The machine pistol brushed the skin of his cheek lightly, its barrel icy cold.
‘I can drive a truck,’ said a voice. It was so close to his ear he could feel the warmth of the man’s breath on his skin. ‘You don’t want to do it, then I will, but then we got no use for you, mi hijo.’
Joel figured the guy was bluffing, but he wasn’t about to test his theory. He made the turn perfectly, and began following the lights of the Plymouth once again.
‘Hey, you see what you can do with a little encouragement?’ said the gunman.
The Plymouth flashed its warning lights as they pulled into a clearing before a ruined house, its stone chimney still standing intact beside its collapsed roof. There were two more men waiting beside a black SUV. Like the others, they wore masks, but instead of leather jackets they were dressed in suits. Cheap suits, but suits nonetheless. Joel hit the brakes.
‘Get out,’ said the gunman.
Joel did as he was told. The brown car had joined them, and now he and his rig were lit by the headlights of three vehicles. One of the men in suits stepped forward. He was about a foot shorter than Joel, and stocky, but not fat. He stretched out a hand and, after a moment’s hesitation, Joel shook it. The smaller man spoke English with hardly any hint of an accent.
‘You can call me Raul,’ he said. ‘Let’s make this as quick and easy as possible. What have you got in the truck?’
‘Animal feed.’
‘Open it. Let me see.’
With two guns trained on him, Joel unlocked the big double doors. Flashlights shone on the bags of feed, stacked on six wooden pallets. Raul pointed two fingers into the trailer, and two men climbed in with knives and began methodically tearing bags apart, scattering their contents inside the truck.
‘I hope they’re going to clean up after themselves,’ said Joel.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Raul. ‘I guarantee you that, if they don’t find what they’re looking for, you’ll have more significant concerns.’
‘And what are they looking for: more protein in their diet? It’s animal feed. You got the wrong rig, buddy.’
Raul said nothing. He lit a cigarette and offered one to Joel, who declined. Together, the two men watched as bags were cut and searched, until the searchers were standing shin-deep in the mess.
‘It’s a nice rig,’ said Raul. ‘It would be a shame to damage it.’
‘Look, I told you: you got the wrong shipment.’
Raul shrugged. Joel heard movement from behind him. His arms were grasped tightly, and he was forced down on his knees. Raul lit a fresh cigarette and squatted so that he and Joel were face to face. He grabbed a handful of Joel’s hair and placed the tip of the cigarette firmly against Joel’s right cheek, just below the bone. There was no threat, no warning, just intense pain, the smell of burning flesh, and a low sizzling sound that was swamped by Joel’s scream. After a couple of seconds, Raul withdrew the cigarette. The tip was still glowing faintly. Raul blew on it until it was entirely red once again.
‘Listen to me,’ said Raul. ‘We could take your rig apart, piece by piece, and then set it alight before your eyes. We could even kill you, and bury you in the woods. We might not even go to the trouble of killing you before we bury you. All of these options are open to us, but we don’t want to do any of those things, because I don’t yet have a problem with you personally. So here it is: I know you’re smuggling. I want to know what you’re smuggling, so you’re going to show me the traps, and I am going to keep burning you until you do. Now, tell me.’
After the third time, Joel did.
They left him in the clearing. Before he departed, Raul gave Joel a salve for his wounds. The burn on his face was bad; the two to his hands were worse. Raul had placed the cigarette to the skin between the thumb and forefinger on each hand. When that hadn’t worked, he had threatened to put it out in Joel’s right eye, and Joel had believed him. He told them where the trap was, but even after following his instructions they couldn’t find it. It was a professional job, designed to pass undetected during anything but the most painstaking of searches. He was forced to show it to them, first explaining how the seat came apart so that the space, which ran the width of the cab, could be accessed. He then opened it by the careful application of pressure to its two lower corners.
The compartment was capable of being divided into smaller sections, depending upon what was being transported. On this occasion, there was a plastic tool box containing a dozen small cylindrical objects, similar in length to pieces of chalk, and wrapped in layers of cloth and plastic to protect them. The men in the cab handed one of them down to Raul, once it had been stripped of its protection. It was ornately carved, capped with gold at each end and inset with precious stones. Raul held it in the palm of his hand, testing its weight, then asked: ‘What is this?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Joel. ‘I’m just the transporter. I don’t ask questions.’
‘It looks old, and valuable.’ Raul held out a hand, and a flashlight was placed in it. He used it to examine the stones more closely. ‘These are emeralds and rubies, and that’s a diamond on the tip.’
The seal in Raul’s hand dated from 2100 BC. It was an ancient bureaucratic device, used to verify business and legal transactions by impressing the seal into documents inscribed on clay tablets. By this point, Joel had seen enough of them to know, but he remained silent.
