Flamingo Palace
David unpacked his bag and laid his diving equipment out on his bed. He had his own private room with en-suite and television. It was up to the standards he was used to on the oil rigs and much bigger. On the rigs, his neighbours were fellow divers and engineers. Here, they were security guards and an assortment of people, like himself, who catered for the needs of the resort’s rich guests. He was pleased to see that Henry’s Columbians and Anna’s Brazilians had been required to leave their weapons at the main gate.
Security at the Flamingo was provided by the resort’s own guards. According to Frank, they were recruited in the Zulu heartlands and were tough. David had seen them. They wore dark-blue uniforms emblazoned with a badge showing a flamingo armed with a stabbing spear and rawhide shield.
He consulted his notes. He had to go to the staff office and check in. He was trying to locate it on a map when his phone sounded and he heard Sipho’s voice.
‘I must speak with you!’
Sipho sounded flustered. He was usually so calm. David guessed something was wrong.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘We must meet.’
‘Where are you?’
‘In the executive compound. You’re not allowed here. I’ll have to come and see you. There’s a place called the Flamingo Palace. We can meet there.’
‘I can’t do anything until I’ve been to the staff office,’ David said. ‘They’re going to issue me with a pass.’
‘Yes. I understand. But be quick.’
David consulted his watch.
‘I’ll see you at the Flamingo Palace in half-an-hour. The office is over the road from here. It shouldn’t take long.’
A movement caught Petra’s eye. A large animal was sneaking down the path towards her. She caught glimpses of it between the bushes. The creature had the colouring of a leopard and was moving like one. The tourist brochures said there were leopards in the mountains near Cape Agulhas and they were small. This one looked big. She decided on a hasty retreat and was hurrying back down the path when she heard Anna’s voice.
‘Petra! Come on or we’ll be late.’
She turned and saw Anna. Her sister had Constantia with her. The old cheetah was on a lead and Anna was striding behind it with long gliding steps. She was dressed in one of her zany South American outfits and looked as if she had just arrived from a street carnival in Rio.
Anna stopped a few paces away and eyed Petra critically.
‘Where ever did you find that?’
‘Find what?’
‘That suit-thing that you’re wearing.’
Petra’s face dropped. ‘I bought it to come here.’
‘This is a resort, Petra.’
‘I am well aware of that.’
‘It’s not a lawyer’s office.’
‘I’m here to represent the de Villiers Foundation.’
‘Not dressed like that.’ Anna balanced on her high-heeled shoes and glared at her like a toreador about to impale a bull. ‘You look ridiculous, little sister. No one dresses like that on holiday.’
Petra shrank back. Anna always made her feel small. Uncle Henry thought she could keep her big sister under control. There wasn’t a chance. Anna steamrollered her way over everyone she met.
‘Come on!’
She turned and Petra followed. It had always been like that. Some girls grow up faster than others. They dip their feet in the ways of the world while their sisters have their heads buried in books. Anna wasn’t just older. She knew how the real world worked.
They padded back along the path. Constantia led the way and her presence caused confusion. Frightened yelps greeted them when they emerged from the bushes and entered the patio in front of the restaurant. Other guests had arrived with their pets and some were alarmed by the sudden appearance of a big cat.
Their cries were music to Anna’s ears. She revelled in the mayhem she had caused. Nothing pleased her more than to be the centre of attention. Petra hung back and tried to hide her embarrassment.
A voice sounded in her ear.
‘Petra. My parents want to meet you.’
She turned and saw Mario.
‘Anna is doing her thing,’ he whispered. ‘She won’t miss you.’
He spoke in his quite unassuming voice. Petra had felt at ease with him from the moment they first met. He slipped into the crowd and she followed him into the restaurant.
A smartly-dressed couple stared in their direction. Petra recognised them from photographs in the annual reports of the Mendez-Klein group of companies. They were seated at a small table sipping mineral water from tall glasses. Daniel Mendez-Klein wore his hair swept back and had a tightly-clipped moustache that reminded Petra of old photographs in her father’s library. His wife, Carmel, sat beside him in a dark dress that reached to her ankles. Both looked out of place amongst the brightly dressed people milling around the buffet tables.
Carmel raised her head as Petra approached.
‘We have been wanting to meet you.’
She spoke with a strong Spanish accent and had the demeanour of a royal duchess. Carmel Mendez-Klein was totally different from her son. Mario was softly spoken and unassuming. His mother sounded like an inquisitor at a heresy trial.
