Days of the Dead

by David Monnery

  That did seem to strike home. ‘You may go,’ Orantes said coldly, breaking eye contact. ‘Enjoy your stay in Mexico,’ he added sarcastically as the uniformed man led Docherty away.

  A minute later he was out on the dark street, and after taking a look in both directions – neither of which seemed particularly inviting – he decided that either was better than standing still. Orantes might be finished with him, or the interview might have been a prelude to something else – like one more unsolved robbery and murder on Mexico City’s mean streets. There was a hint of brighter light in one direction, so he started out that way, upping his pace from a walk to a jog, then a fast trot. It was probably unnecessary, but better to be safe than sorry.

  No threatening figures emerged from the shadows, and as he ran the bright glow came slowly into focus. It was the Avenida Mosqueta, which distant memory told him ran past the main railway station.

  Feeling relatively safe once more, he walked east, wondering why Toscono had gone to all this trouble. The Argentinian had hardly been ambivalent that morning, so why labour the point? It seemed gratuitous, even insulting, which was maybe the point. Either that or Toscono was an anal retentive who couldn’t sleep until he’d covered every conceivable angle.

  Outside the station Docherty found a cab. He gave the driver the name of his hotel, but halfway down Tacuba he changed his mind and told the man to drop him off in the Zócalo. There was a small protest demonstration going on in the middle of the square, which reminded him of the Day of the Dead in 1977, when a reproachful cross of flowers and burning candles over fifty metres long had been laid across the stones, pointing straight at the President’s door.

  In the far corner a drummer was beating out a rhythm, and he walked towards the sound. The dancers were different tonight, but every bit as good. He watched, enjoying the spectacle as his brain worked on the problem of Toscono. When the drum fell silent he realized his mind was made up.

  Sir Christopher Hanson switched on his office TV for the news, but the only thing anyone seemed able to talk about was the wretched football match. He was almost glad that Germany had beaten England – at least now the fever would begin to subside and they could get back to a normal civilized summer of tennis and cricket. But he couldn’t quite make the emotional leap – even fifty years after the war it was hard for most people of his generation to wish anything good for the Germans. Only the previous week a bout of insomnia had caused him to watch a film which followed a group of gypsies from pre-war Poland to Auschwitz. These were not crimes that could be forgotten in a hurry.

  Would Angel Bazua have enjoyed the Third Reich? Hanson wondered, as he opened the bound printout once more. The light-brown hair and blue eyes suggested possible descent from the early German immigrants to Argentina, but there was no genealogical evidence. Bazua’s father, Raul, had been a worker in the Buenos Aires cattle market, his mother, Steffia, a seamstress, but the names and occupations of their parents were unknown.

  Bazua’s track record suggested a Third Reich-friendly narrow-mindedness, not to mention an appetite for cruelty and pathological patriotism, but on balance Hanson decided the Argentinian would have found the discipline somewhat restrictive.

  He read through the file for a second time, making sure he had imbibed all the relevant facts. The fifty-two-year-old Bazua had spent all his childhood years in Buenos Aires; his family, though poor, had never gone hungry, and by some miracle his parents had managed to put enough aside to send the boy to military school. From there he had won a scholarship to a prestigious academy, where he was implicated in a scandal concerning a maimed prostitute. There was no real explanation of how he had weathered this crisis – only a suggestion that blackmail had played a part – but he had graduated with honours a year later, and began the task of working his way up the Army’s promotional ladder. He was soon active in extreme right-wing ‘clubs’ and in 1970–1 he spent a year at the US anti-insurgency school in Panama, where he made friends with like-minded officers from several other Latin American countries. As the war between Left and Right in Argentina escalated in the mid-70s the ‘clubs’ turned into semi-official death squads, bent on cleansing the nation of all opposition to the ruling coalition of big business and the military. Bazua had been in charge of operations in and around Rosario, a port city with nearly a million inhabitants two hundred and seventy kilometres north-west of the capital.

