Standoff

Thirty-two

I retraced some of my steps, like the ones to Yaviza. Others I avoided, like those through the Darién Gap. Everything they say about that place is true and one visit is one too many.

The dockside at Turbo was still a good way to clear the sinuses even if the temperatures had come down a few degrees since I was last there. But the bar on the river was just as I remembered it — full of drunks. On the off chance that I might jag a lead, I flashed photos of Perez and Apostles around to anyone prepared to give me some eye contact. Hope over reason, you might say. Pretty soon folks started avoiding the gringo with the mug shots. It wasn’t good for the health to be identifying cartel bad guys to strangers in drug-smuggling territory.

The bus ride to Medellín was uneventful. I hired a car and drove to Bogotá and stayed at the Marriott. That night, I went to Dry 73, ordered a chocolate martini for old times’ sake and sat on it, watching the clientele come and go. There was nothing to see here, though I stayed in town several days hoping it would show up. Next stop: the Hacienda Mexico, Apostles’ spread next to Pablo Escobar’s country retreat on the road halfway back to Medellín.

The trip was uneventful. No one tried to run me off the road, shoot at me or peel my skin off. This was how most people got around, listening to music, enjoying the countryside. I could get used to it. I finished the bottle of water and threw it into the floorboards to join its pals there and listened on the radio to local Colombian folk music funked up with rap. To my ears, it was the aural equivalent of dunking cheese in hot chocolate. I could go for either on its own, but together they just seemed wrong.

The place where Matheson ran me off the road rolled along. The purple Kia was gone, as was the greenery that had kept it so conveniently hidden.

The next landmark along was the Piper Cub on top of the gate at Escobar’s place. Being mid-week, there were fewer tourists and buses.

The Hacienda Mexico was ten minutes’ drive further on down the road. Coming up on the familiar entrance, I could see it had a new ornament to complement the security cameras — a Colombian Army armored personnel carrier parked across the gate. I pulled to the verge and stopped thirty yards down range. Okay, not smart. This must have looked suspicious. The soldier with dark sunglasses sitting up behind the APC’s turreted machine gun turned his head in the direction of the car. I could see from his body language that its arrival made him nervous. He jabbered something into his headset. I got out of the vehicle, walked toward him and gave a friendly wave. He responded with a wave of his own, shouting, “¡Alto! ¡Fuera!”

Technically, what he said was, “Stop! Go away!” But what he meant was, “You! Fuck off!” Who argues with a. 50 caliber Browning? I returned to the car and drove down the road a ways, pulling over again around the corner and out of the soldier’s sight. Was I thinking I was just gonna drive on in there? The Colombian Army had the place bottled up. Made sense. Three months after the event, the wounds inflicted on the US, Mexico and Colombia by Messrs Apostles and Perez were still raw.

So I dialed my supervisor.

The call went through. “Hola,” I said to Arlen, making it chirpy.

“Hey, how’s life on the road? What’s going on, bud?”

“Not a lot.”

“Excellent.”

“Arlen, I want you to do something for me.”

Silence.

“Arlen?”

“You know, historically, when you say ‘Hey, Arlen, I want you to do something for me’ that usually means trouble,” he said.

“Nope, no trouble.”

“So what is it you want that’s no trouble — an urgent delivery of suntan lotion FedExed to wherever you are, pronto?”

“I’m outside Apostles’ Hacienda in Colombia.”

“Vin …”

I could feel the exasperation.

“I wanna get inside the house.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Great reason.”

“Arlen …”

Silence.

“What are you doing, Vin?”

“Looking around.”

“Every intelligence service in the world is hunting those two.”

“In that case one more set of eyes won’t hurt.”

“You think they’re just going to move back home?”

“Crooks are creatures of habit — even super crooks. And these two have a serious arrogance problem. Who knows what they would or wouldn’t do?”

“I repeat — you think they’re just going to move back home?”

