by Layton Green
“You recognize the location?” Grey asked.
“No,” Fred said slowly.
Even in the photograph, the man standing next to Escobar had a presence, an aura that soaked through the printing paper and made Grey’s nerve endings tingle. This was a man who took what he wanted from life and had no qualms about the consequences.
And, judging from Fred’s lack of recognition, a major player in the drug world who lived in the shadows.
Fred’s voice was quiet. “You think that might be our guy?”
“I think if it’s not, then it’s someone we’d want to take a stab at anyway.”
Fred held the photo up as he stared at it, a touch of hoarseness creeping into his voice. “Yeah.”
Grey searched his friend’s face for signs of concealed recognition. Finding none, he replaced the items in his backpack and tilted his seat back.
It was dark when they arrived in Bogotá, but Grey could sense the mountains surrounding them on the descent, their looming bulk straining against the veil of darkness.
Walking through the airport brought back a flood of memories from his posting. Remembrances of the proud and wary eyes of the Bogotános, of how the night settled over the city like a heavy blanket still chilly from the closet, of the diesel fumes and incessant noise and piles of trash and feces on La Carrera Séptima, the commercial lifeline of Bogotá and the most intense street Grey had ever seen.
He remembered the graffiti everywhere, not an eyesore but a voice, a soundless urban cry protesting the government and the gringos and the narcos and the sins of colonization that had cracked the spine of Latin America. And he remembered the white beacon of the cathedral of Monserrate floating high above the city, as remote and idealistic as a citadel from heaven, looking down on the fishbowl of humanity swimming beneath it.
The address Lana had texted was in La Candelaria, the historic quarter. They had to risk a taxi, a dicey prospect in Bogotá. The city was notorious for armed assaults on passengers.
When their driver turned off the main road into a blighted neighborhood, Grey tensed in the passenger seat. “Dónde vamos? Esto no es el camino.” Where are we going? This isn’t the right way.
“Tranquilo,” the driver said. “Hay un accidente en la carretera principal. Soy conductor honesto. Tranquilo.” Take it easy, there’s been an accident on the highway. I’m an honest driver. Take it easy.
Groups of men congregated on the street corners, rubbing their hands over trash can fires or simply staring at the taxi as it passed. None of the streetlights worked. Potholes loomed like swimming pools, the brick buildings with shattered windows on either side looked like a series of interconnected crack houses.
“This place makes Baghdad look inviting,” Fred muttered.
Grey didn’t relax until they exited the neighborhood and saw the lights of downtown up ahead. Soon they were cruising along La Carrera Séptima, the scarves of the pedestrians pulled high to combat the pollution adding to the omnipresent sense of danger. A few minutes later the taxi dropped them at a busy Juan Valdez café on the outskirts of La Candelaria.
“The address is a few blocks away,” Grey said, stepping towards the café and shielding his face from the drizzle. “I’d prefer to approach on foot.”
“If I have any more espresso I’m going to crap coffee beans.”
Grey agreed with the sentiment but needed the energy boost. He popped two ibuprofen with a bottle of water and his café tinto, then tried calling Lana one more time, still without success, before leading Fred into the brick and cobblestone streets of La Candelaria.
“What’s your plan?” Fred said.
“Let’s see what this place is first. Could be a bar, a hotel, a home.”
“Think she would have named one of the first two.”
“Agreed.”
Fred took out a toothpick. “Wish we had some steel.”
“Agreed.”
La Candelaria looked unchanged to Grey, blocks and blocks of colonial buildings with wrought iron terraces and terra cotta roofs, some of them restored, most with split plaster overlaying the brick. The bottom-floor shops were closed except for a few bars. Lanterns lit the main streets, high-walled side alleys tunneled into darkness.
A pervasive aura of decay overlaid the historic district. Grey had always found the place unsettling at night, filled with figures disappearing around street corners, shuttered windows, and those eerie papier-maché ghosts looming from the rooftops.
