The QE2 Is Missing

Aurelia Maria Hortiguela was as Spanish as her name, but since Franco’s death she had found herself rather unwelcome in that country. It did not matter. She was now an Argentinian citizen and needed all the time she could find for the thriving business she did in South and Central America for the arms corporation she represented. Unlike Chvosta she enjoyed weapons for their own sakes, and indeed had an indoor firing range at her home outside Santiago del Estero, close to the foothills of the Andes. To her, a pleasant evening was a few hundred rounds of ammunition and the holes punched neatly in and around the bull’s-eye on the paper target. Then, ears ringing, relaxed and happy, she would climb the stairs to bed with a bottle of good wine. Clara would be waiting for her, soft arms and full breasts, and the night would be perfect. She owed her tastes in weapons to her father, an artillery captain, who had raised her on a succession of Spanish Army bases after her mother had died at childbirth. She owed her tastes in sex to him as well, once she was old enough to discover that all of the other fathers went with the putas near the Army bases, not with their own daughters. Aurelia hated men; with very good reason.

As soon as the customs officer had passed Chvosta’s passport back, Aurelia pushed hers across the counter. The bored Mexican official flipped through the pages, found the stamp that had been put in at the airport the day before, then banged his own stamp next to it and slid the passport back. Aurelia went through and stood beside Chvosta while they waited for De Groot to join them.

Hendrik De Groot was a cool, apparently indifferent man who maintained an air of calm at all times. He had trained himself to be stolid and unmoving in public, an image that fitted his work, and saved all of his emotions for private display. The customs officer frowned and muttered over the Dutch passport, but could find nothing wrong. De Groot apparently ignored him. The passport was duly stamped and passed back and De Groot took it without as much as a nod or a smile.

De Groot put the passport away in his attache case and locked it, calmly and efficiently as with any other task. He was better when he worked, whatever he did, for he put all of his attention to it. Growing up in one of the oldest diamond-cutting firms in Amsterdam meant that he rarely thought of anything except diamonds. Though he was young, not yet thirty, he had the eye of an expert and knew cut, quality and value almost by reflex. He travelled a lot since he was an independent valuer who exacted high fees, but never asked his clients’ business or discussed it later with anyone. His price bought quality, accuracy — and silence.

“Welcome aboard,” the steward said as they stepped off the gangway onto the deck. He examined their tickets and directed them to the nearby lift. Chvosta and Aurelia were both on the first deck, in First Class, with single-bedded outside cabins. While De Groot also had a single cabin, the accounting officials of Global Traders had seen no reason to waste money on his accommodation, so he had an inside room on the fifth deck, deep within the ship. He had made no protest when he had checked the cabin on the deck plan. His fee would more than make up for any discomfort.

From where he stood on the dockside, the Tupamaro leader Josep could see the passengers boarding. His eyes had moved unseeingly over the fat man puffing and sweating in the heat, stopped for a moment by reflex on the magnificent behind of the girl next to him, then moved on. They were unknown to him.

“Are you the one Chuchu sent?” a voice asked from behind him. He turned to see a dark figure in the shadows, a sweating longshoreman with a baling hook over his shoulder. Josep nodded and moved over to join the man.

“Yes, I’m the one who contacted him. Are all of the arrangements made?”

“Just about. Getting your men into my gang was easy. I go to the shape-up, pick whoever I want. There are no questions asked here. But the bags, that’s different, that’s hard…. “

“No, the bags are easy. They are stacked around the corner. Just see that they are picked up and loaded aboard with the rest of the luggage.”

“Please senor, you don’t understand. The other bags have cleared customs, they’ve been checked. Yours are just there where the truck put them during the night. I don’t know what’s in them — I don’t care — but if I’m caught. That means smuggling, jail…. “

“Just don’t get caught. I was told you were the best foreman on the docks. That you could get away with anything. You’re getting paid good money. All you asked, plus a bonus. And something else. You live in Colonia del Flores, don’t you?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you have that nice little house with Bougainvillaea all around it. It was pointed out to me. You have a wife and two daughters there. They are alive and healthy. Now.”

“You son of a whore — what are you saying!”