When the lock on the tent zipper was undone and the zipper quickly opened, Megan came face to face with Hector.
“General Zahn wishes to see you,” Hector said after thrusting open the tent flap.
“This early? Is something wrong?”
“Now.” Hector couldn’t even look at Megan, who quickly put her boots on and followed him to the trailer.
Hector stopped Megan halfway to the trailer and rubbed himself up against her, his mouth half an inch from hers. “He will tire of you, gringa bitch, and then you regret the day you met me.”
“I already do.”
“Puta!”
Megan pried his hand off her arm. “The general will not be happy to hear of your treatment of me, Hector.”
“Tell him, and you are a dead woman.”
“I’m a dead woman anyway, you dumb ass.”
Suddenly, Hector released her. “You will pay, whore. You will hurt so much, you will wish you were dead.”
Opening the door to the trailer, Megan turned to him. “I’ll see you in hell first.” Entering the trailer, Megan felt her heart race. She hated Hector almost as much as he hated her. If she didn’t get out of there, Hector would most assuredly kill her.
“Ah, Megan, buenos días. Please...sit down.”
Megan sat as the general finished lacing up his boots. He looked up at her and smiled warmly. He did not appear to be angry, but Megan was still wary nonetheless.
“Coffee?”
Megan spied two cups and a carafe of coffee sitting on the table. Oh, how long it had been since she and Delta sat over two steaming cups of coffee in the morning. It had been one of her favorite parts of the day. “I’d love some. Allow me.” Megan reached across him and poured the aromatic drink from the carafe. Unless he was very good at hiding anger, General Zahn was not throwing out any vibes to Megan. As a matter of fact, she was picking up just the opposite. Handing a cup to him, Megan grinned.
“It is a beautiful morning, no?”
Megan nodded and wondered if he really expected a captive to notice whether or not the day was a pretty one. “Very.”
“Did you sleep well?”
Looking at him over her cup, Megan wanted to laugh. She was being held hostage in a foreign country, forced to do manual labor with little more than rice and beans to eat, was locked up in a tent with nothing but a blanket, and he wants to know if she slept well? The question was beyond absurd.
“I slept fine, thank you.” Gazing into his face, Megan saw a look familiar to her—one she’d seen thousands of times on the faces of her johns. He was staring at her with an unadulterated lust which stripped her bare of her clothes, her self-respect and her self-esteem. As Megan returned his gaze, she knew that, if she ever had the chance, if she ever really needed to, she was quite capable of killing a man like Zahn.
“Good.” Reaching for a brown bag on the floor, the general pulled out a small bottle and handed it to her. “I thought you might like something a little...feminine.”
Megan stared at the bottle of perfume as if she hadn’t seen one before. Was this guy for real? Was he as smitten with her as it appeared?
Taking the bottle from him, Megan opened it and smelled the cheap perfume as if it were the most divine nectar. “Mmmm. Nice. Thank you.” Turning the bottle over, she dabbed some behind her ears. If Zahn’s weakness was his desire for her, Megan would use that to her advantage as much as she possibly could. “This is very thoughtful.”
Zahn nodded curtly, almost looking embarrassed by her pleasure. “There is something I need to do this morning and I would like you to accompany me.”
Megan forced a grin. “Accompany you? Where are we going?”
General Zahn smiled. “You’ll see. It is a beautiful place, really. We shall finish our coffee and be on our way.”
Setting her cup down, Megan rose and followed General Zahn out the door.
Once outside, he gave a few commands in clipped Spanish before strapping on a very sharp, very scary-looking machete.
“We should be gone most of the morning. I will have you back before lunch, when my scouts return.” When he closed the door to the trailer, locked it, pocketed the key and said something in Spanish to his guard.
“Your scouts?” Megan asked as they left the camp.
“My men. I have men on the Panamanian side who believe they might have stumbled on another cavern much like these.”
“Another cavern? How much is enough, General?”
General Zahn started down a path and spoke over his shoulder as they went. From behind, Megan noticed a knife attached to his boot along with a gun on his belt. If he wasn’t truly a general in a bona fide army, he sure looked the part.
“Money buys government help, Megan. And governments who are bought turn their heads away from certain activities.”
“Such as poaching and smuggling?”
The general stopped and turned all the way around. “Drugs are the least of man’s problems. We aren’t just speaking of cocaine, we’re also talking semi-automatic weapons, tanks, nuclear weapons, microchips, software and even large corporations. Everyone is in the business of making money.”
“And that’s what the gold does for you? Buys businesses?”
Continuing down the path, he nodded. “My wife does not understand, either. It’s a man’s world, Megan. Violent, corrupt and greedy. If I wasn’t doing this and making a great deal of money, somebody else would be. And why not? My children go to the best private schools in the world; my wife lives in a mansion on a thousand acres of beautiful land; and my parents can live the remainder of their lives in luxury. If I was an American businessman crushing smaller companies and ruining competitors, I would be a hero, an idol. My face would be on the cover of magazines.”
