RACE AMAZON: False Dawn (James Pace novels Book 1) (6 page)

He spent several hours daily, that first week, with the same doctor. Not only were there constant tests; blood, urine and saliva, but also exercise regimes conducted on a range of machinery, slowly designed to grow more demanding.  He was pushed harder every day and would probably have felt better by the end of the week if he hadn’t been subjected to a series of tropical inoculations as well. 

Apart from deadly wildlife, the Amazon basin apparently had more than its fair share of dangerous diseases though Pace knew from his background reading that the diseases the invading Europeans took into the jungle with them had been immeasurably more devastating on the indigenous Indian population than anything they’d contracted themselves from the jungle.  An estimated population of nine million was reduced to a little over two hundred thousand in barely one near-apocalyptic century. 

So, just in case the environment sought vengeance, he was jabbed.  He worked so hard to get fit that the weeks literally flew away from him.  As his strength grew, so did his confidence.

The final five days before Pace was due to take the flight with Hammond were largely logistical in nature. The press reports on his involvement spread like wildfire. It had been almost embarrassing to watch the evening news and to see his face splashed across the screen in time to praising words from the newscasters, over and over.

He managed to give nineteen interviews during those initial weeks; eight for live television, the rest for the tabloids. The media, to his surprise, didn’t find a cruel word to say about him and the publicity boom McEntire predicted fell neatly into place.

Of the McEntire clan he saw nothing until the night before he was due to leave. He learned from Hammond that Doyle McEntire was in Australia, brokering some deal or other but he’d not heard a word from Sarah either. 

She just turned up at his flat, in a re-run of their first meeting, at a shade after eight o’clock. Pace was half expecting someone from the firm to contact him and was delighted to hear her familiar tones crackle over his intercom. His packing (new clothes all, and most still in their plastic jackets) was done and dusted and two expensive new suitcases sat by the front door.  There was nothing left for him to do so a visit from anybody was a nice distraction.

Sarah looked even more beautiful than he remembered.  She was wearing a pair of black jeans with a sleeveless, lacy white top. Her hair was worn down this time and was longer than he’d imagined; falling thickly several inches past her shoulders. Her appearance was simple, sexy and unfairly gorgeous.  She was not blind to his reaction and the knowing smile playing at the corners of her mouth as he invited her in made him feel a little foolish.

From the moment she sat down the atmosphere was completely different from before. She carried no briefcase and immediately wore a relaxed smile.  Pace was happy to agree to her suggestion that they go out for a drink to celebrate his last night in England, although his own jeans and sweatshirt precluded visiting anywhere sophisticated, not that there were many places in his local area that rose to such standards. 

It also meant he could keep his new walking boots on, which had been stuck to his feet for days in an effort to break them in. So far he’d only suffered one blister.

The local pub seemed the obvious choice and it was packed with people.  The first thing to strike him may have been the crowd but the second was more off-putting; an atmosphere choked with a stifling heat.    A quick glance at Sarah told him she found it as hot as he did so they opted to take their drinks out into the empty beer garden.  Some of the wooden tables still had brightly-striped umbrellas propped through holes in their centre. 

They sat down at one, the red and white material musty but lending them a sense of privacy as well as warding off the very light rain that had began to fall.

‘The publicity worked better than expected,’ she began, sipping her glass of sweet cider. Pace hadn’t worked out what to say by then and gratefully seized upon her opening.  

‘I’m glad,’ he said.  ‘I hope it covers what your father paid me.’

‘Don’t worry, nobody’s going to want any of your money back,’ Sarah smiled and sipped at her drink again. 

‘Good job, I’ve got plans for every penny.’

‘We’ve managed to get a couple of multinationals interested that weren’t even on the list to start with. Your interviews have been well received and the whole thing is being promoted strongly.  They’ve been queuing up to have their company logos on the promotional material.’  Her face was alight with enthusiasm.

‘More pledged money?’ asked Pace.

