The Guanaco Affair

By Jim Reay

Behind the glitter of Queenland's Gold Coast, danger lurks. A blameless Brisbane woman is abducted. A man is murdered. Danger is imminent. 

Sam Hall, IIB agent, is in Brisbane on leave when he gets caught up innocently in the fallout from the kidnap of a Chinese woman and the discovery of a murdered man behind the Queensland Gold Coast. The clues to the mystery have tentacles that stretch back into history. 

IIB must join the dots across several countries and The Guanaco List – a missing record of Argentinians, accused of crimes against humanity in the Dirty War of 1976–1982 – is implicated. It was allegedly hidden where a huge battle was fought on the Falkland Islands in 1982. Can it identify a criminal support network and bring justice for Los Desaparecidos – the Disappeared? 

The timelines are short. With the help of a retired Scottish spook, a Vietnam veteran and victims of the Dirty War, Sam races to unravel a complex mystery in the quiet valleys behind the glitter of the Gold Coast. 

Author, Jim Reay, brings back the characters of the clandestine Netherlands-based International Investigation Bureau in The Guanaco Affair. A thrilling 2008 crime mystery, it intrigues and informs readers with its interwoven stories about the long-term effects of war on the survivors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Reay
• Release date: Mar 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780648473909

Book preview

Chapter 1

South-East Queensland, Australia. Sunday 16 November 2008

It is in their eyes and their stance. These men have been used to torturing and killing … with as little emotion as when swatting flies.

Sam Hall hopes that he looks innocent – bewildered and fearful, with his hands held high – all the years of special forces’ training to resist interrogation. But, inside, the adrenalin is coursing through him.

Without weapons, could he take them out?

Very doubtful. They are both standing well beyond a flying kick distance and at a ninety-degree angle to each other. They have done this before … and often.

He now knows that he is looking into the faces of two of the most dreaded men from the Argentinian junta’s death squads of the late 1970s and early 1980s – the ‘Dirty War’. But that was over a quarter of a century ago … this is here and now in a valley behind the sparkling holiday strip and beaches of the Queensland Gold Coast.

What terror must those helpless people have felt being faced with either of these two in those horrible days of Los Desaparecidos – the Disappeared. Or had it just been a fatalistic resignation, with the hope that others would take their place in the resistance movement … to get the story out?

Perhaps, he could distract them, duck, head for a corner and just flee for his life. Sam is part of a team. Where is the team? They don’t know his current predicament.

Back in the junta days, the leader on the right was called Mala Bestia, Evil Beast – the other would have been El Miedo, the Fear. Their nicknames were very well known, although only a few victims ever survived to tell the tale.

Or maybe, he should just attack and go out in a noisy blaze of glory. The commotion might give the others a chance to get to his captors. But his role is to get court-admissible evidence to convict them; not to be a fallen hero. Others had tried the heroics in the past, but the problem is still here, staring at him.

His thoughts continue to roll.

‘So, your name and … who are you really?’ the man on the right asks.

Arms starting to strain from being held high, Sam answers, ‘I’m Sam Hall. I just work for the caterer.’ His tone is a cross between angry and frustrated. ‘What’s this all about? Let me go. I need to get back to the kitchen. They are waiting for me.’

‘You are a liar, Sam Hall. I am an expert at picking liars. What have you seen here?’

‘Seen? Nothing. I’m here to work. I’m just a caterer’s assistant, for God’s sake.’ He gives an exasperated gasp. ‘I see a man with a gun holding me against a wall while you call me a liar. Now, let me go.’ The pitch of his voice rises. ‘This is madness!’

The man responds with a yellow-toothed smile … predatory almost. ‘Do you know who I am?’

Sam affects confusion at being asked the question, before answering guilelessly. ‘The Mayordomo calls you El Maestro.’

‘Indeed.’ The teeth flash again. ‘The Master. Marco, here, and I have dealt with people like you for years and years. And still you come, pretending innocence.’

Suddenly, a large knife appears in his right hand.

‘You are not frightened, Sam Hall. Why is that? Why are you not frightened?’

‘I am frightened! Very fuckin frightened! Let me go!’

El Maestro merely smiles, a cat with a mouse smile, and quietly says, ‘Do you think you can attack a man with a weak left arm … and perhaps overpower him? Is that what you are thinking, Sam Hall?’

