by Phil Klay
—
It amazed Abel how quickly the curse had taken effect. He didn’t understand at first. When they were taking the journalist, he simply panicked, too much in terror to think about what it meant. It was only later that he realized, when a delivery truck pulled up to his store. A delivery truck with nothing to deliver, but inside the truck were the same two men from military intelligence who had asked him, a year ago, everything he knew about El Alemán and his links to both the Urabeños and the guerrilla.
“The store is closed,” he told them. “We don’t get deliveries anymore.”
“Okay,” one of the men said. “Then you’ll help us change a tire.”
They took a tire off a back wheel. One of the men followed Abel into the store, and while the other worked he asked Abel about the kidnapping. Was it really the guerrilla, as the Jesúses were telling them? Maybe some splinter faction of the Elenos.
“It wasn’t the Elenos,” he said.
The man said, “Then it was Jefferson.” And that’s when Abel realized the curse was working.
Abel shrugged. Just that, a shrug. If his boss knew he was talking to the military, he would be dead. If it wasn’t for the curse he’d planted, the curse only he knew about, Abel would have been terrified. But knowing about the curse and feeling, for the first time since he was a boy, the circle of protection his parents had always dressed him with, he had just enough courage to tell the man that he’d keep an ear out for information, and that he’d be willing to do whatever it took. The man handed Abel an envelope with a little money inside. Not enough to risk his life for, but still something to set aside for when he reopened the store. It was funny to think that way. As if reopening the store was a possibility now.
They told him if he wanted to stay out of jail, he needed to continue to be cooperative.
“I’m not doing anything illegal,” he said.
The man laughed. It was such an odd thing to say, especially in a place like La Vigia. What did the law even mean here? Perhaps in big cities, in places like Cúcuta, or Medellín, or Bogotá, people walked around with a sense that somewhere, outside of them, was this thing called “law.” In La Vigia, there was none. There was a way of doing things. Talking about your boss to military intelligence was not the way of doing things in La Vigia.
“I’ll work with you because I want to,” he said. It made him feel like a brave man.
They left him with a phone. “This uses the Integrated Communication Network,” the man said. “It’s secure, so we can speak freely.” And it was over this phone that Abel had agreed to give Jefferson a gift, a gift the military would prepare for him and deliver to his store.
A few days later, Abel went to meet Jefferson to discuss the mobilization for the peace vote, carrying the gift under his arms. A DVD box set of Steven Seagal movies, tied with a red bow. Abel had examined the package carefully. It didn’t seem suspicious. There was no obvious place where the electronic beacon was hiding. And, they’d told him, it was on a timer, so it wouldn’t give off a signal for the next few hours, just in case Jefferson had it examined.
Abel held the box out awkwardly to his boss. He regretted not removing the bow. A bow was unlike him.
“When you used to show us movies, at that ranch you had near Cunaviche, these were my favorite,” Abel said. “I wanted to get you a small present, to thank you for bringing me back where I belong.”
Jefferson laughed and took the gift. “Thank you, thank you.” He examined the box, reading off titles. “The Patriot. Marked for Death. That was a good one. Did you know he’s making a movie with Mike Tyson?”
Abel did not know that.
“That will be very good.”
And then they discussed the peace vote. Jefferson had surprised Abel when, a few months ago, he had told him he wanted the vote to succeed. This was an old paramilitary town, and the peace was unpopular here, but if they could turn people in favor of the peace it’d give them a sense of how much influence they had before the more important elections, like the one for mayor.
“Oh,” Jefferson said. “That journalist. We found her. We’ll figure out what she knows and then turn her loose. Things will return to normal.”
As he was leaving, Jefferson stopped him and said, “Come by tonight. I’ll send someone to pick you up. We can watch a movie, like we used to.” And he’d hefted the box of DVDs.
So. Jefferson wanted to spend time with him. Him alone. Abel nodded. The invitation sparked fear but also, somehow, pride. Jefferson had always treated him differently.
After the meeting he went right back to his store and took out the special phone the military had given him. If he called them and told them that Jefferson had the gringa, there would be consequences. Serious consequences, though he wasn’t sure what they would be. The forces operating at a higher level in his country had always been mysterious to him. He called. He delivered his message. And when he hung up, his heart was racing. He was afraid, and anxious. He wanted to go find Luisa, and tell her what he’d done. He knew it was important. But he couldn’t tell anyone, and so instead he decided he’d go see Deysi, ask her if she’d like to go dancing Saturday, and keep the knowledge of what he’d done to himself, a jewel he could take out and polish if he felt the need.
He would never be a saint, that was clear. But he had done three dangerous things in his life. First, protecting Luisa back in Rioclaro. Second, using the curse. Third, giving Jefferson the beacon. He doubted most men in his place would have had the courage to do any of those things, let alone all three. He didn’t know what would happen, but even if what he’d done didn’t free him from Jefferson, he’d tried. He wasn’t an especially good man, he knew that. But he was better than most.
