Fashionably Late (For My Funeral) Pt. 03

I followed the instructions. "If you are listening to me," I said into the microphone tucked under my collar, "I'm to get instructions from a public telephone. In case they are watching it you should stay well away from it. Don't move in when the car stops. In case they are using a scanner I won't speak to you again until I have received the instructions and I am on my way to wherever."

I parked beside the telephone and waited. I think that they were watching the booth and waiting to see if anyone else showed up before they made the next move. It almost didn't come off. Just as the phone rang and elderly woman pushing a shopping cart walked by and stopped. She was just about to pick up the phone when I walked over to it. I just managed to grab it on the third ring and I hung it up immediately.

"What did you do that for? It could have been important for someone."

"It was important for me. I'm waiting for important instructions."

"Then why did you hang up if it was so important?"

"That is part of the instructions."

She shook her head, pushed past me and muttered something about stupid instructions as she walked off. The phone rang almost immediately. "Who was that old lady?"

"You tell me, I don't know. Just some passerby I suppose. What do I do now?"

"You drive three blocks down the road and turn left.' The instructions were read to me in the same mechanical voice that suggested computer generation but was more likely someone altering his voice to achieve that effect. 'About a hundred yards down on your right you will find a vacant allotment, pull your car in there. In your left hand jacket pocket you will find your next instructions. Follow them to the letter."

I followed the first lot of instructions and found the vacant allotment. Feeling in my jacket pocket I found the next set of instructions. "How had they gotten there? It must have been the little old lady that put them there", I was thinking out loud for the benefits of my listeners.

I was instructed to drive to an industrial area, park my car outside a warehouse and wait.

I parked and waited, and waited, and waited for what seemed like hours but my watch had only moved a further fifteen minutes when a car came and parked just behind mine. Two men got out and approached. "Mr. Feldham?"

"Yes. Who are you?"

"Who we are is not important to you. Do you have the money?"

"Yes." I glanced at the case beside me on the floor of the car.

"Good, can we have it?"

"Not until I see Sendi."

"We want to see it now!"

"I'll show it to you now but you can't have it until I see Sendi." I picked the case off the floor and making sure that they couldn't reach it I opened it so that they could see the money stacked inside. "Now can I see her?"

One of the men walked back to the car and was in deep conversation with someone else via the car phone. Presently he walked back to my car. "Follow us."

I followed. They drove around and around in a confusing pattern in the hope that if I was being followed they would be able to lose any tail that may have been put on them. I don't know about the tail but I was lost.

Eventually we pulled into the driveway of a large mansion set well back from the road, the type of house that you were shown on one of those guided tours of the stars homes and told that some major star of the silent era had held huge orgies there in his or her heyday. It looked as if it could still hold orgies, but of a much more discreet nature.

The lead car stopped at the gate and the driver talked into an intercom. The gates opened and we drove into the grounds. I parked out front of the house and waited for the two men to escort me inside.

They conducted a fairly thorough search for weapons and anything else but missed the microphone and transmitter which was taped to my back. It was small enough to be undetected by a casual search but powerful enough to send a message to the repeater in the car.

I was escorted into what was once the library but now served as a large office. Sendi sat in a huge chair and if it wasn't for the cords that bound securely I would have thought that she was a guest in the house. She greeted me with her eyes and the relief was transparent. I don't know what they had done to her but I was pretty sure that it wouldn't have been comfortable for her.

"The case please." The man in charge stayed seated behind the desk. I was about to carry it over to the desk when one of my escorts pushed me into a chair and relieved me of the case. He placed it on the desk, opened it and turned it to face the man.

He looked at the bundles of money, he then took one of the bundles from the top row and another from one of the bottom rows. He took the band from the bundles and spread the notes on the desk, taking a magnifying glass from the desk drawer he scanned the notes in great detail, looking for signs that they had, in some way been tampered with. He found nothing and was satisfied. "Tie him up."

I was grabbed from behind and held while one of the men tied me securely to the chair. When this task was completed he stood in front of me. "Just so that you don't get any ideas about freeing yourself and calling for help before we get clear you and your lover here are going to sleep." I felt a needle prick into my arm. I went to sleep.

Sendi was still asleep when I woke up. We were no longer in the house but in the sterile confines of a hospital. I looked around me and found Captain O'Reilly seated beside me. "You're awake then?"

"Yes. How did it go?"

"Perfect. We have tracked them to the airport and they caught a flight to New York. We have the NYPD on alert to pick up the trail as soon as they land. How are you feeling?"

"Still pretty groggy. How is she?" I asked looking towards Sendi.

"Still asleep and I expect that she'll stay that way for a little while yet. Now you rest here for a while. The hospital will release both of you when you are both well enough to leave. Your car is waiting for you in the car park. I wish that I could afford something like that." He left and I waited for Sendi to wake up.

Hours later Sendi and I left the hospital and walked to the Porsche in the car park. "Who belongs to this?"

"We do. I traded the mobile home in on it. Do you like it?"

"Of course I do, but I would have thought that you were the English sports car type, you know Jaguar or MG or something like that never one of these."

"Just goes to show you can't judge a book by its writer." (Look, before you criticise me about using a mixed metaphor here, I'm just trying to be light hearted and relieve the tension, so give me a break.)

"What are we going to do now?"

"I've been thinking. What would one of my heroes do?"

"No Darling, don't even think about it."

"I must. I must follow this through now that I've been involved. I am going to start at the other end and follow it through to this end."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm going to Colombia and I'm going to follow the cocaine shipment until it gets to the other end and I am going to get evidence on all the stages of the operation so that those involved can be successfully brought to justice."

"Listen Superman, you are not going to risk your life in this stupid quest. I know that I'm being extremely selfish here, but I don't want to lose you. We're just starting our lives together and I don't want it to end almost before it has started. Darling I haven't had a lot of success with my relationships, first with my family and then with the men in my life. You've come into my life and changed all of that and now you're telling me that you want to go off on some dangerous mission that is likely to get you killed, where does that leave me?"

"Where I need you to be is safely here waiting for me to come back, like St George with the dragon's head on the tip of my lance."

"No. I am coming with you."

"No you're not. Look Darling, I love you dearly and the last thing that I want to do is to lose you. Believe me I'm very aware of the dangers that are ahead of me, and the risk that I'm taking. If I thought that it was safe for the both of us I wouldn't hesitate to ask you along. This is something that I have to do, on my own."