“Should be the next left,” Grey said.
They turned onto a quiet cobblestone street that looked like something out of the Middle Ages, absurdly narrow and punctuated by iron-studded wooden doors.
They found a door halfway down the block that had to be the address, unmarked but placed between adjoining numbers. Fred blew into his hands to warm them. “So much for a bar or a hotel.”
Grey gently tried the door handle. Locked. No windows, no evidence of what might be inside.
Waving for Fred to follow, Grey walked to the end of the block, past another locked door. He tried Lana one more time; straight to voicemail.
“We can break cover and call the embassy, or the local cops,” Fred said, “though we both know that’ll be as helpful as a hot air balloon in a tornado. Or we can wait until daylight, find some hardware in the meantime. None of those options are good for Lana. Waiting has a tendency to make a missing-persons trail ice over.”
“In that case,” Grey said, his eyes searching the darkness and finding nothing but questions, “we’ll have to see what’s behind Door Number One.”
SOUTH AMERICA
1985
John Wolverton was dead.
The General—his new moniker had taken off in the criminal world—moved quickly after Colonia Dignidad, from the Santa Muerte cult in Mexico to Voodoo in the Caribbean to LUS in Brazil, even utilizing the Catholic Church and the Apostolics when the opportunity arose. Using a structure already in place—there were thousands of cults in the Americas—he sought out the criminal organizations whose constituents possessed the requisite faith and superstitions, then simply harnessed the awesome power of mankind’s fear of the unknown.
He became an expert in dozens of religions, studying the doctrines and practices that inspired the most fear and loyalty. Utilizing talented demagogues as his lieutenants, he wormed his way into the highest levels of religious societies, existing cartels, and, when possible, governments.
The drug boom of the eighties provided him with almost limitless opportunity. Colombia became so important to the cause he decided to establish a presence in the capital. At the CIA, John Wolverton had been heavily involved with the use of mind-control drugs. Combining this expertise with the powerful psychotropics available in South America, his urban drug cult thrived in the shadows of Colombia’s cities, led by the sinister Señor Guiñol.
Through a series of kidnappings of politicians and cartel bigwigs, and a propaganda campaign that fanned the flames, the General proved that his new cult could hit anyone at any time, could put scopolamine in a drink or a cigar or the back seat of a limo. The horror stories of people dragged into decaying fortresses in the abandoned bowels of cities were enough to spur payouts from most of the cartels. And for those organizations outside the cities, well, there were plenty of black magic cults in the wilds of Colombia.
Yet as important as Colombia was, and Mexico would become, neither was where the General chose to base his empire. He wanted someplace isolated and secure, out of the limelight, with no local business ties that could trace back to him.
He found a place high in the sierra, he avoided technology like a cancer, he did what it took to terrify the locals and secure their loyalty, he paid off and then killed the right people in government so no one would know he was there.
He indulged his every passion and prospered beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Yet from the very beginning of his empire, when he set up another cult of his own twisted design, an homage to his past, he was sel
f-aware enough to know that his mind was not a normal mind, and that he was sinking slowly into madness.
LA CANDELARIA, BOGOTÁ
PRESENT DAY
Grey peered down the cobblestone street, then up at the eaves of the terra cotta roofing hanging over the ten-foot wall. Odd that there were only three doors on the entire street, and no windows.
He circumnavigated the block, with Fred trailing behind. All four sides were the same: long narrow alleys, ten-foot-high stone walls, three doors per side, contiguous roofing, no windows.
Grey tried the door in the middle of the street behind the one they had first tried, assuming it was the rear entrance. Locked. He took out his filings and went to work on the deadbolt. It was a tough one and took him a few minutes, opening to reveal a concrete wall behind the door. He tried two more doors and found the same thing.
“It’s been walled up,” Grey murmured. “This place is a fortress.”
“Maybe it’s a false address.”
