Dead in the Water Read Online Free PDF Page A

restaurant for dinner with Ramón Ortega, his contact in the Ministry for Environment and Natural Resources. He’d been trying to set up this meeting for nearly two months, and was fearing the worst. But Ortega was on time, they had a table to themselves, well away from the other diners; it was a relaxed, easy meeting. And Ortega’s reassurances about the government’s commitment to environmental protection were more earnest than he expected.
    And then, just as they were finishing the main course, the Minister himself, Gustavo Rodriguez, showed up with a tame photographer in tow. Jeremy was delighted. If the Minister wanted to be seen having dinner with Jeremy Peters, it meant that he saw One World as an important player. But Rodriguez clearly had his own agenda, although it didn’t emerge until desserts had been rejected in favour of Tequilas, and the talk moved from the prospects for Venezuelan football to the current political situation and the imposition of the curfew.
    “ It is a crisis, my friend, yes,” said Rodriguez. “All governments have those. It is a bad time. What you want, what we want is the same thing. But if we are not in power…. What can we do? So we have the Emergency. That way we stay in power, and when this … irritación has passed, then we create the Forest Protection Force.” Rodriguez seemed in good spirits; adamant that the state of emergency, the curfew, the paramilitaries on the street, was a “ Situación . It will pass. There is no need to get agitado . Outside people they want to make things … more exciting. Foreign reporters make up stories. But there is no civil war. Nobody here wants civil war.”
    “ Outside people?”
    “ Foreign companies. They want us to increase oil production. They think that when Chavez went everything would be OK for them again. We are not communists, but this is our country.” His lop-sided smile was definitive: we do things our way. “But if we are to succeed, Señor Peters, we will need the support of Europe.”
    So that’s what this was all about.
    “ I don’t have influence, Señor Rodriguez. One World is an environmental NGO, not a government agency.”
    “ I think you are a very modest man, Señor Peters. Your very close friend, Mark Boyd. He has the ear of your Prime Minister. I think that is how you say it.”
    “ It is indeed how we say it. But ––”
    “ Please,” said Rodriguez, smiling broadly. There was nothing more to be said on the matter. “Now. How are you getting home tonight Señor Peters? Time passes very quickly in your company. But there is a curfew. And I have detained you here far too long.”
    He insisted that if Jeremy would accompany him in his official car to his gated villa in the foothills of El Avila, then the chauffeur would drive him home from there.
     
    Sealed in and protected, he felt ambivalent about riding as the sole passenger in a ministerial car: uncomfortable around that degree of privilege, if glad to be able to beat the curfew in the safest way possible. He started to make some notes about the meeting, but couldn’t stop his thoughts to wandering to Rachel. There was a missed call on his mobile phone, but no message. She must have rung while he was at dinner. It was too late to call her back. She’d be asleep by now.
    The driver was following instructions. Drive smoothly. Don’t stop unless it’s an official check point. Don’t turn back. But he could not avoid swerving, causing Jeremy to look up from his palmtop and glance out to see a group of urchins playing football beneath the street lights. One kicked the ball at the Mercedes, then raced across in front of the car, skipping onto the sidewalk, arms flapping abusive gestures at the puto hiding behind darkened glass, all of them screaming with silent laughter at the inventiveness of their profanities.
    Jeremy Peters, the invisible voyeur, looked back, his smile dropping away as a curfew patrol emerged from an unlit alley. The driver