by M C Rowley
At last, I lifted myself up. I felt weak from the drugs they’d given me and my head was heavy, but the dull thudding was bearable. Cautiously, I moved forward until my reaching hands touched a wall, and then I felt along it until I found a light switch.
The light was dazzling at first. Then I saw I was in a bedroom. A fancy bedroom, with modern and clean decor.
At the window a blackout blind was pulled down. I walked to it and pulled it up, to reveal a view to rival some of the best I had ever seen.
I must have been at least twenty stories high, and before me the city of Lujano was laid out, a picture of clarity in the mid-morning sun. Low-rise red colonial buildings nestled among telegraph poles, forming the historical center, and around it, thousands of hectares of modern city.
I knew Lujano. It was the vision for modern Mexico, a minuscule ember of hope in the midst of a failing state. The industrial-boom city had started as a small town. Back in the days of the revolution, it had been a central meeting point for the conspirators of my adopted country. Now, it had grown into one of the biggest success stories of Latin America. And that was for two reasons.
Firstly, one of the richest men in the world and Mexico’s most successful entrepreneur was a son of Lujano. Matias Esteban. He had got rich when a public gas company sold up in the ’80s and he inherited a network of gas dealerships and acres of land. He’d reinvested and become even richer by buying failing companies and pumping capital into them until they were revived.
Forbes reckoned Matias Esteban’s net worth was around forty billion US dollars. And he was the poster boy for Lujano; he still lived there, and invested heavily in its infrastructure, building hospitals and schools. Mexican people regarded him as a hero, especially as he was richer than Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.
The second reason Lujano was seen in such a positive light was the state governor, José “Pep” Augusto, another famous son of the city. Journalists in their droves had dedicated kilometers of copy to touting him as a truly non-corrupt politician, and a future presidential candidate. If Esteban was the poster boy of Lujano, Governor Pep was the star quarterback.
I stared out at the city for a little longer, wondering why I’d been brought here specifically, and then walked out of the bedroom to explore the rest of the apartment.
The living room had floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the same view. The space was sparse, like a feature in an interior design magazine: white floor tiles, two long black sofas, Miró reprints on the wall, and not much else.
There was an open-plan kitchen connected to the living room, and a letter lay on the shiny granite countertop of what the designer would invariably have called “the breakfast island.” I opened the envelope and found inside information on the company I now directed: just the name, Polysol, the address and some photos of a half-built industrial unit.
I was wearing the same clothes as the day before and I felt the urge to wash up, get changed, and get out of this place. Had the cartel leader forbidden going out? No, I was sure of that.
In the bedroom I found the wardrobe stuffed full of new garments from Zara or some other generic mall store. I showered and changed into a shirt and chinos and brogues, and felt a little better.
And at least I knew Eleanor was alive. The cartel wanted something from us. I didn’t know what that was yet, but as long it was the case, we had a tiny amount of leverage here.
I heard a knock on the front door of the apartment.
I came out of the bedroom and stared at the door.
Another knock.
I was trapped here. It could be the cartel again, but they’d only just left, and I doubted they’d knock. But who else knew my location?
I walked across the pristine floor and lowered the handle and slowly opened the door.
There, grinning, was Jason.
“Dyce,” he said. “We know what the cartel want.”
I moved to the side to let him in. He was dressed similarly to yesterday, in khaki pants and a creased blue cotton shirt. He walked to the kitchen and sat down on a stool.
I said, “So tell me.”
He got up again and went over to the large flatscreen TV mounted on the wall. He grabbed the remote from the table below it, switched the TV on, and jumped channels to CCN en Español. The scandal with the president was still the lead story. They were talking impeachment.
“This,” said Jason.
I looked at the TV.
“What do you mean?”
“Politics,” he said.
“Jason,” I said. “Spell it fucking out.”
He went back to the breakfast island and sat down, smiling patiently like a schoolteacher with a particularly difficult brat.
“The cartel want to use you for something. We don’t know why they want you specifically, but it’s connected to your son, and now your wife.”
I joined him at the island. “I’m a corporate spy. What good am I to the cartel?”
Jason kept on smiling. “Yeah, that’s your cover. Mr. Reynolds is helping you here. He sent me to see you now we’ve found out a bit more.”
“So?”
“So, they’re gonna ask you to abduct the governor of Lujano.”
I leaned back. I didn’t know what to say or think anymore.
“And Mr. Reynolds,” Jason added, “wants you to hijack their move.”
Chapter Six
Jason left me in a state. The best he could come up with, as I’d protested and ranted, was:
“Dyce, this is the only way. You don’t have anything else. Do this, and you have a chance.”
He’d given me a cell phone—a burner, he called it—and told me the one number programmed into it was his, and that I should call when the cartel made contact. He also gave me a bit of cash, then he was out the door.
My stomach churned but I had to eat something. I checked the cupboards and found a large pack of chips and a jar of gherkins. I ate them slowly, forcing each bite down.
