Mateo nodded and decided to start the Nautic: The "Deck Boat" was now sliding through the imaginary streams of a blue sea with greenish tints, way to the Cíes Islands. She sat down next to him, letting herself drift by her imagination, sprayed the ocean with gasoline, setting her on fire, the sea blazing before her eyes for a moment. He increased speed to twenty knots, pursued by a huge sea serpent. He felt erect like a Greek god. For a moment she was Aphrodite, goddess of fecundity, desire, shattered by routine, beside Achilles her protector, on the way to the walled city of Troy. Maybe Matthew was that for her, an old warrior ready to protect her to exhaustion, fighting for her, sword in hand until the climax of the battle, with the physical and imperturbable face of Brad Pitt's forty-year-old, on the screen of a cinema of a neighbourhood that projected the greater super-production of the year.
They docked at the Rhodes pier, then landed and walked through the route of the Faro da Porta, passing through the Lake of the Nenos. They stopped for a while and looked at the fish. Sargos, castañetas, sea bass and salmon; Sought refuge in that natural park, to reproduce without fear of poachers or illegal dumping. There were groups of tourists taking pictures, others recording with camcorders.
They walked up the slope to the lighthouse. Once above, Mateo took out the binoculars to comb the area, and on the way up they had encountered numerous groups of sea gulls (Larus Cachinnas), whose excrement had reached a forest guards absentminded in their spectacles. Numerous groups of butterflies (Zennthya Rumina) swarmed among the flowers with their robes robbed of yellow, black and red spots. Mateo drew with the binoculars an abrupt landscape, following the line of the coast that was lost in the horizon. A perfect frame manipulated by dozens of seagulls, planning on the sea, to capture valuable pieces with which to feed their young.
He aimed his glasses at the Ruzo islet. Two "Zodiac Classic" were smuggling tobacco and hashish. A kilometre west of the islet, offshore, the "Nervión" would anchor a forty-meter-long fishing vessel from the Caribbean, with twenty-two thousand kilograms of cocaine on board, headed by Tobias, an old sea wolf in his fifties. It was a major operation, they should move quickly. The "Outlaw 33s" would be ready for release, but that wouldn’t happen for a month. The merchandise would be unloaded on the slopes of Monteferro at night. There it would be picked up by a fleet of all-terrain vehicles and taken to Patos beach, where the Russians would be waiting with their Volkswagen vans. From there it was up to him.
Of course, Mateo didn’t reveal any of this information to Mireia. They couldn’t take any chances despite the confidence the young writer had. His reputation was at stake, along with that of the logistic team designed as a spider web by Lucia. But Mireia was aware of everything, she had flipped through his diary while he was driving the boat and wrote down in her notebook all kinds of data about the operation, date, latitude, longitude, where the "Nervión" would walk and the transfer of merchandise, means used for the transfer of the drug, the sketch of the operation on a small map scrawled with pencil by Mateo. She had done it in an automaton, following the instinct of her journalistic period, without any kind of evil, thinking that she would not mind and it could serve her to better development of the fictional action in her novel.
She just couldn’t control her nose and when she wanted to stop it was too late. She still could not resist behaving like a snitch. She felt ashamed of herself when she realized the importance of the documents she had transcribed, vital for the operation called Nécora IV. But it was too late to turn back and chose to keep her mouth closed as always. She was astonished at the magnitude of the negligence Mateo had committed by leaving those documents within her reach. She regretted the risk she had taken. If Mateo discovered her, peering at the papers; he could have shot her and thrown her into the sea. She was still a bad girl, too curious for her age. Things of profession, bad habits rooted during the last years of working for a tabloid newspaper.
2—The road is running out of vegetation.
