Free Age of Voodoo by James Lovegrove Page B

department either.
    They passed sunbathers who were lounging beside a crisp blue swimming pool, sipping drinks, fiddling with their smartphones, scrolling through books on their e-readers, plugged into music on their MP3 players, yelling at their children—all blissfully oblivious to the hostility simmering between Lex and Buckler, the potential for bone-crunching violence.
    Then the two men were on the beach, striding across sand like muscovado sugar, fine-grained and fawn. They walked until they reached the beach’s end, where coconut palms grew thick and tourists were few and far between. They were well out of earshot of the hotel, distant specks to the unaided eye.
    “I’d prefer this not to come down to a smackdown between us,” Buckler said. “We’re meant to be co-operating. Special relationship and such.”
    “I’m happy to co-operate,” said Lex. “What I will not accept is some bloke who thinks he’s hot shit waltzing in and taking advantage. Whatever your mission is, Wilberforce Allen and Albertine Montase have no part in it. I draw the line there, and you do not cross it.”
    “You, Mr Dove, if I may say, are arguing from a position of total ignorance. You wouldn’t be so quick to make blanket statements like that if you had the first clue what we’re up against and how urgent it is that we see the matter resolved.”
    “Ignorant I may be, but some things are non-negotiable, and this is one of them.”
    “Has it occurred to you that your friends might volunteer their services, willingly, if asked?”
    “Whether that’s the case or not, I’m not prepared to let you ask them or put undue pressure on them in any way. Because you will, and they’re good people—innocents—and I won’t have them placed in harm’s way, even if it is with their consent.”
    Wearily Buckler shook his head. “You know, it’s a shame. I was hoping you and I would be able to settle this with a reasoned, gentlemanly exchange of views.”
    “Then, lieutenant, back down. Simple as that.”
    “No can do, ace. Let me just say that in eight seconds I could have you on the ground, in a chokehold, unconscious. And all’s I’d have to do is maintain the pressure for a few seconds more, starve your brain of blood and oxygen, and that’d be that. Lights out. Permanently.”
    “Of course you could,” said Lex. “And by the same token, I could grab you, spin your round, take hold of you from behind by the jaw with both hands, and kick your legs out from under you. You’d fall, and your own bodyweight would separate your skull from your spinal column at the Atlas bone.”
    “It could happen,” said Buckler nonchalantly. “Or I could slam your head backwards against that there palm tree trunk—shatter the back of your skull. What’d kill you, though, is your brain getting hurled forward, tearing against the inside of its case.”
    “Funny you should mention palm trees,” Lex replied. “My speciality is making it look as though someone has died through mishap rather than design. I use what’s around me. I often improvise. See these coconuts lying around?” There were several on the beach, smooth green seed pods the size of rugby balls. “People get killed by those all the time. They can fall from the tree right down onto your cranium, from a height of thirty feet or more, and each is a solid thing weighing up to five pounds when fresh. Wham! Instant fatality. A body gets discovered here, at this very spot, with a bloodstained coconut nearby, and the coroner will draw only one conclusion. It won’t occur to him that someone might have slammed the coconut down on the deceased’s head.”
    “Cute. How about this? I pull you forwards and down into a headlock. I grab your pants belt, haul you up upside-down, and fall backwards, landing on your head. Our combined weight crushes it like an egg.”
    “It would work better on firmer ground than this. Tarmac or concrete, or a tiled floor. But I take your