‘The project is almost three million pounds up on our highest expectations already.  Most of that money has come in because of your involvement.  You must be a celebrity of some kind,’ she laughed.

‘Getting yourself shot does have some advantages.’

‘It would seem so in your case.’

‘I’m glad something good is going to come out of all this. I’m the first to admit I’ve drifted since leaving the air force.  I was beginning to wonder where, if anywhere, I was going.  I’m not getting any younger sadly.’  

Pace didn’t really know the woman but he felt completely comfortable with her. Momentarily at a loss for the next sentence he took refuge in a few swallows of his beer.  The icy liquid chilled its way down to his stomach.

‘Are you worried?  About the race?’ Her question took him by surprise. ‘It isn’t going to be easy, even for the experienced team members.  How are your nerves holding up?’

‘Okay,’ he replied. This late in the day, with an outbound flight to South America waiting for him the next morning, being worried didn’t feature. His only feeling was a bloody-minded determination to succeed. 

‘That’s good.’  Sarah said softly.

‘I’ve been given a second chance. Your father has given me the opportunity to do something really useful again with my life and I’m going to do it.  It doesn’t matter what
his
reasons are.’  

Sarah leaned across the table and pulled his hands into her own, her touch gentle on his skin.  The sudden intimacy surprised him, as did the look in her eyes of honest admiration.

He had no idea she’d spent the previous evening reading through his personal file, including several sheets of family background and subtle psychological observations undertaken by the Harley Street doctor; none of which Pace would ever see. 

His was the story of a man who’d thrown away a promising career with the Royal Air Force and walked away after nearly a decade of service. 

His military records had been included in the secret dossier and indicated a hugely talented pilot with a disciplinary record that left a lot to be desired.  Pace had walked a fine line with the chain of command and seemed to have had little respect for it.  Overlooked for promotion several times because he had a habit of speaking his mind, regardless of who was listening, he’d finally called it a day.  Civilian life had been one long amble to nowhere ever since.

‘You know what I think?’  

‘I don’t have a clue.’

‘I think you’ve got guts.  You know this is going to be a struggle but you’re going anyway.’  She kept a loose hold on his hands and Pace made no move to pull away.

‘I don’t know about that,’ he smiled, a little embarrassed.  ‘Between you and me I think I’ve probably just lost my mind.’

‘Sometimes you need to feel like that to make a change.  A bit of madness does the world good.’

‘And I won’t be alone out there either.  If the team’s half as good as it looks there should be some great memories made.’

‘Have you ever been to Brazil?’ As a member of the McEntire camp Pace was pretty sure she already knew the answer to that, which she did.  Maybe she was just looking for ways to build up the conversation.

‘I saw a lot of the world when I was flying for Her Majesty’s Government.  The Middle East, Far East, Europe, Falklands, but I never got to Brazil.  Interesting times back then.’

‘I’ll bet.’

‘I even did a three-month stint on loan to the Navy, working off carriers in the Med.  As for actually going to places for fun, that’s a different story.  I’ve been to Spain, Italy and Dublin.  Oh,’ Pace added, ‘and I’ve done a couple of day trips across the Channel. In fact I haven’t left these shores for the last four years.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Sarah.

‘It’s hardly the track record of a respectable adventurer.’

‘You’ll do fine,’ she said with conviction, then proceeded to give his hands a squeeze.  A wave of real heat flooded his body. 

A distant roll of thunder interrupted them, almost immediately accompanied by the beginnings of some heavier rain. Darkness thickened and the pub’s floodlights snapped on, sprinkling the garden with a host of intermittent shadows. 

The rain and thunder grew heavier as they watched but they stayed dry beneath the canopy.  The breeze remained light and had no affect on the larger raindrops; they continued to fall straight down. Not surprisingly they remained the only people outside.

Lightning forked into the ground a few miles away, followed quickly by a succession of explosive crashes as the electricity discharged angrily into the earth. Thankfully the umbrella stayed up.  It was so sodden that excess water simply ran down to the edge of the material and dripped off the multitude of fraying tassels that trimmed its lip. 

