Queen of the South

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  “Has it occurred to you that I can have you followed?” said Yasikov.

  Patty rested the hand holding the cigarette in her lap. “Of course that’s occurred to us.” She inhaled and returned the hand to her lap. “But you can’t follow us to where it’s hidden. Not there.”

  “Oh, I see. Mysterious. You are mysterious ladies.”

  “We’d realize we were being followed and disappear. And find another buyer. Five hundred kilos is a lot.”

  Yasikov said nothing to that, although his silence indicated that five hundred kilos was, in fact, too much in every way. He kept looking at Patty, and once in a while he gave a brief glance in the direction of Teresa, not talking, not smoking, not moving; just watching and listening, almost holding her breath, her hands on the legs of her jeans to absorb the sweat. A light blue polo shirt, tennis shoes in case she had to make a quick getaway and slither between somebody’s legs, her only jewelry the semanario of Mexican silver on her right wrist—in sharp contrast to Patty’s elegant clothes and heels. They were there because Teresa had insisted on this solution. At first Patty had wanted to sell the drugs in small amounts, but Teresa had managed to convince her that sooner or later the real owners would figure it all out. It’s better if we work straight, she counseled. A sure thing, even if we lose a little. All right, Patty had finally agreed. But I talk, because I know how that fucking Bolshevik’s mind works. And there they were, while Teresa became more and more certain that they’d made a mistake.

  She’d been around people like this since she was a girl. They might speak a different language, look different, wear different clothes, make different gestures, but underneath they were all the same. This was going nowhere, or rather somewhere they didn’t want to go. When all was said and done—Teresa was realizing this too late—Patty was just a spoiled society chick, the girlfriend of a wet-behind-the-ears asshole who had been in the business not out of necessity, but because he was stupid. A guy who thought he was cool—like so many others. As for Patty, she had lived a life of appearances that had nothing to do with the real thing, and the time she’d spent in prison had done nothing but blind her even more. Here in this office she wasn’t Lieutenant O’Farrell—she wasn’t anybody. The blue eyes with flashes of yellow that were looking at them—that was where the power was here. And Patty was making an even bigger mistake than coming here in the first place. It was a mistake to put it to him this way. To refresh Oleg Yasikov’s memory, after so much time had passed.

  “That’s just the problem,” Patty was saying. “Five hundred kilos is too much. That’s why we’ve come to you first.”

  “Whose idea was it?” Yasikov didn’t seem flattered. “Me the first option? Yes.”

  Patty looked at Teresa.

  “Hers. She’s the deep thinker.” She gave a quick, nervous smile between puffs on her cigarette. “She’s better than I am at calculating the risks and probabilities.”

  Teresa felt the Russian’s eyes studying her; he looked at her for a long time. He’s wondering what it is that joins us, she decided. Prison, friendship, business. Whether men are my thing or we’re a couple.

  “I still don’t know what,” said Yasikov, asking Patty without taking his eyes off Teresa. “She’s doing in this. Your friend.”

  “She’s my partner.”

  “Ah. It’s good to have partners.” Yasikov turned his attention back to Patty. “It would also be good to talk. Yes. Risks and probabilities. You might not have time to disappear to find another buyer.” He paused deliberately. “Time to disappear voluntarily. I think.”

  Teresa saw that Patty’s hands were trembling again. And how I wish, she thought, I could get up right now and say, Quihubo, don Oleg, see ya around. Didn’t even see that third strike coming. You keep that shipment, right, and forget this chingada.

  “Maybe we should . . .” Teresa began.

  Yasikov looked at her, almost surprised. But Patty was already at it again: You wouldn’t gain anything by that. Not a thing, except the lives of two women. And you’d lose a lot. And the fact was, Teresa decided, that apart from the trembling hands that transmitted their shaking to the spirals of cigarette smoke, the Lieutenant was handling this very well. And she didn’t give up easily. But both of them were dead women. She was about to say that aloud. We’re dead, Lieutenant. Let’s pack up and get out of here.

