Bacchus and Sanderson (Deceased) (32 page)

“So your father, who was he investigating? Do you think they killed him?”

William looked at Tiny in surprise.

“Why did you ask if I thought they killed him?”

“They way you described how he had died and how you recounted the tasks you have to complete. You look like a man who’s worried and beginning to feel a little out of his depth. Am I right?”

William had sat lost in thought for perhaps two minutes. He looked up and stared at Tiny, took a sip of beer to wet his lips and said.

“Ernest, my father, spent the last forty years of his life trying to prove that his brother was murdered. He was determined not only to prove that, but to discover what his brother, my Uncle Jonas, had stumbled across that made killing him so important. The company he was employed by and who we have since shown killed him, is CHC Industries.”

William could not have hoped for a more dramatic reaction to his statement. Tiny’s face suffused red and he had the look of a man on the verge of a stroke. His anger was palpable, making his muscular bulk strain his tee shirt as his body swelled with rage.

“Cortez.” he said the single word with such venom, shocking William with the depth of his anger towards them.

Tiny held up a restraining hand when William made to speak. After a moment to control his emotions he continued,

“The same family I assume?” William nodded.

“Without knowing anything about the circumstances of their death’s I can say with absolute certainty that they would have been responsible. I have two reasons to despise this family.” Tiny paused to take a sip of his beer.

“First, I belong to a group who care about the world we live in. One of our areas of interest is the rainforest. Were you aware that two hundred thousand square miles of Amazon Rain Forest vanishes every year? Most of the forest was cut down, destroyed, for logging of tropical hardwoods, farming and cattle grazing. CHC is one of the worst offenders. They convert rain forest to farmland to grow feedstock for bioethanol production. They steal the land, no cost. They employ peasants and pay them a subsistence wage, low cost. Then they produce the bioethanol in refineries in Columbia, low cost, and then ship it to the United States or Europe and sell it at a competitive price, huge profit. Every month they cut down more rainforest. The irony is they have so much tropical hardwood; they have had to set up a division to sell the wood to brokers. No cost for the wood, therefore, huge profits. I try and teach my kids that crime doesn’t pay. It does if you’re a Cortez!”

             
William was fascinated by Tiny’s explanation on the Cortez bioethanol business and wanted to hear second reason he hated them. Still greed and underhand practice or worse? William prompted Tiny.

“You said you had two reasons to despise them”

Tiny nodded and said,

“The second is more difficult. A few of the kids I help have had addiction problems in the past or have friends and family who still have problems. In the last few days the dealers have been going crazy, hyping a new, cool batch of ultra pure coke. This shit is arriving soon and the price will ‘blow their minds.’  I’m worried; any drug that is this pure would never normally make it to the street. It would be cut to almost nothing and the profits would be huge. If the pure is going to be released then a lot of new addicts will be made and some reformed addicts will want to try the good stuff. Combine that with bargain basement prices and they’re going be creating a whole new generation of customers. Once they’ve got them the next bag is twice the price and half as good.”

Looking puzzled William said,

“I can see why you’d be worried, but how does it connect with the Cortez family?”

“The word is that it is coming from Colombia in one of their tankers.” He paused and looked at William, concern on his face.

“I think you might be needing a little help.”

“Your friend Tiny said that?” said Ben, grinning. “CHC is importing cocaine in their tankers when they bring Bioethanol into the UK and other countries around the world?”

William shrugged, unsure why Ben was so excited. To describe that assertion as supposition was being generous.

“Yes, he said that or something similar. A bit of a leap believing something because one junkie mentioned something to another junkie. Why?”

Ben began pacing the room taking deep breaths, excitement all over his face.

“Ok. How much do you know about CHC and the Cortez family?”

The blank stares that greeted him surprised him as he had been expecting more interaction than this. Jemima seeing his confused expression jumped in saying.

“We all know the basic stuff, Charles headed the company, and since his death Felicity has taken control. They are a producer of bioethanol and export the bioethanol around the world.”

Annabel added,

“We know they are murderers and are involved in the cocaine business, thanks to Jemima.”

Ben looked at William and asked,

“William, anything?”

William thought for a moment and then said,

“We know that we have been tasked by Ernest to stop them. Stop them, once we know what they do and how they are doing it.”

“When William gave me the Cortez family and CHC to research I thought it would be a simple cut and paste from the internet and then get back to what I do, geek shit.” Shaking his head, he continued pacing and talking.

“I love a challenge, but this was easy right? Wrong. And a little bit right. If you’ll humour me for a moment, everything will become clear. Charles Cortez was born in Colombia, just outside Bogota and spent his first ten years there. He was then sent to England and went as a boarder to a top prep school followed by Eton and after that Cambridge. Each holiday he was whisked back to Colombia to continue his education in the family business and to develop the friendships that would be so important in later life. Scroll forward thirty or forty years. I looked at the cousins, uncles, nephews, nieces and friends of Charles Cortez. His immediate family. All of these people appear to be low level CHC employees or peasant farmers working the family land.”

William interrupted,

“What you’d expect. Charles is looking after his family and the people he grew up with. Behaving as their lord and providing them with a guaranteed means of income in a country that is riven with poverty and degradation. And an ego, a massive ego. If he ensures everyone is able to feed their families then they will be in his debt. Charles Cortez isn’t someone I’d want to call my shots for me.”

Ben shrugged looking irritated. He took a deep breath, smiled and continued.

