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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Seattle, 1993

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Shanghai

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Colombia

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Coco Loco Land

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Hongkong

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Shanghai

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Medellín

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Blood and Honor

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Historical Note

  Teaser

  Prophetic

  Forge Books by Harold Robbins

  Praise

  Copyright

  For

  Jann Robbins,

  keeper of the flame

  Acknowledgments

  The efforts of people who assisted in the preparation of this book are appreciated. They include Bob Gleason, Eric Raab, Elizabeth Winick, Hilda Krische, Robert Rees, and Barbara Wild. Also, Chuck Coffman and John Parks of Armeno Coffee Roasters, Ltd., were generous in explaining the techniques of roasting and cupping coffee. Any errors in describing the techniques are solely of my making.

  Harold Robbins

  left behind a rich heritage of novel ideas and works in progress when he passed away in 1997. Harold Robbins’s estate and his editor worked with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Harold Robbins’s ideas to create this novel, inspired by his storytelling brilliance, in a manner faithful to the Robbins style.

  SEATTLE, 1993

  Coffee Capital of America

  Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.

  —TURKISH PROVERB

  1

  Decaf Latte with Low-Fat Milk and Artificial Sweetener

  “I’ve inherited what?”

  I stared in disbelief at the man who had just told me I had come into an inheritance. Behind me, my coffee and muffin store—Café de Oro, an Urban Coffee Plantation—was in ashes … literally.

  An explosion had destroyed not only my business but my financial vision for the future. Worse than the loss of my shop and the damage to adjoining buildings, one of my employees was dead. I hardly knew the victim, a Chinese emigrant named Johnny Woo who had worked for me for a couple weeks. Not a very agreeable type, but I’m sure someone somewhere loved him.

  A leaky gas line was the probable cause, a fireman told me. I had gone into the smoldering rubble against the shouts of firemen to find the cash box that held my weekend receipts and a vitally important document. I came out empty-handed except for a coating of gray-black ash, smoke in my eyes and lungs, and a charcoal face streaked with tears that erupted when I found out my business was gone and an employee dead.

  As I came half-blind and stunned out of the debris, this suit with a Gucci briefcase and well-fed face was waiting to tell me I’d come into an inheritance. A bad joke on a day my dream went up in smoke and someone died.

  “Screw off,” I said. That wasn’t the way I usually talked, although by today’s standards of thirty-one-year-old women it was pretty mild. But with my business trashed, an employee dead, and the owners of adjoining businesses no doubt already calling their attorneys to crank out lawsuits, I was in no mood for some jerk to make a joke.

  Fighting back tears, too devastated to pounce on him and his expensive gray suit with whatever force 125 pounds of angry female could muster, I brushed by him to find a taxi to get away from the smoldering ruin.

  He spoke to my fleeing back. “I’m with the law firm of Kimball, Walters and Goldman. You’re walking away from a substantial inheritance.”

  “He looks like a real lawyer to me,” a fireman said. “I know; my wife’s hauled me into court plenty of times.”

  I turned and sized up the man. The fireman was right—he had the smug look of someone who wins no matter what side loses. A business lawyer, not a clever street lawyer like Johnnie Cochran or a charismatic showman like Gerry Spence, but the type who had an office in an ivory tower, billed for every breath he took, and was a master at those quiddities, quillets, and tricks Hamlet complained about.

  Tasseled cordovan loafers were the clincher. A female lawyer friend told me that along with their three-thousand-dollar Armani suits, male business lawyers wore tasseled loafers while criminal lawyers preferred cowboy boots.

  He approached me, a little hesitant. My knees were wobbly, my heart pounding, I needed a bath, a good cry, and a plane ticket that would take me far away from the mess my life had suddenly become. From his point of view, I suppose I looked like a slightly scorched maniac.

  “Miss Novak, we represent the Estate of Carlos Castillo. Mr. Castillo owned a coffee plantation.”

  “My shop—”

  “Yes, you called your little coffee drink store a coffee plantation. But Mr. Castillo’s business was an actual plantation.”

  “You mean a place with coffee plants—”

  “I believe coffee grows on trees.”

  “Is this a joke?”

  “I’ve tried to explain to you that—”

  “Just tell me, is this a joke?”

  “This is not a joke. Mr. Castillo passed away and left you his plantation.”

  “Left … me … his … plantation.” I let the words swish around my brain, trying to make sense of them. I didn’t know a Carlos Castillo. Or anyone who owned a coffee plantation. But I was desperate enough to clutch at what appeared to be a miracle. Or a mistake.

  “Are you sure you have the right person? My name is Nash Novak, but I may not be the only Nash Novak in the world.”