  Some seven thousand people, most of them students or trade unionists, had disappeared during Bazua’s reign of terror, but several hundred of those with the richest connections had subsequently turned up, presumably in return for substantial ransoms.

  Bazua had not fought in the Falklands War, but his only son – the product of a short-lived marriage from his military academy years – had been killed at Goose Green, further deepening what seemed to have been a life-long hatred of the English. Defeat dealt a huge blow to the prestige of the military, and at the age of thirty-eight he had resigned his commission. Not enough was known about his activities over the next few years, but by the end of the 80s he had relocated to Cartagena on the north Colombian coast and emerged as a major player on the international drug-trafficking stage. He had not challenged the local cartels in the cocaine market, but had, from the beginning, concentrated on the refining, distribution and sale of his adopted country’s burgeoning poppy crop. By the mid-90s Colombia had become second only to Burma in heroin production, and Bazua was profiting most from the growth.

  He was not untouchable, of course, and by 1993 the need for a scapegoat had caused the Colombians to make a show of imprisoning their only non-indigenous drug baron. A whole new facility had been built on the Caribbean island of Providencia, largely, it seemed, to the chief prisoner’s specifications. And the flow of heroin continued unabated. Or almost – the operation in London the previous week had doubtless caused a temporary shortfall in the British capital’s supply.

  Which would just raise the price and make the bastard a bigger profit on his next shipment, Hanson thought sourly. Some days he felt really nostalgic for the Cold War, and honest enemies.

  Why were the Americans being so obstructive? Salewicz had phoned him back the previous evening with a list of rationales and excuses a mile long, but he hadn’t even bothered to pretend that he believed any of them. Listen to the subtext, the CIA man had seemed to be saying – sometimes you just can’t get what you want, and there’s no point in wondering why.

  Well, it wasn’t good enough. He had given the Americans a chance to explain themselves, make their case, and they hadn’t even tried. They might think that would be the end of it, but if Hanson had any say in the matter it wouldn’t. Not many things made him angry these days – apart from his children, of course – but no one was going to finance a second invasion of the Falklands with profits from flooding Britain with heroin. One way or another, Bazua had to be stopped. The question was how.

  Hanson stared out of his window. Somewhere in the distance there was shouting – it was probably football supporters. For all he knew, English and German fans were replaying yesterday’s game in Trafalgar Square.

  On his desk the ancient intercom crackled, as if it was clearing its throat. ‘Mr Shepreth is here,’ his new secretary announced.

  ‘Send him in,’ Hanson replied irritably. She always sounded like a dental receptionist.

  Shepreth’s tall frame loomed in the doorway. He looked bronzed from his three months in the field, Hanson noticed. ‘David, how are you?’ he asked.

  The old man was in a bad mood, Shepreth thought, as he took the proffered seat. He hoped it had nothing to do with him. ‘Fine, thank you,’ he answered with more tact than truth. Thanks to his neighbours he had only managed about six hours’ sleep in seventy-two. Someone across the street had played loud music for most of the night, and the Americans next door had thoughtfully erected a basketball hoop between the buildings, encouraging their son to bounce his ball through the hours of daylight.

  ‘Good to hav
e you back in one piece,’ Hanson murmured, his eyes on the printout he had just rescued from a pile. ‘I read your report. Did the Yanks in Panama give you any reason for not coming up with an address for the fax number?’

  ‘I was told they didn’t have one.’

  ‘Which was nonsense, I presume?’

  ‘I can’t be sure – he might have been telling the truth.’

  ‘But you didn’t think so?’

  ‘No,’ Shepreth said, trying to recall why he hadn’t thought so. ‘I don’t know Neil Sadler that well, but he sounded embarrassed to me. I don’t think he knew why he’d been told to be unhelpful – but he had.’

  Hanson leant back in his chair, twirling his pen between his fingers. ‘I’m beginning to think this may be one of those stupid internal rivalries the Yanks seem to specialize in,’ he said.