“You’re right in part. Charles, and now Felicity did need their family in their debt. Not for ego, but for sound business reasons. The hoards of peasant farmers, caretakers and gofers don’t take any income from their occupations. They pay no taxes. These should be poor destitute people, starving, miserable, stressed and exhausted.” Ben opened his MacBook. He clicked the wireless mouse and brought up some photographs and a video clip. Clicking on the first photograph, he opened it and began narrating.

“This is a Cortez cousin. A small scale farmer.” He clicked again and a photograph of an opulent mansion with accompanying swimming pool.

“This is his house and pool.” He clicked again and brought up a photograph of a man standing next to a cherry red Ferrari.

“Meet Pedro Montoya. Pedro is caretaker of the shabby office building in the background, standing next to his favourite car. He also has a Maserati and a Lamborghini.” Clicking again, he opened the video clip. They sat in silence as they watched a man cavorting in a hot tub with five beautiful women and another man. Ben continued his narration,

“Contrary to appearances, this is Juan Mendoza, a goat farmer. As you can see, he has lost his goats, so now he spends his days with prostitutes and drinking champagne along with his brother Domingo Mendoza.” He closed his laptop and looked at William, Annabel and Jemima.

              Jemima shook her head smiling,

“Cousin Pedro, Uncle Juan and Uncle Domingo. The money went to their heads. Imagine if they can live like this for working a few hours a month how much money my grandfather and sister have been making? This is what they are protecting. This why Jonas and Ernest died.” Jemima looked at them one after another and then added,

“That is why we have to put an end to what they are doing. I’ve burnt my bridges, I’m more an enemy to Felicity and CHC than any of you are. I can help you. I know far more than Felicity thinks, but you are going to need to trust me.”

              Before anyone had time to react to Jemima’s words Ben added,

“I think I might have an idea how they import the cocaine into Europe. This is all supposition at the moment. But it’s possible, maybe probable. Let me explain. Pure cocaine is prepared by forming cocaine hydrochloride, which is water soluble from the base, which is insoluble in water. To extract pure cocaine at the other end, you neutralise its compounding salt with an alkaline solution, which will precipitate to non-polar basic cocaine. It is further refined through aqueous-solvent Liquid-liquid extraction. Wikipedia is a wonderful thing … the cocaine hydrochloride is dissolved in water, two hundred grams per hundred millilitres of water; this is the stage at which they export the cocaine. Remember, the Cortez’s as well as being Colombian, and cocaine producers have a legitimate business that moves products, liquid products, between South America and the rest of the world. The volume of bioethanol that CHC declare on arrival in a European port would be
,
point zero zero zero zero one per cent less than the tankers were designed to carry. I’ve managed to acquire a copy of the plans of CHC’s tankers and they all have a gross cargo capacity larger than they declare. Modern tankers are designed and built with a double skinned hull. I can’t be sure without examining one of their tankers, but I think that they have incorporated a narrow third skin between the inner hull and the cargo tanks. On a Panamax tanker, which is the majority of their fleet…”

Annabel interrupted,

“Panamax? What’s that?”

“The largest size tanker that can travel through the Panama Canal fully laden. This is the quickest route from Colombia to the Caribbean and on into the Atlantic Ocean. Their markets are east and west coast United States and Europe so their tankers transit the Panama Canal all the time. A Panamax tanker with a capacity of seventy thousand deadweight tonnes will have a Bioethanol or oil capacity of five hundred thousand barrels. A barrel is one hundred and fifty-nine litres. That’s seventy-nine million five hundred thousand litres. Point zero, zero, zero, zero, one per cent of that is seven hundred and ninety-five litres.”

Jemima shook her head at this supposition,

“That doesn’t sound anywhere near enough. On a ship that size they could hide ten times, a hundred times that amount.”

Ben grinned enjoying defending his theories. Before he could continue William said,

“Whether you’re bringing in ten thousand litres or seven hundred isn’t the risk the same. In this case more is better. More cocaine solution gives a better return for the same level of risk.”

Ben opened his laptop again and typed into a search engine looking for the data he had found yesterday.

“The Cortez’s are very bright, don’t forget that. ‘Sniffer dogs are shown to be less than thirty per cent accurate on very low concentrations of a drug.’ The odour of the bioethanol in such a large volume will mask the very low volume of the Cocaine hydrochloride solution. Also, I’ve done the maths. Cocaine hydrochloride is dissolved in water at a rate of two kilograms per litre, that’s one thousand five hundred and ninety kilograms in our seven hundred and ninety-five litres. However, this is only forty per cent pure, so when it is extracted at our destination, we get six hundred and thirty-six kilograms of pure cocaine. The pure cocaine will be cut with other drugs or inert powders to a purity of say fifty per cent, though it’s often less. This gives us one thousand two hundred and seventy kilograms of cut product. With me so far?”

William, Annabel and Jemima nodded, entranced. Ben continued,

“Cocaine is sold in one gram wraps, so this gives us one million two hundred and seventy-thousand wraps. These are selling on the streets for about fifty pounds each. That my friends is a cool sixty-three million five hundred thousand pounds. The beauty is that the seven hundred and ninety litres of Cocaine hydrochloride can be transported in a compartment of a tanker carrying bioethanol without anyone being any wiser. I haven’t looked at how many shipments of bioethanol are moving around the world at anyone time, but you don’t need many to get very rich. The Cortez family has been doing this for at least forty years. The one thing I haven’t worked out is how they have eluded suspicion let alone capture for this length of time. This is just supposition at the moment; I can’t prove a thing, but …”

He left the sentence unfinished.

              They all sat in silence considering the enormity of the numbers. Jemima broke the silence first,

“I had no idea, none at all. There is nothing Charles or Felicity wouldn’t do for that amount of power, nothing. This has to stop.”

***