The First Lady Escapes
Page 26
In the distance, he glimpsed the glittering water that hugged the narrow Baja Peninsula: the ink-blue Pacific to the west, and to the east the Gulf of California, its water the blue-green hue of Navajo turquoise. He resisted the urge to tug his camera out of his backpack and snap some beauty shots. A hot desert wind buffeted the helicopter. Shooting the view through an ordinary lens might result in blurry photos caused by the movement, but he knew that if he took pictures with his new 600mm lens, they would be as clear as if he had taken them on solid ground. My new lens was made for panoramas like this, he thought.
This was his first ride in a helicopter. He realized that he would have considered it exhilarating if it weren’t for two facts: 1.) The sides of the chopper were open, essentially making his seat belt the only thing between him and oblivion; and 2.) When he arrived at his destination, he guessed that there was a 99 percent chance he would be killed. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Why should I fear plunging out of a helicopter to my death, he thought, if I’m going to die from a bullet later anyway?
Everyone in the helicopter was wearing headsets so that they could communicate over the drone of the engine. Rosa sat in front, next to the pilot. “Can you hear me back there?” she said, her voice through his earphones muffled by static. “If you can, raise your hand.” Phil raised his. Natalia didn’t respond. She was staring down out of the open cockpit, her expression flat with despair. I hope she isn’t thinking about jumping, he thought. He nudged her gently. She slowly raised her hand halfway.
“Good, so I’m sure you’re wondering where we’re heading,” said Rosa. “Here’s the deal: We’re on our way to meet Dionisio Reyes. The Dionisio Reyes. You heard of him, right? Nod if you heard of him.”
Phil didn’t respond. He wasn’t sure if the reason Natalia didn’t respond was because she hadn’t heard of the name either, or that she had zoned out.
“Shit! You never heard of Dionisio Reyes?!”
“Not really,” Phil said.
“What planet do you live on? Dio runs the Baja drug cartel. He’s, like, one of the richest, most wanted men in Mexico. Make that the world!” She shook her head. “Whatever you do, when you meet him, act like you heard of him, like he’s a big fucking deal! It’ll kill him if you don’t and then he might…” She stopped herself. “Nod if you got that.”
Phil nodded and nudged Natalia. She nodded too.
“So the reason I’m taking you to Dio is cuz me and my amiga, Maria, discovered that one of you sitting back there, okay, the lady with the bald head, was getting it on with a guy who was not her husband—who just happens to be the President of the United States.”
Phil debated whether or not to ask Rosa how she found out. Before he could decide…
“I won’t reveal the details of how we made our discovery,” she said. “I’m not exactly proud of our research methods. But, I mean, like, whoa… Madam First Lady, your guy was a hunk, a total stud!” When Natalia didn’t respond, she continued, “Movie-star handsome, y’know? I don’t blame you for dumping your pendejo husband for him.”
“Too bad my movie star turned out to be as big an asshole as my husband,” Natalia murmured.
“Yeah, that really sucks, right?”
“May they both rot in hell!”
It surprised Phil that Natalia was so straightforward with Rosa. Maybe it was a woman thing. Or maybe it was because she was so angry with both her husband and her lover, and herself, that she didn’t care what she said or to whom she said it. He saw that her eyes brimmed with tears. He reached into his backpack, pulled out a half-used package of Wash ’n Dry towelettes and held it out to her. She didn’t take it, as if she were too numb to notice.
“Anyway, you don’t need to sweat that Dio is gonna, like, y’know, whack you, ma’am,” continued Rosa. “He’s gonna contact President Funck and make a trade for you. Y’see, his baby brother, Pancho, is in a U.S. prison awaiting trial. The poor fuck’s been rotting in there for six months. Pancho’s a lot better looking than Dionisio, but Dio’s the brother with the brains. I bet he’s smarter than President Funck too, and that he’s got a shitload more money!”
Phil was surprised that Rosa was such a motor mouth. Since he could see that Natalia was lost in thought, he felt an impulse to keep the conversation going with Rosa. She had said that her boss wouldn’t kill Natalia, but she hadn’t mentioned what Dio would do to him. Maybe if she gets to like me, I’ll have a better chance of staying alive, he thought.
