Ten minutes later, Milena whispered for him to accompany her to the bathroom. The bodyguards tried to follow them, but the Turk cut them off. She had offered him a fat tip if he would help her fulfill Boris’s fantasy of having sex in a women’s restroom. The bodyguards reluctantly agreed to stay outside after making sure there was no one else in the bathroom.
The Russian was in a hurry. He rushed into a stall, lowered the toilet seat, sat down, and uncovered his right arm. She let Boris’s haste pull her along and pulled the syringe from her jacket and prepared the mixture while he tied off his biceps with a rubber tube. Unable to wait, he tried to take the needle from her, but she slapped him away. She was afraid that he would screw up the injection. Later, it occurred to her that if she’d let Boris shoot up, she wouldn’t technically be his murderer, but at the time, all she wanted was to finish what she’d started.
She injected him and watched the drug flow through his body. He stretched his neck out inhumanly, as if trying to see something on his scalp. His legs shook, and he gave off a strange high-pitched scream.
The bodyguards shoved the Turk aside and entered the bathroom. They found Milena leaning over Boris’s body, the syringe still poking from his right arm, like a sword buried in a dying bull. One grabbed her by the collar of her jacket and slammed her against the wall, and the other unholstered his pistol to take out the Turk. The Turk already had his pistol in hand, and floored his aggressor with two quick shots to the chest and the other with two to the back. It seemed impossible that a heavy-metal group could make more noise than a Beretta, but nobody rushed into the room. The Turk grabbed Milena by the wrist and jerked her onto her feet. A thread of blood ran from her head and onto her jacket. They left the bathroom and headed toward the exit, and Boris’s friends, still sitting at a table in front of the stage, noticed nothing.
They left Milena’s motorcycle in the parking lot and took the Turk’s car. As soon as they were away from the bar, the Turk called Bonso and explained what had happened.
The Romanian was watching an episode of Game of Thrones with Mercedes, a Moroccan girl. Indignant, he was complaining to her of the perversity of Cersei Lannister, the incestuous queen, when he received the call. What the Turk had just done meant a death sentence for them both: everyone in Marbella knew Boris was untouchable, that his mother was more powerful than him, and that the Russian mafia was implacable when it came to blood. Everyone also knew the Turk was his right-hand man.
He threw the telephone against the wall. The solution, if there was one, was way out of his hands: Vila-Rojas, he thought. He picked the phone back up, called the Turk, and gave him his orders.
55
Vidal, Milena, and Luis
Tuesday, November 18, 8:20 p.m.
It didn’t go down the way Jaime had planned. Just after eight in the morning, Vidal called at the door of the bedroom where Milena and Luis were staying in the Hotel Michoacán. Luis opened cautiously. Fingers of sunlight came through the cracks and pointed accusingly at the scene. Milena had a sheet pulled over her chest, and his friend wore nothing but a pair of pants he seemed to have thrown on before opening the door. The disordered bed, their clothes thrown haphazardly over a chair, and the bottle of wine on the nightstand were the very image, almost the cliché, of a secret fling. Luis’s first feeling was of irritation, his second of indignation, and then both were pushed aside by a more selfish thought: Rina would have to find out what had happened there.
Luis looked at the ground and invited Vidal in.
Vidal explained Jaime’s plan.
“With a little luck, Bonso and the Turk could be taken out today. All you two have to do is go down to the lobby so the lookouts they send in will confirm that you’re both here. After that, everything will be finished and you can do whatever you want.”
“There’s nothing I’d like more than to see Bonso and the Turk fall. But it’s way more complicated than that,” Milena objected.
“You don’t understand, the whole country is up in arms after the death of the El Mundo editor; even the president wants to get involved. Claudia and Tomás ate with him yesterday. It’s over, Milena, there are much bigger forces than any threat you’re running away from. And those forces are working in your favor. Take advantage of them and get free for once from whatever it is they have over you.”
“You’re the ones who don’t understand!” Milena insisted, and looked to Luis. “Can you leave for a moment, Vidal? I need to talk to Luis alone.”
Vidal looked at the two of them, utterly confused. He thought he was bringing good news and that his only task would be overcoming Luis’s natural resistance to collaborating with Lemlock. The advantages of the plan were so evident that he assumed his friend’s pragmatism would keep him from giving in to his prejudices.
“Luis, convince her. If we wipe out that gang, we’ll have to negotiate with Vila-Rojas. Yeah, that’s right: we know about Vila-Rojas.” Then he left the room.
Milena leapt from the bed and started talking while she buttoned up her shirt.
“There’s something I can’t tell you. If Bonso dies in these circumstances, it will cause a video to get leaked that will lead to Vila-Rojas falling, and probably Yasha, the leader of the Ukrainian mafia in Marbella, along with him. That could cost me my life. I can’t tell you more because I don’t want to put you in danger. The less you know, the better.”
Luis reflected briefly.
“Bonso shouldn’t fall into the trap Jaime’s set for him,” he said.
“Exactly, but your friend Vidal won’t understand that.”