After an hour, I decided to head out to the phony company I was fronting. I had no plan and no way forward, but I had the address so I left the apartment and found the lobby below. The reception was empty and a glass door opened up to a mini-plaza outside. I found a finger scanner on the inside and followed instructions on a screen to register my print. It took a few seconds and I left and grabbed one of Lujano’s yellow taxis.
We drove around the ring road and into the sticks on a long, desolate road lined with solar-powered street lights. Farmland all around led through huge valleys, up to hills in the distance. Lujano was high and the air was dry, but I could see green creeping up all over, so the rainy season had begun here too. As the hills grew larger, I realized the industrial park was situated at the foot of them, sheltered from the wind.
We arrived at the industrial park after forty-five minutes. Calling it utilitarian was dressing it up. Each unit was the size of about twenty football fields, and a uniform gray, its only adornment the logo of the occupying company. We rode through streets lined with cactus rock gardens and crisscrossed by overhead electricity cables, until we reached the back of the park and a sign suspended on a sturdy concrete pole: Polysol.
In front lay a plot of about two square kilometers. In the middle was a gigantic metal hangar, with mountains of raw material pallets piled up around it. To the right of the building were five mobile offices.
I paid the driver and got out and watched him drive off, leaving a trail of dust behind him. I considered the landscape. Behind the site, huge green mountains grew out of the horizon. They were close, with no buildings but many shrubs: good for hiding. I pondered whether there were any people up there.
I was so busy staring at the hills that I failed to notice the Mexican guy stomping toward me across the lot until he was five yards away.
“You must be Mr. Mark Kersteen,” he said, and held out his hand.
“Huh?” I said. “Oh. Call me Mark. Please.” I shook his hand. “And you are?”
“A
lejandro Ponce. Chief financial officer of Polysol, at your service.”
I’d never met a finance chief who actually spelled out the acronym, CFO. Ponce was tall and lanky and very neatly turned out: pressed chinos that looked brand new, manicured nails. He wasn’t a fancy guy, but clearly someone who got up early to prepare for his day. He squinted through his rimless spectacles at me as if they weren’t working very well.
I nodded to him. “Nice to meet you.”
I began to walk across the dusty lot toward the hangar and the offices at its side. Ponce fell into step beside me.
“Where are you from?”
“England, originally,” I replied.
“Oh, I like London. My wife and I visited there last year.”
Ponce’s English accent was good, though not perfect. I guessed he had studied abroad.
“Oh, yeah?” I said.
“Yes. Very beautiful. The people in London,” Ponce said, “they are very…dignified.”
An image of Colchester in the early hours of a Saturday morning flashed into my mind: short skirts wrapped around freezing, pin-like legs standing over vomiting, fighting boyfriends called Dave. Scuffles. Beatings with no robberies. England. The real England. Clockwork Orange. But I could never destroy the fantastical image Latin Americans held in their minds of the place.
Ponce and I kept walking, and talking. We went through the motions. I gave him my fake backstory, keeping locations and jobs as close to the truth as possible, so they’d be easier to recall later. Ponce told me about Polysol. It was a Mexican venture due to start production of plastic injected auto-parts in one year. Chinese investors had just promised tens of millions of dollars, and the governor was about to announce the thousands of jobs coming Lujano’s way.
I nodded all the while and pretended to be interested, but in fact I was analyzing Ponce, not the business. At first, I wondered whether he was my contact here in Lujano. But no way did he work for the cartel. He was actually proud to be part of the project, although he agreed that it seemed a bit early to have us here on site, seeing as there were no employees, let alone production yet.
Ponce showed me to my office. Inside the portable building, the floor had been laminated and faux plants positioned in each corner, still shiny from their packaging. There was a large wooden desk and filing cabinets with a small TV on top. I waved Ponce off and closed the door. I just wanted the cartel to give me their damned instructions. I felt helpless and utterly lost. Eleanor was out there somewhere while I sat here, impotent.
I hated waiting on others, so I took a walk. I headed to the building and peered inside. I was shocked to see a long queue of people. There must have been a hundred of them, all standing in silence, lined up down one side of the site and curled around the lower end. The plant was empty, but on the floor duct tape marked where machinery would soon be placed. Dates were written next to each area.
I walked past the people toward the start of the line and found another mobile office. A crudely written sign pasted to the door read, Entrevistas—Interviews.
So the setup was real. And Polysol, Lujano, was a long-term job. I peered into the office from which the line of people extended, and saw a young lady sitting behind a desk, smiling at each interviewee.
I walked around for a while longer, taking in the site, the size of it, the plans for new offices, and stealing glances at the looming hills in the backdrop. Then I headed back to my office. Nothing about it made sense. Polysol had nothing to steal, nothing to sabotage. Ponce seemed legitimate, and no one else here looked vaguely like they worked for an international drugs cartel.
I sat at the desk, on the leather reclining chair. And there, tucked under the keyboard, I spotted an envelope addressed to my pseudonym, Mark Kersteen.
I picked it up, looking around the office as if some stranger might jump out from behind a plastic plant and shout, “Surprise!” But no one did. Shaking my head, I opened it. The note was handwritten in an attractive and eloquent script. It read:
Tonight, 6 p.m. Plaza Los Angeles, Residencia de Gobierno.
