The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel Read online

  The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings

  A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel

  By Michael Yudov

  Copyright © 2017 by Michael Yudov.

  Cover design by Michael Yudov.

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any forms or by any means without the prior written permission of the author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, places, brands and occurrences are used fictitiously.

  A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel

  The pilot of a geological aerial survey, Ted Dawson, is engaged in an exploration of iron ore deposits in the Brazilian selva. Agreeing to secretly sell obtained aerial survey data to an international commercial group, Ted is now involved in a criminal fraud and putting his life at deadly risk. Trying to escape, Ted transmits a copy of the aerial survey data to his brother, the banker and V.P.'s Assistant of Citecorp. Shortly after the transfer, his brother is found dead in his office. To investigate the mysterious murder, Citecorp hires Jeffry Claxton, a private detective and Ex-Member of British SAS. During the investigation, Jeffry, along with a group of the Canadian military, gains valuable information and discloses an international terrorist organization.

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Prologue

  Brazil, Amazonia Region, Northeast Sector, May 23, ‘96

  T

  he heat was beginning to get to him. He was stripped down to his shorts, and it was still beyond oppressive, it was like being broiled alive. At a low setting, so that it would take quite a while to cook, but cook he would. The jungle airstrip slashed through the greenery with a temporary feel. Nothing could hold back the rain forest for very long, that had been learned here a long time ago. Nothing except the most drastic of measures. Cut and burn seemed to work all right. After a good cut and burn, nothing would grow, nothing but a bit of scrub grass. Enough to feed the cattle for a year or two, then even the scrub grass was history. After the first rainy season, it changed again. Mud plains as far as the eye could see. That's what you ended up with, but it was hard to explain that to someone whose vision was focused on immediate survival for his family. Amazon cowboys. It was a hard territory to make your way in, and those who were hard sometimes managed to hold on. Sometimes.

  He finished gassing up the ‘plane, plugged the barrel of high octane fuel, tipped it on its side and slowly rolled it to the cover of the trees at the side of the airstrip. He made one more trip for the hand pump, and tucked it in next to the remaining barrels, pulling the canvas cover tight over the lot of it. He stood for a moment, almost naked, breathing hard, and swatted idly at a few bugs willing to brave the layer of supposedly deadly repellent he had placed between his skin and them. He looked up at the sky, then walked back to the 'plane and climbed in, pulling on his cotton jumpsuit before firing up the engines on the modified Cessna. The twin turboprops coughed into life with a sputtering roar, first the left, then the right. He gave the 'plane some left throttle, and began to turn in place. When he was one hundred and eighty degrees about face, he opened up on both engines, holding hard on the brakes until the roar was a satisfactory feeling in his bones. Releasing the brakes, he gave the craft its own head. Full throttle and a clear strip. The weight of the sensors he carried on this trip made the 'plane sluggish, but it behaved itself well enough to do the job. The first time he'd taken off from this airstrip he'd thought he was going to end up in the trees, with the 'plane spread out in a nice fire pattern for hundreds of yards in all directions around him.

  This was the fourth time he'd done it now, and he knew that it was a close thing, but it would work. It had worked before. As he cleared the canopy of the rain forest, about one hundred feet above the ground, multihued birds burst from cover on all sides. He couldn't hear them over the sound of the engines, but he knew what it would be like if he could. Screaming, screeching loud. Two years in this hot green hell was all he could stand. From one end of Brazil to the other, he had flown for the companies who would pay the bills. If this set of flights worked out just right, he would finally be able to start his own company. Then he'd let some other sky-jockey do the grunt jobs. It was time to get out, before it got him first. The forest was a living breathing thing here, and his biggest fear was going down. If you went down in this part of the world, it didn't matter how well you crashed. It was only a matter of time, a very short time, and you became one with the environment. Forever.

  He pulled out of his climb at two hundred and fifty feet, and checked his dials, coming around to a heading due west from his takeoff point. After about thirty minutes of steady cruising at one hundred and eighty miles an hour, he flipped on the recorder, and the sensors started feeding the geophysical data directly into the black box bolted into the space behind him, where the passenger seats used to be. As he passed over a group of seven small round lakes, he could feel it in his bones as the sensors went wild. It was the find of a lifetime.

  Amsterdam, June 13, ’96

  T

  he cocktail lounge of the Amsterdam Hilton hotel was quiet at that time of day. The baby grand piano sat silent at one end of the room. A lone waiter dressed in black slacks and shoes, with a white shirt and black vest, busied himself with the cleanup chores at the other end. It was just after the lunch rush, almost 3:00 PM. Two men sat at a table waiting. Neither one looked like they belonged together. One was an outdoorsy type with tousled blonde hair, just a shade too long for current fashion, dressed in khaki safari pants tucked into hiking boots. He had an old-fashioned brown leather flyers' jacket lying on the chair next to him, a bit incongruous given the warmth of the European summer.

