Green had heard it before, several times, but he allowed the other man to talk himself out and said, scoring, “Which is surely why you’ve got to help, José?”
The lawyer made an uncertain gesture with his shoulders, looking down into the already empty glass. Green gestured for refills, although he did not want any more.
Rivera said, “I want this to be the last time, for a while. My nerve, it’s not … it’s not good.”
Green again remained impassive, this time for different reasons. José Rivera was not just his agent: the lawyer was his best agent, a man at the center of the gossip of the judiciary and the police and the army and the traffickers. Green knew that a great deal of the success for which he had received congratulations from Washington was due to this one twitching, nail-biting man. He did not want to lose him—which meant playing the man with the expertise of a fisherman, not with rod or line but with a personal touch tickling him into a sense of security. And that meant not coming on heavy with the latest instruction from headquarters about alerting Rivera to a newly set-up investment situation and asking him to guide some of the major traffickers toward it. Spring-tight as he was at present, Rivera would run and never come back if that sort of proposition were made to him. Brennan had said he wanted things organized as quickly as possible but the man would have to wait: Brennan was in Washington, where it was easy to send cables about things happening as quickly as possible and then go out for a leisurely lunch at Mellon’s or Dominique’s and talk to other hot-shot supervisors about “move your ass” decisions. Harry Green was at the sharp end, where the shit stuck after it hit the fan, and he decided that the right field decision was to let Rivera run until the meeting with Gomez. In the star rating, Gomez was not in the top league, but Green was realistic: an FBI or CIA or Drug Enforcement Administration rating was arbitrary; none of them actually knew. Gently he said to the lawyer, “Don’t worry, José. Sure you should rest. I’m not pushing you.”
Rivera smiled gratefully at the younger man. “You’ve been very good to me,” he said. “From the time this began, you’ve been very good to me.”
Psychology was an important part of the training. Green said, “How’s María?”
Rivera made a seesawing motion with his hand. “Her asthma isn’t good, not here in Bogotá. Sometimes I think I should move somewhere nearer the coast.”
“Manuel?”
“The teachers say he’s quite exceptional,” beamed Rivera, with boastful pride. “Already he’s talking of what he’s going to do in the university.”
“What’s that?”
“Something modern, he hopes. Computers maybe. Myself, I don’t understand any of it.”
“There are some excellent universities in America,” said Green.
It was an unthinking remark, made to keep the conversation going and maintain the calming of the Colombian, but Rivera seized on it, surprising the FBI man. “The Bureau could help! Getting Manuel a place, I mean?”
The question completely confused the young American. He supposed it was possible, but he had no idea whether the Bureau would involve themselves in things like that. Hoping his embarrassed coloring was not obvious to the man in the gloom of the sunken bar, Green said, “I don’t see why not.” He tried to reassure himself that it was not a direct lie.
“I’ve never asked for any money,” reminded Rivera.
“I know.”
“Any sort of reward?”
“No.”
“I would like that to be my reward.”
Green decided that he had wrapped everything up and sealed it with tape; all he had to do was to decide on the delivery. Rivera would come back because he wanted something. And when he came back the FBI man knew that he could set up the investment sting with the lawyer because of the man’s need for a university place for his son. Not that Green intended to cheat him. He would go through Brennan or whoever was necessary and try to get the kid a place—which shouldn’t be too difficult. The CIA and the FBI regarded American colleges as their kindergartens: he himself had been recruited off campus. The Bureau had enough power and influence to place a kid, if they wanted to. Green decided he would convince Washington that a college place was an inviolable condition for Rivera’s continued cooperation. He said, “I promise you that I will raise it with Washington. And I promise you that I will do everything in my power to make sure it happens.”
Rivera gave another sadly frightened smile. “You’ve always been very good to me,” he repeated.
“And I will continue to be,” said Green. “You’ll let me know, about Gomez in Medellin?”
