White Cargo (8 page)

“Afraid not,” Holland replied.

Cat felt a moment of panic. Had he got the wrong man?

“Just Colombia,” Holland continued. “I know more about that place than the bloody Colombian Tourist Board.”

“That'll do,” Cat said, relieved. “How's your Spanish?”

“Useless in the libraries and classrooms of the world, crackerjack in Colombian bars and whorehouses,” Holland said. “How'd you come by my name?”

“You available for a few weeks, maybe a few months?”

Holland slapped his hands down on the arms of the leather chair. “Listen, mate, I've asked you twice how we come to be introduced, and you haven't answered me. I just did two years and seven months of a five-to-eight for doing business with people I didn't know, so I'll just push off . . .”

“A mutual acquaintance,” Cat said. “Carlos.”

Holland stopped talking, his mouth still open. “I know lots of blokes named Carlos,” he said, warily.

Cat tried to keep his face still. He hadn't counted on this.

“Half the Latinos in the hemisphere—” Holland began.

“This Carlos isn't a Latino,” Cat said quickly.

“The son of a bitch,” Holland grinned. “I thought he was dead.”

“Nope.”

“Well, now I know how I got paroled first time at bat. You and Carlos work together, do you?”

“Just acquaintances,” Cat said.

“Mr. Catledge,” Holland said, relaxing into the chair, “my time is your time. What can I do for you?”

“How about a drink?” Cat asked, rising.

“I wouldn't spit up a scotch,” Holland replied.

Cat picked up an old copy of
Time
magazine from his desk and dropped it in Holland's lap on the way out of the room. “Page sixty-one,” he said. “That'll bring you up to date.”

In the bar, Cat took his time about mixing their drinks. When he came back into the room, Holland was still reading. Cat handed him his drink and sat down on the sofa across from the man. Holland looked up, his face sad.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “That was a bloody rotten deal.”

“That's about the most complete account of the event the press published,” Cat said, “but a lot has happened since then.” He told the Australian in some detail of his efforts to find the pirates, then finally of the phone call from Jinx. “I'm going down there after her,” he said. “I need help. Somebody who knows the territory; somebody to keep me out of trouble. Carlos says you're the man. Want to go with me?”

“Be delighted,” Holland grinned.

“I'll pay you fifty thousand—ten up front and forty when we get back alive.”

“That what Carlos told you to offer me?” Holland asked.

“Yep.”

“Well, that seems fair, but how long are you reckoning on?”

“As long as it takes.”

Holland made a sucking noise in his teeth. “That could be an awful long time,” he said.

“I see your point,” Cat agreed. “Tell you what; if it takes longer than a month, I'll pay you five thousand a week for as long as it takes.”

“Done,” Holland said. “Now what?”

“Let's go to Colombia.”

“Now, let me get this straight,” Holland said, holding up a hand. “You don't have any information you haven't told me about?”

“No. Now you know everything I know.”

Holland rubbed his chin briskly. “Well, then, I guess we start at Santa Marta, then, since that's where this thing began, and since we haven't got a clue in the bloody world where else to start.”

“Not a clue,” Cat said. “I know it's a big country. Do you think we have any chance at all of finding her?”

Holland shrugged. “Listen, mate, Carlos thinks you've got a shot at finding her, or he wouldn't have put you in touch. If he thinks so, that's good enough for me. Sure, it's a big country, but when you're tracking down something as dirty as this, the geography shrinks. The people who do this sort of thing tend to congregate in certain parts of the country. We'll start in Santa Marta, because that's the beginning of the trail. I doubt if she's there, but somebody knows something. I know a couple of people there; we'll call on them. If I had to guess where she is, I'd say one of three places: The Guajira Peninsula, in the northeast; Cali, in the west; or in the Amazon country. If she's alive.”

“She was alive a week ago,” Cat said.

“That's your best hope,” Holland replied. “If they didn't kill her when the boat went down, they want her for something.”

