weeks apart from a prostitute on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, and then it was solely to enquire of the price of a blow-job. For research purposes only, I added wickedly; a comparative study of twelve European cities. ‘Oh’, she replied, telling me thirty euros and sounding rather proud when I told her that that was much more expensive than Prague.
Waiting for Carlos had made my brain go soft. I needed to sharpen it again. I hadn’t actually slept with a woman for two years but as I walked up Rue d’Antibes I stopped at FNAC and turned to see if Stephanie was still there, to see whether she would be watching me, to ensure I didn’t miss the unmissable, enormous entrance right in front of me, but she was gone.
*********
Juan Andres Montero Garcia stopped running when he saw the hut. Rickety and windowless, it didn’t belong in the jungle, but someone must have put it there for some reason. He took the Makarov out of its holster and crept slowly towards it. He had lost Suares and his men a good ten minutes ago, but he had kept going just in case. He knew they would not be able to out-run him, but if he didn’t change direction then they would simply radio ahead and have another team pick him up. So he turned right and ran ten minutes eastwards. The hut was locked with a single brass padlock, which he opened within seconds. Flat on his stomach, the rough grass prickling him through his uniform, he swung the door open, pistol raised. Nobody. The hut was eight foot by six and he noticed that there was a window masked by a makeshift shutter. He walked in and opened it to let in a little more light.
He saw what at first sight looked like medical supplies, covered by a plastic sheet and cocooned in polystyrene. Tropinone? He remembered a lecture given in Bogota in the second year of his chemistry degree by a jolly man with a clean-shaven face who mopped his brow constantly. Here in the hut there were several heavily-insulated packets of the stuff. He stared at them, trying to recall the exact words the clean-shaven professor had used. He remembered he had been making some point about the synthesisation of alkaloids and then he had made a joke about everyone becoming rich. It was coming back to him.
Tropinone was an alkaloid, synthesised during the First World War by an Englishman as a synthetic precursor to atropine. If one converted the tropinone into 2-carbomethoxytropinone and reduced this to ecgonine, one could, with difficulty and under microbe-free laboratory conditions, proceed to convert the ecgonine into pure, synthetic cocaine. No need for coca leaves, no need to be in the Colombian jungle, no need to be in South America. No need to run the risk of transporting an illegal substance across thousands of miles, no need to cross borders, no need to centralize.
He remembered something about the expense of the synthesis being a barrier to entry, but laboratory techniques were improving all the time, and the clean-shaven man had said that he would give an Alpha to whomsoever could manufacture a gram of synthetic cocaine for less than the cost of buying it in the street a few hundred yards from the university in Bogota. Everyone, including Juan Andres Montero Garcia, had thought he had been joking.
He couldn’t risk lighting a fire, so when night fell he ate the snake raw. It rained heavily, which meant he had enough to drink, and the hut provided good shelter. It would only be for one night because he knew he could not stay there any longer. Someone would visit the hut at some point, although why anyone would keep tropinone in conditions as filthy as this was a mystery, unless, of course, the people keeping it had no idea what it actually was. The sterile packets had been made up by someone in a laboratory, and Juan Andres was careful not to leave any prints on the packet he inspected. He could see the remains of a quality-control stamp, and although he could not read every letter of it clearly, he was sure
Waiting for Carlos had made my brain go soft. I needed to sharpen it again. I hadn’t actually slept with a woman for two years but as I walked up Rue d’Antibes I stopped at FNAC and turned to see if Stephanie was still there, to see whether she would be watching me, to ensure I didn’t miss the unmissable, enormous entrance right in front of me, but she was gone.
*********
Juan Andres Montero Garcia stopped running when he saw the hut. Rickety and windowless, it didn’t belong in the jungle, but someone must have put it there for some reason. He took the Makarov out of its holster and crept slowly towards it. He had lost Suares and his men a good ten minutes ago, but he had kept going just in case. He knew they would not be able to out-run him, but if he didn’t change direction then they would simply radio ahead and have another team pick him up. So he turned right and ran ten minutes eastwards. The hut was locked with a single brass padlock, which he opened within seconds. Flat on his stomach, the rough grass prickling him through his uniform, he swung the door open, pistol raised. Nobody. The hut was eight foot by six and he noticed that there was a window masked by a makeshift shutter. He walked in and opened it to let in a little more light.
He saw what at first sight looked like medical supplies, covered by a plastic sheet and cocooned in polystyrene. Tropinone? He remembered a lecture given in Bogota in the second year of his chemistry degree by a jolly man with a clean-shaven face who mopped his brow constantly. Here in the hut there were several heavily-insulated packets of the stuff. He stared at them, trying to recall the exact words the clean-shaven professor had used. He remembered he had been making some point about the synthesisation of alkaloids and then he had made a joke about everyone becoming rich. It was coming back to him.
Tropinone was an alkaloid, synthesised during the First World War by an Englishman as a synthetic precursor to atropine. If one converted the tropinone into 2-carbomethoxytropinone and reduced this to ecgonine, one could, with difficulty and under microbe-free laboratory conditions, proceed to convert the ecgonine into pure, synthetic cocaine. No need for coca leaves, no need to be in the Colombian jungle, no need to be in South America. No need to run the risk of transporting an illegal substance across thousands of miles, no need to cross borders, no need to centralize.
He remembered something about the expense of the synthesis being a barrier to entry, but laboratory techniques were improving all the time, and the clean-shaven man had said that he would give an Alpha to whomsoever could manufacture a gram of synthetic cocaine for less than the cost of buying it in the street a few hundred yards from the university in Bogota. Everyone, including Juan Andres Montero Garcia, had thought he had been joking.
He couldn’t risk lighting a fire, so when night fell he ate the snake raw. It rained heavily, which meant he had enough to drink, and the hut provided good shelter. It would only be for one night because he knew he could not stay there any longer. Someone would visit the hut at some point, although why anyone would keep tropinone in conditions as filthy as this was a mystery, unless, of course, the people keeping it had no idea what it actually was. The sterile packets had been made up by someone in a laboratory, and Juan Andres was careful not to leave any prints on the packet he inspected. He could see the remains of a quality-control stamp, and although he could not read every letter of it clearly, he was sure
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