Rivera bit at his lip, as if he found the verbal assurance difficult, jerking his head several times in affirmation.
“Shall I contact you?”
“No!” said the Colombian at once. “Wait for me. I’ll call you when I know it’s safe.”
“OK,” said Green. “I’ll wait.” He’d wait, too, until the result of the Medellin visit before raising anything with Washington. Hopefully it would give him something with which to bargain.
“It will end one day, won’t it!” said the lawyer, in an unexpectedly emotional demand. “One day this country will clean itself up!”
Not while a guy can make twenty-five million from a cocaine or marijuana shipment, thought Green: the money was just too much. He said, “Sure we’ll clean it up. That’s what we’re here for. That’s why the President set up all the task forces.”
“Dear Mother of God that it should happen soon!” said the lawyer, vehemently. “I hate what drugs are doing to my country.”
Rivera insisted upon more brandy but Green refused, concerned at the other man’s intake. “You’ll be careful, won’t you?” said the American.
Rivera laughed once more, bitterly. “You’d be surprised how careful.”
The man drank it quickly and Green was apprehensive that he was going to drink even more but Rivera suddenly tensed himself. “I must be going.”
“You’ll call me?” pressed Green.
“Yes.”
“We’d better leave separately.”
“Me first,” insisted the lawyer, anxious now to break the contact.
“Of course.”
The FBI man sat back, pitying the diminutive, mustachioed lawyer as he hurried away from the table and up the stairs to the foyer level. It must, thought Green, be awful to be as frightened as that: absolutely bloody awful. He took his time finishing his drink, and did not become impatient at the slowness of the waiter to settle the check.
Jorge Gomez had survived this far—and intended to continue surviving—because he took care in everything. The man at the bar, whose presence was part of that care and who had maintained a surveillance on the lawyer from the moment of his contact with Green, quietly followed Green up the stairs. There was no risk of his being identified by the FBI agent because the others were patiently waiting in the foyer area, as they had since Rivera’s arrival two hours earlier: two would have already detached themselves, to accompany the lawyer wherever he was going, and there were three more to alternate the observation of the unknown man who was about to be indicated by the barroom watcher. The one with the camera hurried outside the hotel the moment he saw Green emerge from the bar, so that he was ready with a long-focus lens to capture the American as he left. Green was excited at the outcome of the meeting, convinced that important things would come from it, and he relaxed his former caution. Rivera had got away unidentified so why worry?
It was a short walk back to the embassy compound, about half an hour, and the moment the undetected surveillance team saw Green enter, the photographer knew how to put a name to the unknown person on his film. Through the immigration inspector whom Gomez kept on the payroll—the same man deputed weeks earlier to warn of Julio Navarra’s arrival from Bolivia—the photographs were checked against the filed visa application forms of American personnel. Harry Green’s name came up an hour later.
“Drug Enforcement Administration.” wonder
ed Ramos, when the information was telephoned through to Medellin.
“Maybe that. Maybe CIA. Maybe FBI. It doesn’t matter,” said Gomez. He was disguising it very well, but the closeness to possible disaster frightened him badly.
“We were lucky we found out,” said Ramos.
“No, we weren’t,” corrected Gomez, at once. “We found out because we took the proper precautions, watching that bastard Rivera and seeing whom he met.”
“Of course,” apologized the other man. “I meant, lucky to have found out before we went through with the meeting.”
“We’ll still go through with the meeting,” decided Gomez. “I want to know what it’s about.”
“Of course,” said the protector again. Instinctively his hand went up to the knife scar.
“The motherfucker!” erupted Gomez, the nervousness becoming anger. There was something else too: the awareness that he had made a mistake in going to the Colombian lawyer in the first place.
“Now we know we can make an example,” said Ramos.
Gomez held up a warning hand. “I want to know everything first,” he said. “I want to know everything he’s told the Americans about me. I mean everything. You understand?”
“I understand.”
