I entered the large building, a monolith of communist architecture that dominated the south western corner of the city’s main square. The building was impressive, certainly not beautiful like the other pastel coloured chocolate boxes that occupied the rest of the Rynek but impressive nonetheless. The grey concrete structure had a large green neon sign halfway up that flashed on and off, the words Said Bank BPL, below the sign hung a huge white banner with a photograph of some Latino matinee idol (a strange choice for a Polish bank I thought), clutching a suitcase full of cash, the cash I suspected he was paid for being the face of the bank.
I stepped into the foyer; it was all elegant white marble and gold light fittings, behind the desk was a tired looking security guard who seemed to be struggling to stay awake and appeared to be blissfully unaware of my presence. I adjusted my deerstalker and gave a cough hoping to rouse him from his slumber this seemed to have little effect, in fact his head had now disappeared under the desk and the snoring noise coming from the other side of the foyer suggested he had fallen into a deep sleep.
Then out of nowhere a fist slammed down on the security guards desk, he leapt up rubbing his eyes and his cap fell off his head. The fist belonged to a smartly dressed, dark haired man with an amiable face. The security guard appeared to be mumbling some sort of apology; the man just waved his hand and walked over to me. He was wearing red rimmed glasses and appeared slightly amused by my tweed three piece suit and matching hat, he stuck out a hand and greeted me in a jovial manner “Mr Sempleton I presume?” I took my hat off and bowed slightly “at your service” he laughed “my name is Rafal would you like to follow me my employer has been expecting you”
He barked an instruction at the confused looking security guard, who pressed a button and a large glass door slid open. I followed him up a short flight of stairs, into another almost identical foyer where there was some strange Kafkaesque machine. It looked like some strange type of elevator. One half of it was perpetually moving upwards the other down to some underground lair maybe; the strangest thing was that the machine never stopped. Every so often some kind of cubicle flashed past upwards or downwards, it looked truly terrifying. The cubicles racing past my eyes looked like wardrobes without doors. The foyer was filling up with people in black suits; they would stand alongside me then suddenly without warning fling themselves into these wardrobes as they flashed past. From the expression on my new acquaintances face I understood that I was going to have to participate in this death defying act. “We will be going up to the fifth floor Mr Sempleton”
I took a long deep breath and as one of the wardrobes started to hove into view, I closed my eyes and leapt forward, I crashed into the back of the fast moving wardrobe, fell over, my deerstalker slipped down over my eyes and out of my pocket fell my entire supply of lemon drops which scattered across the floor of the travelling wardrobe. I finally managed to get to my feet just in time to see my chaperone calmly step out of the speeding wardrobe onto the fifth floor. I froze for a second as the marble floor and Rafal started to disappear below me, then closing my eyes again I leapt out. I felt a sharp pain in my head and the cold marble floor on my cheek as I lay there sprawled out face first, staring at the smartly polished black shoes of my guide. He looked down at me, clearly trying not to laugh and gently helped me up with his hand before walking over to the entrance to the elevator of death to retrieve my now crumpled deerstalker.
I stood up and tried to place the crushed hat on my head as best I could, and muttered something about health and safety procedures and that in Great Britain such a death trap of a machine would have been long consigned to the past. As I followed Rafal down the long hallway, I thought about the strange phone call I had received that had bought me to this building. I had been sitting in a café drawing pictures of mushrooms for headquarters when my agency issue telephone had started to bleep. The only people who had the number to my phone was mother and headquarters, I looked down at the number but had not recognised it. Now in the event of this happening I had been informed by my superiors not to answer under any circumstances and immediately report the number to HQ. I thought about this, but then decided to answer as I was becoming increasingly bored with my posting here and was eager to get myself embroiled in some kind of adventure.
On the other end of the phone was the soft voice of a woman, who spoke excellent English with the faintest lilt of what I thought, could be a Spanish accent. Her name was Mariella and that her client requested my presence at the banks head office at noon tomorrow. I had found her voice slightly intoxicating and imagining that I might get the chance to meet this dusky sounding beauty, I had agreed without hesitation.