My turn for exasperation. “I’m doing this on my own time, Arlen. Get me inside. Please.”

“And it’s just to look around.”

“That’s a promise.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Jesus.” Resigned sigh. “Give me an hour.”

I drove back up the road, the soldier in the APC tracking the car as I drove past. So I had an hour to kill. What the hell, I turned into the Hacienda Nápoles and joined a recently arrived busload of tourists. Together, we all ogled at lifesize dinosaur models and bullet-riddled burned-out cars and what remained of Escobar’s zoo. There were some of those hippos and also a few zebras, and I heard a guide say that the grandfather of the herd had been stolen by Escobar from the Medellín zoo. The story went that the zookeepers arrived one morning to find their one and only prized zebra replaced by a donkey painted with black and white stripes. Fun guy that Escobar.

More recent additions to the deceased drug lord’s seven-thousand-acre ranch was a Jurassic-themed water park and a maximum security prison where the only thing that escaped was irony.

My cell rang.

It was Arlen. “Where are you now?”

“Looking at zebras.”

“Really?”

“Or donkeys painted black and white. You can’t be sure around here.”

“Right. Meanwhile, if you want to get into Apostles’ place, I’ve cleared it. Get down there now. They’re expecting you. You’ve got a twenty-minute window and you’ll be accompanied.”

“I’ll take what I can get.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Let me know if anything interesting turns up.”

“Will do,” I promised. “Anyone in particular I should check in with?”

“Lieutenant Jimanez. J-I-M —”

“Jimanez. Got it, thanks.”

“What are you driving?” he asked. “I’ll tell them to look out for you.”

I gave him the details.

“Vin — don’t do anything …”

“Stupid?”

“Put an adjective in front of it.”

“Fucking stupid?”

“That’s it. Like I said, let me know if anything turns up,” he said.

“Will do.”

The call ended.

This time I pulled up behind the APC rather than down the road and the soldier behind the machine gun didn’t appear to be so nervous. He said something into the mike and the APC rolled back a dozen yards, exposing the gate, which was open. He waved me through. I drove up the cinder driveway, through the dense overhanging islands of jungle. My memory stitched Apostles into the scenery, riding around on horseback dressed up as Villa though, looking back on it, I now believed that what I’d seen back then was a body double.

Finally the view opened out on to the expansive grounds and the double tennis courts, the lush green lawn now slightly overgrown. Also ahead was the magnificent grand old ranch house in the Mexican style.

Along with a couple of golf carts, several light utility army vehicles were parked outside the main entrance, a couple of men in Colombian Army-issue camos standing around talking. I stopped behind the vehicles. A man came out the front door of the house and walked up to my car.

“Special Agent Cooper?” he asked.

I showed my OSI ID and read JIMANEZ on the tape above his breast pocket. He was of medium height and dark with narrow almond-shaped eyes. In lightly accented English, he said, officiously, “I have orders to show you around.” I got out of the car. “What would you like to see? What are you hoping to find?”

“Just come to have a look.” I shrugged. “Maybe there’s nothing to find.”

“If you don’t mind, I must accompany you,” he said, gesturing at the front entrance.

I nodded and went inside, past the staircase. I absently picked a flintlock pistol up off a side table, looked at it and put it down. A suit of medieval armor now guarded the doorway into the lounge room. “I met with Perez in a study,” I told the lieutenant.

He knew the layout of the place better than me and led the way. “I didn’t realize that you had been here before,” he said.

“Yeah,” I replied, trying to concentrate on what was different and what was the same because things had moved.

“And Juan de Apostles was also here?”

I nodded. The hallway off the lounge room was familiar.

“Down here?” I said to the lieutenant. ‘There’s a study.’