“Personally,” decided Gomez. “I’ll do it personally…” He paused, the anger increasing. “Motherfucker!” he said again.
“The ten o’clock flight from Bogotá,” said Ramos.
“Here, at the finca,” said Gomez. “The bullring stables.”
On the flight from the capital Rivera needed brandy. There was no bar service on the shuttle but he carried a hip flask and went into the lavatory twice before the plane put down in Medellin. Ramos was waiting to meet him with two other men. The greeting was friendly but reserved. On the way out of town, toward Gomez’s house in the foothills, Ramos inquired politely about the flight and Rivera said he was glad to be in Medellin—as he always was—because the weather was invariably better than in cloud-engulfed Bogotá. He wanted to take some orchids back for his wife, and Ramos said that, while the lawyer had his meeting with Señor Gomez, he would personally see to it that they were purchased and packed. Rivera thanked the man for his trouble and Ramos assured him it was no trouble but a pleasure.
It was the largest of Gomez’s fincas, a sprawling estate despite the restriction of the mountain foothills, with an enclosing wall into which were set high and heavy gates which only opened upon identification from the gatehouse. The house itself was set far back, directly against a jut of mountain rock which provided perfect protection from the rear. To the right were the garages, servants’ quarters and accommodation for the guards, ten of whom Gomez kept in permanent residence, on a rotation basis. The bullring, with its tiered seats and stabling for the horses and the bulls, was to the left, where there was more land available. Centerpiece of the huge widening drive was the permanently watered, and therefore green, garden area, with a playing fountain and a blaze of the sort of flowers which made the valley famous. The gatehouse warned the main house, before the limousine even reached it, so Gomez was already waiting on the veranda when the car circled the garden area and drew up in front of the low steps.
Gomez personally opened the door to let the lawyer out. As Rivera emerged, the trafficker said, “Welcome, my friend. Welcome.”
“Good to see you again, Señor Gomez,” said the lawyer. He was sure he kept the nervousness from his voice. It had been sensible to bring the brandy on the plane. “Let’s hope we can make some good business.”
“Business later,” insisted Gomez. He took the lawyer’s briefcase from him, handing it to one of the escorts from the airport, and said, “First you must see the new bulls. I’m putting on a fiesta at the weekend; all the townsfolk are coming free of charge …” He allowed the pause for the boast to have its full weight, because it was true and because he was outdoing the other traffickers by this coup. “And I’m flying Ortega in from Madrid, to fight in the main corrida …”
Rivera looked uncertainly after his disappearing briefcase. “Should be a wonderful event,” he said, letting himself be led across the forecourt toward the ring area.
As they got nearer, the noise of the animals became more pronounced, punctuated by the occasional snorted scream of protest. The unusualness of the animals being enclosed, rather than being allowed out in the fields and paddocks at the back, did not occur to Rivera until the very entrance to the stabling. He turned at the door and began, “I don’t understand …?” but Ramos didn’t let him finish, driving his fist into the small of the man’s back so that he was hurled breathless into the covered block. The lawyer’s frightened squeal was lost among the louder bellowing of the angry captive animals. The second man who had come with Rivera from the airport hauled him easily to his feet and, with Ramos on the other side, they wired his wrists together using industrial fencing pincers, and then suspended his arms above his head and pulled him up on the very tip of his toes through a high-set pulley attached to one of the main beams. It was impossible for Rivera to support himself and he stumbled desperately, trying to sustain a balance and failing, so that he swung from the taut wire like an uncontrolled marionette. The wire sliced into his wrists and blood poured down his arms. Rivera screamed long, wailing, hysterical screams, further unsettling the disturbed animals, who began snuffling and making their own noise, drowning out that of the lawyer. Gomez, apparently irritated by the man’s crying, stepped forward slightly and kicked directly into his unprotected groin, finding his testicles. This time, Rivera’s scream of agony rose above those of the animals. His body tried to double up, but the wire stopped the movement, cutting deeper into his wrists.
