“Welcome to Mantanay,” the butler says.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, staring at the valley.
“Yes, it’s very quiet,” Diego agrees. “This is a conservation area of the Polylepis forest. I guess that makes me a conservationist.”
The butler serves us steak on a bed of rice and peas with red wine. He waits for me to try a bite.
I cut into the center and try a small piece.
“It’s very good,” I say. “Is it rib eye?”
They both laugh.
“No,” the butler says. “It’s cuy.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s guinea pig,” Diego says. “A very traditional dish. One you must try while on vacation.”
I almost spit out the meat. “Guinea pig?”
“Yes. It’s no different from cows or pigs.”
I know he’s right. I’ve hunted plenty of fury critters and have never flinched when skinning them. But the game I capture don’t run through plastic tunnels.”
“I’ll get you a ham sandwich,” the butler says.
I start to protest, but the butler won’t listen to me. He heads down the path toward the main house.
“I’m sorry,” Diego says. “I wanted you to try some of the local cuisine. I hope I didn’t offend you.”
“You didn’t offend me. It just took me by surprise.”
“I like surprises. Life is too boring without adventure. That’s why I like you, Caroline. You strike me as someone who goes wherever the wind takes her, not worrying about tomorrow.”
“Life is short. Ten years from now I’ll probably be filing papers in some stuffy desk job. I have to enjoy things while I’m young.”
“I think you underestimate your abilities, Caroline. Though I second the sentiment.” He raises his wine glass. “To living life as an adventure.”
Our glasses clink.
Diego ignores his food. I tell him he can go ahead and eat, but he insists he won’t start until I’m served.
“What does you family think about you staying in Peru? Do they worry?”
Diego has hit on a sensitive subject. I debate whether to give him the family background of Caroline Davis or Miranda Hill. My own background will probably make the most sense. Besides, I haven’t mapped out Caroline’s family history.
“My mother died giving birth to me and my dad recently lost his battle with cancer.”
Diego nods. “Sorry to hear. My parents died when I was very young, as well. My father was killed fighting in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. He was a high-ranking official. My mother was murdered to threaten my father into stepping down from his role in the People’s Army.”
“That’s awful. What did you do?”
“It was a crazy time. My father put me in to hiding when I was six. I was raised in safe houses among the People’s Army. They kept me out of the fighting and taught me how to survive, how to organize, and the realities of the world. Occasionally I saw my real parents.”
I want to press Diego on his political stance and to argue the fallacy of Marxism and Bolivarianism or the hypocritical nature of using guerrilla warfare for peace, but I don’t think Caroline the cocktail waitress is that politically astute.
Diego studies me. “You don’t agree with our tactics, do you? I see the disdain on your face.”
Perhaps I’m not the skilled actress I think I am. “I just don’t think violence is ever the means to peace.”
Diego scoffs. “Yes, your country would know nothing about violence. You may enjoy peace at home, but your nation’s imperialist endeavors bring misery and destruction around the world. It is your main export. Our own government brings that upon its citizens. Corruption and evil is a way of life in South America.”
The butler returns, cutting the tense mood. He smiles and sets down my American dish before leaving again.
“Do you ever blame yourself for your mother’s death?” Diego asks. “I mean, do you feel like you have something to prove to yourself in order to make your life worthwhile?”
“That’s a very rude thing to ask.”
“Is it? I think it’s a perfectly reasonable question. Why are the most important manners of life considered rude while flattery, which allows someone to lead a false existence, is deemed polite? Where’s the honor or respect in that?”
“But you hardly know me. What if I were to ask you the same? Do you think you have to do something exceptional in life to make up for your parents’ young deaths?”
Diego sets down his glass of wine and stares at me. “Absolutely. Every single day I feel that pressure.”
“And has the coffee business tamed those demons?”
Diego smiles. “No. However, what I can do with the proceeds makes up for it. Besides, the coffee business is a temporary thing. I have my sights on bigger endeavors. Positions that can bring about real change.”
Before I have an opportunity to respond, a man wearing a suit rushes out of the pergola, sweat running down his face, his hair flopping with every step.
Diego doesn’t get up or act alarmed. He waits for the man to whisper in his ear. I lean in closer, pretending to take a bite of my sandwich, hoping the mic will pick up the conversation.
Diego nods and shrugs.
“It happens,” Diego says. “I’ll handle it.”
He folds his napkin and places it on the table.
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
“Of course. We should hurry, though. Let us get you your dress.”
As we head back to the compound, I ask Diego if he’ll show me around. I haven’t gotten a single shred of intel that Nick and José can use.
“Not today,” he says. “My business demands my attention.”
I try to look for anything: coca leaves lying about, discarded gasoline or acetone drums, a hydraulic press used for stamping the bricks. I see nothing. If Diego is one iota as smart as I think he is, an illegal drug has probably never been anywhere near any of his homes.
As he takes me down a spacious hall with marble flooring, I see something I never expected in a drug smuggler’s home.
I stop and peer into the room.
