by Rowley, M C
They say you need six minutes to see if you´re being followed. I don´t know why the number six, but it was a good gauge. I´d used it before. I first heard of the measurement in a paperback thriller, the name of which I could not recall. But it worked. Six minutes, and you were safe.
I pictured the group who had made me, shocked, and discussing me. I saw them arguing about what to do. I guess they would bring someone, a guard, the police. Someone. And I would be caught. The Governor´s kidnapper. I was made, well and truly. But it didn´t bother me now. I was close to the real Governor´s kidnapper. And he would protect me to protect himself.
I waited, and counted to six minutes. Nothing. My fourth gamble approached me. Was it to be running on stage and doing this in front of thousands of people? Or waiting and trying to grab Esteban on the way out?
I walked to the other end of the space, and found what I was looking for.
There, the black walls created an illusion of solid structure. But it wasn´t solid. It was a giant crack that peered out to the back part of the main stage. There was a crowd of about 15 security guys peering through it. They were private security. All sturdy guys dressed in beige chinos, blue shirts and waistcoats, with two or three cell phones clipped into the belt. They were staring away from me, at the stage. And past them, at its center were two bright red couches, on one sat a handsome man dressed in a fine suit holding a big microphone, the glamorous interviewer flown in from Mexico City no doubt, and on the other sofa, a portly older man, in a gray suit. Balding on top, huge moustache above his lip. Thin, drooping intelligent eyes, brown skin. Matias Esteban sat with a microphone in his hands talking.
I stepped to the side of the vantage point I had found, so that I could peer at the stage, but so that Esteban´s band of protectors could not see me. I listened to the voices a little.
Esteban was speaking about the weak peso, and how that can be a good thing for Mexico. His voice was slow and thoughtful. What he was saying was eloquently put. It was thought through. He spoke in a controlled and restrained way, making every word count. It was a skill not many can profess to possess, but he did it with panache as the entire auditorium uttered nothing more than a hint of a sound and he held them captivated.
I decided running on stage was foolish. I couldn´t risk getting taken down and leaving Eleanor´s fate to the unknown. I was sure he would speak with me, if I just got the chance. So I listened.
It wasn´t my first conference experience. I had sat through endless presentations, speeches, and workshops, seminars and business themed getaways. It was part of my facade. I had to go to them. If I was the Director of a company at that given job, then I would often have to set the budget and even organize them. They were hell. But this? This was different. I had to admit it. Esteban spoke of the need for a new evolution of capitalism, where profits are married to social investment. It was compelling stuff, I supposed. His voice was that of the empathetic and experienced university professor, a wise old man who had done the suffering for us. And I battled to even comprehend him scheming the fake kidnap of a governor, or the spying on a competitor for that matter. There were things I didn´t know. But there were things I knew for sure. And Esteban just didn´t fit into any of my thinking. It didn´t work.
I realized that he was beginning to wrap things up on stage. He concluded his thoughts, and began extolling Mexico´s virtues and future promise as a superpower. And then, the handsome presenter stood up and thanked Mr Esteban and didn´t need to ask for applause before the entire space was flooded with the noise of ferocious clapping.
It was time.
I walked backward and eased up to the group of minders, who waited patiently for their boss.
One of them turned and looked in my vague direction, but quickly swung his neck back to the stage, where Mr Esteban was walking around the front of the sofa, still looking at the crowd, still waving and smiling. Then he turned to us, and I caught his eye.
It was a millisecond. Not even that, but I could have sworn on my life that he recognized my face. The way his pupils swooped downward to his left straight after meeting mine. A self awareness in him, like he was seeing some uncanny childhood phantom. I stood and stared at him. But he, willingly or not, avoided my gaze and walked toward us and I realized how tall he actually was, at least 6 foot, maybe more. His gray suit was expensive and tailored to wrap around his gut perfectly. His shirt was salmon pink, and he wore no tie. His shoes were polished and buffed to a military shine and he walked like he talked. Elegant, and full to the brim with conviction.
He was 10 meters away, then 5, then his men made their move. Like a horseshoe they surrounded him. In the middle, a young man in a slick, tight fitting suit placed his hand on Esteban´s shoulder and began talking to him rapidly. The bodyguards now formed a U around him and the gap was closing tight. I ran and ducked. I felt one of the guards swoop his arms around my head but miss. I pushed up as the guards pressed in, shocked by what was happening. I saw guns draw, and radios come out of holsters. In a some farcical synchronization, we squeezed into each other, a tight ball of bodies, and my face came right up against the old man.
His bird-like eyes lost their droop, his eyebrows stretched two inches above his eyelids.
I said, “recognize me?”
But he was speechless. And then I felt a stone-like smash on the back of my head and everything went black.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The carpeted floor underneath me vibrated and hummed. It was dark and there was almost no air to breath. I sucked it in, but the gag filtered it and made it taste like oil.
There was a knot at the back of my head from my blindfold, and I lay in a fetal position, hog-tied.
The car was driving fast. I lay still, and listened.
It was an SUV. Not a truck. Not a cop car. A Suburban, or a TAHOE, or an Escalade. So they hadn´t killed me, yet. And they hadn´t turned me in, yet.