Megan was surprised by his impassioned words. Surprised, and somewhat taken aback. This monster had a point.
“But how rich does one man need to be, General?”
General Zahn stopped and turned toward Megan. “Did you know that Colombia supplies over eighty percent of the cocaine throughout the world? Have you any idea, any concept of the kind of money we’re talking about? Eighty percent, Megan. Our cartels own more governments than England once did. Like any wise investor, the cartel bosses have simply diversified their portfolios.”
“Is that what you’d call murder, kidnap and rape? Diversifying a portfolio?”
The general turned his back and started walking again. “As I have said, it’s a man’s world, and international business is no place for women.”
“Why? Because we choose not to exploit people for personal gain?”
Again, he stopped. Megan couldn’t tell if she was angering him or if he was enjoying the conversation. “Have you any idea how the so-called honorable Japanese businessmen conduct business, Megan? Americans are so busy looking up to Japanese craftsmanship, they are not paying attention to the fact that those same businessmen are buying up your own country out from under you. It’s business, Megan, and the good businessman always plays for keeps. This gold is my way of ensuring my place in that business world.”
When the general continued down the path, Megan decided it was time to change the subject. She didn’t care to hear more about his warped impression of Americans, Japanese or women. “Are we going into a town?”
“No. I no longer go into towns. I may not be in my native land, but my face is quite familiar even in Central America. I am still free because I do not take unnecessary chances.”
“What about when you go home?”
“I am a wealthy landowner in Colombia, and I donate much money to the church, the schools and even the local government. I own ranches, a manufacturing plant and purebred horses. I have a satellite plate, a telecommunications system and a very secure home. The people of my region do not care how I get my money because they know that I spread it around. People who are given things don’t ask questions. Poor people given things ask even fewer questions. That is a motto that your very own
government lives by.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. There’s a drug problem in your country because your government sleeps with the cartels. For every pound of heroin or cocaine they find, there’s a hundred pounds more that make it in. With a success rate like that, someone isn’t doing their job.”
“Are you saying that our government has an association with your cartels?”
This made him laugh. “You weren’t listening. I said eighty percent of the world’s cocaine comes from Colombia. With the cocaine trade becoming impossible to stop in your country, why is it Americans have not done something political against Colombia to stop it? You still trade with us, you still put corporations in our country, you even visit it as a tourist destination. If your government wasn’t as corrupt as everyone else’s, and they were serious about their so-called war on drugs, they would impose embargoes, tariffs, every kind of economic sanction they could.”
“But we don’t.”
“No, you don’t.”
Megan nodded. “In other words, we’re trying to kill the weed by cutting off the top, instead of pulling it out by the roots?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“And you were able to acquire all that you have now through drug money?”
“How else can a poor Colombian boy make that kind of money, experience the kind of power I enjoy? But drugs alone are not enough to keep a man in power. One must expand. Like your Donald Trump or Ted Turner. They are wealthy beyond imagination because they diversified. In my world, I am no less successful than they.”
As Megan followed, she tried to take note of as many landmarks as possible—a tree bent in half over here, ivy covering the trunk of another there. She was certain she’d not been in this part of the forest. “Have you always been a drug runner?”
The term made General Zahn stop so abruptly, Megan nearly collided with him. “I am a businessman. I buy and sell commodities others can’t or don’t. Drug runner sounds so...amateurish.”
“Let me rephrase the question. What did you do before you became General Zahn?”
“I was in the military many years ago, and I realized we were fighting a losing battle. Drugs are everywhere, and it isn’t as bad as you Americans make it out to be. Many tribal people still existing in the rainforest use drugs on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Drugs are one way of connecting to one’s spirituality.”
“But in developed nations, drugs contribute to violent crime. Even Japan is beginning to suffer the effects,” Megan countered.
“But it isn’t the drugs that are the problem. It’s the people and your attitudes. Many of your crimes happen because the drugs are illegal. Drugs are illegal because Europeans fear them. Every single Amazonian tribe uses hallucinogenic drugs of one kind or another. They smoke it, eat it or drink it, and it often accompanies their most important rituals. Drugs in those cultures are every bit as essential as food.”
Megan wiped the sweat from her brow. “But if drugs were legalized, you’d be out of business, right?”
General Zahn turned and grinned at her. “Then I would become what you call an ‘honest’ businessman, and instead of dealing with the black market, I would be dealing with the even more corrupt pharmaceutical companies. Don’t you see? It makes no difference to me who I deal with, because as long as there are plants, there will be drugs that someone, somewhere will want.”
“What happened to make you turn your back on the military?”
“The military turned its back on me. I realized that we weren’t Colombian soldiers fighting to protect our country; we were Colombians being used by the American and Canadian governments to fight for their countries.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You Americans blame your drug problem on my people, or on the Mexicans, or on your immigrants—on anyone but who it truly belongs to. Instead of solving the problem in your own home, you come into mine and try to clean my house.