Marco remains stationary and the gun hand never wavers. There is a patient inevitability about their actions.

El Maestro continues, ‘I think you underestimate us, Mr Hall. Like so many before you.’

True, perhaps … in one sense, given that he has now been caught.

Sam Hall is only in Queensland by coincidence to recuperate after a failed mission in Spain with the Dutch International Investigations Bureau and he has become embroiled in this dangerous business almost by accident.

But, underestimated?

He certainly shouldn’t have. Sam’s father, Andy Hall, had been a sergeant with the British Parachute Regiment in the Falkland Islands’ war of 1982, against the Argentinian junta. Andy’s father didn’t often talk of that conflict but when he had, it was to speak of how hard the battles had been.

While the media in each country had engaged in jingoistic bravado, the fighting soldiers on the ground didn’t ever underestimate their opponents. Close proximity to imminent death has a way of focusing the mind, the training and the actions.

And, at this moment, Sam is in the same life or death situation. Yes, he definitely understands the closeness of potential death. He has no illusions about these two men in front of him. His trained mind is still running through all possible scenarios … and the most likely outcome is not pleasant. He is helpless in the hands of two experienced, sociopathic killers.

He looks again into their eyes and …

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Chapter 2

Upper Mount Gravatt, Brisbane, Australia. Thursday 27 November 2008

‘Arthur, the general public often talk about flight or fight as the only responses to danger … but there is so much more to it than that. And it speaks volumes that you, as the director of a Dutch investigation agency, would be out here so quickly with such an open mind – prepared to listen and learn.’ Dr Greg Steinhardt is a Queensland medical consultant, a specialist in a range of post-traumatic stress disorders, PTSD … although he dislikes blanket terms which can so easily miss the nuances of individuals’ reactions to horrific situations.

Arthur Blair is the joint director of the International Investigations Bureau (IIB), based in the Netherlands – an organisation which he formed in 2004 with a Swedish counter-espionage agent, Sven Gulbrandson, to operate ethically and cross-nationally beyond the rules and protocols which tend to stymie national law enforcement authorities. IIB is frequently contracted to work, with the covert permission of national agencies, to collect court-admissible evidence against international criminals who use the constraints of national legal systems to hide from justice.

On the surface, Arthur is in Queensland talking to this trauma specialist because he had committed his agent, Sam Hall, to assist in investigating a situation in co-operation with Australian and Queensland police forces. But, beneath the surface, Arthur is feeling a rare sense of guilt. It had been his decision to send Sam to Brisbane for recuperation after a mission in Spain had backfired. The Spanish operation had failed to get the information required and Sam had lost a very close friend in the messy shoot-out – never an easy emotional situation for a team leader to deal with.

Sam was to get a few months in the sub-tropical paradise of Queensland, to recharge and to take time to study some Asian languages as a distraction from his anguish. It was the gesture of a caring organisation which looks after its valued staff.

However, Arthur and Sven were also aware of the chatter in the dark espionage networks that two potential targets, distantly associated with the Spanish operation, might be living in the Philippines … and potentially interested in moving to Australia.

While Arthur didn’t know that the situation would blow up in Queensland, he had an inkling, a hunch, that the Philippines circumstances could have a connection with Queensland. Sven had disagreed with sending Sam Hall to Brisbane for his rest and reinvigoration for that reason. But Arthur’s persuasion had eventually placed a vulnerable agent in harm’s way – hence the guilt. He had known … and now he was questioning his judgement.

Should he have realised that Sam might have been caught up in this?

But how could he have? It had just been an idea at the time, guesswork … one of their many IIB prescient moves.

Was the blow-up just an accident or coincidence?

It seemed to have started on Remembrance Day – only a little over two weeks ago …

Chapter 3

Brisbane, Australia. Tuesday 11 November 2008

The car radio continues its run through the 6 pm catalogue of local sensational highlights.

The badly burned body of an unidentified male in his late teens or early twenties has been found after a bushfire swept through on the Nerang-Murwillumbah Road just above the Hinze Dam. Police are investigating. They say that the circumstances are suspicious …

Sam Hall listens quietly in his Audi, parked beside the Brisbane River in the St Lucia grounds of Queensland University. Every few minutes, multi-coloured lorikeets head noisily for their evening roosts, drowning the background news prattle with their squawking dart-like paths overhead.

