The Barboza Credentials by Peter Driscoll

Author:Peter Driscoll [Driscoll, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Silvertail Books
Published: 2023-09-27T16:00:00+00:00

4

Emmerich led me down a corridor into the north wing of the house. About halfway along it was a closed door with one of the armed guards leaning against the wall beside it. Obviously that was where they had put Akimo, and they weren’t taking any chances on his making a sudden recovery during the night. Emmerich walked past the room without giving it a glance and showed me into his study at the end of the wing. It had a partridge wood desk marked in several places by circular stains from bottles and glasses. On the wall behind it was a framed, hand-drawn surveyor’s map of the Açúcar Emmerich estate, and on a table by the window stood a short-wave receiver-transmitter and a master control unit for the Pye walkie-talkie system used by the guards. Unlike the living-room the place had a cluttered, lived-in air, and I guessed that this was where he spent his evenings, working, brooding, drinking. This was his nerve-centre, the throne-room of his empire. He gestured me into a swivel chair and I noticed two pictures standing at one end of the desk. One was a framed print of the newspaper photograph I had seen, Emmerich with his rifle behind the sandbags. The other was a faded group photograph taken on the lawn in front of the house, on the occasion of some party. Emmerich, slightly slimmer and a good deal younger, stood at the centre of a row of a dozen men laughing or smirking into the camera, several of them in Portuguese Army uniform, all of them clutching glasses: his cronies from the old days. Between Emmerich and one of the officers, each of them with an arm around her shoulders, stood a pretty ponytailed girl of eleven or twelve in one of the full skirts that had been fashionable in the mid-fifties. One of the friends’ daughters, I supposed. I searched the faces quickly for Gil’s; it wasn’t there.

Filipe had left to return to Beira. The houseboy had followed us to the study with the bottles of whisky and schnapps. Emmerich went behind his desk to push aside the map and reveal a small safe set in the wall at chest height. He twisted the combination knob back and forth. To judge by the squinting and grunting that went on he was having trouble seeing the figures, but finally the door swung open. He dragged out a foolscap-sized file cover; three bundles of money and a couple of papers slipped to the floor. The money was American, thick wads of used twenty-dollar bills. He tossed the file onto the desk in front of me. On the cover was a gummed label—the pale patch on the photostatic copy—with my name and the unintelligible Portuguese headings. A glance at the entries inside told me it was authentic. Emmerich was holding out his hand. I surrendered the file reluctantly, though knowing it could now make little difference whether I had it or not.

“Satisfied?" Emmerich said. “It's yours as soon as I am sure you have fulfilled your part of the contract.

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