‘Your uncle has spoken of you.’
Petra had guessed as much.
‘He says you are studying to be attorney.’
‘I am specialising in international law.’
‘That is wise decision.’
Carmel’s head nodded sagely.
‘Do you speak Spanish?’
‘No,’ Petra lied. ‘My languages are English, Afrikaans and Xhosa.’
‘My son teach you Spanish.’
Carmel turned to Mario who was staring into space as if detached from everything that was going on around him. Failing to get a response, she returned her attention to Petra.
‘I approve your ensembla.’
Petra guessed she was talking about her clothes.
‘So senseebla!’
Carmel’s accent grew more extreme as she enthused over Petra’s smartly cut skirt and jacket. She ended with a virulent attack on her sister and cousin.
‘Anna and Carla … stupida … stupida!’
Petra waited for more to come but there wasn’t any. Carmel switched to Spanish. Petra knew enough to know that Mario was being instructed to be nice to her and not behave like a stupid child as he usually did.
This time, Mario seemed to be listening.
‘Petra. My mother and father must leave. Would you like to join me for a meal in the restaurant?’
‘That sounds a nice idea, Mario.’
She turned to his parents.
‘It has been so nice meeting you.’ Petra gave her nicest smile. ‘I have so much wanted to make your acquaintance.’
A woman in pink pants dabbed something under David’s eyes and a woman with a camera adjusted a spotlight to illuminate his upper body. His lower part was dressed in a sky-blue wetsuit and his upper part was bare. The women enthused over his muscular torso and said he made a stunning subject. David had never imagined that taking a photograph for a staff pass could involve such elaborate preparations.
A mask and snorkel were thrust at him.
‘Hold that in your right hand.’
David grasped the mask.
‘No! Not like that!’
She twisted the snorkel around.
‘Make it point up!’
‘That’s better. You’ve got to send the message.’
A dive knife was placed in his other hand. David wondered what message that was meant to convey. He was past caring. The whole operation was farcical. No one had asked for his diving qualifications. They weren’t even interested in his real name. The picture wasn’t required for his pass. It would adorn the TV-screens in the resort and inform its female clients of the latest exciting addition to the Flamingo Stud.
The woman in pink pants consulted her notes.
‘They’ve got Davo written down here.’
‘That’s what my diving buddies call me.’
‘You can’t have it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Too much like Dino … and that’s taken.’
‘How about Dave?’
She didn’t seem to hear.
‘You could have Angelo.’
David shook his head.
‘Well. Suggest something.’
‘Is David alright?’
‘Ugh! If you can’t think of anything better …’
She pulled a face and wrote something on a form as the women with the camera sprang into action.
‘Head up! Smile! Head to the side!’
The camera flashed. David went through the routine as dozens of shots were taken. The whole ridiculous process was taking far longer than he had expected. By now, Sipho would have reached the Flamingo Palace and would be wondering what had happened to him.
Petra placed a small trout on her plate and surrounded it with vegetables and fresh salad. Mario joined her and was soon venting his anger at the extravagance of their surroundings.
‘It’s totally disgusting!’
He pointed to a tray stacked with shellfish.
‘Just look at those abalones. They’re stripping the reefs to feed the bellies of fat slobs who would be far healthier if they ate less and stuck to plain food.’
Petra noticed that Mario’s plate had no fish or meat of any kind. She guessed he was a vegetarian and felt self-conscious about her trout. Mario didn’t seem to notice. He wanted to talk about her father.
‘Richard tried to stop it. I heard him at Princetown. He came to recruit graduates for his projects. The damage being done by indiscriminate fishing is devastating and not just in shallow waters. Deep-sea trawlers are taking fish from thousands of metres. Everything grows slowly at those depths. Fish take hundreds of years to get to table size. When they’re gone there won’t be any left. Richard’s people have teams going around to quantify what’s happening …’
He continued to sing her father’s praises. Petra realized how little she knew about the work of the de Villiers Foundation and decided to change the subject.
‘My Uncle Henry says we shall be meeting Cuthbert Maguire.’
‘Not just meeting,’ Mario grunted. ‘The emperor is holding court and his barons have been summoned to his presence.’
‘The emperor?’
‘That’s what he is.’
‘You mean Cuthbert?’
‘Who else?’