“Your people are so unhappy about how they live that they would rather be numb. This is not the fault of my people, yet we are using armed soldiers to stop them from growing or cultivating a drug that almost every country uses and wants. Hypocrisy, really.”
“So you switched sides.”
“Yes, and I have been a rich man ever since.”
“But rich and wanted...”
“Perhaps.”
“If you’re so rich, why don’t you stop so you can enjoy it?”
This made General Zahn laugh. “I did not become a wealthy man on my own. There is always someone we are accountable to. One does not simply walk away from the cartels.”
“Oh. So you owe someone.”
General Zahn turned. “Don’t you?”
Megan looked back at him silently, but didn’t respond.
For the next half hour or so, they walked in silence, with Zahn stopping occasionally to hack away at the underbrush. As they pushed on, Megan heard a faint rushing sound; a sound they were nearing. As they pushed their way past several bushes, Zahn split a bush in two and held it back for Megan. When she stepped over the bush, it was as if she’d stepped into paradise.
Falling majestically was a waterfall about forty feet high. The water flowed smoothly over rocks and into a pool, which eventually evened out to a smooth, calm pond-like area which trickled lazily over smooth rocks until it reached a creek. The pond-like area was nestled in a clearing about the size of a football field, and the water, which rushed down the cliff face, was crystal clear. It was the most beautiful place Megan had ever seen. In the open space, no trees blocked the brilliant sun, which beamed down on the clear water. The smaller trees surrounding the water were canopied with bright green leaves and yellow trunks. The fresh scent of jasmine wafted through the air, and butterflies hovered about, flapping lazily from one plant to another.
Standing next to her, General Zahn rocked back and forth, smiling broadly. “One of my men discovered this place by accident. I come here when I need peace.”
“It’s beautiful,” Megan murmured. “Absolutely amazing.”
Moving ahead, the general sat on the soft ground near the bank of the pond and began unlacing his boots. “There are many, many places such as these in Colombia. I long for them, for the simplicity of life there.”
Joining him on the ground, Megan folded her long legs up and rested her chin on her knees. Although she would kill him if she had the chance, Megan still found some admirable qualities about the man. “You speak of Colombia with such passion.”
Taking off one boot, General Zahn paused to look at Megan. “It is where I wish to be. When this...project is completed, I hope to spend my days watching my daughters and their grandchildren grow up. I hope to take time to fish in the lake. There is much I would do.” He stopped, then added, “But I have debts to repay, just like any other successful businessman.”
Megan watched in silence as he removed his second boot. She knew what was coming next, and steeled her insides against the violations she knew would come. “How did you find the gold? According to legend, this coast was believed by Columbus and others to have rich deposits of gold and silver, but no one ever found any of this mythical gold.”
General Zahn grinned. “Ah, that would be half right, my dear. You have studied your Central American history well.”
Megan nodded. Before beginning her internship, she’d consumed every book she could get her hands on about Costa Rican history, lifestyle, rituals. “I have done some reading.”
“And what did you discover?”
“Columbus was treated well by the natives when he got here,” she answered.
“And?”
“And he noticed their necklaces of silver and gold. The Spanish tried to conquer the natives, because they thought they’d get all of the gold, but—”
“They never found any,” Zahn finished for her.
“Not until an earthquake hit this country. What happened then?”
General Zahn grinned. “In 1991, C
osta Rica suffered a devastating earthquake, which disturbed the muck on the river floor. One of my connections, an American, as a matter of fact, was completing a geological survey shortly after, and noticed a change in the water. There were trace elements that had not previously existed. It wasn’t long before we followed that trace and ended up here. After that, all we had to do was find the underground water source, and here we are.”
“You had an American geologist on your payroll?”
“Of course. I also have several doctors, lawyers, politicians, judges, law-enforcement officers and medical personnel in my employ. I have people all over the globe looking out for special artifacts, museum pieces, microchips, even coins. Diversity is the key to wealth, Megan, and I am as diverse as they come. Did you know that San Jose’s Jade Museum has the world’s largest collection of pre-Colombian jade?”
Megan shook her head.
“Another area of my portfolio, you see. If the earthquake unearthed gold deposits, what about archeological finds? Priceless artifacts might be here, waiting to be found.”
“But they would belong to the Ticos.”
This made General Zahn laugh. “The jade would belong to the highest bidder, Megan. Surely you are not so naive as to believe that archeologists are also humanitarians? Some of the world’s most renowned diggers are on some other country’s payroll.”
Megan watched as he unbuckled his pants and dropped them to the ground. Pulling his shirt over his head, General Zahn now stood in front of Megan completely naked.
“What about the natives here? Have you had connections with any of them?”
“Such as?”
“The Bribri?” The heat from the morning sun drew perspiration down Megan’s back.
General Zahn stretched out and smiled. “You have done your homework.”
“It’s a rich history.” Megan swatted away a buzzing insect.
“Indeed.”
“And they could be very wealthy.” Megan wriggled her toes once her boots and socks were removed.
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