  “I would hope that you are the only Nash Novak who owns a coffee store in Seattle named Café de Oro.” He shook his head. “It’s not a mistake; the only address we were given for you was your store.”
He glanced at the mess. “Former store.”

  “All right, tell me exactly what’s going on; give me the bottom line.”

  He took a step closer but stayed out of arm’s reach. “You have inherited a coffee plantation. I can understand why the news is such a surprise. We were advised that you had never met Mr. Castillo, your benefactor. My impression is that he was someone who knew of you and decided to benefit you.”

  “I inherited a coffee plantation. From a stranger.” I could repeat the information, but my brain was having a difficult time processing it.

  My store was in Pike Place Market, a cluster of quaint shops between First Avenue and the waterfront, overlooking Puget Sound. I stared out at the Sound, trying to get my feet under my brain. It was a gloom-and-doom morning; a haze of fog hadn’t burned off the Sound yet. Neither had the fuddle in my mind.

  I tried to deal with it logically: Someone—a stranger—died and left me a coffee plantation. A real coffee plantation, not just a name like I used on my shop. The “coffee plantation” extension of my store’s name came from the interior decorations of green plastic plants and coffee bean sacks.

  I struggled with the man’s name—Carlos Castillo. It didn’t connect. The name conjured up nothing except for the fact it sounded Spanish or Portuguese. It wasn’t possible a complete stranger would leave me an inheritance.

  But that was exactly what this lawyer with tasseled shoes was telling me.

  “This place … this plantation … what’s it worth?”

  “We haven’t been given a valuation, but one can imagine that an actual coffee plantation would be worth a significant amount of money. Millions, for all we know.”

  I nearly swooned. I know, modern women don’t swoon, but having your dreams and livelihood go up in smoke can ruin your whole day and send you back to basics. I gasped for air.

  “Are you all right?”

  I shook my head. “It’s been a bad morning, the worst in my life. Tell me about the snake.”

  “The snake?”

  “There’s always a snake in paradise, a catch, someone or something that’s going to throw cold water on winning the lottery, waiting for me to scratch the last number just to find out it’s a loser.”

  “I honestly don’t know that much about the situation. Like you, I’ve never met Mr. Castillo. We were hired through a law firm in Miami simply to notify you of the inheritance.”

  “Where’s this plantation?”

  “Colombia.”

  “Colombia? The country in South America?”

  He smirked. “The last time I looked at a globe it was a country in South America. Just below Panama, I believe.”

  “Isn’t that the place where there’s so much violence? Civil war, murder, kidnappings, the government always on the verge of being overwhelmed by drug lords and commie guerrillas?”

  “I believe there is a history of trouble in Colombia.”

  “How do I get my money?”

  “Your money?”

  “From my inheritance. Is this place going to be sold—”

  “I really know little about the situation. The firm in Miami instructed us to give you the particulars on the lawyer in Colombia who handles the estate.” He raised his eyebrows. “I understand the plantation is in the jungles of Colombia. My impression from the Miami firm is that they also know little about the situation. It appears that not all the information coming out of the country can be relied upon. They believe that you will have to go to Colombia to get the details and claim your inheritance.”

  I nodded, as if I was getting the big picture. “Okay, let me get this straight. You’re saying that a stranger has left me a coffee plantation thousands of miles from here, and in order to claim it, I have to go to one of the most dangerous places in the world?”

  He cleared his throat. “Naturally, the firm of Kimball, Walters and Goldman will expect a complete waiver, holding us harmless for any prospective detriment that might occur in claiming this inheritance.”

  “What makes you think I’d go to—”

  “Nash! You bitch! I’m going to sue your ass!”

  Vic Ferrara, the owner of the fish shop next to my coffee store, shouted and shook his fist at me. He was being restrained by two firemen. The smell of burnt cod was in the air.

  The lawyer cleared his throat again as he handed me a manila envelope. “This is the contact information for the Colombian lawyer. I suppose that once you get this, uh, fire matter cleared up with your insurance company, you can decide what you want to do about your inheritance.”

  “Insurance company?” I began laughing, not with humor but the sort of hysterical laugh I’d give if my doctor told me that he had amputated the wrong leg.

  That vitally important document in the cash box I couldn’t find in the rubble was the overdue payment on my insurance policy.

  2

  Still gripped by dread and confusion, I went up the street, away from irate fishmongers and my life’s ruin. I needed a taxi, a bus, anything to get me off the street and to my apartment, where I could bar the door and shut out the world.

