The darkening sky triggered Al’s concern for Mari and he was getting seriously worried until finally he heard the key turn in the door.
Mari entered.
“So how did it go?” he asked.
“How did what go?”
“Uh, well, I don’t know. Your meeting?” Al hated when she fucked with him. This was too good an opportunity for her to pass up though, obviously.
“Oh, that. Pretty well. We can discuss it at dinner. I’m starving. There’s a good restaurant a few blocks away, according to the desk. Let’s try it,” she suggested, before waltzing in the bathroom and locking herself in. “I’ll be ready in five,” she called through the door.
Al played along. What choice did he have?
She finally emerged, all sweetness and perfume, grabbed his arm and walked him toward the door. He grabbed his satchel and they made their steady way to the restaurant. The streets were bustling with the dinner crowd and Al detected no aura of menace or danger on the well lit street.
Once they were seated and had ordered, Mari gave him the data dump.
“You’ll meet him tomorrow. Seven a.m.. We have to go to a coffee shop a few minutes from the hotel, and we’ll get a message from someone telling us where you have to go. It will be just the two of you.” She folded her arms. “I’m to stay out of it.”
“Does he want to cut out my heart and eat it in front of me?” Al asked.
“I think we got past that part. I guess you’ll know for sure tomorrow. If he changes his mind, I’ll remember you every Christmas,” Mari offered.
“That’s touching. But seriously – is he holding a grudge?”
“You’ll be fine. Just don’t make any sudden moves around him,” she warned.
“Are you serious?” Al demanded. He couldn’t tell.
“Mostly no – okay, maybe a little. He’s on edge being near an urban area,” she explained.
“The Butcher is a little testy, but hopefully I’ll be fine,” Al concluded.
“It’s the best I could do. Have you got any better options I haven’t heard yet?”
Al burst into low-volume song: “We’re off to see The Butcher...”
The reference was lost on Mari, who’d learned her English in elementary school, before perfecting it throughout high school and college, that and watching Bruce Willis action films.
Their food arrived, and Al floated a different topic as they ate. “Mel is very cute, and very smart,” he began.
“She should be. She’s my daughter,” Mari stated.
He tried again. “I never thought I’d have a daughter…”
“Al, you don’t… I do,” she explained matter-of-factly. “You had a few seconds of muscle spasm. I have a lifelong commitment.”
“And what if I don’t feel that way?” Al asked. “I mean, now that I’ve seen her? Now that I’ve seen you again?”
“Spare me the melodrama, Al,” Mari snapped. “You had a chance to stay with me, and if you’d loved me you would have. You didn’t. So there are no obligations.”
“You never called me to tell me,” Al argued.
“I had my cell number forwarded for a year. Were your fingers broken?”
Al shook his head in defeat. “I thought you knew me well enough to understand I’m an idiot sometimes...”
She stared at him. He had a fleck of food in his goatee, and was sweating down his sunburned bald head.
“Sometimes?” Mari repeated.
“Haven’t you ever done something really stupid you now regret?” Al asked.
She stared at him again, incredulously. Waited a few beats. Eventually Al figured it out.
Time for a different approach.
“I appreciate what you’re doing for me, Mari,” Al offered.
“I’m doing it for Mel.”
And there they let it settle, though Al believed, well hoped, there might just be more to it than that.
They finished their dinner and walked back to the hotel, the streets still populated, only now with young people headed to the nearby clubs. The same desk clerk abruptly found something that needed doing in the back office when he saw Mari entering the lobby. Mari and The Invisible Al made their way upstairs.
A tense silence permeated the room as they took turns brushing their teeth and getting ready for bed – Al taking a shower so he’d save time in the morning.
Eventually, they silently slipped under the sheets on their respective beds. Mari turned off the bedside lamp.
“I’m sorry, Mari, about everything,” Al murmured. “Sleep well…my friend.”
“Me too, Al...me too.”
The following morning, Mari’s phone alarm sounded at six a.m.. She went into the bathroom for her morning routine while Al tried to drowse. Mari emerged at six-thirty.
“God you snore loudly nowadays,” she declared.
“Good morning to you, too,” Al responded.
“Really. My cousin had an English bulldog, and that’s the only other noise I’ve ever heard that sounds like you,” she said. “You didn’t snore four years ago.”
“I have allergies.” Al explained.
“You’re fat,” Mari offered.
“I have issues,” he tried again.
“Like eating too much. And not exercising, and drinking all day long...” she listed.
“I was thinking of respiratory deficiencies,” Al said.
“I hear smoking helps those,” Mari observed.
“I’m trying to quit,” Al lied.
“Snoring? Or eating too much? Or smoking?”
This wasn’t going well. “I’m sorry I disturbed your rest, Mari.”
“We need to leave in a few minutes,” she said – right, as usual.
Al dabbed ointment on his ragged feet, pulled on his clothes and grabbed his knapsack. He was ready to hit the road in three minutes flat.
“Were you planning on zipping your fly?” Mari queried.
