Blood Wood

By Mark Reed

BLOOD WOOD

Guy Lucan is an English railway engineer employed by a New York based consulting firm. Posted to Madagascar as part of a World Bank contract, he is to assist with regeneration of the island’s 100 year old French colonial railway network. His love of Malagsay life soon develops, and quickly he understands the challenges of managing an antique transport system in Africa.
Soon after his arrival, the State railway is unexpectedly purchased by an emerging local business magnate linked to the Mauritian mafia. Guy discovers the railway is being used to export shipments of illegally logged Rosewood from Madagascar. As he learns more about how the new owner is using the trains to hide these exports and launder millions of dollars of criminal funds, his life is threatened when he is kidnapped by the loggers.
Escaping from capture seems impossible but...

Guy Lucan’s role as the railway Director General becomes a mix of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond as the conspiracy deepens ... powerful and persuasive!

• Language: English
• Publisher: CUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS
• Release date: Mar 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310710643

Mark Reed

Mark Reed is an award-winning visual artist in the category of figure drawing and design. Experienced in both traditional and digital media, he has produced numerous works of art that have sold to collectors in the United States, Europe, and Australia. His literary work wonderfully brings to life many of the characters and exciting places seen throughout his artwork.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Pudong Airport

A small puff of smoke from the starboard tyre announced the arrival of the Gulfstream G450 jet as it touched down softly at Pudong Airport. Inside the leather covered fuselage, Marcel moved in his seat and loosened his belt after the six hour flight from Singapore. He had spent much of the journey watching the French darts open and close in the back of the flight stewardess's tight knee length skirt as her slim thighs moved easily up and down the aisle. Based in Marseilles, was how she had answered his question, with a heavy Corsican French accent laced with an Italian dialect. Too far from his home turfs of Madagascar and Mauritius he had mused, but then they were both members of the jet set so distance might not stand in the way of lust?

It was now about three in the afternoon, and the hazy smog filled daylight of Shanghai city beyond was starting to wane. As the executive jet taxied to a halt on a little used part of the airport's apron, a highly polished 1964 black Mercedes 220SB could be seen sliding across the runway towards the plane. It floated over the tarmac like a Nazi staff car.

Marcel adjusted his trademark reflective Rayban sunglasses and gently tightened the Windsor knot on his Hermes silk tie. He watched the car intently through the small oval window of the jet. Though this would be one of his shortest business meetings, it could well turn out to be pivotal, and first impressions were crucial to him. He rose from his seat, stooped as he traversed the few steps towards the open door of the aircraft, and stretched tall as he drew in breaths of the polluted Chinese air and started to descend the steps.

As his left foot reached the ground, the grand bull-nosed Mercedes drew closer and stopped about five metres away. His image and that of the jet behind him reflected in the car's gleaming black paintwork, and he found himself briefly checking his appearance in this fleeting mirror. The back windows of the vehicle were heavily tinted and he sensed that he was being watched and examined by whoever was in the rear seat. As his eyes scanned the car, he noticed the manufacturer's circular Tristar emblem standing proud above the radiator. It was not made from the usual shining chrome, but appeared to be fashioned from a darker, heavier material which was highly polished so that it shone red in the afternoon twilight. As he started to walk a couple of steps towards the vehicle, he realised what the material was – the Tristar had been intricately hand carved from solid rosewood. Malagasy Rosewood he guessed, judging by the intense blood red colour of the wood.

The rear door of the car opened as if powered by hydraulics, as he approached. He stopped and steadied himself with one hand on the window frame of the door whilst the other pulled his navy double breasted cashmere blazer around his torso. He lifted one leg into the back foot well of the Mercedes and slid his body down onto the cushioned leather seat. As the door closed behind him, his nostrils filled with the strong smell of old leather inside the car – this was a very different scent from the artificial fireproof leather used inside the jet. This was vintage cow skin which had been nurtured and polished over many years. The smell was almost intoxicating and reassuringly rich.

Marcel was slightly surprised and disappointed to find that the back seat of the car was empty. He had assumed wrongly that his business associate would have been waiting in the vehicle to greet him. Maybe this had been deliberate – to make Marcel feel less important and to put him off guard on his arrival. Whatever the strategy, it had not worked as Marcel confidently relaxed back into the sprung leather armchair of the Mercedes and felt almost presidential as the car moved away across the concrete apron.

