The Aztec by Bill Vidal

Author:Bill Vidal
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409064947
Publisher: Random House

19

PINTO SLAMMED THE conference-room door and returned to his office. He read what he’d noted down during the meeting. Could there be any misunderstanding? He would send for the tapes in a moment but he was sure that those had been Mercedes’s words.

‘We know for a fact that it was Rosa who planted the Florin idea in her cousin’s mind.’

There had to be a mistake here. He would dig up the tapes of his chat with Rosa Uribe back in January. But he was certain she had told him that Jack Hadley had secured an interview with The Aztec.

If Mercedes was right, then Pinto had a serious problem on his hands. Could Rosa have an agenda of her own? Could she be working for someone else? Why? Who? None of it made sense and yet the two statements were in conflict.

Pinto considered the implications. Suppose for a moment that Rosa was a double. Was this about the gold or was there something else? Something in Latin America? Africa? What could Rosa possibly have access to that might make her valuable to the Cubans? And where did the dead Mexican fit in with all of this? Pinto had a good relationship with his opposite number in Mexico City. He would make a call.

He took a cigar from a leather-covered humidor and rolled it between his thumb and fingers. He leaned back on his chair and lit up, watching the curls of smoke rise towards the ceiling extractors. Double agents, Pinto reflected, could be lethal, the most cruel of knives straight into your back. Undetected double agents, that was. Once you knew their game it was a different story, an asset even.

It was time he took a closer look at Rosa Uribe and, if his suspicions turned out to be true, play her double-dealing as his trump card.

Pinto jumped as his direct line rang.

‘Pinto,’ he answered with customary brevity.

‘Pinto, this African business …’

‘Yes, Minister?’

‘Have you decided how we should play it yet?’

‘I believe I have, Minister.’

‘Good man, knew you’d come up with something. Shall we make it dinner tomorrow night?’

‘I’d be delighted, Minister.’

‘Splendid. My place, nine-thirty.’

It took Jack and Mercedes two and a half hours to drive to Salamanca. For once Mercedes did not seem hell-bent on breaking land-speed records. They felt relaxed, as though a burden had been lifted.

‘Do you think Pinto will make good his threats?’ she asked

‘No. He’d be in the shit up to his neck if we spoke to the press.’

‘Would we?’

‘Probably not. But he couldn’t risk it. He just needs us to be quiet until he’s found his bloody gold and sorted out whatever he’s plotting to do with it.’

‘What do you suppose he’s up to?’

‘I don’t know, Mercedes. Maybe it’s better we don’t know. There’s something going on there that involves both Spain and Florin and I think we are best out of it.’

‘What about Florin? How will you get the rest of the material? For the biography, I mean.’

Hadley had considered that at length.

‘I reckon that by now Florin knows what happened in Saint Steven.

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