But that wasn´t to say I was guest of honor either, with being hog-tied, gagged and in the back of a truck, and all.
Someone coughed. It was loud, it made me jump and shudder in my ties. The SUV was a big hatchback, and the trunk was open to the back seats. That´s why there weren´t voices. They didn't want me knowing anything more than I had to. But the cough was loud; an unstoppable itch from the throat, probably resisted for as long as he could take. It sounded rasping, like his throat cut up when it came out. It also bounced off the interior walls quickly, but not as quickly as a small car. So this was definitely an SUV.
The humming told me we were on good tarmac, which was good news, because a bumpy country track would end in shovels and holes and burying. So I was OK for now. Esteban needed me.
I lay still, listening. But these guys were pros. I doubted I was in the same car as the big man, but I could have been. I couldn´t talk or see so it didn´t make a difference. The floor hummed away.
After a half hour or so, the truck slowed and made a series of turns. My body shifted and banged into the trunk´s walls. Then I felt us elevate slightly, and then more aggressive circular turns. The noise of rubber on cement and a heavy engine bounced back from the walls. An underground car park.
After eight turns, the truck came to a halt, and I shifted forward toward the driver end, and then back until we were parked.
Four doors opened, and then steps sounded from outside. And at last, the trunk door screeched open in my ear and warm stale air hit me. I sucked it in like a water fountain.
Big hands grabbed me at my shoulders and then at my legs. I felt myself lifted and placed on a hard shoulder.
We walked for at least two minutes before I felt the air vacuum and then heard the sound of the elevator start. It travelled a short way and the door pinged, and the air got fresh.
A larger space. It smelled of cut flowers, and the hint of expensive and perfumed furniture polish. My weight shifted as my carrier span me around and sat me down on a chair, and cut the hog-tie between my arms and legs. I let my body and aching limb
s settle into my new position and waited. I heard steps walk away from me. The guys were silent. Deadly silent. They could have been robots. Then a whisper, and then the tie at the back of my head undid. The gag fell away and I stretched my mouth as open as possible.
Then, a voice whispered in my ear,
“Volteas y te mato, ¿entiendes?”
Turn around and you´re dead.
I nodded.
My blindfold fell away and light flooded my eyes. I didn´t turn back, but I heard two sets of footsteps retreat from where we had come and the door shut.
It was a luxurious hotel suite, some sort of penthouse. The furniture was French, polished oak with curved table legs, spindly and delicate. The carpet under my dirty shoes was thick and a coffee cream color. The room was large, about 100 square meters, and sofas lined the edge, while huge windows lit the room, although the drapes and curtains blocked the view.
There were coffee tables placed at intervals in front of the sofas, and oversized lamps stood proudly on each of them.
The silence hummed and I waited for the man who owed me an answer.
The entrance of the penthouse was as luxurious as the window side. There was a corridor which ran off out of sight, and the main door.
I turned back and started to count. I measured each second with a Mississippi. I focused on the questions I would ask Esteban when he came.
The sun was high, above the tip of the window now. Midday, or thereabouts. But the heat didn´t enter this space. The air con was a subtle, expensive system. I could not even see the vents.
Silence.
I got to half an hour in my head and nothing.
The ties on my wrists and my ankles started to burn. My tendons and muscles ached. And my heart began to beat wildly.
40 minutes passed.
My breathing was labored. It hurt. My heart moved out of sync with it. Beating, beating.
Had I lost the gamble? Maybe I had. Maybe this was my execution.
50 minutes. I counted. An hour.
Nothing.
I began to focus on what I could hear. After five minutes I picked up the hum of the air conditioning, and the tiny, subtle shifts in its rotors, and that was it. I let my hearing sink deep into the atmosphere and all the floors of this building, and only the humming stayed constant. I imagined the sound waves emanating from below me, all the way up until they met my frontal ear lobe, and then inside, registering in my brain. I felt dizzy from it, from worrying about Eleanor, about Jason too. And I realized I could also hear my heart beat.
And out of the silence, a distant thud.
And then more thuds.
Esteban was here.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The door shattered the silence like thunder when it opened from behind me. I distinguished only one set of footsteps entering the room. And the door shut. I stared forward at the windows.
And then, from my 6 o´clock, in perfect English with a thick Mexican accent. “Have you heard of the Sons of No One?”
The steps came up to my back and then around into my view. Esteban was still dressed in the gray suit, and his 70 years betrayed him up close. His face was rotund, and a large double chin framed his jaw. His moustache was bulbous and walrus like. His eyes were tiny, black and devoid of shine. Devoid of empathy.
He stepped in front of me, placed his hands in his pockets and stood still.
“Of course the name is just a gang thing. They are sons of someone,” he said.
I stayed staring at him. Inside, I was trying to consolidate my questions. He was putting me off though with his presence. He walked around in a circle and came to a stop in the same pose. A strange quirk. Restless, full of energy.
His face was unequivocal, unmoving, unemotional. Like a stern mentor turned tyrant. Out of touch with his early teachings and impatient.