“How’d you learn to speak such good English?” he asked.
“Dude, I spent a summer at my sister’s in San Diego,” Rosa said. “Carla’s married to a Chicano. He’s the lemur keeper at the San Diego Zoo. I spent the whole time watching reruns of Seinfeld, Friends, and Mad Men. By the time I got off their couch and went home to TJ, I could pass for a gringo.”
“Do you know where the name ‘Dionisio’ comes from?” he said, remembering the D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths book that he had pored over at the library when he was a kid. “It’s Spanish for ‘Dionysus.’”
“What’s Dionysus?”
“In Greek mythology, Dionysus is the god of wine and drunken revelry.”
“I never heard about Greek gods, but Dionysus sure sounds like Dio! He makes his own wine—he’s got, like, this secret vineyard—and he sure as fuck loves to party!” She laughed. “He also loves playing the stock market and building houses. Wait ’til you see the house he put on top of a pinche mountain. He calls it his ‘fortress.’ He’s totally into design porn.”
“Design porn?”
“He creams over magazines about beautiful houses. I always bring him some when I visit.” She rustled in the plastic Target bag on her lap, pulled out a magazine, and held it up for Phil to see: Architectural Digest. “He’s got this dream to someday get his fortress on the cover of A.D.”
Phil was surprised when Natalia spoke up. “Rosa, you should see Phil’s architectural pictures. They’re amazing!” She nudged him. “Show her the photos you took of famous buildings.”
“Really?”
“Yes, Phil,” Natalia said firmly, like a command. “They’re in that file folder I saw.” She leaned toward him, opened her eyes wide, and stared into his, as if trying to tell him something.
He didn’t have a clue what Natalia was getting at, but he dug the file folder out of his backpack. It wasn’t easy; the wind was buffeting the helicopter more powerfully now. With an unsteady hand, he handed the folder over the seat to Rosa. “Here you go.”
She opened the folder and leafed through the historic photos. “Awesome,” she said, “for pictures of buildings.”
“That’s my true love,” he said. “Why I became a photographer.”
“You like buildings more than people?”
“No, but beautiful buildings are works of art,” he said. “Plus, y’know what? They don’t move!”
Rosa laughed at Phil’s sort-of-joke. He told himself that he was on the right track, to keep talking. “I took those pictures in Pasadena, home of the Rose Bowl. Have you ever watched the Rose Bowl?”
“The what?”
“It’s a football game on New Year’s Day.”
“Mexicans only watch soccer, and on New Year’s Day I’m too hungover to watch anything.” She looked at a few more pictures. “Yeah, these are pretty damn good.”
“Aren’t they?” said Natalia. “If Phil takes pictures of Dio’s house, I can get them into Architectural Digest.”
“No shit?”
“I’m best friends with the magazine editor. We do lunch whenever I’m in New York. She’ll love Phil’s photos. You think A.D. wouldn’t want photos of a house owned by one of the most famous men in the world?”
“Que chido! That would be way cool,” said Rosa. “I’ll tell Dio.”
Natalia winked at Phil. He finally understood the point of her sudden enthusiasm for his architectural photos. If he took photos of Dionisio’s house, pictures guaranteed to end up in Architectural Di
gest, his chances of getting “whacked” would drop to 50 percent, or maybe, if he was really lucky, zero. He touched Natalia’s hand and mouthed the words: “Thank you.”
Rosa returned the file to him. “Photo guy, what’s your name again?”
“Phil,” he said.
“So, Phil, how about you show me the pictures you took of the lovebirds. I mean, me and Maria watched them going at it on the beach through night-vision binocs, but I spotted you down there with your camera. If you got some hot pictures, I’d sure love to check them out.”
Phil stiffened. It hit him that he didn’t want to show his pictures of Natalia and her lover to Rosa or to anyone. Now that he had rescued her from him, he felt overwhelmed with guilt about invading her privacy. He knew that he could get hundreds of thousands of dollars for the shots he took of the romantic couple. Maybe even a million. He pictured a bidding war with the National Enquirer, People, Us and perhaps even the New York Post or—okay, it was a stretch—the Washington Post, all competing for an exclusive. He had waited his entire career for an opportunity like this. He wanted more than anything to make his mother proud of him.