“Ooops...I’m still asleep,” Al said.
She didn’t say anything.
They made their way to the street and walked four blocks to an intersection where a small coffee bar was serving espresso and pastries. They took a table on the sidewalk and ordered cafe Americanos. The coffee arrived and they sipped it in silence. Nobody approached. No one called.
After twenty minutes, the waiter brought the check, handing it to Al. He glanced at it and fished around in his pocket for change.
“Look at the back of the check, Al,” Mari instructed.
A single sentence was scrawled in Spanish.
“Walk south on Calle 2 – start now,” Mari read. “This is it. I’ll pay. Good luck, Al.”
The cafe stood on the corner of Calle 2. Al got his bearings and looked for the position of the sun to establish direction but it was hidden somewhere behind an expanse of rolling clouds. He extracted the GPS from his satchel, powered it on and immediately turned right, walking steadily down the quiet street. Two blocks later a car pulled to the curb beside him and a voice from the backseat called his name through the halfway lowered window. Al stopped and the door swung open. He got in, and a man jumped in beside him. They roared off into traffic.
Forty minutes later they were deep into the countryside, having left the city well behind them. They turned off the highway and navigated a series of ever smaller roads until they were bumping along a dirt track cut into the dense growth. They arrived at a small caretaker’s hut and pulled over. Two men holding machine-guns stood on either side of a Nissan van. A third man rolled the sliding door open and gestured with his head for Al to get inside.
He did, and another man already in the van slipped a black hood over his head. The van engine started and soon they were bouncing down a rural trail, after making a series of switchbacks and turns. They stopped ten minutes later and Al was guided out of the van and into the interior of a structure. The hood was removed, revealing a man in his late thirties, seated on a threadbare loveseat, black and white photos of anonymous Colombians
framed on the wall.
The man gestured. “Sit.”
Al sat.
“Mari tells me you are someone important to her, and that I shouldn’t kill you – yet. She says you have a proposition for me that is sensitive and could make a tremendous difference to my organization, as well as to the eventual balance of power in Colombia. That’s quite a promise. So I agreed not to hack your head off with a machete if you could interest me within five minutes of meeting you. You’re now down to four and a half,” the man said.
“Julio?” Al asked.
“You’re wasting time. But yes, that is one of my names.”
“My name is Al. Mari swears you’re trustworthy, which is why I’m here,” Al started.
“You’re an American. What would you know about trustworthiness? You now have four minutes,” Julio advised.
“I know you value her,” Al said, “and will understand the value of what I’m about to offer you. When we’re done, I’ll tell you what I propose and what I want in exchange.”
“What you want in exchange?” Julio’s eyes widened. “How about being allowed to leave with all your organs? You now have three and a half minutes.”
Al slowly raised his knapsack, and handed it to Julio.
“Open the bag. Inside, you’ll find a camera. Open the screen, turn on the power and push the button with the single arrow on it,” Al instructed.
Julio cautiously opened the bag and removed the camera. He watched the screen for five minutes, in silence. Then he powered the camera down and put it on the sofa next to him.
“No fucking way,” Julio said, shaking his head at what he’d just seen. “No fucking way…”
“Yup. Now here’s what I’m proposing...”
They spent the next hour going over the outline of Al’s plan. Julio stared at the ratty ceiling, lost in thought. After a heavy, almost infinite silence he nodded, as if coming to a decision.
“What do you want, if I agree to this?” Julio asked. “And why wouldn’t I just kill you now, and take this, and do whatever I want?”
“Because you’re an honorable man. Because you gave your word. And most importantly, because your sister would never forgive you,” Al answered honestly.
“And your demands?”
Al listed them. Four items.
Julio appeared to consider them thoughtfully before rising to his feet.
“We have a deal. My men will take you back to within a block of where they picked you up. Give me forty-eight hours to arrange things and I’ll get in contact with Mari.” He shook Al’s hand. “You took a huge risk bringing this to me. I really wouldn’t hesitate to knife you where you stand and watch you choke on your own blood,” he warned.
“I bet on your sister.”
“I’ll keep the camera,” Julio said. “Good luck with her,” he concluded.
“Thanks. I’m going to need a lot of it. Luck, I mean,” Al quickly added.
“I’ll be in touch.”
Julio walked to the door of the house they were in and snapped his fingers. A man entered, holding the hood, and pulled it over Al’s head again. Al felt something thrust into his hands – his knapsack; now empty save for the little GPS unit.
And just like that, it was over.
The drive back to Cali was anti-climactic. They changed cars twice, and after an hour Al found himself blinking in the mid-day light, standing on the sidewalk of Calle 2.
Chapter 39
Julio watched the video in silence as the van’s wheels crunched down the dirt track and away from the little house.
He liked Al’s plan. What the man had wanted in return was laughably easy to provide. The difficult part would be dancing with the elephant – negotiating with the U.S. government so FARC got what it wanted without bringing down the wrath of the entire American military machine. But the reward was potentially massive and would make FARC extremely powerful and wealthy, positioning it to replace the existing government of Colombia at some point in the future – something the FARC had never believed possible during its entire existence.