“I think we already lost Vidal some time back.”
“You think?”
“He’s not a bad guy, but he’s like clay in Jaime’s hands. If they knew about Vila-Rojas, they’ve intercepted my encrypted messages, and they could only have done so because he revealed one of my passwords.”
“So how are we going to keep Bonso from falling into the trap?”
“I already have the email addresses his organization uses. The problem is, Lemlock does, too, or they will soon, so they’ll find out I’m the one spilling the beans. If they didn’t care for me before, now they’ll see me as an enemy.”
“They’ll like you less, and I’ll like you a little more. Thank you, Luis,” she said, looking in his eyes. He didn’t know how to answer.
56
Tomás and Claudia
Tuesday, November 18, 11:00 a.m.
He woke up at 5:20 in the morning, as if he were a computer terminal hooked up to the Net. That was the hour when El Mundo’s digital edition went online, long before the deliveryman would leave the print version at his apartment. The journalist knew the headline he read on the screen: he had written it himself. It wasn’t the lead story that attracted his attention, lurid as it was: “Deputy Director of El Mundo Assassinated by the Mafia.” What he was looking for was the second story: “Salgado, Godfather of the Human Traffickers.” He read it, knowing that from then on, there was no turning back. It was an ultimatum, a declaration of war that wouldn’t end until one of the parties was eliminated.
The night before, he’d given instructions to a half-dozen of his best investigative reporters to give all their time to documenting the trafficking rings, especially the ones selling women, and the protection they received from the authorities. Two of them focused exclusively on the criminal careers of Víctor Salgado and his affiliates, with the plan of publishing additional pieces in the upcoming weeks. Tomás knew that if they managed to convert the ex-public official into an exemplar of corruption and the story took off on the social networks, no one would dare to protect him. Governors, ministers, and senators who owed him favors and even their jobs would suffer sudden attacks of amnesia: in politics, loyalty only prevails when betrayal doesn’t offer dividends. They would have to make Salgado a hot potato, a pariah no one could help without paying a high political price.
Tomás told himself he’d have to consult with Vidal to see what steps sh
ould be taken to make the ex-prison director’s story go viral. The headline wasn’t enough, not now, when no one but the political and cultural elites read the daily papers and watched the news. El Mundo’s accusation of Salgado would be like a bomb going off among the political class, and everyone would have to take cover. But Tomás needed more. The system had to leave the capo high and dry, even put the squeeze on him, and—why not?—lock him up. There were more than enough reasons to do so. But for that to happen, he’d need public opinion to question authority so intensely that inaction would come with a political cost. Only the social networks could have that kind of effect: memes and hashtags that could make the former jailer into a figure as well known as he was contemptible.
The night before, he had called various foreign correspondents to alert them of the attack on the deputy director. He made no mention of Milena and stuck to explaining the newspaper’s investigations into Víctor Salgado, offering human trafficking and money laundering as the most probable motives for the aggression. His friend Peter Dell, a correspondent with the New York Times, assured him he would place a story on the paper’s front page.
Four hours later, at El Mundo’s offices, Tomás was waiting on Vidal to start a meeting with those responsible for the online edition. He knew the newspaper’s tech guys were good, but he preferred to have someone he could trust on his side before crucifying Salgado on the social networks. While he waited on his nephew, he went into Claudia’s office.
“Any reaction from Salgado?” she asked.
“None. But as they said in the old days, no news is good news.”
“Prida talked to me half an hour ago. Very restrained. He put all the federal government’s resources at our disposal to find those responsible for the crime. I told him they wouldn’t have to look hard, everyone knows Víctor Salgado.”
“And what did he say?”
“He went off on a tangent. He assured me that he’d told the attorney general not to spare any resources in the investigation.”
“Well, he’s going to seize up when he sees the article in the New York Times.”
“Hopefully the authorities will do something before Salgado takes his revenge. Where do you think he’s going to come from?”
“It’s impossible to know, but we’ve beefed up security everywhere. The Mexico City chief of police has sent out extra patrols. Did your mother finally get out of the city?”
“She’s on a plane right now, I convinced her to go to Miami for a few days. And you? And your daughter?”
“I’m going to have lunch with her, I didn’t want to say anything over the phone. I want her out of town. Maybe she can go to a friend’s house in Cuernavaca where she spends a lot of time. It’s not easy to persuade her. She’s hardheaded, you know? You’ll meet her eventually.”
Claudia nodded, concealing the warmth that flooded through her breast. “You’ll meet her eventually”: a phrase that foretold paradise.
“I don’t want anything to happen to us,” she said. “Not to us, not to any of our people. Not now, when we’ve begun something that could be so important for you and me.”
Whether she meant El Mundo and the news cycle, or the closeness between them, his life was finally beginning to make sense. In a little less than a year, he had gone from being an insignificant columnist with just a handful of readers to the head of the most important journalism resource in the country. And the hopeless, fleeting affairs he’d carried on for years were over, making room for a real relationship with one of the two women who had come into his life. He knew the ambiguity with Claudia and Amelia couldn’t go on forever. One way or another, he’d have to take a decision soon.