Suddenly he felt stupid for not realizing it earlier: Would photos that people snicker at and gossip about, photos that some men would masturbate over, make his mother proud? No way.
Disgusted with himself, he closed his eyes and shook his head, as if hoping to erase the images in the photos from his mind.
“Hey, photo dude, Phil, we’re gonna land soon,” said Rosa. “Show me the pinche pictures!”
He pulled his Dell laptop out of his backpack and turned it on. Every photo he had ever taken lived on this laptop. He caressed its smooth metal skin, as if saying goodbye to a dear friend who was on his deathbed. You’ve been good to me, and I’m really sorry about what I must do, but it’s the right thing, he thought.
“Let me upload the pictures I took this morning from my camera first,” he said to Rosa. “It’ll just take a minute.” He grabbed his Nikon, removed the photo disk, and slotted it into his laptop. “Then every single picture will be on my computer. It’s easier to view them there than on my camera.”
“Just pinche hurry. We’ll be there in ten minutes.” The wind shook the helicopter. “If we don’t crash first.” She elbowed the pilot and bitched at him in Spanish, as if the strong gusts were his fault.
A ding indicated that the photos on his camera had uploaded to his laptop. He sucked in his breath and hit the key to delete all the photos on the photo disk. When it was completed, he removed the empty disk and inserted it back into his camera.
The helicopter jolted in the stiff wind. He clutched the computer on his lap. On the screen, he glanced at the photos of Natalia and Vaclav that he had taken last night: Dozens of beautiful shots of the loving couple on the beach at sunset that captured the joy in their eyes and their passion. In some of the photos they were kissing. In others they were pulling off each other’s clothes and embracing on the sand. He was ashamed to admit that several of the photos bordered on soft porn.
He turned to the new photos from this morning. Among the shots he took of them leaving the hotel, some revealed the anger on Natalia’s face as she confronted Vaclav. The shots he took on the beach captured Vaclav fiercely grabbing and shaking her. He remembered when he took them; that was the moment he decided to help her. He knew it was lame, but one of the three Boy Scout Promises had flashed in his mind: “Duty to Other People.”
He studied the next photo, of Natalia wrenching away from Vaclav. After he took that picture was when he stuffed his camera into his backpack and hurried over to the old man walking horses on the beach. Phil had never been on a horse—he was scared of horses as a child—but he grabbed the reins of the brown horse and then hoisted himself up onto the back of the dappled-gray horse. He kicked the horse as he had seen it done in old Western movies on TCM and took off after Natalia.
Thinking back on that moment now, he realized: In my whole life, I’ve never done anything so brave. The wind pummeled the helicopter again. He knew that what he was about to do next required even more bravery.
“Rosa,” he called. “I think I’m going to barf!”
“I don’t blame you!” As the helicopter lurched in the wind, she grabbed the metal safety bar above the cockpit window. “Just don’t barf in the chopper!”
With one hand, Phil grabbed the railing on the back of her seat. He tightly held the laptop with his other hand and leaned out of the open side of the chopper. Looking down at the ground, thousands of feet below, made his head spin.
He felt a hand grab the back of his waistband. “I’ve got you,” said Natalia.
Phil waited until another gust of wind slammed the helicopter. He leaned farther out over the side, made a loud barfing sound, and then let go of his laptop. It dropped like a rock.
“Fuck!” he yelled. “My whole life is on that laptop! Fuck!” He wiped his mouth, as if cleaning up vomit.
But Rosa wasn’t watching. In the front seat, she was puking out of the helicopter.
“I’m so sorry, Phil,” said Natalia, letting go of his waistband.
“That sucks big-time!” Rosa said, wiping her mouth and groaning. “Wait! Shit! Does that mean you lost all your pinches photos of Natalia and pinche lover boy?”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” cried Phil, playing it for all it was worth. “I’m totally fucked!”
