Falklands Deadline - Ed Zaruk (short novels to read .txt) 📗

the wooden pier, occasionally glancing behind, expecting to be followed, puzzled when he wasn’t. Looking out over the North Sea, friends from his whaling years came to mind. He’d slip away to Norway.
Alone on the dock, he untied the front line of a Waverley 29 he’d purchased to teach his nephew how to sail in his teenage years. Better days, he reflected, tossing the line on deck and releasing the stern. Stepping into the short companionway, he took a last look ashore. Nothing. Good. He opened the cabin door.
“Buenos dias.” The voice startled Howard as a set of hands grabbed his arms and pinned them behind. In the dim light before him stood a man of medium build, dark complexion, the hint of indigenous blood. From a face etched with lines of cruelty, eyes intense with confidence borne of absolute power, appeared to laugh at him. “Señor Wingate, let us do business.” The man nodded and Howard felt his arms released. “All I ask is the return of a document my government lost in nineteen thirty-nine.”
“In return for what?” Howard asked.
“Why your life, of course,” he said, developing a sardonic smile.
The man was a poor liar, and inklings of the military’s dirty war against its own citizens confirmed to Howard he’d become one of the disappeared ones. Men had died for what was now securely locked away. “I don’t have it.”
Howard grunted as a fist drove the air out of him. Bending over, he sagged to his knees, then felt his head snap back. Blocking his field of vision was the cruel face of the Argentinean, eyes like black pits with no bottom.
“Where is it?”
Howard shook his head between gasps.
“You’ll find I’m not a patient man,” the Argentinean said, dragging Howard up the companionway, across the deck, and dropping him on the pier. “Once more. Where is the Falklands Document?”
Howard said nothing. A hand shoved his face into the cold sea. Holding his breath, he resigned himself to the inevitable when his lungs gave out. Bubbles of air trickled up his cheek. He swallowed water, then started choking and gagging. His head was jerked back.
“Last chance.”
Coughing, Howard spit out salt water. “Bugger you.”
“Doesn’t matter,” the man said, shoving Howard Wingate’s face back in the cold sea.
Squirming sideways, Howard looked at the shimmering surface inches above him. The last thing he noticed was a crucifix hanging from a heavy, gold chain around the Argentinean’s neck.


TWO


The executive offices of the Compañía Ballenera Argentina, a modern structure of green-tinted glass and black onyx, rose eighteen stories into the Buenos Aires sky. On the top floor, from a large office bounded on two sides by plate-glass windows, Luis Lopez looked down on the chaos that passed for traffic in Buenos Aires, savouring the moment. As Chief Executive Officer he ruled over a financial empire that had started with a whaling station on South Georgia Island seventy years ago and had grown so large its name had been changed to CBA International. Its tentacles reached into the heart of the Argentine government. Lopez was on a first name basis with each member of the military junta. Two of those three men sat behind him waiting while he stared down at the lights of the city.
Seated in a green leather chair to Lopez’s right, smoking a cigarette, was Admiral Jorge Anaya, a vain man, intent on breaking the nation by lavish spending on the Armada. His counterpart from the Fuerza Aerea, General Basilio Lami Dozo, lacking enthusiasm for today’s meeting, had not been invited. Public opinion didn’t warrant it.
Two chairs over, a glass of whiskey in his right hand, sat Presidente de la Nación, Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, leader of the junta and political figurehead of the inept military rule that, in Lopez’s mind, was losing touch with the people. Sitting in his shirtsleeves, enjoying the comfort of the deep-padded chair, and Lopez’s liquor, Galtieri displayed a relaxed self-confidence that belied the pompous man Luis knew him to be.
Touching a button that electrically closed all the curtains, Lopez turned in the subdued lighting, addressing both men from behind his huge desk. “Gentlemen, as we speak, CBA’s newest salvage barge is approaching South Georgia Island.”
“Yes, but will it arrive on the nineteenth?” Admiral Anaya asked.
Lopez waved the question down. “We wrote severe penalties and large bonuses into the towing contract with Sterling Salvage and Marine. I have every confidence it will be delivered on time.”
“Good.” Anaya tapped his cigarette, allowing its ash to fall on the thick carpet. “The fleet auxiliary Bahía Buen-Suceso is in position to deliver Davidoff’s men and our soldiers when it arrives.”
Constantino Sergio Davidoff was a man more attuned to Lopez. He liked the fast-talking Argentinian with Greek roots who was into scrap-metal salvage, big time. CBA first had done business with him when the company was cutting up the old whaling fleet. He’d found buyers in the Philippines that had not only made the company money, but also had enriched everyone’s personal bank accounts. Davidoff had been the only man Lopez recommended to the junta when they came to him with this venture, and he let it be known that without him, there would be no deal. What concerned Lopez, were the military men involved.
“Who’s heading the operation?” Lopez asked.
Galtieri finished his drink. “Vicecomodoro Alexandro Seville is the man looking after our interests. Special Forces, loyal, completely trustworthy. I have every confidence he will get the job done.”
Lopez had met the man personally and taken an immediate dislike to him. CBA security had supplied a handwritten report about his involvement in what was emerging as the country’s ‘dirty war’. The desaparecidos, young people taken in the night, tortured, then killed. No, Lopez thought, that wasn’t the right term for drugging someone and pushing them out of an aeroplane over the ocean. Disposed of, came to mind. By men like Seville. No wonder the junta’s popularity was falling.
Davidoff, who stood to make thirteen million dollars tearing down the old whaling station at Leith Harbour, knew how to do business with CBA, and by extension, Lopez. The figure was paltry compared to what the junta would gain financially from the venture. Seville answered only to the two men before him. Lopez didn’t trust any of them.
“And this other matter?” he asked, settling into the chair behind his desk and gesturing between the two military men.
Admiral Anaya thumped a fist on his knee. “April second. Everything is in motion.”
“It will be a great day for Argentina.” Galtieri pointed a finger to the ceiling, continuing in his false oratory voice. “Las Malvinas son Argentinas.”
Luis Lopez knew the chant. Galtieri had diverted the population from more pressing issues with it. But now the mothers of the disappeared ones were marching in the streets, and Galtieri had to come up with something spectacular to restore public opinion. Invading the Falkland Islands was his solution. “What if Britain responds?” Lopez asked.
“What can they do?” Anaya asked, then answered his own question. “They have one broken-down old icebreaker. We have the finest fleet in South America.”
“A military victory is easy,” Lopez said before looking at Galtieri. “Turning world opinion in our favour may not go as well.”
“Why not?” Galtieri said. “The Americans will support us.”
“Against the British?”
Shaking the glass in his hand, Galtieri ignored the liquor sloshing out of it. “They have no right to be in Las Malvinas.” Wiping his hand, he then drained the glass. “The invasion is necessary to secure our operation on South Georgia Island.”
“What if the Falklands Sovereignty Lease-back Document should surface?”
Galtieri’s face contorted in rage. Jumping up he took a step toward Lopez and shouted so loud spit flew from the corners of his mouth. “There is no Falklands Sovereignty Lease-back Document.”