Seven months had passed since Lucia's entry into the prison, Nicholas didn’t have the courage to visit her. He was sorry he couldn’t do it, but the commanders wouldn’t understand. They wanted to keep the press away from all that. His integrity as an agent was at stake. He had denied the relationship with Lucia to the cameras; In spite of the insistence of Susana Seoane in attributing to him, a sentimental relation with the recluse. No one would understand that an agent of the law slept with an important drug trafficker. The department was responsible for hiding the evidence, his footprints were erased throughout the house, scientifically his adventure with Lucia had never happened. In exchange for refusing to see her again, Nicholas was promoted to sergeant and admitted to the narcotics brigade of the Civil Guard, it was a very expensive price to pay, but that was his job. Although he still wanted her and missed her terribly, his duty to society and his companions forced him to forget her. As far as he was concerned, they would never be together again. Besides, his job now was to pursue her to exhaustion.
Despite the money that the families had offered him to turn a blind eye to the investigation he was carrying out (an informer had blown up a possible large-scale drug entry operation along the southwest coast of Galicia), he hadn’t let himself being bribed. His record was clean in that sense and although he could use a bonus: he wasn’t that kind of agent sold for money. His life hadn’t been easy, and all that was owed to the Body. He enjoyed his work, especially since his ascent and nobody and nothing would prevent him from continuing to improve and climbing steps in his career as an agent of the law, if someone stood in his way he would fight back with all the weight of justice.
Sergeant Nicholas tried to tie up cables in his office alone. His elbows rested on a fake wood table whose colour imitated the streaked trunk of an old oak.
His look was lost in some documents extracted from the files of the judicial. A lot of data on quantities of different amounts, cachets of cocaine, heroin, hashish, pills, smuggled tobacco, seized by the Corps in recent years, and not a single test that involved the five families with that merchandise. Nicholás knew that Lucia was the key ready to open the door of any investigation on the subject. He kept an ace up his sleeve. His confidant was very close to Lucia. He knew that La Reina was operating again, from prison, so that was a clear advantage, since she was located. From there it would be easier to follow her every move. At least he would know against who he would fight, he could see or at least intuit the chips that his opponent intended to move as in a game of checkers. Black had moved, but the law always plays last, hidden in the shadows, always on the prowl, ready to jump on its prey.
He knew that the families had begun negotiations with the Russians. These clearly dominated gambling and prostitution in the Mediterranean. They were untouchables. Now they wanted to settle on the Atlantic coast. For this nothing better than to ally with the Galician mafias, knowledgeable about the land and open to do business. No one was interested in an open war with the Russians. Most of his men were ex-combatants from the Chechen and Balkan wars. The war wouldn’t benefit anyone. The sea gave enough fishing for all, but of course! The fish had a price. The Russians paid well, there was only one problem. The Galician mafias would have to reorganize themselves, to increase their logistic body. That's where Lucia came in. She was the most capable, serene, intelligent of the entire northwest organization. Let us say, to explain it in some way, that the sum of the manoeuvrability of the intelligence groups of all the great leaders of the Galician mafias was exceeded by the imagination, audacity and intelligence of the team that, for such an eventual occasion he had ridden on the road, Lucia in less than a month. Nicholas knew that she was the best at his job. There was only one problem. He also aspired to do his own good. He knew there was a big operation going on. Large quantities of heroin and cocaine were to be introduced along the coast, now the question was When? Where? and how? That was information that he didn’t have at the moment, but if his contact didn’t fail, he would know beforehand.
Nicholas b
ought a house in a village located two kilometres from the Ferrería, following the course of the Queixa river. He had been busy getting settled. That helped not to think about Lucia. The taste of her eyes, the look of her mouth, all reminded him of her. He missed the scent of her skin, along with the bristly hair of her sex, which had caused so many nightmares, before becoming the object of his most erotic dreams. He would have lost the reason for not having met Mireia, the best friend of his former mistress: young, hard, blonde, five foot seven, discreet chest, lively eyes, slim and slender waist. He was thinking of her, as he reviewed the reports on the table, her smile was charming. It was only two days since they last met. They walked for hours through a yew forest until they reached a gigantic birch; The fenced farm of eight thousand square meters of forest, was owned by the Sousa family. Mireia reminded Nicholas that he was invading private property when he ran the gate pin and entered the estate.