Al had just handed Julio the means with which to manage the U.S. and get it to work towards FARC’s interests. It would also reposition Julio within the organization to be the natural successor to Alfonso Cano, the current Commander in Chief. In five years, or ten maybe, he’d step down, or die, and then Julio would be the one to assume control – which was virtually guaranteed…once he’d negotiated this deal.
The risk was worth it.
Of course, it would take a bit of work to set up a secure communications channel that couldn’t be traced, but he had a contact who could do it via the Internet. He thought through how best to transmit his demands, and smiled at his idea.
~ ~ ~
The CIA’s Director swiveled his chair to face the telephone. The Agency was taping the call and attempting to triangulate a geographical location for its origination, however, they couldn’t get past the IP masking software – the signal was being bounced to IP addresses around the world, seemingly at random, every 30 seconds. The Director realized at some level that it didn’t matter – it was the substance of the discussion that was key. They’d already dispensed with identifying the key participants – now they were down to terms.
“I’m listening,” the Director said, his distinctive lisp emphasizing the sibilance.
“What we require is for your government to allow our shipments to pass unmolested into U.S. ports. This should be simple enough to achieve. Twice a month, a container or two will arrive on a designated cargo vessel…and you’ll ensure that the contents make it through customs unobstructed – with no tracking or other subterfuge,” the Colombian stated.
“And you honestly think we can arrange for thousands of pounds of cocaine to make it onto American soil every month with no DEA or law enforcement interference?” the Director clarified.
“I believe you’re more than capable of accomplishing this,” Julio explained. “It’s not as though there aren’t tons making it through every week already. What I’m proposing is that in exchange for our discretion, you eliminate the losses we experience on occasional shipments and enable us to ramp up our supply to better accommodate demand.”
“And if something goes wrong on our end? Something unforeseeable?” the Director asked.
“You will reimburse us for the lost shipment at a cost we stipulate,” Julio said. “In all honesty, I don’t care if you transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to our accounts every month and confiscate most of the shipments, or allow them all to go through. That’s up to you. If your country really wants to stop most of the inbound cocaine traffic, you can stop the containers and pay us the value.”
“You realize this is unprecedented,” the Director hissed, “and flies in the face of decades of policy and stated goals of our government, when it comes to drug control and supporting terrorist organizations?”
“That’s the second part of the deal. Over the next three years, your government needs to temper its rhetoric regarding FARC and slowly transition to a position where it recognizes us as a legitimate political faction within Colombia. Within another two, I would expect that policy will support FARC’s agenda to becoming a mainstream contender for Colombia’s government,” Julio continued. “In return, FARC won’t feel it necessary to engage in kidnapping or extortion as mechanisms to achieve political change.”
“What guarantees do we have that you’ll honor your part of the bargain?” the Director asked.
“Every month, you’ll not see the recording splashed across every PC screen in the world. Each day, you won’t wake up to a world where the U.S. Government is exposed as liars, cheats and frauds, and rendered incapable of governing or negotiating with other, legitimate regimes. That will be your guarantee. There are now multiple copies of the tape in secure locations around the globe – if you doubt my willingness to broadcast them, simply do not agree to my terms within the next twelve hours and we’ll have nothing more to discuss,” Juli
o warned.
“But you’re asking the impossible.” The Director’s voice had taken on a slight wobble.
“I’m not asking. I’m proposing a solution to the biggest problem your nation has faced in two hundred years. If you don’t accept my terms, or think you can propose different ones, then do nothing…and twelve hours from now you’ll be facing political extinction. You know how to contact me. You have twelve hours. I suggest you stop posturing and start getting the approvals you need to ratify our arrangement,” Julio advised. “Oh, and just in case you’re getting any clever ideas; if we get hit with a missile attack or I choke on a chicken bone or get run down by a car, the tape will immediately be circulated globally. So you better take all precautions to ensure I live a long and prosperous life,” Julio continued. “You have eleven hours and fifty-nine minutes.”
The call terminated.
The Director stared at the phone for a while before turning to face the other occupant of the room – the White House Chief of Staff, Jeremy Temens.
“What the fuck are we going to do?” Jeremy demanded.
The Director wiped the sweat from his brow. “I think we need to brief the President. It’s actually not a bad deal, all things considered...”
“Are you insane?” Jeremy sputtered. “The U.S. Government is going to become the silent partner of the largest cocaine exporter in the world, as blackmail payoff!”
“Jeremy, this is very simple. It’s a matter of survival…the least of two evils. Sure, we can all agree that drugs are bad and wrong and cause suffering and crime and the like, but in my opinion, the fallout of the tape going public makes that moral position a non-issue. We can’t allow it to surface. Ever. I would have thought that’s obvious. You’re just lucky he didn’t demand an F-15 filled with suitcase nukes to be personally delivered by the first lady to a Medellin airstrip.”
The Geronimo Breach Page 24