Inside the chasmal empty aircraft hangar, the car came to a halt and delivered its passenger at the approximate centre of the floor. As the automobile reversed back through the small aperture in the hangar doors, Marcel turned around, trying to focus on the darkness which filled the corners of the warehouse. He realised that he had to remove his sunglasses – it was simply too dim to make out anything but fuzziness through the darkened lenses. His mysterious client had won the first round, he realised – understanding that he had been forced to show his full face which was probably now being photographed from the recesses around him, and being compared by computer against his Interpol file. Good job he had come in person, he thought. He had considered sending Philipe as his stand in, but the free jet ticket which had arrived the day before his planned departure had changed Marcel's mind. His vanity and ego could not resist accepting a chance to travel first class like a mogul halfway across the world.

What would have happened if Philipe had been standing there in his place, and his face had not matched the Interpol file? He could have been shot from the blackness with a silencer and the deal would have been lost.

'Bonjour, Monsieur Marcel. Bienvenue à la Chine!' boomed a voice from in front of him. The French accent was bad and the heavy lisp suggested that it came from a native Mandarin speaker. As Marcel strained with his uncovered eyes to peer into the darkness, soft lights were illuminated above him and he could make out a single office desk behind which sat an elderly oriental man who was the source of the welcome words. Apart from the desk and its occupant, the hangar was completely empty. On the desk were two mock crocodile skin briefcases of the type which one can buy on any street corner throughout Asia. Their locks and carrying handles were turned away from the old gentleman and faced towards Marcel as he walked up to the desk.

'Mr. Chi, I assume. Mr. Kotler Chi?' replied Marcel as he approached the desk. He stopped a short distance in front of the desk and decided that a handshake was not the correct gesture in this culture nor in these circumstances. Instead he put his feet together like a soldier standing at arms and bowed his head meekly as a sign of respect to his older seated associate.

'My name is not important. Did you have a good flight and are you ready to transact the business as we discussed?' retorted the old man.

Marcel confirmed his acceptance and did not refer to the travel arrangements. Immediately he regretted this omission as he had enjoyed the flight enormously, and he worried that without thanks his host might not offer him the chance to return to Madagascar in the same comfort. 'And yes, the flight was comfortable, most enjoyable and excellent…' Marcel found himself over compensating for his initial lack of answer to the original question.

'One hundred containers at the agreed price and by the agreed date on a Delmas vessel to be advised. The deposit is in the two briefcases here in front of you,' explained the old man. Marcel had insisted on cash, but he had not expected the deal to have been concluded quite so quickly and openly. He had expected a dinner and evening in Shanghai, after which some male entertainment before probably a final renegotiation of the price. His mind raced quickly as his logic and reasoning caught up with the pace of the transaction.

'Agreed. Two thousand five hundred tonnes by the end of July in the port of Vohemar. You have my word,' responded Marcel in his school boy English.

'Then you also have my word, and there is no need to count the money. I wish you a pleasant flight back and look forward to doing business with you again, Monsieur Ravatomanga'. As the old man finished speaking, his arms reached down to either side of his chair and he started to disappear backwards into the darkness away from the desk. It dawned on Marcel suddenly that his colleague had been sitting in a wheelchair all the time, and that he was now accelerating smoothly and silently away from the desk and back into the blackness at the edge of the hangar.

As Kotler Chi disappeared from view, Marcel could hear the sound of the Mercedes re-entering through the half open doors, coming to collect him. He stepped forward and picked up one of the cheap briefcases in each hand and turned towards the car. They were heavy and he understood why they had been packed in two cases – in order to distribute the weight evenly between a man's shoulders. He was glad of this foresight as he stood and waited for the car to reach him.

Back inside the executive jet, the same stewardess smiled at Marcel and asked him in her Italian French if his meeting in Shanghai was successful?

