Cocaine

by Jack Hillgate

  ‘This little baby’s come all the way from Canada’, said Kieran, pulling out a small block of dark-brown hashish wrapped in cling-film, his eyes widening.

  ‘Put it away for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘Is not a problem’, said Juan Andres, still smiling. ‘We can smoke it later. Get rid of the evidence. Right, Ryyy-an?’

  ‘Claro que si’, I replied, with the false confidence of a man that had watched other people smoke, snort, eat or inject a wide variety of illegal narcotics but had himself never tried anything stronger than Pro Plus.

  ‘How far do we walk?’ I asked, looking up at the blazing sun, small globules of sweat already forming under my shirt just in time for dusk and the mosquitoes.

  ‘Quieres agua?’ said Juan Andres, handing me a green metal water bottle. ‘You thirsty?’

  ‘Thanks.’ I took a swig.

  ‘Is five ‘clock. Is getting dark soon. Maybe we catch taxi to Popayan.’

  ‘That nice?’

  ‘Is beautiful, but not like before earthquake. 1983. Lots of people dead.’

  He hailed a taxi.

  ***

  He woke in the hut at dawn and stretched for five minutes, working his body back into shape. The previous day he had run at full pelt through the jungle for perhaps half an hour and jogged the same distance again. His calves were throbbing and he craved salt and so Juan Andres licked the sweat from the skin on his forearms to compensate. He listened, carefully, for the sound of anything human or mechanical, but all he could hear were birds chirping and cawing, mosquitoes trying to get their last meal of the night, and large four-legged animals creeping through the underbrush.

  If he headed south again he could make for Ecuador or Peru, but Suares would be expecting that. It was the easy way out, the shortest route. He had to leave the hut and the tropinone and he had to do it now, this morning, whilst dawn was breaking. Navigating by the sun was easy, especially after his training. If one watched the sun rise, as Juan Andres did that morning whilst he checked his Makarov and his Uzi were in perfect order, then one had an even sharper sense of direction and time.

  If he had been able to look inside the cocaine factory, the one he had run away from, he could have ascertained whether the production line was the standard one, working from the raw coca leaf, or whether it was something more technical, involving alkaloids and men with degrees in chemistry, just like him. It was unlikely that they would deliberately store tropinone in a hut such as the one he was now leaving. The sun would bake it and it wasn’t guarded. No, it was probable that they had no idea what it was, and that it had arrived as part of a shipment of something else.

  No-one had ever asked Juan Andres if he wanted to use his technical and academic qualifications in the Narcotrafficos. Suares, he felt, considered a degree as something to be disdained, probably because Suares hadn’t been to university and neither had ninety-nine per cent of his men. Juan Andres had never trusted Suares, but now he knew he could trust no-one. It was not surprising that Suares had never told Juan Andres that he, Suares, was working with the Cartels as opposed to trying to shut them down, but it was surprising that he had never attempted to corrupt Juan Andres in the same way that he had corrupted Pepe. Why involve one, and not another? Was he incorruptible? Or was it to maintain a semblance of plausible deniability, or possibly morale?

  Morale had been difficult enough to maintain at two hundred and forty dollars a month, Juan Andres’s last monthly paycheck. As he picked his way carefully through the jungle, waiting for the crack of a branch or the noise of rotor blades above him, he realized that he would be receiving no further paychecks, and that his family might not be safe if Suares thought that Juan Andres was still alive. That is why Juan Andres Montero Garcia had to die, and the best person to engineer this unfortunate event was Juan Andres Montero Garcia.

  7

  March 2007 – Cannes, South of France

  I hadn’t seen the Wisemans for a few days, but later that afternoon a small cream envelope appeared under the front door to my apartment. I noted with amusement, when I opened it, that I had been invited to a Wiseman dinner party the following Saturday. Dress: ‘come as you are’. I caught myself naked in the mirror. The Wisemans probably wouldn’t be overjoyed if I took their instruction literally. Today was Tuesday, which left me five days in which to decline, which was the sensible thing to do, but another part of me was dying to accept and simply sit, eat and join the human race for a few hours and discover whether or not the Wisemans, Jack and Jan, posed any kind of threat to the equilibrium of my existence.