Cat didn't want to think about why somebody might want Jinx. “Why those three places?” he asked.

“Because that's where the drugs get made, and sold, and smuggled.”

“Why do you think this has something to do with drugs?”

“Because everything in Colombia—everything that's dirty, anyway—has something to do with drugs.”

Cat had heard that before.

Holland reached down, unzipped his canvas bag, and removed a large magazine, printed on yellow newsprint, called
Tradeaplane.
Cat had seen it around the flying school. “We're going to need an airplane,” he said.

“What for?” Cat asked, surprised. “Don't the airlines fly to Colombia?”

“Oh, sure,” Holland said, “but I don't have a passport; they took it away before my trial. And anyway, I expect my face would light up a few computers in both Colombian or U.S. Customs and Immigration. Then, once we're in the country, we have to be able to move around without the police paying too much attention to me. There's always police in airports.”

“Then where would we land a light aircraft?”

Bluey grinned. “Well, there's airports and there's airports.”

Cat remembered that he had a passport for Holland, but he remembered Jim's advice, too. “Okay, if you say so.”

Holland waved a hand. “Your house, your car—you look as though you can afford a good airplane.” He began
flipping through
Tradeaplane.
“I reckon we'll need to spend somewhere between seventy and a hundred thousand bucks, depending on what's available locally. Of course if you want to go looking around the country, we could save some money.”

“I'd rather save time. We'll get whatever you want.”

Holland stood up. “I'll start looking today. You got a car I can borrow?”

Cat went to his desk and got some keys. “There's a Mercedes station wagon in the garage.” He tossed Holland the keys.

Holland fingered his suit. “I'll need to pick up some gear as well.”

Cat took a banded stack of bills from his desk drawer and tossed it to Holland. “There's your ten thousand,” he said. “You've got yourself a job, Mr. Holland.”

The Australian stuck out his hand. “Call me Bluey,” he grinned.

Cat grinned back. “I'm Cat.” He liked the man, but he still felt a little uncomfortable with him, knowing what he did about his past. Now, he was giving him ten thousand dollars and Katie's Mercedes. What the hell, he thought, he could never do this on his own. He needed Bluey Holland, and he would just have to trust him.

•   •   •

That night Cat lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. He closed his eyes and conjured up Jinx's face, but it was not the face he had most recently seen. It was younger—twelve or thirteen. He could not quite form her image at a later age in his mind. He wondered if, eventually, he would not be able to remember her at all.

“I'm coming, kid,” he said aloud into the darkness. “I'm coming to get you.”

“C
AT
? B
LUEY.
I
THINK
I'
VE FOUND OUR AIRPLANE.
”

“Great, Bluey. What's it going to run me?”

“The neighborhood of seventy-five grand—that's purchase price—we're going to need an annual inspection for five hundred to a grand, a loran navigator, and a fuel-flow meter—call that another six grand. Plus, we've got some fuel modifications to do south of here; say, a total of ninety grand all found.”

“Okay, that sounds good. Can I have a look at her?”

“Sure, I'd want you to. I'm out at—what's this bloody field called?”

“Peachtree Dekalb?”

“That's the one. The airplane's sitting out in front of the tower. She's red and white; her tail number is 1 2 3 Tango.”

Cat laughed. “I like her already. I'll be there in half an hour.”

At the airport, Cat parked near the tower and started looking for a light twin-engine airplane with the right tail number, but to no avail. Then Bluey came out of a hangar and pointed. Cat's eyes came to rest on a single-engine Cessna, and he came to an abrupt halt. “Jesus, Bluey, you
want to fly us over a thousand miles of open ocean in a
single?
That thing's not much bigger than the little trainer I've been learning in.”

