Read Online River of Death by Alistair MacLean - Free Book Online Page B

you’re second fiddle.’
    Hamilton left, leaving behind him a brief but profound silence. Tracy said: ‘Well. Of all the arrogant, hard-nosed, intransigent bastards—’
    ‘Agreed, agreed,’ Smith said. ‘But he holds the cards, all of them.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘Enigma. Rough, tough, but dresses well, speaks well, obviously at home in any territory. Nuances, clever nuances. At ease in my drawing-room. Not many strangers are. Come to that, nobody is.’
    Tracy said: ‘And he’s come to the conclusion that this Lost City is so dangerously inaccessible that he’s not prepared to try the same route again. So—a helicopter. Or hovercraft.’
    ‘I wonder.’ Smith was still looking thoughtful. ‘Why else would a man like that throw in his lot with us?’
    ‘Because he’s convinced he can eat us alive,’ Maria said. She paused. ‘Maybe he will at that.’
    Smith looked at her without expression then crossed to the dining-room window. Hamilton was just moving away in his black Cadillac. A chauffeur stopped polishing a nondescript Ford, glanced towards Smith’s window, nodded, climbed into his car and followed the Cadillac.
    Hamilton was driving down one of Brasilia’s broad boulevards. He consulted his rear mirror. The Ford was about two hundred yards behind. Hamilton increased his speed. So did the Ford. Both cars were now travelling well above the speed limit. A police car appeared behind the Ford, switched on the siren, overtook and flagged the Ford to a stop.
    The Ministry of Justice was a rather splendid building and the large airy office in which Hamilton sat across a polished leather table from Colonel Ricardo Diaz was suitably sumptuous. Diaz, in an immaculately cut uniform, was large, tanned and looked competent to a degree, which indeed he was. Diaz took a sip of some indeterminate liquid and sighed.
    ’About Smith, Mr Hamilton, you know as much as we do—everything and nothing. His past is a mystery, his present an open book that anyone is welcome to read. The dividing line between the present and the past can’t be precisely delineated but it is known that he appeared—or, rather,emerged or surfaced in Santa Catharina, a province with a traditionally heavy Germanic settlement, in the late forties. Whether he is of similar origin is not known: his English is as immaculate as his Portuguese but, as far as is known, he has never been heard to speak German.
    ’His first business venture was to produce a newspaper aimed primarily at the native German speakers in the province but printed in Portuguese: it was conservative and strongly pro-establishment and marked the beginning of a long and close association with the government of the time, an association that has persisted, despite changes of government, until this day.
    ‘He then branched out into the fields of early plastics and early ball-point pens. Smith was never an innovator—he was and remains a takeover specialist and a share manipulator of genius. Both the publishing and the industrial sides of his businesses expanded at a remarkable speed and within ten years he was, by any standards, a very wealthy man.’
    Hamilton said: ‘He couldn’t have been without the odd cruzeiro to begin with.’
    ‘Agreed. Expansion on a scale such as Smith’s must have called for a great deal of capital.’
    ‘And the source of capital is unknown?’
    ’Totally. But that’s nothing to hold against any man. In this country—as in many others—we don’t care to enquire too closely into those things.
    ‘Now we come to Tracy. He is indeed the general manager of Smith’s publication division. Very tough, very able, nothing known about him in the criminal line, which could mean that he’s either honest or very clever. The best you can say of him is that he’s a soldier of fortune. The police are certain that the bulk of his activities are illegal-diamonds have an odd habit of disappearing when he’s in the neighbourhood—but he’s never been