The Big Killing Read Online Free PDF Page A

you've given me.'
    'I'm on holiday.'
    'You anywhere near Abidjan?'
    'Yes.'
    'Good. You've got a job.'
    'I know that.'
    'What do you mean?'
    'I'm being paid to sit around by one guy and I'm doing a job for another tonight.'
    'Well, you've just got your third job. I've been approached by a guy called—hold on a sec—Samuel Collins of Collins and Driberg. They're diamond traders with offices in Hatton Garden and Antwerp. His son, Ron—is that Ronald? Maybe not—anyway he's twenty-seven years old, young, naive and impressionable; no, I dunno, but young Ron is going on an African trip to buy diamonds. He flies to Abidjan Monday October twenty-eighth on BA whatever, getting in at nineteen hundred hours, I think, but it doesn't matter because you're not meeting him at the airport. There's a couple of fixers who are going to do that.
    'He's going to stay at the Novotel, which is good because we have an account with them and you're going to stay there too. He's due to go to a place called Tortiya which is up in the north somewhere, then he either flies out of Abidjan to Sierra Leone where the military are putting up some confiscated goods for tender or he goes to Angola. You don't have to go to Angola because I've got about twenty people out there already but you
do
have to go to Sierra if he goes. OK?'
    'What do I have to do?'
    'Look after him. His dad's worried about him.'
    'He's twenty-seven.'
    'A conservative estimate of his father's wealth is two hundred and fifty million.'
    'Another poverty-stricken bum.'
    'That's the ticket. Straight to the point, Bruce, that's why I picked you. There's one small catch.'
    'How small?'
    'Three hundred a day plus expenses.'
    'How small's the catch, clever bastard?'
    'Touchy.'
    'Telling me the money before the catch.'
    'Play the game, Bruce.'
    'The catch, Martin.'
    'It really is small. You can't tell him that you're looking after him. He's an arrogant little fucker and he won't have any of it. That's the catch. Small, isn't it?'
    'I'm not going to follow him, for Christ's sake. A white man following another white man in a sea of black faces. You've got to be kidding me?'
    'Get close to him, Bruce. Be his friend. You're good at that.'
    'How do you know?'
    'I like you.'
    'You like everybody.'
    'I didn't like that Somalian bastard.'
    'He's dead now.'
    'Ye-e-e-s,' he said, as if he might have had something to do with it.
    The madame was leaning on the end of the desk with her eyelids falling and her head jerking up when the door banged open and an African in full robes stood in the doorway and roared with laughter so that I looked around the busted furniture in the lobby for a punchline. She pulled off the same key and gave it to him. The girl didn't even bother to look up but stood and set off out of the lobby. The man left a strong smell of cheap spirit behind him, as if he'd been drinking twelve-year-old aftershave. He gave us another roar from the passageway which didn't sound so much like fun as stoking himself up for the big one.
    'You still there?' asked Martin.
    'Where are you going to send the money to?'
    'You're that short, are you?'
    'I am, yes, and it's tricky to be somebody's friend if you're cadging drinks all night.'
    'There's a Barclays in Abidjan, we'll send it there. A couple of thousand, OK? Give us your passport number.'
    I gave him the number.
    'I won't be able to go to Sierra.'
    'You'll find a way for three hundred a day.'
    'Maybe you're right.'
    'That just about wraps it up then. Give us a call when it's over.'
    'Or, if I have any problems.'
    'You won't have any problems. It's a piece of the proverbial. The easiest money you've ever made.'
    'Somebody else said that to me today.'
    'You're on a roll, Bruce. Enjoy it. I'll book you in the Novotel tomorrow night; you're on expenses from then on in.'
    'You couldn't open up that expense account today, could you?'
    'That's a little unconventional, Bruce.'
    'I need to hire a car. Nothing to do with you. It'd be a help.