by Pablo Poveda
“That’s not the reason I’m here,” he said, changing topics. “I owe you an explanation.”
“It’s never too late.”
“Give me your phone,” he ordered, and I obliged. The officer threw it into the ocean.
“What the fuck are you doing, man?” I shouted indignantly.
“You’ll buy yourself another one,” he replied. “iPhones can’t have the battery removed; I had no choice.”
“You could’ve told me to leave it in the room.”
“Anyway, let’s go.”
The ice water of the shore soaked our feet when the tidal waves rose and fell. After a few minutes, it began to be pleasant. From Pinet beach, we could walk in either direction, but Rojo chose to go toward Santa Pola pier. We walked in silence, side by side until we got far enough from the occasional curious hotelier and lights.
“I’ll be brief,” he said, “let me talk, and then, you can ask all the impertinent questions you like.”
“You mean pertinent.”
“I know very well what I said — from you, they all will be impertinent,” he laughed. “What I’m about to tell you is confidential. If you open your mouth, I’ll go after you and gut you. And if I don’t, they will.”
“They?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,” he said. “We’ll do it my way. I’ll tell you the actual story, and you’ll write whatever pays you and keeps you away from trouble another year. Understood?”
“But Rojo — ”
“Are you in or not? I only ask you one thing,” he said. “I am risking a lot, Gabriel, and I don’t want to put you in danger either.”
“Why should I believe you now?”
The officer grabbed me by the shoulder firmly and fixed his gaze in mine.
“Because I’m telling you the fucking truth, Gabriel.”
“You win.”
The policeman took a breath and looked at his feet.
“I imagine that you have been wondering who was the albino, right? You don’t have to tell me anything, I know. You’ll see, it’s going to be complicated to piece it together, but I’ll try to do my best,” he said and took a deep breath. He was silent for several seconds and looked at a point of light on the horizon that must have been a lighthouse on the island of Tabarca — “Do you remember I told you that I had been in Finland?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I lied to you,” he said. “Well, not entirely. I sure was in Finland. I told you that I went there searching for my wife and met that woman, Violeta. What I didn’t tell you was that she was part of a pyramidal organization that attracted their victims through healing seminars, New Age spiritual courses, and drugs. My wife fell into acute depression, started taking drugs and doing things that didn’t suit her. Here is where I lied to you. Her life changed while I was away, absorbed at work from dawn to dusk. Then I noticed that she had gotten scrawny and was abusing the child. So, I decided that he would be better off at his grandparents’, as of her...”
“What happened?”
“I stopped supporting her financially,” he said embarrassedly. “If she was to die, I’d rather she die from hunger, not as a junkie. Having her go through the withdrawal syndrome was her only way out. But my measure fell short. She always managed to get money, she always found something to sell for another dose — ”
“Heroin? Cocaine?”
“No, she was no ordinary junkie,” he explained, dug in his pocket and took out a pill. On it, there was a crab stamped. “Does this ring a bell?”
“It kind of does.”
“The market is flooded with a stronger new version,” said the policeman. “You have already seen what it does. My wife was taking it as part of her therapy.”
“So, your wife did not just go away with the cult.”
“There’s a little more to it,” he nuanced. “One thing led to the other. It was the typical excuse to get rid of me. If she was already physically fucked up, it was there where they broke her spirit.”
“I’m sorry, but I fail to see the connection — ”
“Simple,” he continued. “My wife had acute depression before she started taking drugs, so the hallucinogen made her go in the state.”
“Did she turn into an asshole or something?”
“No,” he said. “Just like cannabis, when you consume it, it blocks the beta waves in your brain, and boosts alpha, theta, or even delta. Beta waves are the ones your brain is producing right now. When you are in a calm and or reflective state, the main sort of brainwave is alpha, theta waves are those your brain engages in when you subconsciously daydream, and finally, delta waves are the ones that correspond to dreams in a deep sleep. This substance inducts the manifestation of theta waves and helps you get into the state. Let’s say that it helps you open a door to your subconscious, get to Nirvana, and whatnot.”
“And then?”
“They only have to repeat and repeat what to do until it is deeply ingrained in their minds,” he said with resignation. “They call it Ludovico’s method. A derivate of shock therapy inspired in the Clockwork Orange, just a bit more modern and with narcotics, to form an army of thieves or — ”
“Now, it’s started to make sense — ”
“I knew my wife was involved in something more than just a mischief when I found a bag of these in the dresser. I also figured out that she was accessing my computer and selling the information I kept in it.”
“I thought you’d be more careful.”
“I was,” he rebuked. “It’s a little complicated, you know. Especially when it comes to your wife. There are things that you refuse to acknowledge.”
“What happened then?”
“I started following her,” he said. “She was no tech genius, but they had taught her how to do it. She didn’t use email, instead, she would save everything on flash drives. She learned how delete search histories when she went online, so I had no other choice than to trace the IP addresses she accessed, and also her calls and text messages — ”
“Who was she calling?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“But you didn’t find anything.”