This is Sam’s holiday reward as an agent for IIB, the International Investigations Bureau – the chance to enjoy the warmth and scents of Brisbane in November, away from the chill of his British homeland and his base in the Netherlands. He is taking the paid opportunity to learn a little Mandarin at the university’s evening language classes for beginners – a one-term course. He has already attended four sessions and it is proving to be a seriously difficult challenge for a man not attuned to the subtleties of tones in speech.

Sam has grown up in countries that speak English and the traditional Western European tongues. Most of his work for The Hague-Rotterdam-based IIB has been in familiar cultures, albeit with a couple of brief military sorties into Iraq and Afghanistan. But the world is changing. Asian languages are definitely the way of the twenty-first century, especially Chinese and Indian dialects – and Sam knows that he is seriously deficient in those.

He is distracted as he gathers his briefcase of notes on the passenger seat, in readiness for the short stroll to the seminar room, just a five-minute walk away.

The chatter from another cloud of feathered frenzy draws Sam’s eyes away from his car park, as the birds swoop towards a large leafy tree. In the fast-fading light, swaying branches and shadowy tree trunks cast gloomy shapes at counterpoint to the stoic security lights which brighten the pathways and roads.

That it is when he sees it.

It looks like a mugging – a bent-over shape slowly collapses to the ground at the base of huge tree trunk, a hundred metres away. Two figures, one large, the other thin and smaller, leave the scene fast – heading away through the trees – while the falling shape lies crumpled in a heap … but moving.

He slides from the Audi and moves stealthily, the product of years spent honing his senses for danger – and he is unarmed, in the conventional sense. However, his thirty-three-year-old, 185 centimetres of trained muscle would be a match for most situations in close-quarter combat.

The only sound is a wheezing, as the shape gasps for breath. There is no-one close – only some slow-moving distant figures on a path leading up into the buildings and four laughing girls on a faraway floodlit tennis court.

The gasping man has thick dark curly hair and is still doubled over in pain. Just visible under his ear, a trickle of blood oozes sluggishly from a small gash behind his chin bone.

Sam raises the man’s upper body to let more air into his lungs. He is light. Winded, badly winded – but there are no other obvious wounds beyond the red congealing nick.

‘You’re okay. Winded. Just like on the football field.’ He tries to sound encouraging.

The man turns his face to look at his blond-haired helper, tries to nod and force a smile but the combined effort of breathing and controlling the pain in his stomach are taking precedence.

‘Take your time. There’s no-one else around now.’

Sam keeps scanning his eyes around the balmy normality of a Tuesday evening in the peaceful parkland setting – hardly some inner-city alleyway or den of iniquity. There are no danger signs anywhere. Occasional pairs of students are making their way purposefully towards evening lecture theatres and tutorials. He studies the victim: slim, baseball-style jacket, jeans and joggers. A U of Q backpack lies on the ground.

‘Attacked,’ the man croaks. ‘Big bastard. Threatened me. Knife. Punched in the guts.’

‘Is your wallet still there? Phone?’

The man winces as he taps at his front jeans pocket. ‘Yeh. I keep them on the front. Harder for pickpockets.’ He rolls his body to rest his back against the tree trunk and lets out a pained gasp as he tries to relax. ‘Might have done a rib or two.’

‘Did you know them?’

‘No. But they knew me. Warned me off! Big fella. Tatts like a bikie – on his neck and chin. This beating was a taster, he said. He had a knife. Big silver one.’ He touches his chin and feels the wetness of his blood. ‘The bastard’s cut me too. Is it bad?’ His eyes widen and he shudders.

‘Just a scratch. Are you able to stand yet? I’ll get you to the police.’

‘Jeez. I was just doing a friend a favour. A few enquiries – that was all. I’m first-year journalism. It’s what we try to do – to learn the business.’

Sam nods as he listens. ‘Where do you live?’

‘Mount Gravatt. I was heading for my bus. My girlfriend is here though – in the residence. I’ve just left her. Help me up, please.’ He reaches up for assistance while wincing at the pain in his abdomen.

Sam leans over him to lift under the armpits – very light, just a teenager – when he suddenly hesitates at the waft from the young man, ‘Phaw!’ and he asks, ‘Do you have a change of clothes?’

The young man’s expression changes simultaneously with a new uncomfortable sensation, as Sam advises with a wry grin, ‘A punch in the gut can do that.’