“Listen, sport,” Bluey said indulgently, “let me give you a fact or two about airplanes. First of all, the fatality rate for singles and twins is identical. Second of all, if you have an engine failure in a twin, you have a very difficult airplane on your hands. It takes a lot of practice to fly a twin on one engine, and where I've been, they didn't offer that sort of leisure-time activity. And there are certain advantages in fuel efficiency with a single. Flying over water, I'll take a well-maintained single any day.”

“Well . . .”

“This is a Cessna 182 RG, RG for retractable gear. It's one hell of a lot more airplane than the 152 you've been training in. She does a hundred and fifty-six knots—that's a hundred and eighty miles an hour—on about thirteen gallons of fuel an hour, and I can land her or take off in seven hundred and fifty feet of runway. She'll lift anything we can put in her with full fuel aboard, and not many airplanes will do that. She's only got four hundred hours on an engine that's designed to fly two thousand between overhauls, she's loaded with good equipment, and she's got long-range tanks. We're paying about five thousand over market value, but we're in a hurry, and airplanes this good aren't easy to come by. Now, if you want to hang around here for two or three more weeks while I find a decent twin and practice flying it on one engine, that's okay by me, but this is a damned good airplane. What do you want to do?”

Cat threw up his hands in surrender. “Sold.”

“Good. How quick can you get back here with a
cashier's check for seventy-five thousand dollars, made out to Epps Air Service?”

Cat glanced at his watch. “It'll have to be tomorrow morning.”

“That's good. I'll get them started on the annual inspection. If the mechanic doesn't run into any unusual problems, we should be able to leave in about three days.”

“As long as that?”

“Yep, that's good time for an annual and installation of the extra gear. We'll be stopping in Florida for a life raft and another modification or two on our way. I'll have you in Colombia in under a week's time, if there's not a hurricane in our way.”

“Okay, you'll have your money first thing in the morning.”

“Cat, you're going to need to take a lot of cash along.”

“How much?”

“Well, the Florida modifications will come to a few grand, we're going to have to grease a lot of palms south of the border, and they don't take American Express in the Guajira or the Amazon. We're going to be buying goods and services from people who are used to dealing with customers who pay for things with fistfuls of hundred-dollar bills. You don't want to get caught short down there.”

“I can probably arrange for my bank to wire me whatever I need down there.”

Bluey shook his head. “We're liable to be in places where that won't be convenient, or even possible.”

“Well, how much then?”

Bluey shrugged. “Well, I think you probably ought to have a hundred grand in walking-around money, just so people will take you seriously. Apart from that, well,
we're talking about the possibility of ransom, aren't we? If we find your daughter alive, you may have to buy her from whoever has her.”

“I see,” Cat said, because he couldn't think of anything else to say.

•   •   •

Cat had a busy three days ahead of him. He paid for the airplane, then he saw his brother-in-law.

Ben listened quietly to what Cat had to say. “Cat, this is a crazy thing to do, but in your shoes, I guess I'd do the same thing. You really don't have another alternative, do you?”

“Thanks, Ben,” Cat replied. “You've still got my power of attorney. Do whatever you think is best with the business.”

“We've had a couple of feelers for a takeover. It would mean one hell of a lot of money for our remaining stock.”

“Whatever you think is best, just don't commit me to an employment contract. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to concentrate on business again.”

“I understand,” Ben replied.

“I'll call you from down there whenever I get a chance.”

“Good. I'll let you know whether there's anything important in the mail.”

Cat saw his lawyer and made a new will, leaving everything to Jinx, if she was still alive, a large bequest to his alma mater, and the rest to Ben, if Jinx was found dead. He specifically excluded his son from any inheritance.

On his way home from his lawyer's office he stopped at a camera store and bought a solidly built aluminum camera case, with combination locks, the size and shape
of a large briefcase. At home, he cut a newspaper into a hundred small pieces, measured them, and made some calculations. He was surprised at the result. He called his stockbroker and gave him a sell order and some brief, firm instructions, then called the head office of his bank and asked to speak to the president.

“Mr. Avery's office,” a secretary said.