“Wow,” I say, staring at the impressive library. Thousands of paper and hardback books sit on mahogany shelves. Maybe millions.
“It was once a ballroom,” Diego says, gesturing to the library. “But I’m not much into ball dancing.”
The shelves hug the walls of the ballroom, two stacked on top of one another. A set of stairs leads to a ledge that spans along the upper shelf. Antique recamiers form little reading areas in the center of the room.
I pass the first shelves and notice a meticulous order: classics, westerns, European history, historical fiction.
“Do you actually read these or are they just to look pretty?”
Diego scans the room. “Well, I have not read them all, no. Only those.”
He points to a row of shelves on the other side of the room. Three of the shelves are filled with an array of different books. Several empty shelves sit beside it.
“You’ve read all of those books?” I say. Three shelves worth may not sound like much, but I’m guessing each can hold about five hundred books. Even reading at a brisk fifty books per year, it would have taken him thirty years to read them all.
I cross the room.
There are impressive authors among the mix: Voltaire, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Joyce, Proust, Twain.
“There’s more to life than selling coffee,” Diego explains. “Ideas can topple any regime. There are no greater shackles for a slave than ignorance. When my collection is complete and the violence wanes, I want to open a free library in Chocó or Sucre, two Colombian departments that still have staggering illiteracy rates.”
I commend Diego’s altruist endeavors, though they strike me as rather hypocritical. And the way he says, “when the violence wanes,” is especially naive, as if he were talking about waiting out a dry summer or a bear market. People like him are the reaso
n there’s so much violence in these countries, and it’s his illegal business that continues the corruption and sucks away tax dollars to fight cocaine production rather than building hospitals or schools.
While his ambitions may be right, they strike me as a means of justifying his actions.
Which is odd.
Psychopaths and sociopaths don’t need justifications for their actions. They’re motivated by selfish desires without any consideration of others. If Diego truly is motivated by guilt or a twisted sense of how good is achieved in the world, the CIA’s criminal profile of him is wrong.
Obviously, I don’t say any of these things. I listen and nod and tell him how wonderful it all sounds. Ah yes, colossal libraries dropped into the heart of illiteracy and armed with teachers from Oxford to read to the children! And then e-readers for all, full of the world’s greatest works. And when one of your rivals gets word of your philanthropy and bombs the library, killing a bunch of children, what then, Diego? Oh, that’s right. You’re going to wait for the violence to end. Let me just set my watch for never. By then, maybe you’ll have read all these books, as well.
Still, I’m surprised Diego is an intellectual. Most of the drug dealers I dealt with in the States could barely read a search warrant. If I wasn’t here to gather evidence and if Diego wasn’t one of the world’s most infamous criminals, he would be fascinating to get to know. Just being around him, I sense the intense energy within him, an engine of ideas and theories ready to be put into action.
Diego takes me to another large room that’s mostly empty of furnishings. Inside, there are enough racks of women’s attire to clothe a small village.
“Are you planning on opening a woman’s boutique?”
Diego doesn’t laugh. “No, these are the clothes of my previous wife.”
Previous wife. Yes, that’s one way to call it. I can think of a few more: murdered wife, blown-up wife, pregnant-murdered wife.
This conversation needs a little probing. “Did you have any children together?”
I watch for his reaction. Is there shock, guilt, darting eyes that debate whether to mention she was pregnant?
I don’t see any of those responses.
Instead, Diego’s mouth twitches.
He turns away. “Olivia was six months pregnant with our baby boy when she was . . . killed.”
He chokes on the final word and leans against one of the racks. And the Oscar goes to . . . drum roll, please! Diego Martinez for his epic performance in I Didn’t have Anything to Do with My Wife’s Murder!
“Oh, my gosh. That’s horrible. If you don’t mind me asking, how did she die?”
Diego straightens his back and composes himself. “They were murdered. It was a car bombing and done so to send a clear message to me to stop what I am doing. No one cares about the violence here. Politicians especially. They just want the money to keep flowing. That’s all that matters. Threaten their system and they consider you and your family expendable.”
This is the first I’ve heard anything about someone else being responsible for the death of Diego’s wife. While I don’t believe him, he doesn’t talk about the murder like a guilty suspect would. He said they instead of her. Interesting. He sees the car bombing as a double homicide—or at least he wants it to appear that way.
“Why would someone want to murder your pregnant wife? You’re just a coffee producer with an affinity for literature.”
Diego offers a smile to my sarcasm, but his crossed expression reveals to me that he knows I don’t think he’s in the coffee business. I must be careful, or I will press too much, too early and blow my chances of gaining his trust.
“Coffee is not such a dangerous business as long as you know what you’re doing and everyone who should get paid does. Politics is another matter.”
Diego stands by an arched window overlooking the terrace.
“I hadn’t officially run for office, but everyone knew I was planning to. We started years before. First, we brought clean water to poorer regions of the country, then we started several food banks. We secured Western endorsements to provide free broadband hotspots. No one minded these benevolent acts.