“My guess is the front door opens, but it’s not the way we want to go in.” Grey looked up at the roof, then placed his hands on the wall and raised his uninjured leg. “Give me a lift.”
Fred interlaced his fingers under Grey’s heel. Grey swung onto the roof, grimacing as pain shot through his injured leg, then helped Fred climb up behind him. The spires of La Candelaria’s cathedrals pierced the darkness around them, backlit by the city lights.
The aging terra cotta roof spanned an entire block, with one exception: an aperture twenty feet out from the front door. Grey curled a finger, and they slunk towards the opening.
Peering over the edge on their bellies, the moonlight revealed a weed-filled courtyard strewn with debris and rubble. Grey could just make out a broken archway on the opposite side from the door. He kept his position until, a few minutes later, two cowled figures with torches walked across the courtyard and disappeared into the archway.
After exchanging a glance, Grey and Fred backed away. Grey checked the street for observers and bent to grasp a loose tile he had stepped on earlier. He pulled it up, then with Fred’s help pried off the tiles around it, until they had a hole big enough to fit through. Below them was the wooden framework of the roof, below that an empty room. If there had once been drywall or some other type of ceiling, it had long ago been stripped.
Grey’s eyes found Fred’s, and he shrugged. “It’s weird enough, but those guys didn’t look armed. Let’s take a look.”
Grey used the support beam to drop to the floor without a sound. Fred followed with less grace. The only egress was an old wooden door half off its hinges. Grey peered around it and saw a stone hallway leading in three directions. They kicked up dust when they walked and the place smelled like old socks.
In the next room over, they saw two people slumped in a corner underneath a wall torch, one of them holding a needle. Grey tensed, but they were staring glassy-eyed at the wall, unmoving, lips parted in pleasure.
Grey and Fred backed away and tried the other direction, seeing more of the same. Bare stone rooms, either empty or populated by addicts, sometimes alone, sometimes in twos or threes.
They worked their way outward from the room into which they had dropped. The place was a maze of ruined stone corridors and archways, often with entire walls or sections of passages missing. Rats and cockroaches scurried underfoot. They crept along by the light of their cell phones and the glow from the torches emanating from some of the rooms. His senses on high alert, Grey focused on remembering the route.
Fred pulled Grey inside an empty room. “I don’t know what that stuff is, but crack addicts don’t slump in corners. They bounce off walls. This is a heroin den, maybe. Or something else.”
“Scopolamine?”
Fred pursed his lips, grim. “Or some type of cocktail. Let’s finish the sweep, make sure Lana’s not here, then get the hell out.”
Grey couldn’t have been more in agreement. It was hard to tell exactly where they had been, but they explored the place as best they could. Just as Grey was wondering where the men in cowls had gone, Fred curled a finger, and Grey crept to where he was standing. Through an archway at the end of the hall, they saw the courtyard they had spotted from above, strewn with rubble and lit by moonlight streaming through the open ceiling.
“The grand foyer,” Grey muttered.
They decided to wait and see what transpired. Grey was glad they did. Seconds later, two robed men passed through, disappearing into the darkened archway. Ten minutes later, two more men did the same thing.
“What do you think?” Fred said.
“I think we need to see what’s through that archway.”
“My guess is it’s the same pair of guards, watching the front door and circling back through. Let’s give it a look. We can take those two kooks out, if it comes to it.”
Grey nodded and checked his watch. Ten minutes later, two more cowled figures passed, and another two swept through ten minutes after that. Grey and Fred waited five minutes before darting into the courtyard, noticing two other exit passages before they slipped through the archway.
The opening led to a short corridor, which ended at a wooden door reinforced with iron bands. Before they could decide what to do, the door swung open and two of the robed figures stepped out, carrying torches. For a brief moment everyone froze. Then Grey rushed forward, Fred a step behind, as the two other men reached into their robes and pulled out six-inch-long needles, rushing into the fight with a silence that unnerved Grey.