Sarah and Pace sat in their own little world, seemingly cut off from reality.  They stared from each other, out into the dark night, and back again.  The conversation switched easily from subject to subject as both grew more relaxed. 

Slowly the storm abated but the rain continued to fall.  After another hour under the umbrella, they headed back to the car for the short drive back to his little flat.

The sight that greeted them on arrival quickly darkened the mood.

5

Turning into the little car park, Pace found little room to manoeuvre given the presence of two fire engines, three ambulances and several police cars.  A dozen or more blue lights flashed their defiance, both at the falling rain and the chaotic scene all around.  Pace’s jaw dropped in stunned disbelief.  Although he didn’t notice, Sarah’s hand flew to her mouth in horror; his block of flats was nicely ablaze.  

A ferocious fire raged, sending flames roaring high into the night sky, spitting yellow and orange against the blackness.  Smoke was poorly obscured by the worsening rain and it billowed skyward in a thick column, intermittently highlighted by lightning that cracked across the darkness behind it.

There was enough breeze to force some of the acrid fumes back down towards the ground and poisoned air stung the eyes and throats of several drenched onlookers before police officers hastily moved them back another twenty feet or so.

Pace didn't remember getting out of his car but suddenly he was standing next to a police car.  The blue light flashed annoyingly into the corner of his right eye but he ignored it.  Instead he stared up at the source of the fire. 

He felt Sarah next to him.  She slipped her arm around his waist and they watched his home burn together. Fire danced inside his front room and licked hungrily around the front window frame.  The glass had already blown out and what remained of his curtains were just burning threads of cloth, taunting him as they were toyed with by the wind.  

By eleven o’clock the fire was out and investigators started to sift through the ruins, looking for clues. They would be at it all night one of the police officers reliably informed him, after taking down his details and a brief statement of his whereabouts that night. 

The rain eventually eased before stopping altogether.  Spectators drifted back to their homes after official assurances that all was well.  Luckily, there had been no one in any of the affected properties. Three homes were totally destroyed and three others had been badly damaged.

‘I should try to get into a hotel for tonight, I suppose,’ Pace decided.

Drawn and pale, hair plastered damply to her soaked and now vaguely see-through top, Sarah frowned. ‘You can’t stay at a hotel.  There’s going to be a hell of a lot to do in the morning if we’re to get you on that plane. You’ll need a new passport and a duplicate visa, some clothes and new luggage.’ She shot him an encouraging, bolstering look.

‘That’s a tall order,’ he muttered, not really caring.

‘Don’t take this the wrong way, James, but I think you’d better come home and spend the night at my place.’ She paused.  ‘At least I’ll know where you are and how to get hold of you.’

It made sense to him, so he allowed himself to be led by the hand across the slowly emptying car park to a large blue Daimler sports.  He would need all those things she’d just said and the thought of being thousands of miles away had never seemed more appealing than at that moment. The added bonus of spending more time in her company was simply that, a bonus. Any lustful or romantic notions had gone up in smoke with his possessions.

As they turned out of the car park, neither of them noticed a small van parked on the other side of the main road.  If they had been paying attention, they might have noticed the driver watching them intently. 

He’d done what he was told to do, and he’d been paid five times the amount he would normally get for an arson job.  He had no idea who’d set up the job; orders for this kind of thing always seemed to have passed through many different pairs of hands before filtering down to him.  He felt a little sorry for the couple as he watched them speed away.

‘Don’t know what you did to deserve this, you poor bastard,’ he muttered to himself.  Satisfied that he’d stayed long enough, he made a quick call on his mobile phone to pass on the good news before starting the van and heading for home. 

Fate had other plans, however.  While travelling around a sharp bend in the road, only ten miles from the flat, the van suffered a blow out on one of the front tyres.  Losing control, it flipped over and landed upside down in a deep, flooded ditch.   Knocked unconscious by the impact, he quickly drowned while still strapped into his seat.