The victim’s startled face is registering his realisation that his bladder and his bowel must have released a bit in the ordeal. ‘Aw, no! Can’t get on the bus like this. I’ve got my tracksuit in my back pack. We’ve been playing squash. Sorry. Sorry about all this. Oh, I’m Mike. Mike McEwan.’

‘I’m Sam. Let me get you to your girl’s place. Get you cleaned up. Is it far? I’ve a class to get to.’

Sam drapes a plastic sheet from the boot over the passenger seat to protect from Mike’s discomfort and drives to the residence car park … windows fully down and the air blowing hard.

Mike takes out his phone. ‘Thanks for getting me here. I’ll just call Janet. She’ll let me in. Security.’ He nods towards a warden’s office inside the closed main door. ‘They’d wonder what you are doing here.’ He forces a grin, wincing at his pain and the smell, as the phone starts to connect.

She looks as if she has just showered; towel wound around her hair, dressed in a deep-blue UQ tee-shirt over grey track pants – and a concerned expression on her attractive Asian face.

‘This is Janet. Janet … Sam.’ Mike makes the introductions. Then to his girl, ‘Got mugged on the way to the bus. Sam helped me. But I’m in a bit of a mess.’

Janet’s nose wrinkles in an understanding concern at the waft and she looks distractedly at the blond man who has come to her boyfriend’s assistance.

She shakes her fast-unravelling towel from her long dark hair. ‘Hello, Sam. Thank you for helping Mike.’ She gives an apologetic grin. ‘Just had a shower. Sorry! The towel wasn’t tied properly.’

Sam smiles into her dark eyes, appreciating her accent with the very subtle tones that he has been trying to learn.

She wrestles the annoying towel free. With it finally draped over her shoulder, she shrugs. ‘It can wait.’ She turns with a flick of her damp hair to give Sam her full attention. ‘I am Janet Li. Mike’s girlfriend. Thank you again.’ She accompanies her thanks with a white-toothed smile of appreciation.

‘Bú kèqì,’ replies Sam. ‘Not at all.’ The chance to practise his fledgling Mandarin.

‘You speak Chinese?’ Her interested smile broadens further.

‘Just heading to my beginners class.’ He grins at her politeness. ‘Nice to meet you.’ He turns to Mike. ‘You will report this to the police?’

But a look of fear washes across the young man’s face again.

‘What?’ asks Janet, as she takes in his expression. ‘What’s going on?’

‘They didn’t steal – just threatened me about the enquiries I’ve been making for Leon. They worked me over and told me to back off.’

‘It’s your call, Mike,’ says Sam, in an open-palmed shrug. ‘Take my mobile number in case you need me as a witness.’

Numbers exchanged, Sam wishes them well as Janet supports the limping Mike into the building. At the car, he returns the plastic cover to the boot and leaves the windows well down. He switches on the radio for the drive back to the car park.

Updated reports about the body in the bushfire near the Hinze Dam. The police are treating it as a homicide and are appealing for information from the public. A male person, late teens, early twenties, about 175 centimetres, slim build. Call Crime Stoppers if you have any information.

‘Can’t get away from it even in peaceful Queensland,’ he mutters at the radio, as the powerful Audi sweeps back into the car park space he had occupied just twenty minutes earlier. Now he would be rushing not to be last into the seminar.

His phone rings.

Sven Gulbrandson – one of the two directors of IIB, the International Investigations Bureau. It would be the start of the working day in Sven’s office on Maasboulevard in Rotterdam. Rare to get a direct call from one of his bosses, especially when on leave.

Never one to waste time on small talk, Gulbrandson advises, ‘Just wanted you to know, Sam, that we have received word that the Argentinian Government is preparing to move once more against the fugitive criminals from the Dirty War … not before time. They are after any good evidence on the big ones; those who would be on The Guanaco List – although it has still not been located, even after twenty-six years of searching. I know your keen interest in this matter, so I wanted you to be in the loop. Be prepared to come off leave. You may be needed soon.’

‘Where, Sven? Back into Spain?’

‘Perhaps. Could even be not too far from your present part of the world,’ he replies mysteriously. ‘Either Arthur or I will be in touch soon. Just a bit busy at the minute. Wanted you to be aware though, in case. Adjö.’ He gives his customary Swedish farewell and hangs up before his agent can ask anything more.