  “It takes time to lose a life,” the Russian was philosophizing, although as he continued, Teresa realized that there was nothing philosophical about it. “I think that during the process one winds up telling things . . . I do not like to pay twice. No. I can get it back. And without paying.”

  He looked at the brick of cocaine sitting on the table, between his two hamlike, immobile hands. Patty clumsily stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray just inches away from those hands. And this is it, Teresa thought in desolation. She could smell the other woman’s panic. Then, without thinking, she heard her own voice again:

  “You might be able to get it back without paying,” she said. “But you never know. It’s a risk, a hassle. . . . You’d be depriving yourself of a sure profit.”

  The yellow-ringed irises fixed on her, interested.

  “Your name?”

  “Teresa Mendoza.”

  “Colombian?”

  “Mexico.”

  She was about to add Culiacán, Sinaloa—which in this business was blowing your own horn—but she didn’t. Fish get caught because they open their mouth one time too many. Yasikov had still not taken his eyes off her.

  “Deprive myself. You say. Convince me of that.”

  Convince me of the utility of keeping you alive, read the subtitle. Patty had leaned back in her chair, like an exhausted fighting cock taking a breather against the pit wall. You’re right, Mexicana. My breast is wounded and bleeding, and it’s your turn now. Get us out of this. Teresa’s tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. A glass of water—she’d give anything to have asked for a glass of water.

  “With a kilo going for twelve thousand dollars,” she said, “the half-ton probably cost you, at point of origin, about six million. . . . Right?”

  “Right.” Yasikov was looking at her inexpressively. Cautiously.

  “I don’t know how much the intermediaries got, but in the U.S. a kilo would sell for twenty thousand.”

  “Thirty thousand for us. This year. Here.” Yasikov had still not moved a muscle, especially a muscle of his face. “More than for your neighbors. Yes. The Yankees.”

  Teresa did a quick calculation. She was chewing that nopal. Her hands—to her surprise—were not trembling. Not just then.

  “In that case,” she said, “and at current prices, a half-ton on the street in Europe would go for fifteen million dollars. And that, according to my partner, was much more than you and your associates paid four years ago for the original shipment. Which was, and you can correct me if I’m mistaken here, five million in cash and one million in . . . what would you call it?”

  “Technology,” Yasikov replied, amused. “Secondhand.”

  “Six million in all,” nodded Teresa, “with one thing and another. Technology included. But what matters is that half a ton now, the half-ton we’re offering, is only going to cost you another six. One payment of three million on delivery of the first third, another three as payment for the second third, and the rest of the goods once the second payment is confirmed. We’re selling it at cost.”

  She saw that the Russian was considering this. Shit, she thought, you’re slow, cabrón. You still don’t see the profit, and as far as you’re concerned we’re still just two little dead girls.

  “You want”—Yasikov was shaking his head slowly—“to make us pay twice. Yes. For that half-ton. Six and six.”

  Teresa leaned forward, placing her fingers on the edge of the table. So why aren’t my hands trembling, she wondered. Why aren’t these seven bangles tinkling like a silver rattlesnake, when I’m about to stand up and take off running.

  “In spite
of that”—she was also surprised at how calm her voice sounded—“you will still be realizing a profit of three million dollars on a shipment that you thought was lost, and that I’ll lay odds you’ve already worked into your overhead charges in one way or another. . . . But in addition, if we do the math, those five hundred kilos are worth sixty-five million dollars once it’s cut and ready to distribute on the wholesale market in your country, or wherever you want. . . . Deducting the old and new expenses, your people would still see fifty-three million dollars in profits. Fifty, if you deduct the three for transportation, delays, and other minor inconveniences. And your market would be supplied for a long time to come.”

