RACE AMAZON: False Dawn (James Pace novels Book 1) (5 page)

‘James Pace, adventurer and ecological crusader.’ The words tasted as stupid as they sounded. Still, it would definitely be a challenge. Farewell Essex, hello the Amazon. 

A second swallow of brandy did little to quell the churning mix of excitement and trepidation but it did at least chase away the shivers.

Hammond’s office lay in near darkness once he’d left, save for the small pool of warm light cast by a desktop lamp.  It shone down onto the desk, illuminating the legal pad still open at the page holding the lawyer’s aimless drawings.  

A stick-man, dangling lifelessly beneath a gallows, sprawled ominously across the paper.

4

Hammond’s office occupied a corner on the eighth floor of the fourteen-storey McEntire International building; nestled in a prime spot barely five minutes walk from London’s Liverpool Street Station.

The site had previously been occupied by a venerable set of shops. Real estate being as it was in any capital city, the owners finally gave in to a ludicrously extortionate figure and sold to McEntire. The building was already planned and approved before the demolition even began. 

Twelve months later McEntire had his own building. Tinted glass panels on the outside blended seamlessly with the sandstone masonry of the structure that rose twelve floors straight up before being capped with a pure glass, two-floor pyramid.

Pace stepped into the elaborately refined lobby through silently obedient sliding doors.  It was filled with an almost reverential hush compared to the bustling streets outside.

He was immediately escorted by a burly security guard across the buffed stone floor to a marble reception desk. The young lady sitting behind the desk checked his credentials on the countersunk computer screen in front of her, nodded to the guard and waved across the floor in the direction of the lifts.

The guard had already resumed his post behind the glass entrance doors as Pace thanked her and crossed to the lifts.

The lifts too were constructed of glass and both rode on the outside of the building. Pace called both and they arrived together. The ride up was faster than expected and the glass panels all around him lent a sense of frailty to the car he hoped wasn’t there. It rose as silently as it did quickly, depositing him on the eighth floor with a muted ring and an electronic voice relating the floor number.

He stepped out into an open-plan floor crammed with bodies dutifully working away at their assigned desks and jealously guarding their space with an elaborate network of beige, cloth-trimmed partitions that sought to create corridors and offices where none existed.

Hammond obviously headed up the floor because Pace felt a hundred pairs of eyes curiously boring into his back as he walked around the perimeter until he came to the only corner possessed of a permanently built-in office.

It was a simple square office, built directly into the corner, windowed twice on each of the two internal walls with large, tinted panes that allowed a clear view both in and out. A single wooden door, highly burnished and with a brass plaque that he was sure bore Hammond’s name, stood wide open in the manner of a modern manager. A vacant desk guarded the entrance so Pace walked straight up and rapped his knuckles once upon the exposed inside of the door.

A man seated behind the huge desk at the back of the office looked up from one of three computer screens.  He rose to greet his visitor, beckoning him inside with one hand. As Pace stepped onto exactly the same carpet as everywhere else on the floor, he caught a glimpse of the plaque. It read
Max P. Hammond
in finely engraved letters.  Underneath were the words
Corporate Legal Services Manager
.  He was suitably impressed.

‘Mr Pace.’ The voice was friendly.  ‘I’m glad you could make it today.’  

For half a million pounds he would had have made it any day he was asked. He’d been out of hospital for three days and was already bordering on a mental state akin to suicidal boredom. 

‘Please, grab a seat.’ The man motioned to a pair of large leather armchairs in front of his desk.  He noted that Hammond was quite a diminutive figure, no more than five-feet six.

Pace leaned over the desk to shake hands before sitting down.  The chair instantly grabbed him and did its best to swallow him with comfort. Hammond’s chair; Pace assumed the man was Hammond, in contrast was a standard office chair, albeit leather and high backed. By the way he rolled back from the desk to eye him speculatively, it was also on castors.