‘But he owns newspapers and TV stations. That’s not much.’
‘That’s everything, Petra.’
‘Not compared with mining.’
‘Cuthbert has power.’ Mario’s voice hardened. ‘He makes and breaks governments. A small swing in the votes is enough to unseat a party in most countries. Cuthbert enjoys power and he is quick to use it. Prime ministers and presidents bend the knee to him.’
Suddenly, Mario seemed much older. Petra stopped thinking of him as a woolly-minded undergraduate, obsessed by fish and furry animals. A very different Mario lay hidden beneath the surface.
‘An Australian prime minister learnt that lesson the hard way,’ Mario continued. ‘He failed to visit Cuthbert when he went to America. He saw the president but he gave Cuthbert a miss. An editorial in one of Cuthbert’s Australian newspapers drew attention to the unforgivable sin and the paper switched its support to the opposition. The prime minister didn’t just lose his majority at the next election, he lost his seat in parliament.
That’s just one example.’ Mario’s gaze intensified. ‘I’ll give you another. A certain British prime minister flew to the Aegean for a meeting with Cuthbert. One of his newspapers had been caught phone tapping and awkward questions were being asked in parliament. You would have thought that Cuthbert would have flown to London to sort things out but he didn’t. Instead, he summoned the prime minister to his yacht in a bay off Rhodes. That came out in a public enquiry.’
Petra cut a piece off her trout.
‘If Cuthbert is an emperor what does that make us?’
‘I’m a prince and you’re a princess,’ Mario grinned.
‘But the de Villiers holdings are small compared with the really big minerals companies. Some of them are huge. They must be ten or twenty times our size.’
‘Yes. And they are owned by superannuation funds. The people who run them are employees. That is the difference, Petra. You can be managing director of the biggest company in the world but, if you don’t own it, you are just a humble servant in Cuthbert’s eyes.’
Petra considered the point and added a thought of her own.
‘And you can be the prime minister of a country but, if you don’t own the country, you are a nobody as far as Cuthbert is concerned.’
‘Precisely!’
Petra finished off the trout and turned her attention to her nourishing salad and feta cheese. Her encounter with Cuthbert could be more gruelling than she had imagined.
‘My uncle advised me flatter Cuthbert with small talk.’
‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ Mario muttered. ‘Your father gave them a lot of trouble. For a while they wrote him off as totally loopy. Then they realised that he was cleverer than all of them put together. That got them really scared. Richard knew too much about them and that made him a very dangerous person …’
Mario’s voice trailed away. Petra had the feeling he was about to say more but had thought better of it.
‘You said I would have to do more than flatter Cuthbert,’ she prompted. ‘What did you mean by that?’
‘They know that you are not stupid like your sister. Richard never gave Anna any real power. He gave it to you. They’ll want to know where you stand on all sorts of issues. Let them know that you are the exact opposite of your father. You know how they think. You must have heard your aunt and uncle raving on. Go one better. Act like an arrogant queen in the making. Pretend that you are going to grow up just like my mother. She’ll love you.’
Lights flashed on the ceilings and walls. David was reminded of Las Vegas. The Flamingo Palace was built on the scale of a huge aircraft hangar. There were gaming machines, food counters, liquor bars and a whole lot else. But Vegas had nothing on the Flamingo. Vegas catered for dull, ordinary folk who were out for a bit of excitement. The Flamingo catered for the personal guards of the ultra-rich. Even without their weapons they looked threatening.
He cast his eyes around and recognised some. Anna’s Brazilians were amongst them, huddled beneath a huge television screen, watching football and swigging beer. Uncle Henry’s Columbians were nearby, picking a fight with a bunch of Chinese in yellow tracksuits and baseball caps.
There was no shortage of action but no sign of Sipho. David wondered if he had given up waiting for him. The idiotic business of issuing a pass had dragged on for over an hour. The women wouldn’t let him go until they had kitted him out with a pair of white shorts and a blue shirt, emblazoned with an image of a pink flamingo wearing a scuba mask. His name was printed above the bird in gold letters.
He saw himself in a mirror. The women had smeared him with make-up and he needed to get it off. But, first, he had to find Sipho. He didn’t care if he looked ridiculous. There were more important things to worry about. Something had happened. Sipho was desperate to speak to him. He needed to find out what was bugging him.
