by M C Rowley
Contents
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Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Chapter Thirty Six
Chapter Thirty Seven
Chapter Thirty Eight
Chapter Thirty Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty One
Chapter Forty Two
Chapter Forty Three
Epilogue
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Prologue
Jairo Morales—the wanted man, the murderer, the son—had made it to the Sierra Madre, 600 miles south of Lujano, after five weeks of heavy trekking. Of all the garments he had on, his boots had held up best. Steel-capped with a centimeter of industrial rubber on top, and the thick leather had resisted what the route had thrown at it.
The boots had kept him alive.
His clothes constituted unrecognizable tatters. His beard hung to nipple level. He was starving.
Not dying-starving; Oaxaca offered a free pass to food. But fruit and the odd taco begged from a village puesto did not support his daily exertions. His muscles were tearing and splintering and yearning for protein every minute of his walking day. Nine hours and he achieved only thirty kilometers. Well-fed, his pace would easily hit fifty. The going was slow. And fixing his wound had set him back a week.
But in the Sierra he found hope. Here lived many of his kind. Many who would know of him, of his cartel, and help him. He was close.
He lay on the thick, damp ferns that grew over the solid soil walls marking the track he was following. At his feet was the jungle. Deep, dark-green. The sound of insects buzzing, scratching and scraping made for a loaded silence. A din. A bubble holding him trapped. The temperature was hitting its daily peak, and this was when Jairo stopped to rest and think.
His first option was to find a fellow soldier of the cartel.
His second option was less desirable.
Jairo didn’t want to make contact with her again. Not yet. He had promised himself he would do it in extreme circumstances only, ignoring the fact that circumstances had gone pretty far past extreme a long while back.
He closed his eyes and as his options rolled around in his mind, he fell asleep.
He awoke to the din. Suddenly loud and then fading into nothing, disregarded by the subconscious as useless noise.
Staggering up, he felt hungrier than he had been for a while. He lifted his head and looked into the trees. A soft sea of rotting vegetation and thick green canopy. He shook the last of the sleepiness out of his head and started walking.
Like every other day.
He might have missed the village if he had altered his course by no more than fifty meters. He barely believed it was a coincidence he’d found it. It was not the village that he saw first, though, it was the boy.
Through the undergrowth, Jairo caught a flash of movement. Bright red. He crouched and made his way slowly through the ferns. He controlled his breathing as his mind and muscles regressed into battle mode. He was poised to jump, if necessary, and walked like that, crouched on his heels.
He moved past a thick trunk covered in weeds and saw what he was looking for.
Twenty meters back from the track was a young boy, maybe eleven years old, in an old and worn Manchester United shirt. He was hiding something with big leaves and pieces of wood.
Jairo stayed still and watched the boy as he finished the task. The boy took care to cover two wooden poles with big flat leaves, before he took a look around and then stepped over the poles. It was then that Jairo realized there was a deep but narrow valley below. The boy had been covering the holding posts of a long bridge that crossed the canyon. The rest of the bridge was almost invisible, so moldy and green were its ropes and supporting slats. It looked like the boy was floating as he ran across it to the other side.
Jairo waited for an hour after the boy disappeared on the opposite bank. He had to be sure no one was watching. He knew the culture here in the sierra. The rule of law in mountainous Oaxaca wasn’t so much “guilty until found innocent” as “you set foot on our land, we shoot you.”
After the hour had passed, Jairo approached the posts, climbed over the dried vegetation the boy had left there and starting walking across.
At the halfway point he thought he’d made it. There was no sign of anybody, not a soul. The sierra hummed as it always does, but Jairo could make out no human sound whatsoever. There was no one.
And then, all of a sudden, there was.
From the top of the bank in front of him came ten pointed shards of metal, tilting over and down to face him, followed by ten human faces, each attached to lean bodies, with arms holding their rifle with intent to shoot. Jairo froze and raised his hands.
The ten people made no noise and held their aim with a rigidity that told Jairo they were serious.
The sun scorched his skin now he stood out from under the green canopy of the jungle, and exhaustion hit him. He didn’t look back. He knew he’d walked at least fifty meters and they would shoot him down after two steps. So he shouted at them.
“Tranquilo.”
Two or three of the rifles quivered. Inexperience holding a gun, he thought. Not so pro after all.
“Soy amigo,” he said in the same voice.
I am a friend.
One of them—a woman—turned and asked something of one of the others. Jairo stepped forward. No one shot.
“Mi nombre es Jairo Morales. Solo quiero agua. No les quiero hacer nada.”
I just want water. I don’t want any trouble.