Mireia was shuffling her feet, her boots no longer holding her ankles as before, they began to grow old; The soles were too worn and, to top it all off, he wore black executive socks too thin to walk on the mountain. She would end up with the puffy feet of not realizing that she wore a pair of spare sports socks in her backpack, along with food, a bottle of water, a clean t-shirt and binoculars, plus a raincoat. Although it was a sunny day and the sky was completely clear, she knew that on the mountain you must always be prepared, you never know when a storm can be triggered. In the mountains, it was better to be cautious than to risk unpleasant surprises. Nicholás walked beside her, no doubt better equipped than her, for he wore new Gore-Tex boots, whose outline of the sole suited the irregularities of the terrain. He wore trekking pants, knee-high, sand-coloured, whose breathable DryLon fabric barely weighed more than a plume of feathers. On his back he carried a tent in his backpack in case they decided, as it happened, to spend the night in the mountains.
They were lost in the middle of the southernmost birch forest in Europe. In the woods there were not only birches, also holly, fir, oak, beech, fern and wild serbales; As they walked among the trails, they took advantage to collect berries and other fruits in a vain attempt to recover strength, among some woods managed to see the antlers of a deer. They stopped exhausted by a small fountain. The wind was blowing just before now seemed to whisper a rap, at least inside the head of Mireia, wearing the cap with the visor back style rappers. They stood there leaning against the wall of the pool, a few minutes before continuing the march, they knew that if they overcame fatigue, they would throw up night and needed to find a place to camp before that happened. They loaded up again with the weight of the backpacks on their backs, walking at a good pace for a couple of hours, could barely enjoy the beauty of the landscape due to fatigue. Nicholas despite saddled with a much higher weight on his shoulders than his partner seemed to move with amazing agility, leading the way along the entire route, but actually her twins began to fail; At the same time that he felt strong discomfort in the thighs and kneecaps. He regretted for a moment the absurd idea of carrying the tent; although later he would certainly appreciate it. Despite the pain he never made any kind of complaint and went on his way like a brave soldier on the battlefield.
The road gradually runs out of vegetation until it reaches a fenced farm. In the interior there is a stone shed and tile in the middle of an extensive meadow dense with fresh grass, which descends in a dive toward a stream. It seems to have not gained sight, that encourages them to sneak through the fence, committing a new invasion of the property of others. Decide to set up shop there, Mireia reminds Nicholas a civilian warning of the presence of wild cows and bulls in the area, Nicholas smiles at the prospect of being hit by an animal of these characteristics; But doesn’t notice the movement of cattle in the place. Once the tent is set up, both take refuge inside. It starts to get cold outside. Sitting on an inflatable mattress for two people, contemplate the drawing of the moon while eating a sandwich of sardines and drink a couple of cans of beer, 1906 brand.
—Why didn’t you go and see Lucia in jail? —Mireia asked.
—I would like nothing more in this world than to do so. But if I see her again, I couldn’t continue to do my job with dignity. My goal is to clean the streets of drugs. She’s doing business with the suffering of others.
—It is understandable, one must remain faithful to its principles, —said Mireia with a strange air of coldness.
—As for your work as a writer, what can you tell me about it? —Asked Nicholas.
—Well, it is none other than to tell stories from an objective point of view, without making any judgments. I simply try to narrate fictitious situations, as close as possible to reality, as you see all three of us have very different roles in this society.
—Could you show me how good of a narrator you are?
