Missionaries

by Phil Klay

“The military is coming for you,” Jefferson said before Edilson could open his mouth. “They have spy planes up in the air. Have you noticed? Planes that fly low but don’t spray crops?”

  Edilson looked up toward the road, then back at Jefferson. “We have demands,” he said.

  “They’re coming to kill you,” Jefferson said. “I told them who you are.”

  It was quiet. Edilson nodded, clearly unsure what to say. He turned to the cooler.

  “Would you like a beer? We have Aguila Light.”

  Edilson lifted the top of the cooler and pulled out a beer. His hand was shaking. Jefferson saw Edilson follow his eyes to that shaking hand. He put the beer down.

  “Nervous?” Jefferson asked.

  “We have demands,” Edilson said again. “All you have to agree to is a fair price—”

  “Are you talking about coca?” Jefferson said. “Is this all over coca?”

  Edilson seemed taken aback. That was good. Jefferson wanted him off balance. He had a very different sort of negotiation in mind than the one Edilson had probably come prepared for.

  “Idiot.” Jefferson scowled. “Your men who took the gringa. That was well done. Are they ex-guerrilleros? How many men do you have?”

  “Many.”

  Jefferson sighed. “I’m going to need to know how many men you have. And how many of them know how to use a weapon. Ex-guerrilleros are good. They’re trained.”

  “I—”

  “The people out here, do they trust you? The cocaleros?”

  Edilson raised his head, a confident look in his eyes for the first time. “They do.”

  “I think that’s true. You couldn’t have hidden from me if they weren’t protecting you.” Jefferson pointed his finger at Edilson’s chest. “That’s worth something. That’s worth a lot. I don’t like this anger between me and my growers.”

  “The price you pay for coca—”

  “I told you. Coca is nothing.” He waved his hand. “It’s worth nothing these days. This country is stuffed with it.”

  Edilson shook his head, still not understanding.

  “You little farmers sit on land that is worth far more than anything you will ever grow on it.”

  That interested him. Jefferson could see that.

  “This area is difficult for the police to patrol,” Jefferson said. “And it’s right on the border with Venezuela. Do you understand?”

  Edilson nodded.

  “Coca leaves will never make you rich. But this territory, right on the border . . . It is very important to a lot of people. Jesúses. Peludos. Urabeños.”

  “We—”

  “Listen to me. If the army comes here, no one gets rich. If the army comes here, we are all fucked. So first, you are going to give me the journalist. And I am going to give you fifteen thousand mil.”

  “I’m not here for the money. I’m here for my people.”

  “That is why you’re going to give me the journalist. Because if you don’t, I’m going to hunt you all down and kill you and have my men rape your wives and your daughters and your mothers. And that is not good. But if you work for me—”

  “If I work for you?”

  “Yes, if you work for me. I can’t have these problems over a couple of angry cocaleros. You will work for me, and your men will control this territory for me, and I will pay you a salary, and that will be better for everyone.”

  Edilson stared back, bewildered. He wasn’t much to look at, Jefferson thought, but he’d built up a crew of fighters, and he’d shown some balls. Perhaps he could be useful. Perhaps this whole thing wasn’t a complete disaster.

  “But first,” Jefferson said. “You have to give me the journalist. Or we are all fucked.”

  Very soon, Jefferson had worked out a rough agreement, Edilson had called out to his men on a handheld radio, and a small boat began making its way downstream. Inside was nothing dangerous. Just the American, hands tied and blindfolded.

  * * *

  —

  Intelligence officers are conspiracy theorists by vocation. You want them to see enemies everywhere. Peace treaties are smoke screens, violence an inoperable cancer, and civilians the sea our enemies swim in. At a presentation at the Escuela de Inteligencia that Juan Pablo had attended in 2009, a professor there had proclaimed, “This is Colombia. This is the country of the conquistadores—the bandits, the criminals, the terrorists of Spain. And they are our grandparents, our ancestors, our forefathers. We have their evil and their mischief in our blood. This is why we must always be vigilant. This is why we will never have peace.”