We reached the end of the hallway where there stood two huge ornate doors, with intricate gold leaf carvings across them. Rafal opened both doors, the way you usually only see in the movies, gestured for me to enter, but did not follow and silently melted away back into the hallway. I walked in to the massive room; on one side were just windows that reached from the floor to the white stucco ceiling, from these windows I could see the grand square below. The room had an air of old Havana gentleman’s club about it. This was reinforced by the moustached black haired man, dressed in an elegant dessert coloured suit and matching Panama hat. Above him were huge rising cumulus clouds of thick cigar smoke. The room felt hot and humid as if I had been lifted up and plunged deep into the tropics. The man in the hat and the thick moustache although clearly aware of presence, just carried on staring out of the window and slowly drawing on his cigar.
From the armchair where he was sat came a smooth, deep Latin drawl “Signor Sempleton do you know why I have summoned you here today”
I felt a twinge of irritation I after all was one of our majesty’s trusted loyal servants and did not like the idea of being summoned by anyone apart from my direct superiors. I considered pointing this out but settled for a simple “no sir, I do not” protocol and all that.
“That is good, that means you have not informed your superiors back in England, which also means you have done no research about me, you Signor Sempleton are a man with an open mind, that is good, foolish but open minded.”
“I would have preferred wise and open minded but you will do fine.”
Summoned, foolish I did not like the images these words were conjuring up in my head. The man stood up, it took him a good few seconds to fully straighten up and it was only then that I noticed how huge he was, at least 6ft 7 I thought. He walked over to me in the languid manner of a man with all the time in the world. He stuck out a huge olive hand
“Pleased to meet you Mr Sempleton, I am Don Polvere Blanco; I expect you are wondering how I already know your name?”
Don Blanco seemed to be a man who was not too interested in my answer, the question was purely rhetorical.
“Allow me to explain, I am or rather was a very powerful man Signor Sempleton and in my previous line of business, it paid to know everything and everyone, a habit I still keep today.”
I had absolutely no idea what this moustached giant was talking about but his elegant clothes combined with the thick cigar smoke created an air of mystery that utterly intoxicated me. I would have accepted the job he was about to offer me right there and then without knowing anymore about this magnificent specimen of a man. After all I was starting to tire of investigating different species of mushrooms.
We sat down in two plush red armchairs and over the next hour Don Blanco eloquently told me about his past and the reason that I had been summoned to his plush office on that cold November morning.
For twenty years if you had walked into any bar, shop or café in most Latin American countries and spoken aloud the name Don Polvere Blanco, you would have seen a collective shudder grip hold of the people in the room, followed by silence and bowed heads. He was the most feared drug lord in all of Los Rio, it was even rumoured that on every last Sunday of the month the Don would hold a lunch at his gigantico hacienda that was attended by all local heads of state, if they knew what was good for them. He was regarded as charming, cruel, generous and ruthless all in equal measure, a man never to be crossed.
For two decades his word was law until one night he mysteriously disappeared without trace. Some said he had been killed by an Americano death squad under the direct orders of George whoosh the American president. Others suspected his disappearance was the work of a rival drug cartel who had buried his body deep in the jungle. There was also speculation that the Don had simply retired to some tiny tropical island to live out his days in luxury. The truth was even more fantastical, Don Blanco had always been a huge lover of the beautiful game and on one day having heard tales of a magical village football team that lived and played high in the Rio Grandean Mountains; he had ordered his pilot to fly him there by jet to attend their match in the coppa della Ballone.
It was rumoured, a rumour which the Don himself confirmed to me, that at some point during the second half of the match, he had undergone some kind of spiritual epiphany. Locals speculated that this epiphany had coincided with the very moment their gifted midfielder and captain Aromga had deftly volleyed the ball from 30 yards out into the roof of the oppositions net. The Don had spent the rest of the match in a ecstasy like trance. After the game had finished he had turned to his pilot, telling him he would transfer 5 million denaridos into his account and that the pilot could keep the private jet as he would no longer require its services.
Don Blanco had finally found home, he promptly renounced his former life of violence and corruption and was whole heartedly accepted into society as an honouree Rio Grandean.
The Don got to his feet and walked slowly over to the long windows and looked out at the workers in the square who were busily erecting the small wooden cabins for the soon to be opened Christmas market. Without turning round to look at me he spoke these words.
“ Mr Sempleton I love all of those players as if they were my own children, the children I was never able to have, they are in grave danger Signor Sempleton and it is up to you to save them. My secretary will give you all the details you need.”
Then as if on cue Rafal arrived in the room and let me back out down the long hallway. A few minutes later I found myself back in the square, clutching a large folder and wondering what I had just got myself into.
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