Carefully, Raul rewrapped the seal, and handed it to one of his men.
‘Take them all,’ he said. ‘And handle them gently.’
He lit another cigarette, and smiled as he saw Joel wince involuntarily.
‘So, you say that you just drive, and you know nothing about the items that you are paid to transport,’ said Raul. ‘I don’t believe you, but that’s of no consequence now. I’m going to ask around about those little cylinders, and if they’re as valuable as they look I may hold on to some of them. You can tell your employers, if that’s what they are, that they may consider it a penalty for attempting to run an operation like this without informing the proper authorities, and by that I don’t mean US Customs. If they want to continue transporting such items, then they should come talk to me, and we’ll work something out.’
‘Why should they talk to you?’ asked Joel. ‘Why not the Dominicans, or Jimmy Jewel?’ He saw something flash in Raul’s eyes, and knew that he’d hit a nerve.
‘Because,’ said Raul, ‘we have the cylinders.’
Then he walked away, leaving Joel to nurse his wounds, but not before stamping Joel’s cell phone into pieces, and draining most of the fuel from his tanks, leaving him with just enough to get to a motel outside of Eustis. The burn to his face attracted a few glances when he entered the lobby, but nobody commented upon it. He found the ice machine, then wrapped some of the ice in a towel from his room and used it to ease the pain in his hands and face before making the call from his room.
‘There’s been a problem,’ he said, when the phone was picked up. He gave a detailed account of all that had occurred, leaving out almost nothing
‘We’ll have to get them back,’ came the reply. ‘You say that this guy Raul wants to keep the seals as some kind of fine?’
‘That’s what he said.’
‘Jesus. You think he’s going to use them to mark bags of coke?’
‘I think he’s going to try to sell them.’
‘We’ve succeeded so far because we’ve been careful. Those seals can’t turn up on the open market.’
Joel did his best to hide his irritation. Why, just because he drove a truck, was it assumed that he was some kind of moron? After all, he’d been there at every stage of the operation, right from the start. Without him, it would have fallen apart long before now.
‘I’m aware of that,’ he said, and was unable to keep the edge from his voice.
‘Don’t get smart with me. I didn’t lose the consignment.’
‘Yeah, well, I haven’t seen enough cash to compensate me for the removal of an eye.’
‘You’ve seen more up front than anyone else. You don’t like the arrangement, then walk away.’
Joel stared at the wounds on his hands.
‘That’s not what I meant. Let’s just get this mess fixed up.’
‘It won’t take this Raul long to find out what he’s got. After that, a child will be able to piece together what’s happening. I’ll start asking around, find out who he is.’
‘Jimmy Jewel knows.’
‘You sure?’
‘Pretty sure. You ask me, I think the instruction to hit us came from him.’
‘Well, that’s where we’ll start, then. You say they took everything?’
‘Yeah. They got it all.’
‘Go home. Get some sleep, and see to those burns. Call me tomorrow as soon as you’ve rested. This isn’t the only mess that needs to be cleaned up.’
Joel didn’t ask for clarification on the final comment. He was too tired, and too sore. He hung up the phone and walked to the gas station across the road, where he bought a six-pack of beer to drink in his room, occasionally holding one of the cold bottles to his damaged cheek as he stared out of the window at the lights of passing cars, and the darkness of Flagstaff Lake. After two beers, he felt nauseated. It had been so long since he’d experienced shock that he’d almost forgotten the sensation, but what had been done to him in the clearing brought back other memories, other moments. He scratched absentmindedly at his left shin, feeling the scar tissue and the hollow in the muscle. He called Karen but she wasn’t home, so he left a message on the machine telling her that he was tired and had decided to get a room for the night. He also told her that he loved her, and apologized for their fight that morning. The fight was all the detective’s fault; his, and that meddling old bastard Patchett. Tobias knew enough about the detective from local gossip not to underestimate him, and he wasn’t sure that threatening him was the way to deal with him, but he’d been angry as well as relieved when they’d come to him and told him that the detective had been hired to investigate him and his relationship, and not the larger operation.
He wanted to sleep. He popped some painkillers and sat on his bed, his feet stretched before him. He searched in his jacket pocket, and withdrew the two exquisitely carved gold loops. He had said that the Mexicans had taken everything, but he’d lied. He figured he was owed something for his pain, and for the fact that what he had already shipped was worth a fortune, a fortune of which he had yet to see more than a few bucks in real terms. He also wanted to make up to Karen for their fight.
He held the earrings up to the light, and even though in pain, he marveled at their beauty.