  I unpacked the Taser, read the operating instructions, a three hundred page booklet reproduced in six different languages, and placed it inside the top drawer of the desk in my bedroom, the big brown partner’s desk with the heavily-scored green leather top. Operation of the weapon was relatively silent, the manual assured me in French, and was infinitely preferable to conventional firearms, which, unless one fitted a silencer, produced the sort of noise that would alert everyone in my apartment block and the local gendarmerie. This was a good ‘belt and braces’ approach because I did not have a silencer for my Glock and I didn’t know where to buy one without attracting unwanted attention.

  At exactly five minutes past eight on Saturday evening I walked into the Wiseman’s apartment holding a bottle of Bollinger, a bunch of flowers and a rictus grin.

  ‘Lovely to see you George’, said Jan Wiseman. ‘You’re the first. Come in, come in.’ I let her kiss me on both cheeks. ‘Jack? George is here.’

  Jack Wiseman walked smoothly over to me, dressed in a pale blue cashmere sweater, grey slacks and highly polished burgundy brogues.

  ‘George’, he said, gripping my hand firmly. ‘Lovely to see you. Let’s get that open, shall we?’

  I handed him the bottle and gave Jan the flowers. She ushered me into their living room, which although identical in size to mine looked smaller due to the opulent red-hued Persian rug and the oppressive and amateurish oil-paintings that covered every inch of wall.

  ‘Lovely sunset,’ he ventured.

  ‘Lovely’, I replied, as Jack handed me a glass of my own champagne.

  ‘Been keeping busy?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, you know how it is.’

  ‘He’s been very quiet. Not a sound, ay, Jan? Not a sound from our George’s flat.’

  ‘You leave George alone, dear’, said Jan. ‘We like it quiet, don’t we pet?’

  ‘We do’, he said, nodding.

  I looked over to the dining table which was laid for eight, and Jack’s eyes followed mine.

  ‘We’re having the dentist and his wife’, he said proudly. ‘Germans. Lived here for twenty years. You said you spoke German, George?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then we’ve got the Thompsons, Bill and Sylvie – she’s French, he’s an Aussie.’

  ‘Very international.’

  ‘You know, George, there are nearly five thousand Anglophones living in the Cannes area alone, more than a hundred thousand across the Cote d’Azur, and a very high proportion are what I like to call individuals of high net worth.’

  He pronounced it ‘coat dayzur’.

  ‘And the eighth?’ I asked, nodding at the dinner table.

  ‘Aaah. Now there’s me and Jan being a bit naughty, George. We don’t know if you’re on your tod or married or whatever but we’ve met a very nice lady, her name’s Arabella, and she’s just gotten her divorce through. He was a banker, her husband was.’ He raised his eyebrows and I raised mine in sympathy. Jack leaned in and whispered to me out of Jan’s earshot. ‘Between you and me my son I think she’s a bit of a goer, and she’s not bad looking neither.’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say in reply to this so I took a long sip of champagne and then, fortunately, a tall couple in matching jumpers and small rectangular metal-rimmed spectacles walked through the door.

  ‘Heinrich and Bettina, this is George, our neighbour.’

  ‘Guten abend’,
I said, rising from the sofa.

  ‘You speak German!’ exclaimed Heinrich.

  ‘Nur ein bisschen.’

  I shook the dentist’s hand and kissed his wife on both cheeks.

  ‘Are you old friends of Jack and Jan’s?’ I asked them. They shook their heads.

  ‘Nein. We met last week at The Majestic. Jack is being helping me with der stockmarket.’

  ‘Aaah. Of course’

  ‘And I am helping him with his crowns!’

  Heinrich, Bettina and Jack and Jan laughed. I noted that Heinrich and Bettina had brought a very cheap bottle of white wine with them which didn’t look as if it was chilled.

  ‘Champagne?’ asked Jan, offering my bottle to them.

  ‘Ja ja. Ausgezeichnet!’

  ‘What’s that, dear?’

  ‘It means excellent’, I informed Jan, smiling.

  ‘Oh, right. Sorry. We’re not very good at languages, me and Jack. Even in Marbella we couldn’t get the Spanish going.’

  ‘Too many English in Marbella’, said Heinrich suddenly.