  No matter. Sift through the paranoia, find the actionable intelligence. That was Juan Pablo’s approach. It was a bit more concerning, though, when the malice was directed at him.

  The sergeant from the CIME clicked on a slide, up popped a photo of Luisa Porras Sánchez, and the eyes in the briefing room began crawling over him. Sánchez led the so-called human rights foundation his daughter was tangled in, and the connection between the foundation and the kidnapping was looking stronger by the hour, especially since that peculiar photograph of Jefferson had surfaced on Twitter, of all places.

  “Head of the local office of the Fundación de Justicia y Fe,” the sergeant said, his eyes not on Colonel Carlosama, who he was officially briefing, but on Juan Pablo. Everyone’s eyes were on Juan Pablo.

  In the past day, Juan Pablo had spoken up for the Jesúses. They’d been getting conflicting reports. Human intelligence sources telling them the journalist had been taken by guerrilla, police intelligence fingering the Jesúses, the foundation itself putting out a statement that it’d been guerrilla, American signals intelligence picking up suspicious traffic suggesting the Jesúses.

  It was an unusually sensitive question. Given ongoing negotiations with the ELN and the peace treaty with the FARC, a high-profile kidnapping by the guerrilla would have been a political problem for the president and his supporters. Given the military’s push to take over Agamemnon and other operations against BACRIM, adding the Jesúses to the list of Class A groups would be a welcome step in the next phase of military targeting against nonpolitical actors. These considerations meant that the evidence pointing to the Jesúses was highlighted, and counterevidence ignored. But to Juan Pablo, who tried to resist that kind of political pressure, the whole thing didn’t make sense, and he’d said as much. Why would the Jesúses kidnap a journalist?

  He’d held his own in the argument for a few hours, and then the news reports came out, showing the photo of Jefferson in what a human intelligence source confirmed was the offices of the Fundación de Justicia y Fe. Suddenly, the foundation’s statement fingering the guerrilla was not evidence for Juan Pablo’s cause, but proof that the foundation itself was compromised. And proof Juan Pablo was a fool.

  “Porras’s father was mayor of a rural town near La Vigia,” the sergeant said. “A guerrilla sympathizer. He supplied the ELN with weapons. He was executed by the paramilitaries in 2002. She’s in La Vigia now, they say to interview victims of the FARC, but their office has seen a parade of former guerrilleros coming in and out. And we have a source that claims her relationship with Jefferson goes back fifteen years.”

  “Back to when he was in the paras?” Juan Pablo broke in. “Really?” The sergeant was spinning bullshit theories as real intelligence, trying to fit a narrative on top of a set of facts that didn’t yet make any sense. Was he the only one who noticed?

  “It’s not impossible,” Colonel Carlosama said. “The paramilitaries and guerrilla could work together sometimes, especially the factions more interested in narcotrafficking than in politics.”

  The colonel raised an eyebrow, awaiting a response. Juan Pablo could feel the eyes of everyone in the room. Everyone in the room expected him to defend Jefferson. They expected it not because they thought he had good arguments that he was convinced by, bu
t because he had a daughter with the foundation and it made him emotionally compromised. He knew he should hold his tongue, but he couldn’t stand stupidity.

  “If Porras’s father was executed by paramilitaries back when Jefferson was running the paramilitaries in that region, chances are that it was Jefferson himself who ordered the killing. And now you’re saying they’ve been friends for fifteen years?”

  Colonel Carlosama, no fool, nodded his head in agreement. Juan Pablo felt the pressure ease, fewer skeptical eyes on him and more on the briefing intelligence sergeant as the room of military men instantly adjusted their mood to the mood of their commander.

  “At some point in the previous decade he underwent an ideological shift,” the sergeant said. “Perhaps he felt betrayed by the jail time he had to serve after the demobilization. After prison he went to Venezuela, and there he became radicalized and developed deep links to the Venezuelan military. We think that La Vigia is his beachhead for exporting the Bolivarian Revolution to Colombia, and Luisa Porras Sánchez is helping prepare the ground for his expansion throughout the department.”