The passage was wide enough for two abreast, and Grey engaged the first man as Fred fought beside him with the second. The cowled man lunged for Grey with the needle, holding the torch back with his other hand, ready to shove it into Grey’s face after the needle thrust. By reading his body mechanics, Grey saw both moves coming. Grey caught the wrist holding the needle, yanked the arm forward to disrupt his attacker’s balance, and then snapped a kick at the man’s kneecap to distract him while he inverted the trapped wrist and stabbed him in the chest with his own needle. After that, he dropped him with an elbow to the temple.
Fred was holding both of his assailant’s wrists and trying to force him to the ground. Grey came up behind the robed man and struck him across the back of the neck with a stiff forearm, jumping forward with both feet and whipping his entire body into the blow. The man fell like a comet.
“Thanks,” Fred said.
“Don’t mention it. You up for a change of clothing?”
Fred stripped off one of the robes. Underneath was a solidly built Latino man with thick lips and a sloping forehead, wearing work boots, jeans, and a cheap vinyl jacket.
“Freak,” Fred muttered.
Grey didn’t respond. He was relieved it had been a normal thug, and not something . . . else.
“Odd they didn’t speak,” Fred said.
“They must have been trained for silence and thought they could take us. Gunshots would tip off the neighborhood to their creep show.”
They stripped the other guard and donned the robes. Fred picked up one of the needles, Grey didn’t. He could do more damage with his hands. They also took the torches and pocketed two plastic cards with magnetic strips.
Fred injected both men with a good dose from the needle, and Grey helped drag them into one of the empty rooms. They returned to the wooden door and stepped through. On the other side, a set of wide stone steps descended into darkness.
Grey looked at Fred with raised eyebrows. The place wasn’t as simple as it appeared.
Faces hidden within the cowls, torches in hand, they took the stairs side by side.
The next level down contained a landing room similar to the first. Down a short hallway, Grey and Fred found a small stone room with corridors leading in four directions. Again, the walls and archways were cracked, and loose stones littered the ground, as if the place had suffered an earthquake at one time.
“Looks like more of the same,” Fred said.
Grey gripped his torch as he peered
into the shadows. “Let’s see where the stairs go. If someone’s keeping Lana here, it’s probably somewhere more secure.”
The third level looked similar to the first two, but on the fourth level the mystery increased: the stone on the floor of the landing was lighter and polished, years rather than centuries old. A steel door barred their way to the rest of the level.
“We go through that,” Fred said in a low voice, “we might not come back.”
Grey lifted his eyebrows above and to the left, leading Fred’s gaze to the camera at the top of the far wall. Fred acknowledged the camera with a grimace.
When they reached the fifth and final landing, Grey had to resist the urge to dash back up the staircase. In front of them, a thick glass door shielded a hallway lit by fluorescent light. On the other side of the door, a guard with a square face and close-cropped hair sat behind a metal table, feet propped up and watching a television mounted on the wall. A set of keys was splayed on the table, and he had a semi-automatic in a hip holster. Three monitors faced the guard.
Set into the wall to the left of the glass door, Grey spied a three-inch box with a slit. He swiped the plastic card he had taken through the slit, and the glass door slid open. Then he walked right through, turtling his face inside the cowl. Fred followed.
The guard barely glanced their way, giving a brief nod and then returning to the soccer game. Grey kept walking down the hallway, every muscle tense, holding his torch at chest level. Metal doors, spaced twenty feet apart, lined both sides of the corridor. Set into each of the doors at head height was a square glass window.
A pair of robed men appeared at the far end of the hallway, carrying torches and chatting with their cowls raised. There was nothing to do except keep walking. The oncoming guards passed them without a word.
Grey’s breath seeped out of his mouth. He knew their luck wouldn’t hold forever. The corridor ended at a T-junction, and Grey chose the hallway on the right. More doors.