* * *
—
Jefferson sat across from the journalist, feeling old and tired. He knew what he should do. Move back across the border to Venezuela, put out the word he’d been killed, allow Javier to rename the Jesúses. Then he could return with a new name but the same connections. A temporary setback. Hide out a few months, come back. But a few months meant more to him now than it used to.
“I should kill you,” he said.
Her face was impassive. Perhaps defiant. It was also a mass of purple and black and green. Those idiots in the countryside had fucked her up. She was taking shallow breaths. Probably a few cracked ribs. He’d had his men stash her in a back room with a bed, a television, and a window looking down on a maybe forty-foot drop to a river. There were no other houses anywhere in sight. If she was in better shape, this wouldn’t be a secure place to keep her. But in her condition, she wasn’t going anywhere.
“I should do like ISIS,” he said. “I should get a big black flag, and I should put you on camera, and I should make you pray to Allah, and then I should cut your head off.”
He hadn’t planned on saying that, but he liked the sound of it. He could see it, the grainy execution video. Why was it always a grainy video? Where do you even get cameras so bad these days?
“How sad I’m not Muslim,” he said.
The journalist nodded slowly. There was no visible sign of relief. She swallowed. She was afraid, he could see. He smiled at her, to show her that he meant well.
“I thought you were going to free me,” she said.
He nodded. That had been his plan. But it was too late. The lawyer in Bogotá had told him the Jesúses had already been put on the military’s hit list. What difference did it make now if he killed her or let her go?
“People will look for me,” she said.
“Family? You have a husband? Children?”
“No.”
“Ah.” He shook his head. “That means nobody cares.”
He could tell she was trying to decide what was the right way to respond. He wasn’t sure himself. He didn’t think he’d kill her. It still made more sense to let the whole thing defuse. Ma
ybe even try to position himself as a hero, as a local businessman who negotiated with the cocaleros to rescue this stupid gringa. Maybe if she made him famous, it would protect him.
“The American government cares,” she said. “And they don’t pay for kidnapped people.”
“What do they do?”
“They send Navy SEALs—to kill.”
Jefferson laughed. She was trying to intimidate him.
“If they send a Navy SEAL, I’ll fuck him in the ass.”
“Okay,” she said.
“I’m going to think about you,” he said. And he left her there.
Later, as he ate an early dinner, he saw he had a message from Javier, asking to meet. Undoubtedly, Javier wanted to know why the journalist hadn’t been released. That was what he should do. But he allowed himself to wait, allowed a fantasy to flower in his mind.
In the fantasy, the Americans sent Navy SEALs in to get the journalist. They came to a house where they thought she was being held, but which was, in fact, a trap. A trap for killing gringos. In the fantasy, his men slaughter the SEALs. All except one. It’s the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden. Not the clown he’d seen taking credit on television, but the real one, the one the U.S. government doesn’t want you to know about. He’s a big man, very strong. He looks like Dwayne Johnson, the Rock, but white. And maybe that’s his name. Rock. Steve Rock. The true killer of Osama bin Laden. And Steve Rock has biceps the size of soccer balls. Steve Rock has a dick as thick as a Coke can. On his chest, Steve Rock has a tattoo of an American flag and on his back Steve Rock has a tattoo of Steve Rock killing Osama bin Laden. Steve Rock is large. Steve Rock is glistening. Steve Rock is like Ivan Drago in Rocky IV and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando and Jean-Claude Van Damme in Black Eagle. Steve Rock’s hair is long and his eyes are blue and Steve Rock is crying. He is surrounded by the bodies of his fellow SEALs, all of them piled on the floor, their bodies riddled with bullets. And Steve Rock fires his machine gun into the air until he is out of bullets, and then Jefferson steps out of the shadows, and Steve Rock throws down his weapon and the two men square off, the younger, stronger man against the older, sicker one. But Jefferson is wise, and Jefferson is vicious, and Jefferson knocks Steve Rock down with one punch, Jefferson flings the blood of the fallen SEALs in Steve Rock’s eyes and kicks him through a window, Jefferson lures Steve Rock into a tight space where his size and strength are a disadvantage, and Jefferson conquers Steve Rock. He takes him to Venezuela and parades through the streets with Steve Rock in a cage behind him, and the people throw flowers at the feet of Jefferson and rancid meat into the face of Steve Rock. And Jefferson is declared the new Uribe, the new Chavez, the new Castro, the new Che Guevara.
Of course, Jefferson would still have to die. The gringos could never let him live. That’s how it would have to go. And it would be best. A man like himself didn’t deserve to die from a disease, stumbling downward on the path of life. He deserved to die while climbing to the heavens. He deserved to die while still fully alive. He deserved to be on T-shirts.
* * *
—
When the notification came through, Mason was at his terminal, going through emails. They were mostly dull, administrative tasks. Logistical hassles with a training op in Larandia, details on an ODA team’s forthcoming redeployment, a reminder about the planning committee for the embassy’s Halloween party. That last one he flagged as important. He was taking the girls and didn’t want it to be a shitshow like it’d been the year before. And then a new email came in with an innocuous subject line. “FWD: ISR shift Tibú to La Vigia.”