  I headed for a taxicab parked up the street in front of a deli. As I hurried for it, I tore open the envelope the lawyer had given me. Nothing was in it but an expensive piece of stationery containing two pieces of information: the name, address, and phone number of an attorney in Medellín, Colombia, and an admonition that the firm of Kimball et al. did not represent me, take any responsibility for my well-being or the truth and veracity of the information they passed. Some other legalistic-sounding admonitions were on the paper, but my aching bloodshot eyes slid over them.

  One thing I didn’t skim over: Medellín.

  From news reports I recognized the town as the site of the “Medellín cartel,” a notorious drug-trafficking organization.

  Wonderful. I inherit a coffee plantation—but it’s in the midst of Colombia’s drug war territory. Something like winning the lottery and being told you have terminal cancer on the same day.

  After I had seen the rage in Vic Ferrara, a trip to the tropics until the dust—and soot—settled wasn’t a bad idea. The “tropics,” as in an idyllic island in the Caribbean, not the murder capital of the world.

  As I opened the rear door to the cab, I heard a shout. A man with olive skin and a thin black mustache was trotting toward the taxi with a determined look. He waved at me.

  I quickly slipped in and told the driver my cross streets. “Hurry, please.”

  Once we pulled away, I sighed and leaned my head back against the seat rest, taking in the smell of pastrami and mustard. My bad karma must still be working overtime when someone makes a dash to steal a taxi from me just as I’m getting into it. Seattle didn’t have New York’s mean-streets reputation for confrontations over taxis, not at least when it wasn’t raining—which it did frequently in a city famous for rain, coffee, and Bill Gates.

  It suddenly occurred to me that the man who had run for the taxi had a Hispanic look. I glanced out the back window, but no one was trotting behind the taxi.

  I shook off the notion that just because the man looked as if his heritage was Latino he had something to do with my recent inheritance from the enigmatic “Carlos Castillo.” Seattle was a multi-cultural city.

  * * *

  MY APARTMENT WAS in a four-story building sandwiched between retail stores. Lots of windows and a skylight in the bedroom and bathroom made the apartment appear bright and open.

  On the top floor of a building with an angled roof, the apartment had a garret feel. No elevator made it cheaper because most people don’t relish walking up four flights of stairs, but I didn’t mind it at all; I liked the exercise—and the fact the apartment cost me less than what I’d been paying for a condo.

  When I came across the apartment, I’d been looking for a smaller, less expensive place to live because I was going into business for myself and needed to cut expenses. Walking to meet a friend for dinner, I noticed a small handwritten note posted at the buil
ding entrance saying there was a small apartment for rent. I assumed there would be a stack of applications before me since downtown apartments with views were hard to find, but it didn’t hurt to try, so I did. The landlord turned out to be a sweet elderly Filipino woman who liked me. She had just put up the notice that afternoon.

  Some people would call me weird, but the minute I walked into the apartment, I felt good vibes—the place radiated positive feelings.

  Bright and cheery, the pastel peach living room had floor-to-ceiling French doors that opened to a small balcony. Facing the living room was the kitchen with an open breakfast nook and butter-cream-colored cabinets. The bathroom had an old-fashioned claw-foot tub with a shower attachment, impractical but exactly what I always wanted. I loved to soak and take leisurely bubble baths. It was my one indulgence where I could totally relax and unwind. The bedroom, with its baby blue hue, was soothing and peaceful. The closet wasn’t large, but adding shelves increased my storage space.

  I also utilized the ceiling as storage space, hanging up baskets to hold various things, putting up bookshelves on the walls for my books and picture frames, and even hanging up my ironing board. A few small antique pieces placed here and there, mixed with some modern furniture and a couple of oil paintings, completed my eclectic apartment. Fresh flowers were everywhere. I would buy them at least once a week.

  It wasn’t just the serenity of the place but the view that I liked—scenic Elliott Bay in Puget Sound, the harbor, waterfront, green mountains, and beautiful sunsets.

  * * *

  MY HEAD WAS pounding by the time I got home. I needed a relaxing hot bath, and a pill to break the brutal stiffness tension had created in my back and neck.

  Instead, I threw my purse on the coffee table and grabbed the phone. My first call was to my insurance agent. Naturally, he wasn’t there. After navigating through the do-it-yourself phone system that repeatedly created hope that I would ultimately reach a human being, which never happened, I left a voice-mail message.

  “Mike, I need to talk to you; there’s been a fire; my store is gone; one of my employees is dead. You know my check bounced at my insurance company, they canceled me, and I had the cashier’s check they demanded to get reinstated, but it was in the cash box and—shit, call me, please, right away, as soon as you can.”