS. You know his story, right?’

  The chairman shook his head. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Sam was a subaltern, a lieutenant with one of the Para companies with a great future in front of him. His grandfather had served with distinction in the army during the inter-war years, retiring from the General Staff at the end of the Second World War, while his father had commanded a parachute battalion and was a legend in airborne forces. Sam’s father had such high hopes for his son that he had been christened Samuel Arthur Standish, but those initials turned out to be rather optimistic because Sam soon discovered that he really disliked being a soldier. He left not long after we were in the Balkans and we lost touch. It’ll be good to see him again.’

  ‘My PA will get you the address of the hotel he’s using. And as a gesture of good faith, we can buy your ticket. Business class, obviously.’

  Harper smiled and shook his head. ‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay my own way.’ Actually he’d happily have taken the man’s money but if he booked tickets for Harper he’d need his passport details and Harper preferred to keep them to himself.

  CHAPTER 5

  Harper was given the address of a hotel in Bogotá and he booked his own tickets. On the way to the airport he stopped off at a travel shop and bought several maps of Bolivia, covering La Paz and the surrounding areas, and maps of Colombia and Peru to be on the safe side. The only relatively gentle terrain around La Paz appeared to be due west, towards the southern end of Lake Titicaca and the Peruvian border beyond it. In every other direction, the terrain looked daunting whether it was through the high mountains of the Cordillera Occidental - the western range of the Andes - as far as Peru to the north and north-west; or east across the Cordillera Oriental - the equally mountainous eastern range - and then through the dense tropical rainforest to the border with Brazil; or the Altiplano to the south - the arid high plateau between the twin arms of the Andes mountain ranges. The further south you went, the drier the terrain became, with first salt flats and then desert: the start of the Atacama Desert, the driest place on earth.

  He flew with Air France via Paris, and paid for his own business class seat so that he would arrive in a reasonable state. The food, and the wine, was excellent, as he’d expected from the French, and the seat was comfortable enough that he managed to grab several hours sleep.

  He arrived at El Dorado airport in Bogotá just after 10pm and was given a ninety-day tourist visa by a bored immigration officer. He left the terminal and joined a taxi queue, and after a ten minute wait climbed into the back of a yellow taxi. He gave the driver the address that the chairman had given him and the driver grunted and set off.

  After a thirty-minute drive, during which the driver said not a word, th
e taxi pulled up outside a large terraced house in an area of the city housing several foreign embassies. There was nothing to indicate that the building was a hotel, except for a discreet brass plaque screwed to the wall on the right of the door. The driver jerked his head towards the door and then turned away, looking down the street, while Harper jumped out and retrieved his case. He paid the fare and Harper went inside as the taxi drove away.

  There was a small reception desk to one side, with a bar barely large enough to house half a dozen guests and a small dining room on the other. There were noises and good smells from the kitchen at the back and a few moments later, a young woman dressed in jeans and a T-shirt protected by a cook’s apron came out.

  She smiled at Harper and handed him an envelope and a large brass key. ‘Welcome, Señor Harper,’ she said. ‘This is a message that was left for you and your room is number six on the top floor at the back. It is the room that has been used by your previous colleagues who found it quite satisfactory. When you are in your room, please keep the door locked. There is very little crime in this part of the city but it is better to be prepared. Enjoy your stay.’

  Making his way up two flights of stairs, Harper found himself in a surprisingly large room with two windows looking out over the rooftops. He dropped his backpack on the bed. Testing the windows, he found they had not been used recently and squeaked and protested as he tried to open them.

  He had only been in the room a few minutes when there was a soft knock on his door. He opened it to see Sam Standish, as large as life and probably fifty pounds heavier than the last time Harper had seen him. ‘Fuck me, Sass, you’re a sight for sore eyes.’