As the office was set into the corner of the building, the two external walls were also the outer windows; glass from ceiling to carpet. When added to the windows set into the two internal walls, Pace had a feeling strangely like being resident inside a goldfish bowl. The only other furniture in the room was a long wooden table. Resting on its centre sat a freshly percolating coffee pot and a silver tray of cups, saucers, cream jug and a plate of sweet biscuits.

‘I was glad to come,’ Pace admitted.  ‘I want to sort everything out, starting with the fine detail of the race; the real nitty gritty.’

‘Exactly what needs to be done to iron out any remaining reservations you might have,’ agreed the lawyer, smiling.  ‘It also needs to be done so I can release your details to the other members of your team. As an unknown,’ he added, ‘they’re going to have a great deal more concern about you than you should have about them.’ 

‘In your opinion,’ Pace smiled.  He wasn’t going to let anyone dictate anything to him.

‘Fair enough’, Hammond said, without a trace of sarcasm or mockery in his tone. He seemed to be telling it straight.  In itself that hardly fitted the popular image of a city lawyer. But then Hammond looked far from a suited, faceless bureaucrat.

There was no suit for starters. He wore a smart white shirt, faintly striped with red, and a pair of dark cotton trousers.  The shirt was worn open at the neck, without a tie. 

The most striking feature of the man was the total absence of visible body hair. There was none on his head; he had no eyebrows and there wasn’t even a hint of a beard, the skin on his jaw being smooth and light.  In truth he was utterly bald but his features were those of a young man.  He was certainly no older than Pace and possibly a year or two his junior. 

Although he’d heard of it before, this was the first time he had come across somebody with alopecia.  He made a conscious effort not to stare.

‘Would you like some coffee before we get on, James? It is okay if I call you that?’

‘James will do fine,’ Pace said.  ‘As for coffee, great.  Self-service?’

Hammond nodded.  ‘Jenny’s got the day off today and she becomes unbearable if I get somebody to sit in for her. Says they mess up her systems and routine. Tried it twice, got fed up with the grief and now look after myself whenever she isn’t here.’

Pace stood up with reluctance from the comfortable chair and poured himself a cup; black, no sugar. Hammond seemed pleased when offered one.  He took his white with three. 

Once settled again they discussed the early summer weather; today it was pushing into the eighties beneath a flawless blue sky.  Tomorrow it would probably be falling with rain and sixty degrees if they were lucky. Pace made a few polite comments about the building and his easy train journey into town. It was just general chit chat while they drank their coffee. After five minutes of banter Pace drained his cup and they got down to the matter at hand.

Hammond pushed his own empty cup aside and slid a closed folder across the desk towards the new recruit. Inside was a single sheet agreement. It stated that he agreed to take part in the race and act as camera operator for one of the teams. It also stated he agreed to undertake promotional work before the race and for four weeks thereafter, in any area unless it conflicted with pre-declared moral or religious belief.

The sum mentioned, all payable in advance upon receipt of his signature, was exactly five hundred thousand pounds sterling.  The only punitive clause was that, once signed and agreed, if he pulled out for any reason other than at the direction of a doctor, he’d keep the fee paid to him but would become personally liable for any lost investment his withdrawal brought. 

Pace swallowed hard. That meant being half a million up one moment, five and a half million down the next. It was a very stiff penalty should he suddenly get cold feet.  He knew his decision had to be irreversible before he put ink to paper. One slight disappointment was being robbed of the chance to see a real, tangible cheque with his name on it. Payment would be made directly into his bank account via computer transfer as soon as he signed. In short, sign the contract and kiss goodbye to financial worries forever a few minutes later.

‘The get-out clause seems a little harsh, if you don’t mind me saying.  Any reason in particular for it being like that?’ He paused for effect before continuing slowly.  ‘There wouldn’t happen to be something you’re not telling me about?  Perhaps something I get to discover only after I’ve signed up but by then it’s too late unless I want to owe you millions?’