'Oui,' he replied as he grasped the thick glass tumbler which she proffered half filled with Chivas and ice. 'Oui, très bien. Merci.' As he turned and gazed out of the small window at the grey scene of Pudong International Airport, his thumbs clicked open the flimsy locks of one of the briefcases which rested across his knees. As he opened the lid of the case, he smiled greedily as his eyes focussed on the neat rows of dozens of crisp US dollar bills filling the volume of the box. From each note, the face of Benjamin Franklin seemed to smile back at him like a Mona Lisa portrait.

Each case contained ten million US dollars. Marcel was well on his way to securing an untraceable supply chain for future shipments of illegally logged Rosewood. He planned to achieve this by purchasing control of the Malagasy national railway network.

*****

Chapter 2

The Harvard Club

Guy Lucan loved living in Manhattan. New York was his favourite city, and he had moved there four years earlier. He sat at a table on the sidewalk of 54th Street just off Madison at one of his regular Italian restaurants. In front of him was a dish of freshly made basil and spinach ravioli, and beside him a large bowled wine glass half full of chilled Gavi de Gavi wine which had been bottled in Sicily. As he wiped his mouth on the linen napkin and savoured the contrasting tastes of pasta and Pecorini cheese, he contemplated the afternoon ahead of him.

Guy's silver grey full shock of hair belied his age. Though basking in his early fifties, his expatriate lifestyle between New York and Africa ensured that he was young at heart and was constantly rejuvenated by working and socialising with a younger generation. For the past two years he had been living in Madagascar where the average age of the Malagasy population was under thirty – which had helped a lot with his age self-doubts and soothed both his ego, and his heart rate.

When the waiter returned, Guy ordered a double espresso and pointedly asked for 'the bill' rather than the colloquial American 'check' – but the waiter feigned any reaction, and to his disappointment understood immediately his request. His thoughts quickly reverted back to the afternoon ahead, and the surprise request he had received that morning for a meeting with his employer. It was a surprise because normally his leave was sacred, and was the only four weeks of the year when he had little or no contact with Head Office in mid-town New York. But his boss had insisted that it was urgent, and he knew that Guy had chosen to spend this summer in Manhattan rather than at one of his usual retreats in the Indian Ocean. The fact that an unscheduled meeting had been called had not intrigued Guy; impromptu business meetings were now common place. What had intrigued him, however, was the location of the rendezvous.

Guy signed his credit card slip after calculating the waiter's obligatory seventeen percent tip, gathered his weathered Papworth leather briefcase and strode off down the street in the direction of Fifth Avenue.

The fall sunshine was strong on his face as he negotiated the stop lights at each intersection and gazed upwards at the skyline of the nearby skyscrapers. Fifteen minutes later he paused at the busy intersection of Fifth Avenue and 44th Street and held up his briefcase on his knee against the wall of the adjacent building. He opened the case and took out a carefully furled silk tie which he had chosen especially for the occasion when he got the call from his office that morning. It was a silk printed Chanel design with an oxford-blue background and colourful steam train images tessellated across the fabric. With deft movements honed from years of preparatory boarding school practice, Guy put the tie around his neck and made a very passable and fashionable knot without the need for any mirror. It was a skill which he possessed but which he did not even know he had, a reflex action learned from years of dressing himself en route to the dining hall at Spartan English private schools during his youth.

As Guy rounded the corner from Fifth Avenue onto 44th he glanced at himself in a large brass plate beside a flight of imposing stone steps leading up into the solid building in front of him. In the reflection of the highly polished metal he checked out the arrangement of his tie – though he knew that the knot was good, a visual check confirmed that his hands were still adept at creating an acceptable cravate.

He turned from the wall plate and started bounding up the stairs with renewed confidence. As he disappeared into the heart of the building the afternoon sun shone brightly on the reflective name plate. Any of the hundreds of passing pedestrians could easily read the two word sign – Harvard Club.

At the top of the stairs Guy walked past two uniformed commissionaires and marched purposefully across the cavernous reception hall. It was quiet and cool inside the club, and the constant murmur of the Fifth Avenue traffic and honking taxis outside was muted by the thick stone walls of this historic temple-like building. As Guy approached the Secretary's Desk to sign in, a familiar voice called out his name from the corner of the hall behind him.

'Lucan! Lucan! Glad you thought to bring a tie with you. I didn't and these jokers won't let me into the bar.'