He stepped toward them again. The guns stayed true. He stepped again. Nothing.
“¿Podemos platicar?”
Can we talk?
He stepped again, then again, and slowly his steps turned into a walk.
As he got closer he saw these people were no cartel. They were poor folk. Sierra folk. Scared folk. He smiled at them.
“¿Ya ven?”
You see now?
The guns lowered. He reached the people and stopped.
One of them stepped forward. He was a short man but thickset, with a deep-crimson skin tone and a mighty square jaw. He wore a battered white t-shirt and jean shorts.
“¿Vienes del Código X?”
You from Código X?
Jairo looked at him straight in the eye, “no.”
Of course, his appearance helped. He wasn’t dressed as Codigo X usually dressed but the tension was tangible.
The man stepped forward and looked r
ight into Jairo’s eyes, even though he stood a foot or so shorter.
“Puedes entrar. Hay comida y agua.”
You can come in. There’s food and water.
The guy spoke Spanish with a thick Oaxaca dialect. Jairo put his hand to his heart and nodded, closing his eyes.
“Gracias, paisano,” he said.
The man looked back at him. “Quédate, pero no tenemos nada que ver contigo, güero.”
Stay, but we got nothing to do with you, whitey.
It was a prejudice that Jairo had learned to deal with. His white skin. People—with good reason—often mistrusted it. It went back to colonial betrayals and manipulation. And for Jairo, it went back to his secret heritage. British and American blood cooked in Guatemala and left to age in Mexico.
It was complicated.
The main guy turned and ushered the rest to do the same, and Jairo followed the tribe through the jungle.
The village was set back about a kilometer from the canyon. The people spoke with him as they walked. They told him it was safe here, but that they had problems. He understood. The tracks between each concrete wooden abode were mud. All around were vegetable beds and large water tanks, and the odd donkey and sheep.
The main man took him to a building, and he entered. Inside it was a cement cube with a hole for a window. An old lady dressed in a purple tracksuit was stirring a large cooking pot. She glanced at Jairo and looked back down at her afternoon’s work.
The man led Jairo to a back room with a single bed. He gestured to Jairo to sit down and then left. When he came back he brought a bowl of the menudo the old lady had been preparing and a canteen of water. Jairo thanked him and drank, then ate.
After a time, the man said to Jairo, “you’re cartel, aren’t you?”
Jairo looked back at him and nodded.
“I’ve heard your name before. Through my job.”
“What’s your line of work?”
But the man didn’t answer. They sat in silence for a few minutes.
“Thank you, my friend,” said Jairo. “Without your people’s help I would have perished.”
The man nodded.
“And it pains me to ask another favor, but I must.”
“Yes?”
“I need a phone,” said Jairo. “I need to make a long-distance call.”
The man nodded again and got up and walked out of the room.
Jairo lay back and closed his eyes.
Outside the window of the back room, a young man had been listening the whole time. The name “Jairo Morales” had alerted him. He ran to his hut, found his phone, and dialed the number from memory, excited to be the bearer of good news to the one many called Mr Reynolds.
After two rings, the new boss’s distorted voice answered, “Yes.”
The young man couldn’t speak English, so he explained in Spanish what he had seen and heard. He confirmed the village’s location for the jefe.
Mr Reynolds wanted to confirm it.
“He’s there now?”
“Sí,” said the young man. “Jairo Morales está aquí.”
Jairo Morales is here.
Chapter One
Thousands of kilometers north of where that young man made the call, Mr. Reynolds put the receiver down and smiled.
Jairo Morales is here. He said it over and over in his head.
Mr. Reynolds loved it when his plans worked the way he intended. It didn’t always happen, but when it did, it was most pleasing. He had come a long way, and luck had played her part at times, but mostly he liked to think it was his planning that won through.
He walked to the one-way glass mirror and stood there.
In the beginning, Reynolds had needed riches. Money and investments. Billions of dollars, in cash and in assets, skimmed: 0.0043-inch-thick shavings piled up to form mountains.
Terrifying amounts of money.
The ability to purchase whatever, whoever, and however he pleased.
But not his own money, and he’d remained unsatisfied. Still ravenous for the real prize.
Power was what he required, and thank God Almighty, he now possessed it.
It had taken a lot of money. Even more terrifying amounts.
He found new investors. Bigger players.
He observed them now.
The Founders, as he referred to them, waited in the meeting room next door to the room he used as an office. He watched them through the one-way glass. He’d made sure the real estate people fitted the mirror. Easy enough to source, it reflected fifty percent less light than a regular one and was devoid of a thick backing, permitting visibility from both sides. The rest was a trick of the light. The meeting room had its overhead strips turned up to the max, while his office sat in gloom, the blinds drawn.