“No,” he acknowledged embarrassedly. “She left home, leaving the same note as other women, but I knew she was lying. I carried on with the investigation, but everything pointed to presumed death.”
“In such a short time?”
“In this case, yes,” he answered. “One year sufficed the law.”
“Wow.”
“I refused to accept it. I spoke to narcotics and criminology. I made a couple of calls and insisted that they track down the pills. It took more than seven months before we found anything, and of course, all of this was off the record, and cost me favors and money — ”
“And the investigation led you to the albino.”
“Not immediately, no,” he corrected. “The first clues led me to Russia. Apparently, the market for synthetic drugs in the Motherland is huge. And it comes as no surprise that they use the neighboring border to extend to eastern countries. I was frustrated, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. If I had to go all the way to Russia, I’d be fucked, but then something happened.”
The walk interrupted the conversation. We were facing a small stream that connected the salt marshes with the ocean.
“This way,” he said and skirted the riverbed to the other side. I followed his footsteps in the dark, firmly stepping on the sand that seemed to engulf our feet. “A contact at the cybernetic crime division of the Civil Guard gave me a glimpse of hope. Interpol had come across a violent Ukrainian drug trafficker. They had found him on the outskirts of Turku, Finland, at an apartment that doubled as clandestine laboratory.”
“It sounds like a movie.”
“You’d be scared to know the world you live in,” he added. “Pavel Dinilko was shot down while watching Top Gun and dining a pizza margherita, sprawled on the couch. In that laboratory, they found hard drives
that contained information of a network of procurers and human trafficking that included women from all countries in Europe. The footage you saw was a part of the material found.”
“How did you get it?”
“The seven-degree theory,” he replied. “I understood that my wife was not in Russia but somewhere in Finland. I took a vacation, learned some Finnish — a weird fucking language — and traveled to Helsinki to see what I could find.”
“That’s how you met Violeta.”
“Good, Caballero. You finally got one right,” he said ironically. “I went undercover, changed my identity, and used a disguise to inquire at bars. It took me several months, but finally, Violeta found me. We became convenient friends.”
“You slept with her.”
“I had to,” he said. “That’s why I warned you. With time, I asked Violeta about her work, and she explained how the organization worked. Nevertheless, Violeta had only one contact above her, someone whose face not even she knew. She knew who she worked with, but she ignored their identities.”
“And what did you do?”
“Nothing,” he responded. “I realized that I was working for those who had taken my wife from me, and there was nothing I could do. They had cells spread across different countries. Besides, Scandinavians usually go unnoticed on our beaches; wealthy tourists, harmless, and quiet. Who would suspect anything? It’s easier to suspect of the poor, other religions, or war refugees than it is to suspect people with thick wallets. That raw is our reality.”
“How did it end up?”
“Pyramid organizations tend to get corrupted easily,” he explained. “The Silent Brotherhood was only one example of many. Violeta seeded her darnel in our city, creating a financial model similar to the one she had been running. They are not the only ones; I am convinced that there are more in other regions. Countries like Italy or Portugal are very fond of this voodoo shit. In general, the target is religious people who are disenchanted and disappointed, and easy to lull into a new system of beliefs. In the end, it’s useless to fight them because they reproduce like flies.”
“And what did your wife have to do with the Finn in all of this?”
“I’m about to get there,” he said. “I had given up on the case after not being able to find anything last summer. However, the first deaths from the drug and the coincidences of having such a particular symbol tattooed on their torsos gave me an uncomfortable hunch — ”
“Not only you.”
“Don’t interrupt me, this is serious,” he added. “I had to move mountains in order to retrieve the files and discovered that — again — someone had tried to cut out the middleman.”
“Hämäläinen.”
“It didn’t take me long to find out that he was Violeta’s boss.”
“Chance?”
“Call it what you will, political crisis, economical, whatever.”
“But Hämäläinen seemed resentful,” I said, recalling his words. “He looked for revenge and recognition”
“Yes, and of course, and to get rich too,” the officer said. “The purchase of a yacht in Palma and a villa with a swimming pool in Pollença raised a few red flags, not only in me. I was such an idiot for not having noticed it before — ”
“What?”
“Hämäläinen had been in the Balearic Islands for years. His operation included bribing the regional police until they took over. The same thing happened in the Valencia Community.”
“Your own people compromised, who would have said it?”
“Nothing new,” he recriminated. “The contact my wife sold the information to was a colleague at the Brigade. We have been up to the neck in shit for over a decade, Caballero. When talking about police corruption, we often refer to Eastern Europe, but the truth is that it is not necessary to look farther than the corner — ”
“Hold on a second,” I interrupted. “You are implying that your wife was absorbed by a pyramidal network of human and drug trafficking.”
“Yes.”
“And this network originates in Finland.”
“I am not sure of that” — he hesitated — ”but it seems to be funded there.”
“Wow,” I said. “This is a lot to take in.”
“We live in a rotten burrow.”
“One more thing”
“Shoot.”
“Who was that man?”
“The albino?”