The Arthur is Arthur Blair, founding director of the IIB with Gulbrandson and a former senior prosecutor at the International Courts of Justice in The Hague. Now, with Sven, they run an elite organisation which quietly investigates crimes against humanity across international borders – with a view to getting court-admissible evidence where national agencies might be restricted by their operational protocols.

Sam chooses to walk at a steady pace towards the languages building. The enigmatic words of the director are still rolling through his mind.

He is indeed very interested in the Argentinian situation. His father, Andy Hall, had been a sergeant with 2 Para at the battles of Goose Green and Wireless Ridge in the Falklands in 1982. Although his dad has seldom talked about the detail of those conflicts, there is a bond across the eras that all soldiers have in common. Sam has been with special forces in more modern war zones. The mutual pride is there between father and son. But, about the Falklands … his father has just said that they did what they had to do – and at a price. He’d prefer not to go back over it.

Goose Green had been part of the British response to the Argentinian invasion of the islands which each claimed had belonged to them for centuries – and it was also the start of the last death throes of the junta, the regime which had conducted the Dirty War in Argentina.

But Sam’s interest is also current. On behalf of IIB, he was part of a concerted international push earlier in the year, to locate ‘the list’ – the names of criminals involved in the actual disappearance of thousands of people, as well as the powerful shadowy figures behind the scenes who sponsored such a government-endorsed culture. The Bureau had been tasked with an assignment to follow promising leads, eventually to Valencia in Spain; resources allocated, Sam’s team inserted – but with no success, a vicious fire-fight and a close friend of Sam’s killed in the process.

Yes, Sam has an interest.

He touches the poppy on his lapel. His mind slowly moves from recreation mode and back into ‘active ready’.

There is a cause much greater than himself – and he remembers absent mates, as he always does on 11 November in every year.

He walks into the languages building, still wondering about Sven Gulbrandson.

He knows that the Swede’s background had been in counter-espionage in his native country before he had moved on to a more international role, based in Brussels, for the European community. It was through an association with Arthur Blair that the two had founded the International Investigations Bureau four years ago. Arthur is a calm canny Scotsman – older than Sven. They form a formidable directing team in a niche market – and they are highly prized by national governments and their agencies.

In its short time of operation, the Bureau has become renowned for its prescient nature – an ability to have operatives and intelligence gatherers in the right places before serious actions actually begin.

And that is precisely what Sam is wondering at this moment.

Has either the intuitive Sven Gulbrandson or Arthur Blair placed him in Brisbane for a short recreation because either suspects that something might happen soon in this part of the world?

Might that something be to do with The Guanaco List, or a dark part of South American history?

Chapter 4

Near Buenos Aires, Argentina. Tuesday 30 March 1982

It is 30 March, 1982 – a Tuesday. The date will be forever emblazoned in Sebastian’s mind.

She looks so different now.

Was it only three weeks ago that he had watched Maria and Edgardo arrested in El Centro? Maria – so bold, defiant – head thrown back, dark curls waving. Edgardo, quietly cavalier, resistant to the end.

They had both known it was over from that moment but they were staunch and proud as they faced their fate. Their insurance would be passed on. Eventually, the secretive chain, of which they were a part, would see justice achieved. They had that strong belief and … they would divulge nothing to the secret police.

Nor would he, Sebastian, the conscripted soldier.

He had worn no uniform as he’d observed what had been happening … in fear, a terrified confusion, as notions of right and wrong jumbled in his mind.

He had looked on, frozen in a paralysis of inaction, when they were taken, and he had done nothing. What could he have done? It was kill or be killed.

Maria and Edgardo had always been his heroes when he was growing up.

Now, on this day, the beat of the helicopter rotors is thrumming as a cruel conscience in his brain, even through the muffling headphones. Whistles of cold Atlantic air carry rattling and metallic smells around the chilled helicopter cabin. Hundreds of metres below, the silvery crepe surface of the ocean crabs silently along the coast of his homeland – a place that no longer has any warmth or nurture for him. The sights, sounds and smells of Núñez have forever severed those bonds.

‘Ahora, ahora! Now!’ the pilot’s voice drills through his headphones. The burly men pull open the door in a blast of freezing air and stare coldly at him.