“Yet, I had greater aspirations, ones that could only be fulfilled through politics. I wanted to bring community policing, stop corruption, and jail those who thought they were above courts and justice. We started making speeches in the poorest communities. When we first gained support, the established politicians scoffed at us. Until support flourished. An organic grassroots movement rose around us. No one was laughing any longer. I was told to stop and was threatened. But I couldn’t stop.
“I built this home to hide and protect Olivia after she became pregnant. Convincing her of the danger was difficult. She was brazen and unafraid. Being forced to live in this compound was a prison sentence to her. I begged her to stay and to wait until I had run and the election was over. She refused.”
I’m not sure if I believe Diego. I only know that I have to gain his trust. So I pretend that I’m on his side. “Do you know who killed her?”
“Yes. I do. And when the time comes, they will receive the justice they deserve.”
I suddenly feel as though I’m standing in a funeral home. The articles around me—while being exquisite attire fit for a princess—all contain a morbid shade.
“I really don’t need a dress,” I say. “Just being able to have lunch with you and touring your gorgeous ranch was a treat.”
“Nonsense. All of this is going to be given away anyhow. With the corruption in this country, probably half of it will end up being sold and bartered. I’d much rather it go to someone who will enjoy it. Besides, these dresses were meant to be worn by a rare beauty.”
Diego doesn’t tell me whether I’m a rare beauty or not. I guess it’s implied.
Is he just putting me on? Am I his new plaything, someone to fill his time with? And why do I care to know the answers to these questions?
It shouldn’t matter. I’m here to gather evidence to use against this man—this criminal.
The answer to why I care frightens me. Diego may be handsome and smooth, but he’s a killer. A drug dealer. Scum of the earth. Scourge on society.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, but no, no, no, no. Part of me doesn’t want to believe that. Part of me believes that Diego is telling the truth and that he feels the same pain that I do. I understand the sorrow in his eyes. It’s the same mourning I see in my own eyes every night and each morning. And even the greatest method actor can’t fake that tired, weary expression.
“Are you okay, Caroline?”
I jump and focus my eyes back to reality.
Diego is standing beside me. “You spaced out there for a moment.”
“I’m fine. It’s just the altitude. I’ve been here for weeks, and I still don’t think I’ve adjusted.”
Diego nods. “Yes, some Westerners never acclimate.”
I begin rummaging through the dresses, yet my mind has trouble focusing. I can feel Diego looking at me with his dark eyes, tracing the sunlight across my hair. Part of me wants to run, quit the CIA, and hide in Atlanta waitressing at a dive bar by the freeway for the next twenty years (I now have experience), and another part of me wants to spill everything to Diego about my father and my mother and that every good thing in my life has been snatched away from me—that I know him in a way that no one else possibly could. I’d jump in his arms and he’d hold me and kiss me and tell me everything was going to be okay and promise me he would always protect me.
Coming back to reality, I lift a sage strapless dress. “I really like this one.”
“A beautiful one,” Diego agrees. “But the wrong color. With your hair, I’d go with something else. Hmm. Let’s see.”
He picks through the racks and finally stops at a champagne metallic dress with a slit along the side. I pray that he continues looking. The dress is designed for a bombshell, a Playmate of the Year. I’d look ridiculous in it.
“This one would be pe
rfect.”
“I don’t think—”
“Oh, come on, Caroline. Just try it on. If you don’t like it, we can look for another one. There’s no harm in that.”
Men will never understand the harm in “just” trying on a dress.
Dutifully, I take it.
Diego points to a bathroom where I can change.
I close the door, set down my handbag, and begin removing my clothes. I wasn’t expecting to have to try on the dress, and I certainly wasn’t expecting one that would reveal so much cleavage.
This presents a problem.
The mic is taped between my breasts. I will have to remove it. No easy feat. The tape is medical grade and doesn’t come off easily. Each instance in which I removed it before, I first soaked the tape in warm water. There’s a sink in here, but I think Diego would become suspicious if I started running the water for several minutes.
I try pulling at the corners of the tape and nearly shriek out loud. Christ, that hurts. Ripping a band-aid off is of no comparison.
Looking through my purse, I don’t see anything that might help.
I grit my teeth and continue pulling, clinching my free hand against the lip of the sink. I think I’m going to rip the sink off the wall. I stop torturing myself and evaluate my progress. Is that half an inch or a quarter of an inch? Either way, the progress is wretched. I’ll be in here all day at this rate. I need a new plan of action.
There’s a vanity mirror above the sink with a built-in cabinet. The hinges screech as I pry the mirror open.
I squint, praying Diego doesn’t hear. Let’s see. No weird ointments or foot fungus creams. That’s good. Aha! An old bottle of aftershave cream. I dust off the cap and pour cream onto my hand and rub it into the tape.
I pull again.
The white-hot burn is still fierce, but I’m making progress. Damn me for applying so much tape.
I get one side of the tape removed.
There’s a knock at the door.
I look at the doorknob.
Shit! There’s no lock.
“Is everything okay in there, Caroline?”
“Yes. I was just seeing how it looked and trying to zip up the back.”
Reckless Page 5