  At first glance the image he gave was one of adventurous youth, but his eyes gave him away. His name was Ted Dawson, he was pushing forty-two and his eyes knew it. He had used them to view the life he had led as a free-lance pilot, working the globe any way he could, for more than twenty of those years.

  His companion could have been about the same age, but there was something about his look that made it hard to tell. He dressed casually, in sport slacks and blazer, with a white turtleneck. Even so, he was the one who looked the hardest. It couldn't be hidden. His hair was dark, and he smoked Pall Malls incess
antly while they waited. There was no conversation, only tension.

  While they were busy waiting, the object of their anticipation approached the table and sat down opposite them. The flyer had a hard time not showing his surprise. It was apparent that he didn’t know the new arrival.

  Heidi Meir, ninth in command of one Zurich’s' most aggressive young financial consortiums, had managed to outflank bigger fish than this in her time, and was confident that she would continue to do so for a long time to come. Her heart shaped face was framed by hair perfectly cut to do just that, and the pearl satin suit accentuated her summer blondness to the point where the overall effect was totally distracting.

  Ted Dawson was caught off guard, taken aback by Heidi’s' sheer beauty, and not quite sure that this was the person they were waiting for. She slowly leaned forward across the table, nodded to the man in the blazer and looked directly at the flyer.

  "Hello Mr. Dawson, I am very pleased to meet you. I am Ms. Meir." Her smile was controlled, and she did not offer her hand. "I thank you for coming so far to be here today. You have been very accommodating." Her voice became as controlled as her smile, and it was apparent that the time for dealing had arrived.

  "I am ready to do business gentlemen, and I don't want any mistakes. The price I am willing to pay for this information is five hundred thousand dollars American, as we have agreed. I have brought an initial payment of fifty thousand dollars."

  She pulled a slim tourist guidebook from her grey leather purse, and smiled as she placed it on the table. "I'm sure you will find the tour enlightening."

  The flyer picked up the booklet. It advertised a walking tour of the museums of Amsterdam. Inside was a bank deposit book, showing a balance of fifty thousand dollars U.S. The account was in his name, and the deposit had been made exactly three days prior to this meeting. He placed the booklet back on the table in front of him and waited silently.

  "Don't worry Mr. Dawson, the remaining ninety percent is ready to be deposited to the account. But, it is contingent on positive results. My people must be able to validate your raw data. You have been very thorough, and your results are quite exciting, but…, well frankly Mr. Dawson, for a half a million dollars, we must unwrap the package before paying the bill. The time frame for validation is twenty-four hours."

  She sat back, judging the effect her little speech had had on them. The waiter approached with a new round of drinks for the men, and a Perrier for the woman.

  Ted Dawson sighed tiredly and raised his glass of iced vodka to his lips, sipping deeply. The ice clinked as he slapped the glass down to the table. He had been waiting for three hours plus now, and the vodka had been replenished at a rate of about three per hour. That was as slowly as he could make himself go under the circumstances.

  "Well, Miss Meir, I have the info, and it's good, because not only did I fly the plane myself, but I processed the data as well. The Brazilians weren't looking for the same thing that I was. I found it and they didn't. That's the story. What I want is to profit from it, like any sane man would. I'm not in a position to do that alone. That's why you're here."

  The hard man turned to Ted. "This is the one, give her the data and the access code. We will have the answer by morning."

  There was hesitation on the flyers' face as he glanced from one to the other.

  The woman spoke. "You were approached in a Sao Paolo bar, by our mutual friend here, and questioned concerning the work you had done for the survey team. That's what started it all, and we were responsible for that, not you. Now you are in a position to profit generously from the work you have done. Do not throw away this opportunity without provocation! Let us assess the data, and we will determine the validity of your findings." She raised her glass in an anticipatory gesture of capitulation.

  The flyer hesitated only a moment, then responded in a like manner, raising his own glass. "Done. And one day is all you get. Then I take the data elsewhere." He poured the vodka down his throat, picked up the booklet from the table, and got to his feet, simultaneously pulling a computer cartridge tape from inside his jacket. The hard man stood to join him.

  Ted Dawson held the tape out to the woman, Heidi Meir. As he did, Heidi began to feel a rush of adrenaline flowing into her system, just as she always did when winning. Her inner body began to heat up, but she controlled her expression as she reached out to accept the tape. Then they were both holding on to it at the same time. Ted slowly released his grip. She looked up at him and asked the apparent question. "The access code?"

  He glanced at his companion, but his eyes were cold, green and cold. They held no moral support, or anything else for that matter.