Sarah steered the car in the direction of London, turning onto the M25 at Brentwood beneath a sky that was clearing miraculously fast, to reveal teasing glimpses of a star-strewn night through windows opening in the clouds. 

Pace wasn’t paying much attention. The silence that tangibly filled the car grew heavier by the moment, with neither willing to break it. Ensconced deeply in the soft leather trim, his eyes blankly registered the motorway signposts as they flashed by with dull regularity.

Sarah headed anti-clockwise around the notorious ring road, at a speed that barely dipped below ninety miles an hour. The motorway was quiet and they pulled off at the A1M junction barely twenty minutes later. A quick two mile trip back in towards London and she pulled off into Borehamwood, passing the Elstree Studio complex and slipping slowly through the well-policed small town centre, accelerating again as she hit the country roads on the other side. Another five minutes saw them safely to her home; to his great surprise a fairly modest, white-washed cottage set back about a hundred yards from the road. 

The rain had left the unpaved driveway muddy and flooded at several points.  Sarah carefully nudged the car forward and the luxury sports car traversed the slick with an agility and confidence any four- wheel drive cruiser would have been proud of.

The mood changed with the setting. Once released from the car and transplanted into the airy comfort of her cottage, conversation returned as though it had never faltered. 

Sarah’s home was tastefully austere. The walls were simply painted in delicate pastels and the floors were of highly polished oak, not the imitation laminated sheets, garnished with deliberately placed rugs. A dark leather three-piece suite in the lounge was large and comfortable. Open plan, the effect was inviting and uncluttered, warming yet calm. 

The kitchen was also styled in an old-fashioned way; there wasn’t a trace of a pre-fabricated unit anywhere. One half of the large room held an antique pine dining table and matching Welsh dresser, well stocked with expensive china plates and cups. The other side housed all the appliances, in matching livery of cobalt and chrome.

A free-standing unit by the back door held a double, stainless steel sink with two cupboards beneath and a small work surface ran on top of both the washing machine and drier.

On this short area sat a kettle, teapot and several china jars. Another antique pine unit in the very corner held the food, Pace assumed, but it was closed and its contents hidden.  He had imagined Sarah’s wealth would have steered her towards a large house, filled with expensive items, and it was a refreshing failure on his part.

Sarah busied herself making some tea, which they drank at the kitchen table beneath the soft light thrown out by a suspended, three-bulb kitchen light. 

‘I could use a bath,’ she said suddenly.  ‘I think we could both do with one.’  

‘Is your bath big enough?’

‘I’ll make you a deal,’ she said, totally ignoring his suggestive humour, although Pace thought he caught a brief flicker of a smile.

‘You McEntires do love your deals,’ Pace interrupted.  ‘Will I need a lawyer for this one?’

‘Funny.’ His heart started to pound faster as his thoughts raced ahead.  ‘Why don’t you go and have one while I make some calls.’  His heart slowed in disappointment.  ‘If you want some fresh clothing, my bedroom’s the one right next to the bathroom.  Just rummage for whatever fits.  I have collected a small amount of male clothing over the years, but the choice isn’t great.’ 

‘You’re sure?’  Pace wasn’t going to turn down the chance of a hot soak but he felt guilty about going first.  ‘You could always have the first one.’

‘Then who will sort out all your papers?  No, you go first.  One thing, though, when you’re done make sure you empty it out and run me a fresh one.’

‘No problem.’

‘Now go, before I change my mind.’

Pace needed no further prompting and soon luxuriated in a deep, round tub of hot water for twenty minutes before even bothering to engage in the mundane task of bathing.

While he steamed, his mind played out the events of the evening over and over without conclusion. Was it just bad luck that his home had been destroyed?  He couldn’t remember leaving any heating on, or using the cooker recently.  Something niggled at the back of his mind but it wasn’t clear enough to read.  He felt too tired, all of a sudden, to give himself over to deep thought.