An attack of nostalgia struck him when he imagined either of them gone. The desolation was just as intense whether he imagined losing the absolute intimacy he shared with Amelia on the weekends or the joyous life he could lead by Claudia’s side.
For years, he’d wanted Amelia’s love, and now that he had it, he couldn’t just let it go. But there was something that didn’t click in his relationship with his old friend: he had the feeling he wasn’t always on her level, that sooner or later she would notice his weak points. He always felt pushed when he was with her: to be more intelligent, more vivacious, a better person than he was. For his lover, the universe was imperfect and their voyage through it brought along the responsibility of making it better. It was a notion Tomás could agree with in theory, but he knew he lacked the spirit or the disposition to make the sacrifices it implied.
Claudia, on the other hand, belonged to that species that came into the world to enjoy it, and would do so as long as she didn’t leave it worse off or impose on the happiness of those around her, and Tomás could embrace that philosophy more readily than Amelia’s messianic tendencies.
Vidal interrupted Tomás and Claudia as he always did, knocking lightly and discreetly on the iron door to Claudia’s office.
“They told me to come in, that you were waiting on me.”
Tomás greeted his nephew with a relieved smile. He led him to the meeting room in his offices, where the teams who ran El Mundo’s website were waiting for them, and explained their mission: skewering Salgado on the social networks. Vidal listened to the newspaper’s community manager talk a long time about Kohl’s, hubs, and spheres of influence, tried to imagine what Luis would do in his shoes, and took the floor. It turned out that when Rina was gone, he could do an acceptable impersonation of his friend’s talent, and when the meeting was over, everyone looked at him with respect.
That hadn’t been the case with Luis that morning, when he visited the hotel. When they said their goodbyes, he saw a gleam of contempt in his eyes.
57
Milena
January 2014
It was an area close to the Málaga airport that Milena had never been through before, and if she had, she wouldn’t have known anyway, because the night was dark and lighting almost inexistent on that street. At last, the Turk stopped the car on a corner lined with warehouses. She heard the screeching of a rolling gate being raised up: an obese man tugged at the chain and squinted to confirm the driver’s identity. The Turk pulled inside and the gate went back down.
It was a huge, rectangular space, around half the size of a football field. As Milena walked to the stairway leading to the lone office inside, she thought she saw the outlines of figures in the dim light. The Turk ordered the fat guy to wait at the gate to let Bonso’s car through. He would be showing up any minute.
“Now, Checkers, while we’re waiting on the boss, tell me what shit you’ve gotten us into.”
There was no apparent rancor: just the voice of a person wanting to take advantage of the time he has left. She understood that he’d just killed two thugs and her fate depended on what she said next.
She considered keeping up the story of the accidental overdose but didn’t think Bonso or the Turk would buy it. For months, they had seen her weave her web around the Ukrainian, and she imagined that Bonso’s approval of her nocturnal outings with the Turk was part of his agreement with Vila-Rojas, so she left out the details of the murders of his other associates but didn’t hide the details of the plan she’d tried to carry out that night.
The Turk listened to her without reacting. The deep bags under his eyes and his long face made her think of an old Saint Bernard that’s seen everything.
“I knew you were up to something like that, but I never thought you’d fuck it up so bad. That’s the problem with amateurs, you think you’re clever,” he said with contempt.
Milena nodded, not inclined to argue. Boris’s spasmodic body rose up in her memory, and again she felt the wound burning on her forehead. A tone still thundered in one ear from the bullets fired in the cramped women’s bathroom.
“So who are those guys?” Milena asked, pointing toward the figures shifting in the back of the warehouse.
“They want to be Europeans.”
“So what are they? Africans?”
“
What the fuck do you care?”
Milena didn’t answer. In reality, she didn’t care. She just wanted to stop thinking about the tiles in the bathroom and forget the greenish foam she’d seen bubble from Boris’s mouth. She remembered she still had a syringe in her jacket, the dream kit, and she thanked the gods for the opportunity to evade the difficult moment before her with drugs. The foretaste of relief suffused her body: she slipped her hand into her left pocket and found it empty. First, frustration struck her, then confusion: she pawed her right pocket and found the syringe she was looking for. Only then did she realize she had given Boris the wrong dose.
“Agustín wanted to kill me,” she said to herself in a barely audible voice.
“What?” the Turk asked.
“Both doses were lethal,” she answered, and opened her fist to show the syringe in her hand.
She looked at the dream kit and the force of her addiction pushed her with febrile intensity. Dream or death, whatever that precious liquid inside would bring her—she didn’t care at that point.
The arrival of Bonso’s car distracted her for long enough that the Turk could pull the plastic bag out of her hand and put it in his pocket.
The Romanian ran up the metal staircase with thundering and frenetic steps. He tripped on the last one and walked into the makeshift office with a movement that made Milena think of someone swimming the butterfly.
Milena, or the Most Beautiful Femur in the World Page 28