He hunted around the bars and made a tour of the gaming machines. Sipho wasn’t at any of them. That wasn’t surprising. Sipho wasn’t the gambling sort and he didn’t drink anything stronger than tea.
A group of men in dark suits caught his eye. They were chattering loudly in Russian and looked more Sipho’s type than the overweight oafs lounging around the bars. David wasn’t fussed by their swaggering gait. Many Russian males thought it essential to imitate Vladimir Putin when travelling overseas.
They pushed past and strode through a door with gold mouldings. A sign said it was a relaxation lounge. That was the sort of place where he could expect to find Sipho. There would be comfortable chairs and tables stacked with reading material. David followed the Russians inside and looked around.
To his surprise, there weren’t any chairs or tables. The room was more like a corridor than a lounge. Doors lined one side and naked girls lined the other. It was the sort of thing that happened to his diving buddies. Some of them would have stayed to sample the wares. David avoided brothels. Paying for sex wasn’t on his agenda. He turned on his heels and made a swift exit.
Laughter greeted him.
‘It’s Tweety Pie!’
He guessed he was the source of the amusement. He was smeared with make-up and looked like some exotic creature that had flown in from outside.
‘What’s the matter, pretty boy?’
David grinned. He was back in familiar company. A group of young men was making tweeting noises and gesticulating at him from barstools. They were dressed in scuba uniforms like his own. David read their names and figured he was meeting Dino and his buddies.
‘Did the naughty ladies frighten you?’
He ignored the taunts and ambled across. Dino was in the middle, flanked by Ringo and Rambo. Two others hovered in the wings. All five looked as if they had devoted their entire lives to body building.
He held out a hand.
‘I’m Davo. Sorry for the appearance. Those crazy women smeared me with paint. I’ve not had time to get it off.’
Usually he got a friendly reception from fellow divers, particularly when they were members of the same team. This time he got nothing but bad vibes. Dino eyed him maliciously. David remembered Frank’s warning that things were done differently at the Flamingo.
A stubby finger poked him in the chest.
‘It don’t say that here.’
‘Say what?’
‘Davo …’
‘They wouldn’t let me have it,’ David grinned. ‘They said it was too much like Dino.’
‘Too right it is!’
Dino thumped him on the chest.
‘I’m Dino and don’t you forget it. I’m the one who gives the orders here. You do what I say or I’ll screw your fucking head off and feed it to the sharks.’
David drew back.
‘Okay, Dino.’
‘You understand what I’m saying?’
‘Yes, Dino.’
‘Shake on it.’
Dino’s buddies leant forward on their barstools and gawped. It wasn’t difficult to guess what was coming next. He was amongst muscle-bound morons with a limited experience of how the real world works. They had no idea of how dangerous it can be for people who think they are invincible.
David winced as Dino’s grip tightened.
‘Okay. I’ve got the message.’
Dino kept squeezing. David had been in this sort of situation before. The big oaf was trying to break a finger and that wasn’t going to happen. His face contorted in pain.
‘I said Okay, Dino.’
He kept squeezing.
‘Please, Dino …’
David’s knees buckled and Dino’s buddies cheered like a pack of drunken monkeys as David sank down. They didn’t see what happened next. All they knew was that Dino lost balance and followed David to the floor … striking his head on the way.
Blood streamed down Dino’s face. He looked stunned for a few moments then flew at David, knocking over a table and scattering glasses. David jumped back and was relieved when two security guards intervened.
‘You come with me.’
One of them grabbed David and the other restrained Dino. More guards arrived and David was marched away. A big face turned in his direction.
‘Where you learn that trick?’
‘What trick?’
‘Man. You know what I mean.’
‘Like how not to get hurt?’
‘Ehh!’ The guard relaxed his hold. ‘Those guys crazy. You top fighter. You kill them all if you want.’
David wondered if Dino or any of his moronic mates was smart enough to know that. He hoped they weren’t.
‘Your friend want speak to you.’
The guard turned towards the exit.
‘There by the door …’
He let go of David’s collar and disappeared as Sipho emerged from a doorway. He looked anxious.
‘David. What happened?’
‘Nothing.’ David pulled his shirt straight. ‘I got held up … that’s all. These things happen.’
‘Can you speak Spanish?’
David shook his head.
‘We must find someone who can.’ Sipho grasped his arm. ‘They want to kill Petra. I have a recording. Most is in Spanish. Sometimes they speak English. That is how I know.’