The door behind them opened, thrusting a brief wedge of sunlight into the stable, as the man who had been given the briefcase came in. The case was still in his hand, opened now, disarrayed papers obvious from its sagging top.
“Anything?” said Gomez.
“Nothing.”
“Let him down, very slightly,” ordered Gomez.
Ramos released the pulley, just enough for Rivera to balance on the balls of his feet; his heels were unable to reach the ground. The kick had made him sick; stained his face and chest, and there was a lot of blood. At a nod from Gomez, one of the airport escorts picked up a bucket and threw water over the man. It cleaned him only marginally. Along one of the walls, in sectioned compartments and on specially arranged hooks, was the riding equipment for the horsemen who accompanied the corrida. Gomez selected a riding crop, holding it before him like a pointer and raising the lawyer’s head so that the man had to look directly at him. Rivera’s eyes were rolling, uncoordinated. Gomez slapped him hard across the face with the crop, once. Rivera shouted, “No, please no! No more.”
“What did you tell them!” demanded Gomez.
“Who?”
The crop slashed out again, along the same line as before. “What did you tell them!”
“Nothing!”
“Liar!” The crop went along the other cheek this time.
“Nothing!”
“Liar!”
Rivera hung slumped from the wire, oblivious now to the pain, sobbing incoherently, only words such as “no” and “please” discernible.
“Look up!” shouted Gomez, nodding to Ramos.
The bloodstained, sick-stained crying man forced himself upwards, blinking at the photograph that had been taken the previous day as the American left the Torquemada.
“His name is Harry Green,” said Gomez. “What’s his job at the embassy?”
Rivera’s lips Degan to form a denial and men he saw the crop twitch again and blurted out desperately, “The FBI. He works for the FBI.”
“What did you tell him?”
“There was nothing to tell.”
There was another slash of the crop, further ribboning the lawyer’s face.
“That I worked for you sometimes. Escabar, too. And Ledher. And Alvarro-Moreno,” gabbled Rivera, believing that talk woul
d stop the agony.
“Worked how?”
“Legitimately. Creating businesses.”
“Did he want to know where the money came from?”
Rivera began to shake his head, then said, “I told him that it was cash. That I didn’t inquire. That everything was legal.”
Which it was, Gomez supposed. He said, “What about coming here today?”
“No!”
“But you were going to tell him, weren’t you!” demanded Gomez. “When you got back to Bogotá, you were going to tell him everything.”
“No!”
There was so much blood on Rivera’s face that it was impossible to see whether the riding crop made a fresh laceration or merely opened wider one that already existed. “Weren’t you!”
“Yes, yes, yes. Oh, for God’s sake, stop! Yes. I was going to tell him everything!”
Gomez turned away from the mutilated lawyer, his mind momentarily blocked by the narrowness of his escape. If he’d miscalculated by a day—hours—then everything that he’d worked so hard to achieve could have been ruined. But he hadn’t miscalculated. He’d got this right, just like he’d got everything else right. It was a good omen. Gomez began walking distractedly from the stable. Ramos caught up with him at the door and together they made their way back toward the main house.
“We should make it an example,” said Gomez.
“Unquestionably.”
“The Americans will know that the man Green has been identified. I wonder if they will withdraw him?”
“Perhaps,” said Ramos. “Perhaps not. They’re arrogant bastards.”
“Is everything ready for Ortega’s arrival? I want it all to be right.”
“I’m dealing with it personally.”
“I’m looking forward to it. It will be a good fiesta.”
“The best,” agreed Ramos, who understood the other man’s need to impress the barons.
The body of José Rivera was found the following day, where the bodies of drug victims are usually found: in the hinterland behind the Intercontinental hotel. It was naked. The man’s penis had been severed and stitched inside his mouth. The autopsy disclosed three bullet wounds, but the cause of death was choking, after the mutilation.
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