  She stopped talking, but remained fixed on Yasikov’s eyes. The muscles in her back were tense and her stomach was in a knot that actually hurt, from the fear. But she had been able to put it to him in the driest, most straightforward way, as if instead of laying her and Patty’s lives on the table she were proposing a routine commercial operation with no consequences to anybody. The gangster was studying Teresa, who could also feel Patty’s eyes on her, but there was no way in the world she was going to return that second gaze. Don’t look at me, she was mentally begging her friend. Don’t even blink, carnalita, or we’re done for.

  “I am afraid...” Yasikov began.

  This is it, Teresa told herself. All you had to do was look at the Russian’s face to see that there was no way he was buying this deal. And that hit Teresa like a lightning bolt. We’ve been innocent schoolgirls, she thought. The fear wound itself about her intestines, strangling them. This looks like the fucking end of everything.

  “There’s something else,” she improvised. “Hash.”

  “What about it?”

  “I know that business. And I know you people don’t have hash.”

  Yasikov looked a little disconcerted. “Of course we do.”

  Teresa shook her head confidently. Don’t let Patty open her mouth and blow us away, she begged. Inside her, the road laid itself out with uncanny clarity. A door opened, and that silent woman, the one who sometimes resembled her, was watching her from the threshold.

  “A year and a half ago,” Teresa said, “you were dabbling in it here and there, and I doubt things are any different today. I’m sure you’re still in the hands of Moroccan suppliers, Gibraltar transporters, and Spanish intermediaries. . . . Like everybody else.”

  The gangster raised his left hand, with the wedding ring, to touch his face. I’ve got thirty seconds to convince him, thought Teresa, before we have to stand up, walk out of here, and take off running—before they catch us again in a day or two. Fuck that. It’d be a real bitch to get the Sinaloa gang off your back and come all this way, just to get whacked by a fucking Russian.

  “We want to propose something to you,” she said. “A business deal. Of those six million dollars split up into two payments, the second would be retained by you as our associate, in exchange for something you need very much.”

  A long silence. The Russian did not take his eyes off her. And I’m a mask, she thought. I’m an expressionless mask, playing poker like Raúl Estrada Contreras, professional card player, respected by people because he played an honest game, or at least that’s what the corrido says, and this motherfucker is not going to make me blink, because my life’s on the fucking line here. So look me in the eye, asshole. Like you’d look at my tits.

  “What is that? That we need very much?”

  Gotcha, thought Teresa. Hook, line, and sinker.

  “Well, I don’t know right now. I mean I do, but not all the details. Let’s say boats, for starters. Outboard motors. Pick-up points. Payment for the first contacts and intermediaries.”

  Yasikov was still touching his face. “You have experience with these things?”

  “Jesus fucking Christ. I’m putting my life on the line here, and my friend’s, too. . . . You think I came here to sing rancheras?”

  And that, Saturnino G. Juárez confirmed, was how Teresa Mendoza and Patricia O’Farrell became associates of the Russian mafia on the Costa del Sol. The proposal that the Mexicana made Yasikov at that first meeting tipped the scales. And it was all true: Besides that half-ton of cocaine, the Solntsevo Babushka needed Moroccan hashish so they wouldn’t have to depend exclusively on Turkish and Lebanese suppliers. Until Teresa came along they’d been forced to go to the traditional mafias along the Strait, which were badly organized, expensive, and unreliable. And the idea of a direct connection was seductive.

  The half-ton changed hands in return for $3 million deposited in a bank in Gibraltar and another $3 million used to finance an infrastructure whose legal front was named Transer Naga, S.L., with corporate headquarters on the Rock and a quiet cover operation in Marbella. For that, Yasikov and his people obtained, according to the agreement he reached with the two women, fifty percent of the profits the first year and twenty-five percent the second. The third year, the debt would be considered amortized.

  As for Transer Naga, it was nothing more than a service enterprise: clandestine transportation of other people’s drugs. The company’s responsibility began when the drug was loaded on the Moroccan coast, and ended when somebody took charge of it on a Spanish beach or loaded it onto a boat on the high seas.