  Colonel Carlosama put a finger to his lips and sat back in his chair, eyes on the picture of Porras Sánchez. He leaned back in his chair, stretched slowly, and then sat forward. “These days,” he began, “the main thing the Venezuelan military is exporting is not revolution but black market petroleum.”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. “But Venezuela is also importing cocaine. Now with the help”—the sergeant clicked to another slide, this showing the thread on Twitter and the photo of Jefferson—“of local organizations like this foundation.”

  The pitying glances returned. As the sergeant went on about the foundation where his daughter worked, and how tracking the foundation had generated leads, Juan Pablo realized that he was not simply present at a wrongheaded intelligence briefing. This was an attack on his own credibility, on the reputation of his family, and perhaps on his career.

  Afterward, Colonel Carlosama invited Juan Pablo to share a cigar outside the operations center. Carlosama came from a wealthy family and usually stocked the best brands, but the cigar he handed Juan Pablo after rummaging through his desk was nothing special. An Occidental Reserve Robusto. A good enough brand. But cheap.

  The colonel lit his own cigar, a Quai d’Orsay, by putting it right into the flame like an amateur. Then he handed over the matchbook.

  “It’s a different country now,” Carlosama said. “Less than thirteen thousand murders across Colombia last year. When I was commissioned, the number was closer to thirty thousand. So it’s a different war, too.”

  What was he driving at? Juan Pablo struck the match, held his cheap cigar above the flame, and spun until he got an even burn.

  “The other day General Cabrales and I had drinks with the commander of second division. He told us, ‘The army of speaking English, of protocols, and human rights is over.’ He thinks if we’re going to keep the peace, we’ll need a freer hand.”

  “And General Cabrales?”

  “He had concerns. If the peace goes through, we’re going to be responsible for controlling parts of the country we have never really had under control. Places where sometimes”—Carlosama waved his expensive cigar—“the army has made mistakes.”

  He was talking about civilian massacres, extrajudicial killings, and the rest of the litany of accusations people like Juan Pablo’s daughter’s professor liked to hurl at the army.

  “It happens,” Carlosama said, “when you’re fighting that kind of war. But now . . .”

  “Those kind of mistakes will cause more problems than they solve.”

  “In the long term, yes. The army as a whole needs to be more disciplined. But I think most officers would not agree. They want more freedom.” He smiled. “If your daughter goes into human rights work, she can help keep the pressure on us to stay disciplined.”

  “She comes home in two days. After that, she won’t be doing any more of that work.”

  “Hmmm . . .” Carlosama puffed on his cigar. “You’re up for promotion to colonel again. Of course, they’d be fools not to promote you, but have you thought about what you might do if they don’t?”

  Juan Pablo raised an eyebrow. This thing with the foundation had compromised him.

  “A man with your skills,” Carlosama said, “would do very well even out of the military.”

  “A contractor job?” Juan Pablo said. He’d always sneered at those. Officers trained by the Colombian state only to turn around and offer their skills to the highest bidder. A former boss of his was currently luring officers away with promises of high wages in the United Arab Emirates. But he didn’t want to think about that. He wanted to think about operations. Especially with his daughter being where she was. “Any luck with the beacon?”

  Carlosama smiled. “Our infiltrado—”

  “The storeowner? Abel?”

  “Yes. He says Jefferson doesn’t read books, so they’re going to put it in a DVD box set of American action movies.”

  Ah. That made sense. On CENTRIXS, the secure data system connecting U.S. and American intelligence, Juan Pablo had seen discussion flying back and forth as to which American movies were most likely to be appreciated by a bloodthirsty former paramilitary possible communist narco. One faction had been championing the works of Sylvester Stallone, another those of Steven Seagal. Last time he’d checked, Seagal was winning.

  “Have the Jesúses been classified yet?”