  Like MI5 and Special Branch, Shepreth thought, but he didn’t say so. His boss seemed unusually pent-up today – he couldn’t remember him ever calling the Americans ‘Yanks’ before.

  ‘OK,’ Hanson said abruptly. ‘I’ve got a pretty good idea of our current situation. Give me an update on how the Americans are doing in their war with the drug lords.’

  ‘Not very well,’ Shepreth said. ‘As soon as they knock down one line of kingpins another one springs up. They’d hardly finished slapping themselves on the back for breaking the Medellín cartel when they realized the Cali cartel would probably have done it for them in a couple more years. And since 1992 the Cali people have been taking a beating – quite a few of them are trying to negotiate terms with the Colombian government now – but their old subsidiaries in Panama and Mexico have just struck out on their own. The Mexican traffickers are now the Americans’ number-one targets.’

  ‘We’re still talking mostly about Peruvian and Bolivian coca, refined in Colombia and then sold on, yes?’

  ‘Mostly. Though the Mexicans are now doing some refining of their own, and the Colombians have started growing poppies on a grand scale. The shipment we just intercepted was probably grown and refined in Colombia for Bazua’s organization to move and distribute. More heroin’s going north into the States as well, but at the moment the Americans are more worried by the way the trade in methamphetamines has suddenly taken off. They’re just chemicals, so there’s no need to grow anything – just get the ingredients to a small lab and cook them up. Thousands of these labs have been springing up all over Mexico.’

  Hanson shook his head at the folly of it all. ‘And what’s the favourite mode of transport these days?’ he asked drily.

  ‘It changes from year to year. In the 80s they were sending convoys of planes all the way from Colombia to northern Mexico, but the interception rate got too high for comfort so they switched to small planes hopping their way north via Panama and Guatemala and into southern Mexico – often into territory controlled by insurgents – and from there they’d go north by road. The last bright idea – which was probably Bazua’s – was to send jet liners into northern Mexico. They had fake identities painted over the old ones, radar transponders turned off, and they didn’t file flight plans. They could carry huge shipments and they were fast enough to outrun anyone that saw them. But it wasn’t something they could do too often – or at least not without giving the Americans the proof they wanted that the Colombian authorities were involved. A plane the size of a Caravelle can’t take off from a jungle strip.’

  ‘They don’t try flying the stuff into the US itself?’

  ‘Not in large quantities. Most of it goes across the border in containers and trucks, some of it inside human “mules”. Each of the main crossover points – Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, Matamoros – seems to be the personal fiefdom of one organization, and they each have their own links with the suppliers to the south and the distributors across the border. NAFTA – the trade treaty the US and Mexico signed a couple of years ago – has made things a lot easier for the traffickers. The volume of cross-border trade has shot up and there’s no way the Americans can search more than one truck in twenty without effectively closing the border down. These days it’s easier for the traffickers to get the drugs in than it is for them to get their money out.’

  ‘How are the Americans getting along with the Mexican authorities?’

  ‘Not as well as they’d like us to believe. The Mexicans have too many overlapping agencies, and none of them are completely clean. Traffickers have escaped pursuing Feds with help from an army helicopter. State police have come across Feds trying to bury a damaged jet liner in the desert.’ Shepreth smiled ruefully. ‘A couple of months ago one state’s “policeman of the year” was arrested for trafficking.’

  ‘I imagine the Americans are getting somewhat frustrated.’

  ‘Of course. But the situation’s not going to change. The Mexican police and army are paid abysmally, and their earnings on the side just about provide them with a living wage. The country as a whole is probably making about seven billion dollars a year from the drug trade, and it needs every penny of it.’

  Hanson had opened the file in front of him. ‘It was the DEA who pushed through the kingpin strategy, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Shepreth replied, although the question was rhetorical.

  ‘The National Security Council were in agreement, I think,’ his boss went on. ‘The Pentagon, the Coast Guard and the Customs Service were opposed. Where did the CIA stand?’