Feeling Natalia’s warm hand on his arm, he met her eyes. She mouthed the words: “Thank you.”
Chapter 56
Middle of Nowhere, Baja, MX
December 20, 4:00 p.m.
“Try my Tempranillo, Señora Funck.”
Natalia wasn’t accustomed to drinking wine, certainly not in the afternoon, but her host had insisted that she sample the latest vintages from his secret vineyard in the Valle de la something in Baja. She was lightheaded after sipping what she had considered a bitter Zinfandel, but she sensed that if she turned down another glass, he would be hurt, or worse, pissed off at her. She forced a smile. “If you insist.”
As Dionisio Reyes handed her a Baccarat crystal glass of ruby wine, she sized him up. He was a heavy-set man about her height and age, with obviously dyed black hair and miniscule strands bordering his hairline, the telltale sign of a hair weave. His face was badly pocked with the vestiges of teenage acne and scarred from knife fights. I doubt that a good plastic surgeon, or even a great one, could turn this toad into a prince, she thought.
An hour ago, she didn’t know what to expect when the helicopter landed on the mountaintop and three husky men in white-linen suits escorted her and Phil into the drug lord’s fortress. She certainly couldn’t have predicted Dionisio Reyes’ warm greeting. She had the sense that his sociability was less because of her status as First Lady than his loneliness. Rosa had mentioned that since both the U.S. and Mexican feds, plus every rival Mexican drug cartel, were out to catch or kill him, Dio was stuck here in hiding.
He nodded for her to take a sip of wine. “You know, it’s a miracle that anyone can grow wine grapes in Mexico because it’s below the 30th parallel, the theoretical boundary of successful grape growing,” he said. “Fortunately, my vineyard is arid—grapes hate humidity—and located at a high altitude. That’s why my wine is so great, so terrific!”
“Great” and “terrific” were two of Rex’s favorite adjectives. Rex and Dio would probably get along like old friends, she thought. They both believe their own bullshit. With Dio’s eyes on her, she took a sip. “Delicious,” she said, wishing there was a potted plant nearby where she could dump the rest of the wine in her glass.
Grinning with pride, he walked over to Phil, who was setting up bottles of Dio wine on a massive oak table. Natalia was relieved that the two men had bonded. Architectural Digest had been the two magic words out of her mouth. It didn’t take long for Dio to promise to spare Phil’s life as a thank-you for Phil photographing Dio’s home for the magazine. Phil suggested placing Dio’s wine bottles in some of the shots,
even though the wine wasn’t for sale. “They’ll know what a multi-talented man you are,” he said. “That you are not just a, er, businessman.”
“My editor friend at Architectural Digest will love your house, Señor Reyes,” said Natalia, taking in the vast, circular great room.
Dio beamed. “You really think so?”
“Absolutely!” In truth, she didn’t know the editor of A.D. It would be her secret.
She had to admit that Dio’s house was one of the most magnificent she had ever set foot in. From the air, as the helicopter had swooped closer to the craggy desert mountain, it was impossible to see that there was a dwelling on the summit. “Dio has a super-high-tech camouflage system,” Rosa explained to her and Phil. “It uses computer-generated imaging to prevent anyone from spotting the house from the air unless he gives the go-ahead.” She coaxed Phil to aim his camera at where her finger pointed, to capture the moment the system was turned off so that they could land. A flash of light and suddenly they could see a massive glass and sandstone structure poised on what moments before had looked like a rugged mountaintop.
Inside, the sense that the house was an extension of the mountain played out through boulders that seemingly erupted out of the polished-granite floors, rough sandstone walls, and soaring, cantilevered windows that overlooked the steep mountainside. The natural style was definitely more to Natalia’s liking than the antique-and-crystal-chandelier-French-whorehouse style that Rex favored. Though sunlight poured inside, the temperature was comfortable thanks to a state-of-the-art solar-powered cooling system. “We are off the grid,” Dio had explained with pride.
She walked over and sat down on a supple latte-colored leather armchair, gazing out at a terrace. Rosa, their strangely friendly teenage “escort,” was splashing in a swimming pool with her three-year-old daughter, Conchita.