Mr. Reynolds could see the Founders. They could not see him.
The meeting room they occupied was large but cramped with the twelve men sitting around the oak table. They were shuffling and murmuring to each other. Like in the movie with the similar setup.
Five of the men were under thirty years of age. Silicon Valley startup successes. Another five were from the oil and gas industries and counted themselves as young upstarts; probably in their forties, guessed Reynolds. The other two were hedge fund managers from two banks in New York. All were here in secret.
Reynolds was enjoying making them sweat a little. He knew they wanted answers. But he’d string this out a little longer than was necessary.
He walked to the window on the other side of the office, lifted a blind slat with his finger and took in the gardens. Green in abundance, thanks to the rains this time of year, he supposed.
He turned back to face his suit. A tailor made Brioni from Milan. He remembered back when he’d borrowed his uncle’s suits, when he didn’t have a dime. Now he wore material more expensive than a regular family’s minivan. He recalled the tailors fussing around him after he’d paid upfront. In their back room, the sheets of thin crinkled paper lying everywhere on the floor, imprints of his body. Evidence of his existence.
He slipped on the jacket and adjusted his tie pin. Then, his Berluti shoes. Also handmade, from their Paris base. A single piece of leather. No stitches. Polished to an impeccable standard. He tied the laces and sat back and reflected on what to do in the meeting. Everything had come together so far. There was little reason to worry, and yet that loose end remained. Jairo Morales.
He’d tie it up.
He always did.
There was a knock on the door behind him but it didn’t open. A bolt locked it from the inside. To the left of the door, another one-way mirror revealed a tall, slender lady in her thirties. She was Iranian, with long, dead-straight black hair, sharp features, and a somber grey trouser suit. She looked like a cop, thought Reynolds.
He clicked the solitary silver button at the bottom of the black intercom box by the mirror and spoke.
“Yes.”
“Sir,” said Luciana in her educated British tones, “the gentlemen are assembled. They asked if you were ready yet.”
“Tell them five minutes more and I’ll be there.”
“Very well,” said Luciana.
He breathed deeply. First, he would deal with the Founders. Give them the news. Then, he would dedicate himself to tying up the loose end. As long as they didn’t catch wind of it, he would be safe.
He sat at his desk and waited five minutes more before walking over to the first mirror and clicking the intercom there to announce his presence.
The Founders, twelve men, all white. They never greeted Reynolds, just sat there impatiently. Reynolds resented the need for them, but that was his business.
He had prepared the house for their arrival, ensuring they had no idea he was only meters away.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Reynolds.
One of the Valley geeks sat up.
“Mr. Reynolds,” he said, hands flying all over the place. “What is it with you?”
It looked funny from Reynold
s’ point of view, the guy shouting at the star-shaped intercom speaker at the center of the table, the others nodding and grumbling in agreement.
“You said it would happen by now.”
Reynolds had been on the receiving end of their fury enough times. Who did they think they were? They were the capital. Nothing more.
“Yes, I did,” said Reynolds.
The men bristled, turning to each other.
“And?”
Now one of the hedge fund guys raised his hand. “This isn’t just about us, Mr. Reynolds. You know that. People are invested. If we don’t provide returns too, they start asking questions. And we cannot have that. Not at all.”
The room grumbled in agreement.
“I agree,” said Reynolds. He disdained hedge fund managers the most. They came, often, from blue-collar families. Dirty people dressed up as rich folk. He detested their “hard-working ethic,” or “hustling” as they called it. They were new money. Pathetic.
“So what news?”
Reynolds cleared his throat.
“This afternoon, about an hour ago, I received news that Matias Esteban has been eliminated. Which is to say, the rest will follow soon enough.”
This seemed to buoy the group. They bristled again, but this time with relief.
“He was killed, along with most of the team we sent to Mexico.”
The hedge fund manager who had asked the question interrupted Reynolds’ flow. “And when will the coup start?”
Reynolds ran over the plan he had outlined with Luciana in his mind. It took seconds, but the silence felt like ten minutes.
Reynolds finished with a withering line: “Within a week, Mexico will be at civil war.”
The group of men grumbled their approval.
The meeting ended and the men began calling their drivers. Their most trusted drivers awaited them in the main lobby.
Reynolds crossed the room back to Luciana’s window.
“Put the plan into action, Luciana,” he said as he walked back around to his desk, took off his jacket, and carefully placed it back on the valet stand.
“Yes, sir. May I ask something, sir?”