It was from the colonel who ran MILGROUP, who had just typed “FYI” above an exchange he’d had with one of the embassy’s DEA agents. Mason scanned it quickly. A few ISR assets were being transferred from the police mission in Norte de Santander to support a hostage rescue mission near La Vigia.
So there it is, he thought. The colonel had already approved it. There was nothing for him to do.
He got up from his terminal and stretched. He felt vaguely dissatisfied, though it was a good thing that the mission was a go. While they had a lock on the journalist’s location, it made sense to move fast. Kidnappers could easily disappear with their captives for years within Colombia’s mountains and jungles.
He walked down to the colonel’s office and popped in his head. The colonel, a bald, muscular southerner, was a bit of a Sphinx. He had a southern drawl and liked to play dumb, but could surprise you sometimes with the depth of his knowledge or his ability to see around corners. Last Halloween, he’d put on a white T-shirt, grabbed a mop, and made a highly popular appearance at the embassy party as Mr. Clean.
“Sir,” Mason said, “this thing in La Vigia is going tonight?”
“Looks like,” the colonel said. “Fingers crossed.”
Fingers crossed. Right.
“You need me to stay late?”
“Nah.”
Right.
“I miss being in the field,” Mason said. “Wish I could be out there.”
“Don’t we all.”
Mason thought about saying more, perhaps voicing some of his concerns about the shift that seemed to be happening, in which the Colombian military was taking over more and more of what should have been police functions. But the colonel already knew all that. Better to just wish the guys on the ground well, and to pray the hostage didn’t get killed.
He went back to his terminal and finished up for the day, clearing out his in-box and shooting an email over to the Colombian police unit that had just had their ISR assets stripped. Then he left the embassy.
Tonight, a team of highly trained Colombian soldiers would be moving in and performing the most complex type of operation commandos are tasked with—hostage rescue. Even now, they would be preparing, going through the plan, analyzing a model of the target structure, gaming out all the possible curveballs the operation might throw at them. Soon, they’d be preparing their kit, gearing up, perhaps saying a few prayers, or listening to pump-up music, or whatever little rituals were specific to that team. They had a clear, unmistakably good mission, with an innocent captive and an evil captor. What a luxury. They didn’t have to worry about the things he did at his level. The allocation of resources, the politics behind which unit or branch of service got which mission, and whether or not helping the military shift its focus from killing guerrillas in the jungle to killing drug dealers in coca territory would turn out to be a mistake. Instead, they would have the simple, immediate experience of the battlefield.
It was lucky that the embassy didn’t need him. He’d just spend the night full of envy. Besides, he’d told his oldest daughter that either this week or the next he’d help her with her Halloween costume. They’d gotten a picture frame, and a poster of the Mona Lisa, and they were going to cut out the face so Inez could stick her head through and walk around as the iconic painting. So far, he’d been too overworked to be able to come home early and help her put it together. Today was as good a day as any to start.
* * *
—
Over the next couple of hours, Jefferson’s fantasy dissipated and the real world came intruding, sticking its ugly face in the door and whining about practicalities. The journalist’s capture had attracted national attention. The army was now hunting her, along with the police. Until they found her, nothing that he had built here was safe.
Still, it irked him to just let her go. How could someone be so valuable to so many people, and nothing but useless to him? And if he just let her go, would the unwanted attention cease? His name and face were known now. He couldn’t fade back into obscurity. But maybe he could use that to his advantage. He had, after all, rescued her.
So he went back to the journalist’s room, had his men open the door, and he told her how things would go.
“Journalists have a code,” he said, and she agreed, yes, of course they did. An
d he asked if that code included protecting sources, and she said yes, of course, that is the most basic part of the code, and then he asked if she’d like him to become a source.
“Yes,” she said. He could see the relief across her bruised face. The knowledge that she might survive.
“I think it’s important that you tell people how I rescued you,” Jefferson said.
“I need a doctor,” she said.
“I know what you may have heard about me, that I’m a narco. That I was in the autodefensas. Did they tell you that?”
“Yes.”
“Who? Who told you that?”
“I knew about you before I got here.”
That made him happy.
“I was in the autodefensas,” he said. “Proudly. Everything I have ever done, I have done for the poor people, the forgotten people.”
The gringa nodded.
“In La Vigia,” Jefferson said, “we have been victims of the guerrilla first, and then the narcos second, and the government third.” He laughed. “I prefer the narcos. They kill for money. The guerrilla kill for insanity.”
“And you?” the journalist said. “What do the Mil Jesúses kill for?”
So many things. “The Mil Jesúses is a prayer. Do you know it?”
“I saw it on the internet. Before I came here.”
“Give up Satan!” He pointed his finger to the sky, then realized that was not where Satan was generally said to hang out, and redirected his finger to point it at the gringa. “You cannot count on me because on the Day of the Holy Cross I said a thousand times . . . Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”
He closed his eyes as he said the name of God, as if in the grip of powerful emotion. When he opened his eyes, he saw her staring at him blankly.
“If the demon tempts me on the hour of my death, I will tell him he has no part of me, because on the Day of the Holy Cross I said a thousand times . . .”
He paused, and locked eyes with her. A few seconds passed.