  This time an answer was called for. ‘With the National Security Council, I think,’ Shepreth said. ‘They usually pride themselves on being above such mundane matters as the drug trade.’

  ‘Hmm. A more centralized DEA means less autonomy for the field offices, right?’

  ‘The head of the field office in Mexico City has complained about nothing else for the last six months.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Hanson asked sharply.

  ‘He’s a friend,’ Shepreth admitted. ‘I mean I’m sure he doesn’t tell me everything – he’s a professional – but I do know he’s as frustrated as we are that Bazua’s not on the kingpin list. He may not be shifting the same volume through Mexico as some of the others, but he’s not that far behind. And as I said, he was apparently the first one to have the idea of using the old jet liners to bring in huge quantities on a single flight. His organization on the ground in Mexico is said to be first-rate, with everyone from cabinet ministers to village cops on the payroll.’

  Hanson thought for a moment. ‘I want action against Bazua,’ he said slowly. ‘But the how and the what…’ He looked up. ‘I don’t want to move against him until I know why the Americans are so reluctant to. Maybe they do have a good reason, and just can’t be bothered to tell us what it is. If so…well, a good reason for them may not be a good reason for us – but either way I want to know. So go back to Mexico and see what you can find out. Try and get your DEA friend to tell you why he thinks his bosses are frustrating him.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Shepreth said. He didn’t much like the idea of trading on his friendship with Ted Vaughan, but when all was said and done he knew that the American would love the idea of anyone taking a crack at Angel Bazua.

  Carmen looked round the familiar room, but there was no psychological comfort to be had there. She had grown up in this house, and even after moving out she had thought of it as a safe haven from the troubles of the world, but that was not the case any more. Now it was just the place where her parents lived.

  They were sitting together on the sofa, not touching or even looking at each other. Carmen had half-expected her father to rant and rage when she told him what she knew but instead of exploding he had seemed to crumple. Both of them had. In half an hour they had seemed to age about ten years.

  She had explained about Victoria, trying to cushion the blow by emphasizing how unreliable the woman’s testimony might be, but her father had not been fooled. ‘You think it’s true, don’t you?’ he had asked, begging her with his eyes to deny it. But she couldn’t. The five women had been kidnapped, taken to the isla
nd of Providencia, and forced into sexual slavery by a convicted drug baron named Angel Bazua. When two of the women had become pregnant each had been forced to swallow about seventy condom-wrapped pellets of heroin and put on a plane for the United States. The other three were presumably still servicing Bazua and his men in their island prison. And there didn’t seem to be a thing they could do about it.

  Carmen had then explained to her shell-shocked parents why they couldn’t just go to the police. Her father had tried to argue with her, but without a great deal of conviction. What was happening on Providencia might be outrageous, but it could only be happening with the tacit acceptance of law-enforcement agencies on the island. Giving the story to the press would probably get them more attention than an appeal to the police, but the closer they got to exposing Bazua and his cronies the more certain it seemed that he’d simply dispose of the evidence. The three women would just disappear into the sea.

  ‘So what can we do?’ her father asked numbly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I thought about hiring someone – a private detective – but if we can’t trust the real police why should we trust a man who works only for money?’

  ‘There must be some honourable men doing that kind of work,’ her father said hopefully.

  ‘But how do we find out who they are?’ She had been through this conversation more than once with herself, and her conclusion was always the same – the only person she could trust to ask questions on Providencia was herself. She knew it wouldn’t be simple or easy – there was no way she was going to rescue her sister from a well-guarded prison – but if she could find out for certain that Marysa was alive that would at least be a start.

  ‘I have to go myself,’ she told her parents. An hour ago she would have expected an argument, but now they both just looked at her, fear and hope crowding their faces. ‘I’ll leave tomorrow,’ she said, getting up.

  Her father murmured something about paying for everything, but she was already halfway through the door which led out into the sunlit garden. The hammock was swaying gently in the breeze, and the sudden desire to simply lie down and close her eyes was almost overwhelming.