  “FREEDOM.” He smiled a bit crookedly, but just for a moment. “I'll expect to hear from you by this time tomorrow. You should have all the proof you need by then."

  At that, he turned and walked out of the lounge, through the hotel lobby and towards the bank of elevators. The two others watched him leave.

  "Enrico, watch over him until I have a chance to process this." She gestured with the tape. “I will page you when I have the answer."

  He smiled inwardly, knowing that the information was true, and knowing what the response to that would be. The flyer had determined his own fate with that little parting speech. No matter that it wouldn’t have changed anything if he hadn’t said a word.

  Room 1303, Hilton Hotel, Amsterdam, June 14, ‘96

  I t was five seventeen in the morning. Ted Dawson lay in his bed wondering what kind of foolish hell he had gotten himself into this time. He felt that he had never been in so deep as now, and the dreams he had of operating his own survey airline company were evading him now, as surely as sleep had throughout the night. Slowly the light of dawn crept over the old port city, filtering weakly through the heavy drapes across the windows.

  Everything he had done to set this up kept running through his mind, and the one thread that ran through it all was the man Enrico. He was the one who had first approached him, on an R&R break in Sao Paulo, before the survey was half done. Just checking on all possible options for ‘His People’, as he had put it.

  There were rumors, they had spoken with an Amazon Indian from the area, stories of an ancient tribe had been discussed. A tribe that had the most powerful shaman of all time. A man who had become a god, before the Europeans had come into the rain forest. He held the power of the fire stones. All bowed before him, and before the fire stone.

  For an easy fifty grand, what would be the harm? An extra flight or two, no-one would ever notice the additional air time. If nothing came of it, then he was free and clear with some good money in his pocket. If there was something there, well that was another story. Then maybe he could make some real money. It was government land, and it was a government deal. There was nothing he could do on his own, but…, his People, maybe they were in a different position. That wasn't his concern. What was his concern being whether or not he wanted to make some money? Maybe lots of money. And he was in. Just like that.

  He wondered about his own character, and why he acted the way he did. Rich wasn't one of the things he dreamed about. In fact, if he had to say, he would say he was happy with his life. He just liked the edge a bit too much. Maybe that was why he'd become a pilot in the first place those many years ago. He realized suddenly that it wasn't just gut reaction to a tense situation. He was in trouble. What he had found was worth a fortune beyond his wildest dreams. To think that people in a position to profit from this sort of thing would even consider playing fair was extremely naive. Especially considering that he had offset the longitude and latitude references on the data and the graph files he had plotted from them. That put the Global Positioning Satellite System geographical fix off by just enough to give him the insurance he had wanted, to make sure that things went his way, his ‘Ace Card’. Except for the fact that he hadn’t realized at the time he had done the plots just how much money was at stake. Or who the people he was dealing with were. When he had finally come to u
nderstand, it had been just hours before departure from Rio, for the meeting the night before in the hotel lounge here in Amsterdam.

  Enrico had had a short talk with him in a sidewalk cafe along the esplanade of the main beach, in front of all of the luxury hotels. He asked Ted if he believed in what he was doing, and if he truly comprehended the high stakes of the game they played.

  Ted had asked him what the hell he was talking about, and there had been no response. Just a cold stare, from eyes as empty as a beggar’s bowl in the cold light of dawn.

  Just then there was a screeching of tires and a crash of breaking glass. Shouting broke out all around them as the patrons of the cafe jumped to their feet, some spilling drinks in the process. Enrico didn’t take his eyes off of Ted. He didn’t flinch or turn or comment. As the crowd spilled out into the street, Ted turned to see a woman’s body, draped over the broken windshield of a vintage Ford Falcon convertible, crashed into a large tree on the extended sidewalk of the promenade. She was obviously dead, lying at the angle she was. The driver had jumped onto the back of a motorcycle driven by another man, and was racing crazily through the traffic, already getting away. Pandemonium reigned supreme for several moments until the police arrived, then most of the people melted back into the flow of the city. There was one man left standing in the street, a tourist by the look of him. Youngish, maybe in his early thirties, and stunned out of his mind. He just stood there with his arms hanging down, staring at the wreck. Then he fell to his knees, suddenly, and roared out a name. “Linda, watch out for the car.” He yelled it loud enough to be heard for a block or two. He just yelled it out too late.

  Ted turned back to Enrico, who had not moved, or gazed away. Enrico then had said to him, “Defeat surrounds us in so many ways. Often, we don’t stop to realize how much we have to lose. It is always prudent to have friends who can help you, protect you when you need it most. Especially in a foreign land. Let us go now.” And they calmly got up and left for the hotel to pick up their bags, and head to the airport. Ted hadn’t been sure of just what he’d seen, until Amsterdam. Until this last night of sleeplessness. Thinking without being able to stop. The terror had built.