Sebastian looks at the bashed and bleeding shapes, sprawled unconscious on the floor of the cabin. There had been no need to tie their hands or feet. They still breathed, in their drugged and battered inertia; broken shadows of the proud resistors of El Centro, three weeks before.

Now it is kill or be killed. How can he ever face his brother or mother again?

‘Ahora!’ Now. Push.

The shout spurs Sebastian into action and, braced against the cabin wall, his feet shove his past and present out into the void. He watches the flailing bodies spiral towards a cold voracious sea below.

Their world has ended … and his has too. He knows.

At the same moment as that thought is embedding in his mind, two thousand citizens of Buenos Aires are being taken off to prisoner detention centres from a huge protest rally in the Plaza de Mayo – the ‘national monument’ square in the centre of Buenos Aires, named after the 1810 May revolution, the start of Argentina’s war of independence from Spain which eventually established Argentina’s right to appoint its own leaders … and to protest legally.

But it is not May … and these are terrible times.

Chapter 5

Chile, South America. Friday 2 April 1982

Is it the look in the big brown eyes or the twitching alert ears? Maybe it is the warm fawn and white furry coat? Whatever, it is instant communication between animal and the ten-year-old girl.

‘This is the one!’ Alison McKinnon looks at her father and says, ‘He is beautiful, Dad. Pleeease!’

Rod McKinnon’s face and hands have been weathered by the harsh climate of the Falkland Islands. His short stocky frame exudes the toughness required of sheep farmers on the South Atlantic islands.

He has brought his wife and two daughters to Chile to buy a breeding pair of guanacos, the hardy native herbivore of the South American high plains.

Back on the Falklands, he had thought he might need a sales pitch to convince his daughters to travel to Chile with him on what would be, essentially, a boring animal-buying mission.

‘Guanacos,’ he had said to his girls, ‘are the genetic ancestors of llamas and alpacas – wild animals with thick double-fur coats, the coarser outer hair covering the soft undercoat of highly prized wool.’

They had looked bemused at his opening pitch, but then he is often so serious about farming.

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He continued. ‘The word in breeding circles is that guanacos are considerably smarter than sheep and have a strong protective herd instinct. I don’t just want to rear guanacos for their fleeces. I want them as guards, at lambing time, for our sheep flocks.’

The girls still looked confused.

They know that their sheep wander freely on the central-west coast of East Falkland Island … and that something to guard them would be a good idea; something that could stay out in the open all night, longer than the dogs.

They keep looking at their father.

And what is there to do in Chile? At best, it will be a change from the islands. At worst, it could be quite bad, trailing around farms with their businessman dad.

Jean McKinnon had interrupted her husband at that point with, ‘Girls, guanacos are cute.’

And Rod just shook his head at his wife in wonder as his daughters, Alison and Peggy, suddenly beamed with anticipation.

‘Rod,’ Jean had whispered indulgently, ‘they’re girls, not sheep farmers.’

‘Dad? You could buy him on looks alone. Look at those eyes; the colour of his coat. Da-aad?’ implores Alison.

Alison, and her younger sister Peggy, are visiting a farm in the Chilean hills behind the capital, Santiago. It was a real surprise when her father had told them a week before that the whole family would be going to the mainland for a few days … to buy cute animals.

She hadn’t even known what guanacos were, back then. She had heard about llamas from school – even alpacas, but not guanacos. She understood that they lived in the Andes Mountains.

Her father breeds sheep in the rough grassy country around their home in Darwin and their close neighbour, Goose Green, on East Falkland. He is always super intense, keen for the girls to understand the importance of good stock. Boring!

Now he is planning to breed this llama-like creature called a guanaco.

Alison couldn’t have cared less about good stock but she is enormously excited about going to the mainland – and not being bored.

Even more so when her father had shown her a picture of a guanaco.

‘They are cute, Mum,’ she had announced with grinning endorsement. ‘Really cute.’

Rod McKinnon has bigger things on his mind – although, he knows nothing should be more important than his girls.

This trip to Chile is really important. But he has a sense of impending doom – that his island way of life is about to become even more isolated and there is only a small window of opportunity to get in and make the purchase of these guanacos.

Everything has been planned in a rush because a military junta is in power in Argentina. Bloody idiots, the lot of them. But their hysterics have every potential to cut the trading routes to South America.

Argentina’s economy is going down the plug-hole.