  In time, through phone taps and other intercepted information, it was learned that the rule of never taking any share of ownership of the drugs had been imposed by Teresa Mendoza. Previous experience told her, she said, that everything was cleaner if the transport agency didn’t get involved; that guaranteed discretion, and also the absence of names and evidence that could interconnect producers, exporters, intermediaries, receivers, and owners. The method was simple: A customer made his needs known, and Transer Naga counseled him on the most efficient means of transport. Then it provided the means. From point A to point C, and we contribute B.

  In time, Saturnino Juárez said as I paid the check, the only thing missing was an ad in the yellow pages. And that was the strategy Teresa Mendoza followed from then on, never falling into the temptation to take part of her payment in drugs, the way other transporters did. Not even when Transer Naga turned the Strait of Gibraltar into the largest cocaine entry point in southern Europe, and Colombian blow started pouring in by the ton.

  10. I’m in the corner of a cantina

  They’d been going through the racks for almost an hour. It was the fifth store they’d been in that morning. Outside, on Calle Larios, the sun shone brightly—sidewalk cafés, cars, pedestrians in light clothes. Málaga in winter. And today, Patty was carrying out Operation Clotheshorse.

  “I’m sick of loaning you things to wear, or seeing you dressed like a secretary. So clean under those fingernails and fix yourself up, ’cause we’re going out. On a hunt. To polish your image a little bit. You ready or not?”

  So there they were. They had had an early breakfast before they left Marbella, and then another on the terrace of the Café Central, watching people pass by. Now they were dedicating themselves to spending money. Too much, in Teresa’s opinion. The prices were outrageous.

  “So?” was Patty’s response. “You’ve got money, I’ve got money, and besides, it’s an investment. Sure profits guaranteed, just the way you like it. You’ll be filling that purse tomorrow all over again, with your boats and your logistics and that whole water park you’ve put together, Mexicana. Not everything in the world is outboard motors and counterclockwise-rotating propellers or whatever you call them. It’s time you looked like the girl leading the life you’re leading. Or are about to be leading.”

  Patty was moving self-assuredly around the shop, taking clothes off the racks and tossing them to a saleswoman who was following her solicitously. “What do you think about this one?” She held an outfit, still on the hanger, against Teresa, to see the effect. “A jacket and pants is never last year, my dear. And the guys like it, especially in your, in my, in our world. . . . Jeans are all very well—you don’t have to stop wearing them—but combine them with dark j
ackets. Navy blue is perfect.”

  Teresa had other things on her mind, things more complex than what color jacket to wear with jeans. Too many people and too many interests. Hours sitting over a notebook filled with numbers, names, places, trying to put all the pieces together. Long conversations with strangers to whom she listened attentively, cautiously, trying to learn everything from everybody. A lot depended on her now, and she asked herself whether she was really ready to assume responsibilities that had never crossed her mind before. Patty knew all this, but she didn’t care, or didn’t seem to. “All things in due time,” she had said. “Today, clothes. Today, a little vacation. Today, shopping. Besides, the business is your thing—you run the show, and I watch.”

  In the shop, they moved to accessories. “See? . . . With jeans, what goes best is a low heel, like a moccasin, and those purses—Ubrique, Valverde del Camino. Those leather ones from Andalucía are great for you. For everyday.”

  There were now three of those particular purses in shopping bags stowed in the trunk of the car parked in the underground lot at the Plaza de la Marina.

  “Not another day will go by,” Patty had insisted, “without you filling up your closet with everything you need. And you’re going to take my advice. I give the orders and you follow them, all right? . . . Besides, dressing is less a question of fashion than of common sense. The idea is this: a few pieces, but good ones, is better than a lot of cheap shit. The trick is putting together a basic wardrobe. Then, building on that, you can go in lots of different directions. Got it?”