“You left a seed in Guatemala,” said Esteban. “Not a baby, but a seed of hate. And Guatemala is fertile ground for hateful lost souls.”
“We didn´t leave him,” I said. “We didn´t bloody LEAVE him.”
“However you look at it is irrelevant, Mr Dyce,” said Esteban.
And he walked back away from me and took a seat on one of the sofas.
“The Cartel del Sur take them when they are barely breathing the air of this world. The parents have no idea that someone is watching, waiting for the chance. Then, a cheap bribe to the maternity ward and pow! A son of no one is born.”
I stayed still.
“The cartel have madres - decent women who dedicate their lives to bringing up these infants, with one sole purpose.”
He paused, waiting for my question. I denied it to him.
“The babies grow up to serve the cartel. With all their heart and all their loyalty,” said Esteban. “They grow up to be vicious and dedicated and totally unquestioning servants. Gone are the days of recruiting teenagers by giving them trucks and drugs to sell. Now, the cartel have a constant flow of soldiers.”
I kept it inside. But the rage boiled in my chest. The years of pain we had suffered, the wondering what had happened to him after that dreadful day. And to hear this, it was a violation all over again. The pain returned, the panic in my chest returned. But I remained quiet and just looked at Esteban on the sofa.
“They become attached to their guardians, the madres. They are very much their madres in a very real sense, bathing them, keeping them warm, fed. The cartel hides them in villages where no-one would question the origin of the newborn. They integrate into that society, until the day comes.”
“What day?”
“Their pledge,” he said. “To kill their biological parents. Your boy was different. They couldn´t find you or your wife because you´d left Guatemala, and so the cartel forced him to kill his madre.”
My back ached from the ties, but the pain was nothing to me. “Jesus,” I said.
Esteban nodded. “Yes. It left him just a little angry. Angry at you. And at his real mother. For abandoning him, for making him kill his madre.”
“Tell me his name,” I said.
“Don´t get ahead of yourself,” said Esteban. “I haven´t finished. I was alerted to his existence a few months after he murdered the Doña Morales, his madre. One of the cartel who knew about my connection with them called my people and told us he had foreign parents, and that you still lived and worked here in Mexico. It was quite the serendipity.”
He smiled and his face stretched with genuine feeling of happiness, of contentment at his own cleverness. “And it turned out rather useful.”
“Except you don´t have the Governor anymore. And I know where he is,” I said.
Esteban held his gaze and the smile evaporated. “Tell me where Governor Augusta is.”
I nodded in the most measured way I could muster, ignoring the electricity crackling under my skin. “I´ll take you to him. He is with a group that work for a Mr Reynolds. I suppose you´ve heard of him.”
Esteban puckered his lips and kind of hissed. “He got to you first, that´s all. They have no business here.” And he stood and began walking in circles once more.
“I love my country, Mr Dyce,” said Esteban. “We have had enough reliance on foreign overlords. We are ready and fit enough to look after ourselves. With the right leader, we can do amazing things.”
“A leader like Pep?” I asked.
Esteban stopped walking. “He would make an excellent president, yes. Tell me where he is.”
“I need things.”
“Mr Dyce, you are not in the position to make requests. I push you out of this building and you´ll be arrested before you can utter a peep. No-one will believe you. No-one will buy your story. It´s over.”
“Where is my wife?”
“Your wife?” Esteban frowned, and then a smile crept across his face.
“I´m afraid you´ve made a large mistake.”
There are four or something stages of shock. I couldn´t remember them all but I was pretty sure it included denial, a
cceptance, and grief. I didn´t bother feigning any of them though, there wasn´t any point. It was the answer I had expected, actually hoped for in a sense, not that it made Eleanor any safer but it confirmed my hunch. Jason had Eleanor. And both Esteban and Jason and Mr Reynolds needed me.
Pep, Esteban, Reynolds, Jason and me. Somehow, some way, I had to choose between them. I had to choose the greater good. Whatever it took to save Eleanor, and warn her of the danger of our son.
“I´ll take you to Pep,” I said.
“There´s one more thing,” said Esteban, who took his cell phone from his pocket and swiped and typed a message and then looked back at me.
“I think it´s time you met.”
It happened too quickly to allow my body to react. The door to Esteban´s left, a different one to the main door, opened and through came one of Esteban´s men from the conference in his chinos and flak jacket. He came into the room first, slowly. He was pulling something.
On a chain.
The thick links slumped down to the floor and dragged into the room. They rose up to something, whatever it was pulling. Then a booted foot followed. I struggled in my ties but it was no use. Esteban´s man pulled one last time, and into the room stepped a young man, tied at the wrists, gagged and looped around his neck a large metal, medieval looking necklace which attached to the chain. He looked like a fighting dog. He was tall, his caucasian skin burned from years of sun to a dark clay color. His face was dirty and his beard and cropped hair matted with grime. He wore a filthy white t-shirt and jeans. His blue eyes locked onto mine.
My son.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Your son´s name is Jairo Morales, Deputy Chief of the Southern Border Plaza for the Cartel del Sur.”
Esteban stood aside from my son who didn´t move a budge.
I went to stand, forgetting the ties, and as I did so my shoulders ripped backwards against the strain.