—I'll tell you a story, this is the story of a Galician emigrant who was in Manhattan, the day the Twin Towers flew through the air. —Mireia began to tell her story, while the wind lightly beat her hair against her forehead:
She had silk hands. It was a weaver spider, which threaded its own spider web. Spiderwoman climbing a ledge, atop the Empire State Building on the sixty-nine floor at over 200 feet high. A trapeze artist without a net, about to jump into the void. Moving her arms and legs and ascending the vertical wall of desire, her feet resting on a scaffold, flicking the flash over and over again on the dirty crystals until they were clean as a paten. Marina had also worked in the Twin Towers, without papers, when they flew through the shattered airs. Thousands of pieces of glass scattered all over Manhattan. She was on the ninety-second floor, when the first plane struck the gigantic crystallized figure: gas intoxicated, she tried to leave the scaffold and reach the window sill; But suddenly the steel spine of that gigantic monster began to melt like butter. The iron giant began to spit souls fleeing the purgatory of eternal fire, practicing bungee jumping, but without safety ropes that would stop their falls only a few inches off the ground. Then Marina tried to adjust her spider nets, but Peter Parker was not there to teach her. This was a situation she had to go out by herself. She had left Orense five years earlier. She embarked in Santiago to New York in the hope of finding more than a risky use of clean glass in the tallest skyscrapers in the world. Jogging through Central Park she met Mario, the man of her life, who was from Amoeiro but had spent half his life living in New Jersey. Then on September 11. He was the only one who knew she was working there, in Ground Zero at 8:00 p.m. He went through the endless list of victims several times, but he knew her name was not there. Surely she would have had time to jump into another building at the time of the explosion, and now she would be busy knitting a labyrinthine cloth around Doctor Octopus. With her tightly sexy top fit, imitating Angeline Jolie in "Tomb Raider". She had one of those awesome posters crawling up the wall of his room next to Spiderman.
When the first Boeing skydived against the south tower, black boys who were listening to the seventh hip-hop in their metal ride jumped off the bench where they were sitting, chasing the blast of the explosion, like a sudden change of pace In the song they were listening to.
—Damn, that's the way it is, man.
—It's not the ride, buddy, something has broken, —Turner said, the smartest of the gang staring at the rusty city sky.
Mireia's story was too surreal and confusing, for it didn’t clarify: If Marina had managed to save her life or simply disappeared by the flames in one of those gigantic moles. Anyway to Nicholas, the soft sound of her voice captivated him deeply.
—It's an incredibly good story, —said Nicholas. Then he paused before asking a new question in order to continue to listen to the pleasant tone of her voice.
—Do you have any brothers?
—I had one, but she's dead. It happened for second of the disappeared EGB. That's when I lost my sister Juliet. A truck took her to a better world, forever, leaving her body full of bruises in a walnut coffin. I remember that accident with sadness, sorrow and bitter sweetness: she never sh
ould have crossed at the back of that battered school bus, disobeying the yellow sign that warned her. But the childish illusion of embracing our uncle, who had just returned from the Canary Islands, and who was waiting for her with open arms on the other side of the road, dragged her towards fatality. Not even our parents, close friends of the family, were able to comfort the disgruntled uncle, not to mention Emilio, the truck driver, who despite dragging on the burned tire that giant Iveco loaded to the clay ceilings, got avoiding to destroy the body of that young stranger, who could have been his daughter, almost the same age as Juliet. My uncle cried disconsolately, still waiting for the embrace of his niece, who would never come, as much as he wanted. Meanwhile, I imagined myself at my side running through the wheat fields of Chandrexa, as we used to do so many times upon returning from school, regardless of the weight of the book-laden purses. We raced on and on, as if the lightning were chasing us, jumping the fence that separated the cornfield from a farm they had carved a few days back. We walked slowly, avoiding to tread in the furrows that had combed the plow with careful care, seeded the potatoes, the extensive field, until we reached a glen by which we travelled for a long time, avoiding stepping on the chocolate cakes that from time to time were left by the cattle in their wake.
We walked for a long time, until the road rushed down a descending slope, leaving us on the edge of a stream where we used to sit down to lunch and do homework: Juliet was an ace of chemistry and mathematics, while I mastered in Language and geography, but between the two we complemented each other. The crystalline water of the creek returned the image to Mireia of her sister like a mirror, in which they used to reflect both sometimes. The same face that her treacherous memory sent her now, full of the innocence that can only transmit the most tender childhood, appeared again reflected in her thoughts, like a mockery as she gazed into Nicholas’ eyes, fixed on her own that seemed Want to gobble it up.
The Queen of the Northwest Page 10