“Yes.”
“His name is Arvid Eettafel and goes by the moniker ‘Hydra.’ “
“The Lernaean Hydra.”
“Actually, from Tampere,” he replied, adding a little joke to the seriousness of the matter. “Also known as ‘the Crab’ for his reddish complexion when he drinks vodka, he used to supervise Hämäläinen. These people operate under monikers like that made them fearsome. Nordic people are fond of nicknames... Anyway, he knows where my wife is, and he knew that Hämäläinen had betrayed him. He spared my life, Gabriel, and I gave him something in return. He wouldn’t have had any trouble pulling the trigger but didn’t.”
“What’s your next move?”
“I still don’t know,” he said. “I am considering leaving the corps. With everything I have found out, I don’t think it’ll take them long before they send me to Siberia or try to make my life impossible. Corruption has reached unimaginable levels, and these people have more power than you imagine.”
“Cut the crap, Rojo.”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“Do you think they’ve bought the Chief Inspector?”
“Who knows,” he answered and kicked a peddle on the floor. “Both, you and I need a vacation.”
“You said that last summer.”
“I told you to stay away, that’s all.”
“I guess you’ll keep looking for her.”
“Elsa?” he asked, mentioning the name of his wife for the first time ever. “Maybe.”
“Oh, come on! She’s the reason you’ve come this far.”
“I don’t give a fuck about Elsa” — he raised his tone of voice — ”Even if she’s still alive, there’s nothing left of her. A prostitute who sold her soul for a bag of pills took her place. But someone has to try to stop this. I can’t go to sleep thinking that I turned a blind eye on this world. The Corps is not perfect, nor does it work like in the movies, nor is it capable of taking action on everything that happens. There is an underworld unknown to many, that is the habitat for others who hunt on the innocent. Stay away from it, Gabriel, because the moment you have entered it, you won’t sleep again. You will see things that will remain imprinted in your retinas and haunt you every time you close your eyes. What you have seen so far is nothing but a group of enraged amateurs. In the world I’m telling you about, right and wrong are weighed on a completely different scale. That is the world where I creep.”
“You are a romantic, Rojo.”
“I am but the aftermath of my life.”
“I understand,” I said, feeling somewhat overwhelmed. Much like Hämäläinen, Rojo sought revenge for being robbed of the possibility of an ordinary life. And he was determined to get it back. “Now that you’ve told me all this, I suppose that you’ll tell me what I can and cannot tell the media, right?”
“I didn’t expect less from you, Caballero.”
17
Rojo had traced a perfect escape plan — he knew what would happen in the days after our meeting. The directions were clear — the officer had given me a flash drive containing a dossier of unofficial documents that harmed the ruling class as well as the local political class. In addition to banking accounts abroad, properties registered to mailbox companies, leaked text messages, and recordings, the officer had laid the steps to follow on a timetable for me to follow.
The show was ready.
The opposing party was behind a powerful conspiracy to bring down the mayor and his people. However, none of the politicians who held public office or occupied a seat at the courthouse cleared the scandal. Not o
nly did the files splatter the ruling class but also state forces — police corps, judges, civil servants, school principals, university professors: a real shame. Rojo only asked me to be cautious and never to reveal my source, because not only did it jeopardized his life, but also that of those who had extracted the information from state security systems. Among empty cups of coffee, I realized something that filled me up with satisfaction: Cañete was in a dead-end — the newspaper was on the verge of bankruptcy, the ruling party kept it afloat. Then I understood everything — the concealment of what was going on, and the diversions to cover up the scandals.
That flash drive would get me a good vacation, a well-deserved recess. I had doubted my friend’s intentions once, but I had my reasons.
Rojo bid me farewell at the parking lot of the beach hostel. He got in his black Toyota Rav, rolled down the window, and shook my hand.
“Take care of yourself and don’t get in trouble,” he said. “I hope not to see you in a good while.”
“Where will you go?”
“No idea,” he replied. “I may spend some days in Fuerteventura with my son before the party starts. You know, father and son, away from everything and avoiding the frigging press. Then, I’m going to find that bastard. You can count on it. How about you?”
I thought of Blanca, who was still sleeping in the room.
“I find myself in a difficult time of my life,” I replied, “some doors open, and others close ajar.”
“Cut the crap and melodramas,” he said blatantly. “That girl, Blanca, loves you. And she has given you a second chance. So, think it through and don’t screw it up.”
“How will I contact you?”
“You won’t. I will reach you.”
“It’s in your nature, isn’t it?”
“I’m looking after our well-being, that’s all.”
The car started.
“One question — ”
“The last one,” he sentenced.
“What is your real name?”
The officer let out a grunting laugh.
He engaged the first gear and pulled off.
* * *
I went back into the room and plugged the flash drive into Blanca’s laptop. For a few hours, I read the documents. Their content was unimaginable to the point that one could think they would be better off by deleting it and thinking it never happened. Situations of this magnitude mark the difference between disinterested journalists and uninterested ones. What were my interests? I wondered.