  ‘I agree’, said Jack. ‘Far too many. And not always the right sort, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘What is the right sort?’ I asked.

  ‘Like us of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Oh look’, said Jan, ‘it’s Bill and Sylvie.’

  A further round of introductions ensued. Bill had brought round a pack of twelve tinnies and two bottles of Jacob’s Creek. I tried not to think of the bottles of Puligny Montrachet chilling in my fridge and the Haut Brion and Margaux lying in my wine-rack.

  ‘Fancy one a these?’ said Bill, splitting the cans apart and holding one up to me. ‘They’re fuckin’ freezin’. Got a chiller in the motor.’

  ‘Yes please’ I replied, thinking of the alternatives.

  ‘You an old mate of his lordship I take it, George?’

  ‘No. I live opposite.’

  ‘Wouldn’t catch me dead ‘ere, mate.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Bloody soulless, that’s what it is. Me and the wife, we’ve got a big spread on the Cap, you know, Cap d’Antibes, big garden, private pool, no bloody lifts or smelly bags of rubbish in the corridors.’

  ‘Bill’s a card, isn’t he?’ said Jack, from the other side of the room.

  ‘Quite a character’, I replied, my rictus grin beginning to hurt.

  ‘I’m a self-made man, me’, continued Bill, oblivious. ‘Worked bloody ‘ard for what I’ve got and I’m bloody proud of it. Don’t mind who knows.’

  ‘How do you know Jack?’

  ‘Aaah, I met his lordship at the Ritz Carlton, as chance would have it. We were both waiting for someone and it turned out we both got stood up. So we started talking, drinking and well, here I am.’

  ‘Was this last week?’

  ‘Yeah, I think it was.’

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘Me wife’s a frog', said Bill, in his broad Australian accent. 'Say hello, Sylvie.’

  Sylvie was much younger than Bill, maybe thirty, and she was petite, slim and elegant with bleached-blonde hair and very tight jeans.

  ‘Enchante’, I said as I kissed her hand.

  She nodded coquettishly. I held her hand for slightly longer than I should have done, but she smelt beautiful. The ring on her finger was very large, maybe ten carat. Bill, despite his tinnies, had an expensive wife, which meant he would be rich until she had a child and either divorced or killed him.

  ‘What are you worth, George?’ Bill asked me, blundering on.

  ‘Not much’, I replied evenly.

  ‘Would you like to know what I’m worth, mate? Oy, Lord Jack! Jack! Come over ‘ere and tell this Englishman what I’m worth.’

  Jack Wiseman smiled and came over. He put his arm around the barrel-chested sixty-year-old Aussie and clinked tins of lager with him.

  ‘Bill’s a talker, isn’t he George?’

  ‘Yes he is. Very entertaining.’

  I watched Sylvie looking at me over her glass of Jacob’s Creek. It made me shudder to think of Bill’s furry old body heaving in and out of her, crushing her with his weight.

  ‘Three hundred grand’, said Bill loudly. ‘That’s what I’ve given Jack to invest for me.’

  ‘Really, Bill’, admonished Jack, 'you mustn’t tell everyone, or they’ll all want to be in on it.’

  ‘You got any capital?’ Bill asked me. ‘Jack’s your man. Best in the business.’

  Before I could answer, and somewhat opportunely, the door-bell rang and Arabella arrived.

  October 1990

  We got a triple room at the Hotel Viajero at the junction of Calle 8 and Carrera (eighth street and fifth avenue). The streets of the old town of Popayan were laid out in an easily navigable grid, centred on the Plaza de Armas, the main square. The Universidad del Cauca was only two blocks from our hotel and the bus terminal was perfectly positioned just a few street to the south-west, with a direct route to Cali, Colombia’s fourth largest city and also, according to Juan Andres, its recently-crowned drugs capital.

  ‘Aren’t you worried about being recognized?’ I asked him.

  ‘No, Ryyy-an. I already shave my moustache, I dye my hair, I with two gringos. No es problema. They no look for me. They more worried about each other.’

  ‘Stop worrying, English’, said Kieran, rolling a joint. ‘Once we find you a nice Colombian girl you’ll calm down.’

