‘Well, the bone is clearly from an anatomical skeleton, purchasable in any medical store, used by students since the Middle Ages. About fifty years old. The bone was broken recently with a sharp blow, probably across a bench. Did I make your day?’
‘No, you just ruined it. But I owe you, anyway.’
As with all his calls, Devereaux had recorded it. When Kevin McBride listened to the playback his jaw dropped.
‘Good God.’
‘For the sake of your immortal soul, I hope he is, Kevin. You goofed. It’s phoney. He never died. He choreographed the whole damn episode, duped Moreno and Moreno convinced you. He’s alive. Which means he’s coming back, or he’s back already. Kevin, this is a major emergency. I want the company plane to take off in one hour and I want you on it.
‘I will brief Colonel Moreno myself while you fly. When you get there Moreno will be checking every single possibility that this blasted Avenger came back or is on his way. Now, go.’
On the 5th, Kevin McBride faced Colonel Moreno again. Any veneer of amiability Moreno may have used before was gone. His toad-like face was mottled with anger.
‘This is one clever man, mi amigo. You did not tell me this. Hokay, he fool me once. Not again. Look.’
Since the moment Professor Medvers Watson had burst through the border controls, the secret police chief had checked every possible entrant into San Martin Republic.
Three game fishermen out of St Laurent du Maroni on the French side had suffered an engine breakdown at sea and been towed into San Martin marina. They were in detention and not happy. Four more non-Hispanics had entered from the Surinam direction. A party of French technicians from the Kourou space-launch facility in French Guyana had come over the River Maroni looking for cheap sex and were undergoing an even cheaper stay in jail.
Of the four from Surinam, one was Spanish and two Dutch. All their passports had been confiscated. Colonel Moreno slapped them onto his desk.
‘Which one is false?’ he asked.
Eight French, two Dutch, one Spanish. One missing.
‘Who was the other visitor from the Surinam side?’
‘An Englishman, we can’t find him.’
‘Details?’
The colonel studied a sheet with the records from the San Martin Consulate in Parbo and the crossing point on the Commini.
‘Nash. Señor Henry Nash. Passport in order, visa in order. No luggage except a few summer clothes. Small compact car, rented. Unsuitable for jungle work. With this he gets nowhere off the main road or the capital city. Drove in on the fourth, two days ago.’
‘Hotel?’
‘He told our consulate in Parbo he would be staying in the city, the Camino Real Hotel. He had a reservation, faxed from the Krasnopolsky in Parbo. He never checked in.’
‘Looks suspicious.’
‘The car is also missing. No foreign car cannot be found in San Martin. But it has not been found. Yet it cannot drive off the main highway. So, I say to myself, a garage somewhere in the country. So, a helper; a friend, colleague, employee. The country is being scoured.’
McBride looked at the pile of foreign passports.
‘Only their own embassies could verify these as forgeries or genuine. And the embassies are in Surinam. It means a visit for one of your men.’
Colonel Moreno nodded glumly. He prided himself on absolute control of the small dictatorship. Something had gone wrong.
‘Have you Americans told our Serbian guest?’
‘No,’ said McBride. ‘Have you?’
‘Not yet.’
Both men had good reasons. For the dictator, President Muñoz, his asylum-seeker was extremely lucrative. Moreno did not want to be the one who caused him to quit and take his fortune with him.
For McBride it was a question of orders. He did not know it, but Devereaux feared Zoran Zilic might panic and refuse to fly to Peshawar to meet the Al Qaeda chiefs. Sooner or later someone was either going to have to find the manhunter or tell Zilic.