Hammond took the insinuation of trickery with good grace, not batting an eyelid at the implications.  He knew the offer was genuine although certain worrying political facts had been omitted at McEntire’s request, not to mention some key truths.  Hammond kept his expression fixed and thanked his lucky stars the man in front of him didn’t know all the things the McEntire Corporation did to earn its billion-pound annual turnover. 

‘Suspicion can be a good thing,’ he told Pace, ‘but honestly, no. You just take a moment to look at the deal from our side of the fence.  We need to be sure that once you sign, you’re in. An awful lot of publicity will hinge on your signature.  If we go ahead and alert the world’s media to your participation and then you quit we’ll all look like fools and lose a fortune in sponsorship.’  

Put that way it sounded obvious. Pace laid the folder back down on the desk and changed the subject.

‘Okay. So I know when. I really need to hear more about what, who and how.’

Hammond and Pace spent the next thirty minutes or so discussing the general plans for each of the race stages. Pace gave him a short list of the technical equipment he needed.  There had to be at least two cameras; one broadcast quality and one hand-held digital, a number of batteries, tapes and memory chips. Everything had to be battery powered because this wasn’t an expedition, it was a race, and they couldn’t afford to lug even the tiniest generator along.  Pace’s biggest worry would be conserving battery power to get enough quality footage when he needed it. 

He made up his mind, for the second time, to sign the contract and they got that little formality out of the way quickly. As he poured them both a fresh cup of coffee, Hammond rang McEntire’s private office. He wasn’t there but his secretary had been primed and agreed to pass the money transfer authority straight away. Halfway through their coffee the telephone rang and Hammond answered, killing the call within ten seconds and giving Pace the good news.  The money was safely in his account and ready to spend.

He left almost immediately afterwards, with Hammond having to arrange the necessary press releases regarding his involvement with the project.  They agreed to meet up for a drink at Heathrow before their flight out.  He also left with single-sheet dossiers on his prospective companions.  Although he didn’t realise it until he looked through the papers later that evening, Hammond had omitted to give him one on himself.

The train journey home was as uneventful as before.  As the taxi turned the corner into his car park, Pace was rewarded with the sight of his own car, sitting snugly within its two little white lines, cleaned and polished. Up in his flat, the police officer who’d finally decided to return it had posted the keys through his letterbox.

There were now less than four weeks to put his affairs in order so the next morning he resolved to get things started. He trusted Hammond had been correct in saying there would be no strings attached to the money but there was no harm in taking a few simple precautions.

For safety’s sake he decided to move it, with the added bonus that it would infuriate his inflexible bank manager no end.

It was petty, but Pace knew he’d have to see her personally to withdraw that kind of money.  He drove into town, parked up and found that she would be
delighted
to squeeze him in.  No appointment, no problem – now there was a first.

She expected to welcome a suddenly valuable customer and beamed with friendly smiles as he went into her office.  Twenty minutes later he left the bank with its manager feeling more than a little deflated. 

He left a token five thousand in the account and directed another ninety thousand into clearing his mortgage.  He would return the next morning at ten to collect two bank cheques, each for the sum of two hundred thousand pounds. The five thousand pound difference was slipped into his jacket pocket in the form of a fat wad of fifties.

Two separate deposit accounts, in two separate banks, were opened with the cheques and he could finally relax. The money was now untouchable by anybody but him.

The remainder of the afternoon passed in blissful stress relief. The money he’d left in his current account already more than covered any debt he owed the bank and it just left him to visit a couple of high street stores to settle outstanding credit debts on furniture and his television set.

One final call to the local garage to settle the remaining debt owed on his car and he was finally clear, free forever more from the fear of receiving demanding letters and having to struggle hard to pay them. 

The feeling of relaxation didn’t last long because the race preparations soon began in earnest. Early the following morning, which dawned warm and bright, he was being poked, prodded and generally pulled about by a very eminent Harley Street doctor. There weren’t any further X-rays needed but the twenty or so he’d already suffered were examined thoroughly once again.