At least the race would get him out of the country and give him a positive focus, he finally decided.  Finishing up, he dried off and put the now damp towel around his waist, using a smaller one to vigorously dry his hair while the bath water drained away. A quick rinse and the second bath was underway, this time profusely bubbled with an apple and peach concoction he spotted on a glass shelf above the sink. Steam filled the bathroom again and he had to constantly wipe the mirror clear with one hand as he smoothed his hair into some semblance of order with the other. Then came the slightly damp jeans and socks.  He had left his boots by the front door earlier.

A laundry basket in the bathroom swallowed his two used towels and Sarah’s wardrobe soon produced a dark green sweatshirt.  It fitted him comfortably, so he assumed it had once belonged to one of her lovers.  Her bedroom was as plain as the rest of the cottage although Pace made a conscious effort not to snoop.  He took in the king-size bed, the treble wardrobe and the single bedside table, before returning to the lounge completely refreshed.  Sarah was still on the telephone and gave him a thumbs up sign to tell him things were progressing well.

Anxious to make himself useful, he wandered into her kitchen and made some fresh tea. Sarah joined him a few moments later and beckoned him back into the lounge, where both settled onto the large sofa.  

‘First things first,’ she began. ‘I spoke to Hammond. I told him about the fire. He knows a lot of people through the company and he told me to tell you not to worry. You just have to arrive, as planned, at the airport tomorrow morning.  He will have a new passport and visa ready for you.  You can pick up some new clothing and luggage in the airport shops before you leave.  Are you okay for money?’

‘Money’s not a problem.  I still have nearly four thousand pounds on me. I was going to exchange most of it into travellers cheques at Heathrow but I can use some of that for now.  Besides, I always keep my wallet on me, so my credit and bank cards are still quite safe.’

‘Good.’ Her own enthusiasm had returned. She was used to solving problems at short notice and basked in a job well done.  ‘I’m going to drive you to the airport in the morning myself.  I’ll even help you shop, so long as you treat me to coffee and a croissant for my trouble.’

‘You don’t have to do that, even though it would be great.’ Pace said quickly. ‘I can grab a taxi from here. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than play nursemaid.’

She laughed. ‘Not really.’

‘Not really?’ he parroted.

‘My father wants me in Brazil to handle a few reported niggles with the local administration, just until he flies in himself. It was always on the cards but he never decides until the last minute. Hammond knows his habits like I do.  I managed to book myself a seat on your flight out.  I had a feeling this would happen; it’s a good job too.’

‘So you’ll be coming with us, to Brazil?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long?’

‘I don’t know.  Not long I shouldn’t think.  Just a few days then I’ll be flying back here.’

‘That’s good news,’ Pace said.  He could now look forward to enjoying her company for a good deal longer. The atmosphere in the room seemed to thicken and he had the urge to loosen a non-existent tie and collar. The earlier electricity of her hand in his own was still a fresh memory and he was painfully aware of how close together they were sitting. 

Finally, Sarah stood up and walked down the hall to the bathroom, taking her tea with her.  She shouted back that he should make himself at home. 

A beautiful burnished walnut corner unit held a television, video and DVD, disguised behind a near seamless false front. Switching on the late film; a classic Gary Cooper western, Pace settled back to watch. 

The film was drawing to a climax of exchanged gunshots when Sarah returned. She looked fresh and vibrant in a cream robe.  Her hair was washed, dried and back up in a manageable ponytail. 

She disappeared into the kitchen and spent five minutes clattering around, returning with two glasses and a bottle of Jack Daniels on a tray. Another quick trip to the kitchen and she was back with another tray.  This one held a bowl of salad and a plate of cold chicken, together with some bread rolls, butter and some cold new potatoes. 

Spreading it all out on a rug she got him to hold the glasses and poured a generous shot into each. She turned off the television and they tucked in, both realising how hungry they were as the food hit their tongues.  They demolished the spread before collapsing back onto the sofa with a second glass each. 

Several glasses later and the clock on the wall registered close on two o’clock.  Pace knew he had reached his limit and was happy to agree with her suggestion that they should go to bed.