Guy turned around to see his desk bound employer and superior standing embarrassed at the side of the main hall of the club where the commissionaires asked improperly attired guests to wait like children in the naughty corner. Guy felt a twinge of smugness as he walked over towards Colonel Colquhoun; it was not often that he was able to be better prepared than his alma mater, but in this instance he had been able to outdo his ex-military boss. Though Anthony Colquhoun had worn his habitual herringbone jacket from the office to the club, he was not in the habit of sporting a necktie during the muggy conditions of late August in Manhattan. For this reason he was incorrectly dressed for entry into the Harvard Club in New York, even on a hot late summer afternoon.

'I see you conveniently have a tie on,' said the colonel as he reached out to shake Guy's hand. Typical, thought Guy, that his boss of over seven years would not even consider giving him the benefit of the doubt of knowing the etiquette in this club.

'I have reciprocal dining rights here through my membership at the Oxford & Cambridge Club in Pall Mall,' he replied with satisfaction. 'So I know the form here, and have eaten in the club dining room several times. Let me see what I can organise for you at the Secretary's Desk.' The colonel conceded meekly that in his terms he had been outranked by Guy Lucan on this occasion, and graciously accepted defeat.

Guy returned to the large mahogany counter in the centre of the hall and spoke in hushed tones to the concierge behind. After a few moments Guy returned to his employer and presented him with a long thin paper packet which contained a Harvard Club necktie. 'They put it on my account, so you can wear it now and just explain that you are my guest,' said Lucan. The Colonel accepted the package with genuine thanks, and withdrew to the men's cloakroom to don the tie.

A few moments later, Colonel Colquhoun and Guy Lucan walked side by side through the half glassed swing doors into the Oak Room bar of the Harvard Club.

At about the same time as the barman in the club was serving Guy Lucan with his usual Tio Pepe dry sherry on the rocks, the Gulfstream jet carrying Marcel Ravatomanga back from China was touching down at Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam airport in Mauritius.

During the long flight Marcel had held onto the two briefcases in the seat beside him. He had counted and recounted the money four or five times just to convince himself that the deal was real – and each time he had confirmed the figures, and the future possible trading which he could achieve through Kotler Chi. He was now convinced that this contact was the breakthrough which he had been waiting and searching for over the past few years. Finally he had found the right connection and safe conduit through which he could sell rosewood into the lucrative Far East furniture market. So engrossed had his mind been in the potential for generating cash from this new partnership that he had not even thought once about the Marseillaise stewardess during the ten hour flight. Although Marcel would never know it, her thoughts had been full of the long weekend layover which the flight to China had earned her at an east coast beach resort in Mauritius fully paid for by her fledgling airline employer – such a rare occurrence, that she had arranged for her girlfriend lover to fly out from France and meet her in Port Louis.

Adolpho Brignoli was a tall and immaculately presented man. He stood by the empty fire place in the Oak Room bar and rested one foot on the bottom rung of the leather studded club fender. Guy placed him instinctively as Italian – either second generation or that Upper East Side mix of the best of American East Coast breeding with a dash of Tuscany thrown in. His suit was exquisitely cut, possibly Brioni. Guy felt a twinge of envy – Brioni was James Bond's favoured tailor and he found himself looking for that additional volume under the left arm sleeve which housed 007's Beretta. But Adolpho's suit was conventional, and Guy soon learned that it had been bespoke made for a senior World Bank officer rather than an MI6 agent.

The Colonel made the necessary introductions and explained to Mr. Brignoli that Guy Lucan worked for his railway management consultancy firm, and for the past two years had held the position of Directeur Générale of Malarail, the Malagasy national railway company. He further explained Guy's credentials were earned from years of previous railway management positions, and that in addition he represented the World Bank's significant financial interest in the railway rebuilding programme, sanctioned by Washington in Madagascar four years earlier as part of President Clinton's AGOA initiative.

'So tell me, Mr. Lucan, what is Madagascar like? I've travelled to Africa many times, but never to that country. In fact, I don't even know if Madagascar is technically part of that continent – it's only a small place, isn't it?' said Adolpho in a smug and all-knowing manner which immediately annoyed Guy. But innocently Adolpho Brignoli had played directly into Guy Lucan's hands