  ‘Dios mio!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You should see the girls on the beach. Madre mio, they are so…so athletico.’

  ‘Listen to Juan Andres’, said Kieran, ‘he’s a local. Want some? Help you relax.’ He handed me the joint, which burned steadily. ‘Don’t worry, English, it’s good stuff.’

  I took it from him. It had been sitting in Kieran’s shorts all the way from Canada, accumulating moisture inside its shrink-wrapped environment. A grin spread across Kieran’s face.

  ‘Don’t let it out til you’re good and ready.’

  I knew, from the first moment that I tasted the sickly sweet taste of the class C substance, from that first exhalation. I knew. I lay back on the bed and took another toke. The joint was hot, as the filter consisted of a simple piece of cardboard that Kieran had torn off from an old plane ticket, but apart from the slight swelling that I could feel in my lips, the rest of me was deflating nicely, warming to the journey ahead and my two traveling companions.

  ‘It’s good’, I said, my voice a little higher than usual, handing the joint to Juan Andres.

  ‘No, gracias’, he said, passing the joint straight to Kieran, who took a big drag and then asked me if I wanted a blow-back.

  ‘C’mere.’

  Kieran sat close to me on the bed, took a big drag from the joint and blew it into my mouth. It must have looked like we were kissing, but it heightened the soporific effect of the drug and I shut my eyes.

  The first term at Cambridge had been a whirlwind of new societies and parties and ex-convent girls eager to experiment with their bodies and mine. The second term had been spent trying to get rid of my new acquaintances and the ex-convent girls. The third term was spent cramming for part 1A of the Natural Sciences Tripos examination and listening to Duran Duran – the ‘Rio’ album – at sufficient volume to attract a visit from the Senior Tutor. He popped his head through the wide-open window to my ground-floor room and reminded me cheerily that youthful exuberance was best exercised on the sports field and preferably in silence. He remarked on the inappositeness of the Simon Le Bon lyric - ‘Don’t say a prayer for me now, save it til the morning after’ – adding that unless I buried my head in materials science and Darwinian theories of Natural Selection, he would feel compelled to pray for me both now and the morning after the Tripos results were displayed on the wooden boards outside Senate House. I turned the music off and apologized.

  I opened my eyes to see Kieran holding up a little bag of white powder.

  ‘Canadian coke’, s
aid Kieran. ‘Thought we’d do a little test.’

  ‘You heard of the expression ‘bringing coals to Newcastle’?’

  ‘Nope.’

  He opened the bag onto the top of the copy of the Spanish bible that came free with every room. He took out a credit card from his wallet and used it to chop up the coke and separate it into six lines, thin ones.

  ‘Two each’, he said. ‘I’ll go first.’

  Kieran rolled up a fifty peso note, leaned over, placed the end of the little paper cylinder against the book and snorted up one line into his left nostril, then another into his right. He sniffed and his eyes watered.

  ‘Not bad’, he said. ‘Not too shady. English?’

  I felt a little woozy from the hash. I also felt a little hungry suddenly.

  ‘C’mere.’

  I stood up with difficulty, my head heavy, like I’d had too many pints of Guinness, and I took the rolled up note from him.

  ‘First time, huh?’ he asked

  ‘Listen…Kieran…’

  ‘Go on.’

  I did what he was urging me to do and suddenly I could taste a sickly-sweet taste in the back of my mouth. My nostrils felt numb. Kieran slapped me playfully on the back.

  ‘You’re a man now, Ryan Jacobs. Your mother would be proud.’

  I suddenly felt wide-awake. My eyes stung a little, but the effects of the hash had vanished. Juan Andres dabbed a finger into one of the remaining two lines and licked it. He used his tongue to smooth the crystals over his teeth.

  ‘Thirty percent, maybe not even this much’, he said.

  ‘So what’s the other seventy?’

  ‘Who the fuck cares, English, huh?’

  Kieran’s grin was infectious and we high-fived each other. Kieran went into a strange Red Indian-style jig and Juan Andres leaned on the sideboard in amusement.

  ‘He is crazy, your Canadian friend.’

  I noted that Juan Andres called him my friend, not our friend.

  ‘Sure am, keemosabee’, hooted Kieran. ‘Now who’s for some food and salsa?’