  “It will happen. There seem to be political considerations.” Carlosama put his cigar to his lips and puffed, but most of the embers had died and he barely pulled in any smoke. “I won’t mind them being Class A.”

  “More business for us?”

  Carlosama scowled and waved his hand dismissively. “We’ll have more business than we can stand with the Urabeños soon. No. But I don’t like the Jesúses. One, I don’t like how a tiny group in Norte de Santander has reached all the way to Bogotá. Two, I don’t like their Venezuela connections. And three, I really don’t like the feeling that they’ve been playing us. I’d rather have my narcos stupid and violent than smart and quiet.”

  Carlosama pulled again on his cigar, this time getting nothing.

  “We won’t be doing anything prematurely, though,” he said. “You handle this like it was any other drug dealer. I’m sure you can do that . . . despite . . .”

  “My daughter being at risk.”

  “Oh, I don’t think she’s at risk,” Colonel Carlosama said. “She just got in with some bad people.”

  Carlosama lit another match, once again putting his cigar end right into the flame. Juan Pablo looked down at the dead embers on his own cigar.

  “Hold it above the flame, not in it,” Juan Pablo said, not quite caring if he was giving offense. “You want to taste tobacco. Not ash.”

  * * *

  —

  Lisette sat in the back of the Land Rover with Jefferson, unsure of whether or not she was still kidnapped. The guard in the passenger seat had what looked like an M60 sitting awkwardly between his knees, muzzle sticking up in the air. It was a huge gun, way too long to handle easily in the car.

  Just a few days ago, being in a car like this, looking at the handle of Jefferson’s gun resting against his ample belly, would have been terrifying. Now, she was just so very, very tired. And so very much in need of an aspirin. But to show them, and to show herself, that she still had some pluck, she decided to talk.

  “You should buy M4s,” she said. “I understand that a gun, a big gun . . . it seems scary. An M4 seems a toy. But to leave the car rapidly, M4 is better.”

  Jefferson smiled. “You like guns?” he said. He grabbed the gun in his pants by the barrel, pulled it out, and turned it over, as if offering it to her. He waited a second, then laughed again, and put it back in his pants, an awkward process that involved him pulling at
his waistband while pushing against his belly fat and inserting the barrel in the space created. Why not just use a holster? This guy could afford a nice holster.

  “Yes. I like guns,” Liz said. “I used them when I was a girl.”

  “Good.”

  He leaned back and scowled, as if in pain, and that was it for conversation. As they left the village behind and crested a ridgeline, Jefferson took out an Iridium satellite phone, punched in some numbers, and began what was apparently an upsetting conversation.

  “But how?” he said. “How? I have her.”

  What followed was rapid-fire Spanish that Liz quickly lost interest in trying to track. Her body was sore. She wondered idly if she’d end up with PTSD after all this. She’d once read that only 4 percent of the survivors of the Hanoi Hilton had PTSD, as compared to something like 85 percent of American POWs in Japanese camps during World War II. She tried to remember why. The Hanoi Hilton guys had all gotten lifetime passes to Major League Baseball games. That probably didn’t factor in.

  She tried to think of the techniques of other captured journalists. Exercise, establishing a routine. Someone had said that was important. Writing letters to family in your head. Prayer, if you’ve got religion. The first time he was captured, by Qaddafi loyalists in Libya, James Foley claimed that prayer had helped him. That path wasn’t open to Lisette, but perhaps it was basically the same as meditating, or the mindfulness training that was supposedly popular with CEOs. She imagined a slightly paunchy corporate so-and-so in the sauna at the Harvard Club on Forty-fourth Street in New York, a towel draped across his neck, his legs crossed yogi-style, finger and thumb delicately touching as he gathered his energy, focused on his breathing, and prepared himself for a day of attentiveness to the moment, to his stock options, and to positive thoughts.

  Jefferson ended his call, his face red, and looked her in the eye.

  “You stupid whore,” he said.

  Lisette decided she was probably still kidnapped.

  * * *