And nothing else.
I fired up the laptop that had been set up on a stand with a monitor and separate keyboard and opened a browser window. I typed the address into the URL bar and hit “Search.”
The results didn’t surprise me in the slightest.
I fingered the phone in my pocket, but decided not to call Jason just yet. He had said he was against the cartel too but I didn’t trust him in the slightest yet.
The address was the residence of the acting governor of Lujano State, José “Pep” Augusto.
Chapter Seven
The Palacio de Gobierno was as grand and ornate as I had expected it to be, a Spanish colonial building from the seventeenth century, stocky and bold, with lots of balconies.
Two guys in flak jackets and Desert Storm hats appeared in the doorway as I tried to enter. Their hands met in the middle to form a barrier.
“Who are you, sir?” one of them asked in Spanish.
“Kersteen, Mark,” I said. “The governor sent me a note.”
The guard pulled his hand up to his mouth and muttered something into his two-way.
After five minutes, he got a scrambled reply and he nodded and took his arm out of my way.
I walked into a giant lobby. In complete contrast to the rough charm of the grounds, with their cantera rock paths, yellow lights and blood-red flowers, the inside of the governor’s residence was modern and marble. Two giant stairways curled away from each other to each side of the space and met at the top, like snakes posing for a kiss, before a grand door of solid oak.
On the walls hung portraits of previous governors of Lujano. The older guys were painted and wore military garb and moustaches. The modern guys were photographed and wore expensive white shirts, open at the collar, and Mexican flag sashes draped across their chests. The older guys had faces like they were attending their own funeral. The newer guys beamed down at me as if they’d won the lottery. I remembered the famous phrase spouted by the professor, businessman and corrupt Mexican politician Carlos Hank González: “Un político pobre es un pobre político—a poor politician is a poor politician.” It certainly summed up the priorities of Mexican leaders.
I walked across the lobby. The marble floor was so clean, I felt I should lighten my step so as not to sully the hard work at least five cleaners would have invested that day. I took the stairs to the left, and as I followed the curve, a tall, dark-haired man appeared above me, from nowhere it seemed, and stepped out into my path.
He held out his hand.
“Mr. Dyce,” he said in a perfect American accent. “Welcome. The governor is waiting for you.”
“I apologize,” I said. “Still finding my way around the city.” I looked at my watch: 19:02.
“My name is Salvatierra,” said the guy. He was about thirty, I thought, and dressed in a well-fitting grey suit that showed he was in good shape. He regarded me, unsmiling.
I shook his hand firmly. “Nice to meet you.”
Salvatierra turned and strode off, and I followed. At the top of the stairs he opened the right-hand oak door, and we walked through and down a long marble-floored corridor. Small, intricate lamps made of solid gold lit the way.
Salvatierra stopped and I nearly went into the back of him. He didn’t turn, but just held his right hand out toward a door with a gleaming brass handle.
“Here, Mr. Dyce.”
Then it clicked.
My real name.
I felt the blood drain from my face as I stared at him. I was off my game.
He turned to me, scowling. “Go on.” He gestured toward the door again. When I didn’t move, he stepped closer to me and said, “You know, you shouldn’t have come before getting your order.”
“I found a note,” I said. “I thought it was the order. What was I supposed to do?”
Salvatierra came closer, until his face was right in mine. “You’re supposed to do whatever it is we
tell you to do.”
He opened the door and, with a hand on my back, pushed me over the threshold.
I entered a bar with all the trimmings: the long, polished wooden counter, the beer taps, the fragile-looking display behind it of glass liquor bottles and mirrors, the beautiful wood paneling of which a country club would be proud. There were no customers in this bar, though. Just a solitary figure sitting on a stool, nursing a short drink between two hands.
When José “Pep” Augusto heard me enter, he turned without getting up. The governor was a tall fellow, and handsome, with gray hair cropped short to combat his balding. He wore a well-cut dark-brown suit, but he was relaxed in his “man cave,” his shirt unbuttoned at the top and no sign of a tie. He had a swagger, a kind of ’60s Sean Connery about him, the way he rested one elbow on the back of his stool and the other hand on his right knee, playful and friendly and self-assured.
“You must be Mr. Kersteen,” he said, then looked over my shoulder at where Salvatierra stood. I could have sworn I saw a flash of fear cross Pep’s face, just for a millisecond, and then he nodded and said, “Thank you,” and the door behind me closed.
I walked to the governor and extended a hand. Pep took it and shook it and smiled.
“You got my note.”
I nodded.
“Please, take a seat,” he said. I did. “Drink?”
I hadn’t drunk since before Eleanor had disappeared and I wondered whether it was a good idea now. But the lure of booze was powerful, after using it as a prop for so long.
“I’ll have a beer, if you have one.”
Pep got up and walked around the bar, taking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves, and started pouring from the tap. He was the perfect politician. Like he’d learned it on a master’s degree course at Harvard. Hell, he probably had learned it on a master’s degree course at Harvard.