Jimanez turned and led the way. He went through a doorway. The desk. Yeah, I remembered this room. You are a killer who does not kill. That’s what Perez had told me. He was sitting behind that desk when he said it. The letter opener he’d had that I’d fleetingly considered using on his throat was now standing innocently in a red cut-glass container with a handful of pens. I picked up the letter opener. The blade was dull, the tip of the blade a sharp point. It would’ve done the job like it was made for it. Perhaps I’d have gone through with it if Daniela hadn’t come through the door. I wondered how she was getting on. Daniela hadn’t looked so great when I’d last seen her.

“You have met with evil, Agent Cooper.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, taking in the rest of the room.

“My country breeds such men.”

“Something in the water, maybe?”

I glanced back down the hallway and headed in that direction. The lieutenant caught up. “Yes, and the soil. They are the curse of Colombia,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because of the plentiful water and the rich soil, everything grows here. Every fruit you can think of. It all grows wild. No one will ever go hungry in Colombia. The same is true of coca. It grows wild. And this leaf brings out the worst in people.”

I couldn’t argue with that. We walked out of the house, down the back stairs and onto the lawn, the air thick with insects, heat and tropical dampness.

“Fifteen years ago, there was Escobar and others. He killed thousands, all because of the coca leaf. My father was a policeman and his corrupt partner shot him dead. The coca leaf made everyone crazy. No one wanted those days ever to return to Colombia. And yet now we have men like Apostles. Yes, there is something in the water.”

I looked out over the river. No hippos there today.

“Have you seen anything of interest?” Jimanez asked.

“A few things have been moved around. The suit of armor near the front entrance — I don’t remember that being there, or the flintlock gun.”

The lieutenant shrugged. “We have touched nothing.”

“How long has the army been occupying the ranch?”

“Some days,” he said with a shrug, giving away nothing I could build on.

“Head back inside?” I asked him and the Lieutenant led the way.

A couple of the lieutenant’s men were sitting on a couch and a chair in the lounge room. One was flicking through a magazine on American country homes, the other speaking quietly on a cell phone. Jimanez snapped at them and they both jumped up and left in a hurry.

I stood in the room and took it all in: suits of armor, crossed pikes, leather couches, rugs, crossbows, the mounted heads of various animals on the wall. Something significant was missing. “Where’s the horse?” I asked Jimanez.

“Horse?”

“There was a horse, Pancho Villa’s horse, Seven Leagues — Siete Leguas. It was standing right there.”

The lieutenant looked at me like I had a screw loose. “When?”

Now that I’d pulled my head out of my ass, I noticed that signed and framed photographic portrait of the general was also no longer on the wall either. In fact, quite a bit was missing: one of the stuffed heads, the lion; a crossbow … Perhaps there was more. Where had it gone? “The surveillance cameras here are all switched on?”

“Of course.”

I pulled my cell and went outside.

“Arlen …” I said when I heard him pick up.

“You’re excited about something,” he said. “That’s concerning.”

“There are items missing from Apostles’ hacienda.”

“So?”

“Isn’t it supposed to be locked down?”

“It’s Colombia. What can I tell you?”

“Arlen, the items that are missing are specific. There’s Pancho Villa’s horse, a portrait —”

“Villa’s horse?”

“It was stuffed.”

“That’s an understatement — would have been almost a hundred years old.”

“Funny. Look, I think someone has come with a list and cherry-picked the things Apostles cherished the most.”

“That could have happened well before Laughlin.”

“There must have been some kind of inventory taken when the army moved in here.”

“I can find out. Where you staying?” asked Arlen.

“Puerto Triunfo, a town down the road. There’ll be a motel. Hey, also — there are surveillance cameras all over Apostles’ place. Maybe they got something.”

“I’ll look into it, call you back.”

I thanked Lieutenant Jimanez for his time and trouble, climbed into the rental and drove to town.

Eventually, I found a place that called itself a motel, but then so does the facility that lures cockroaches to their deaths. When it came time to sleep, I bunked down in the rental. And that turned out to be a good decision because if I’d stayed in a room, I might not have seen a familiar green Renault drive down the main street and stop outside the motel.