THREE


Walking into the office of Harwick and Price, John Wingate interrupted a political conversation between his uncle’s solicitor and a Salvation Army Major.
“Ah, Mister Wingate.” The solicitor gestured toward one of two empty leather chairs. “Please,” he said, waiting for John to make himself comfortable. “So glad you could make it.”
Making it, as the elderly man had said, involved a flight from Port Stanley, waiting two days in Buenos Aires for a seat on Aerolineas Argentinas, then an overnight stay in Miami before crossing the Atlantic. “Sorry it took so long.”
The solicitor put on a pair of reading spectacles. “Well now that you’re here, shall we begin?”
John nodded agreement.
Taking up a folder, the solicitor extracted a sheaf of papers, placed them on his desk, then ran a hand over the documents as if flattening them. “As you know, your uncle appointed me executor of the estate.”
“I didn’t,” John said.
“Over twenty years ago. I’ll read the will.” Picking up the papers, he began, “This is the last will and testament of me, Howard Wingate...
John, weary from his trip and feeling the heat of the room closing in, found himself only half listening through the preamble but was brought up short when hearing the solicitor read, “My financial portfolio, I do leave to the Salvation Army.” The man stopped, then peering over his spectacles at John, said, “It is valued at sixty-nine thousand, four hundred and thirty seven pounds.”
Fair enough, John thought. It was the old man’s money. He had the right to give it to charity.
The solicitor took up reading from the will again. “The property known as Stromness House and all its contents I do give to the Salvation Army for their use exclusively.”
John leaned forward in his chair. “What!”
The solicitor held up his hand. “Mr. Wingate, please.” A look of disdain crossed the man’s pudgy face before he glanced at the Salvation Army Major, sitting to John’s left.
“So what do I get, the sailboat?”
“I’m afraid not. That is included in the residue of the estate.”
“And that goes to..?” John glared at the Salvation Army Major.
“A foundation for the local library.”
“So I inherit nothing.”
Giving John the look of a disciplining school master, the solicitor picked up a page from his desk. “A codicil dated August twenty-eight, nineteen hundred and sixty-eight, gives you one thousand pounds and the contents of the centre drawer of the writing desk in the drawing room of Stromness House.” He set the papers down and took off his spectacles.
“That’s it, then? You mean to tell me, my uncle brought me all the way here simply to open a drawer?”
“So it would appear.”
“And this gentleman,” John gestured to the Major, “gets everything else?”
“Mr. Wingate,” the solicitor’s voice turned stern, “I drafted the will as your uncle requested it. I doubt anyone will know the motives behind his actions. And, no, this gentleman is only one of the beneficiaries.”
The Major addressed John, ice in his voice. “I might add, sir, that the estate does not come to me personally.”
“I may just contest this will.”
“I’d advise against that, sir,” the solicitor said. “ Not being a direct descendant of the deceased, you would be treated as equal with the other