The Eagle's Throne

9. MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN TO BERNAL HERRERA

I realize, Bernal, that you must carry out a full security check before allowing a complete unknown like Nicolás Valdivia into the inner sanctum of the presidency. I’ve read with great care the dossier you sent me. Born December 12, 1986, in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. Mexican father, American mother. Both worked in El Paso, Texas, but were Mexican residents. Nicolás’s birth certificate can be found in the public records office of Ciudad Juárez. Parents killed in a car accident when Valdivia was fifteen.

Then there’s a very large gap until Valdivia reappears in Paris, a student at the same college you and I attended. I tested him out. He’s very familiar with the subjects and the teachers there. At the Mexican embassy in France he met General Mondragón von Bertrab, at the time the military attaché to the mission. Von Bertrab used the young ENA student for writing up reports, collecting information, etc. It was the general who brought him back to Mexico, where Valdivia spent five years studying on his own in his native state of Chihuahua.

What happened to him between the age of fifteen and twenty-two? I’ve asked our current defense secretary, von Bertrab, for information. He simply smiled. What can one really know about the life of a teenage orphan forced to earn a living all on his own?

Von Bertrab assuaged my fears. If you need confirmation, just ask him. Nicolás was a bit of a vagabond: working on Mexican tankers and Dutch freighters that often dropped anchor at Tampico, reading a lot, studying when he could find the time, finishing off the subjects he needed for his degree. And then finally, he got himself accepted at the ENA thanks to the intervention of the general, who backed the application with all the necessary documents attesting to Valdivia’s unusual and difficult education, his hard work, his tremendous efforts. You know — a youth straight out of a story by Jack London or Ernest Hemingway. .

Can you ask for a better recommendation, Bernal? Perhaps he has some mistakes buried in his past, but I must ask you once again to trust my feminine intuition. Nicolás Valdivia looks at me with the face of an angel. He tells me he loves me. And I let him love me. But I’ve also seen that other look, surreptitious, the one he has when he thinks I’m not looking. That “lean and hungry” look that Shakespeare portrayed in Julius Caesar. The look of ambition. A little devil with the face of an angel? What else could we possibly ask for if not this, dear friend, to defeat Tácito de la Canal? Let Valdivia owe us everything, and give us everything, too. My intuition tells me that he’s our ideal agent. You yourself have always told me that in politics new blood is necessary, even if it’s dangerous.

Darling, let me be the one to take the risk and pay the price for the damage, if any. You and I are playing a game of political realism. Idealistic at times, like our president was, so disastrously on January 1. But in the end, we must be realists, because we must deal with de facto responses to our de jure behavior. The good thing about realpolitik is that you can do an about-face and still keep your basic principles intact. Nicolás Valdivia is an accident of realpolitik, yours and mine. We can get rid of him as easily as we’ve furthered his career.

Believe it or not, I’ve gone so far as to tell him that when he makes it to the presidency I’ll be his, sexually. And I think he believed me! Or at least my proposal sparked his imagination and his desire.

Be that as it may, we needed to get one of our own into the tarantula’s cave. If our little ant Valdivia gets stung and dies, tant pis pour lui. We’ll just replace him with someone else. For the moment, he’s our man in Los Pinos. Leave it to me, I’ll take care of duping and manipulating him as I see fit. And rest assured, if he’s smart, he’ll be a faithful servant.

When I said to him, “You’ll be the president of Mexico,” young Valdivia didn’t even flinch. He showed no astonishment. Perhaps he thought just what you’re thinking now: What if he betrays us, what if his indiscretion or ambition gets the better of him and he reveals our plan?

I think this boy is very intelligent. He knows how to read people’s eyes. He read mine: If you betray me, nobody will believe you. They’ll just think you’re an ambitious little operator and perhaps a very big fool. I don’t need you as a victim. I need you as an ally. A little Lucifer like you is exactly what I need.

He’s as vain as he is astute. He believes me. We will, however, run into problems when he’s stripped of his illusions. He may react vindictively. We must make very sure that our victims have no weapons for revenge.