by Jeff Buick
“Yeah, but double-check their C-cards before you gear up,” the owner of the dive company said. “I had a quick look this morning, but it was dark.”
“Okay.” Eugene smiled at the two men and one woman as they passed him, headed for the boat.
The sun was well above the horizon when Larry, the overweight boat pilot, started the engines and signaled to Eugene to pull up the anchor. They weaved through the fishing boats, now bobbing on their anchors in the harbor, and headed for open water. The ocean was relatively calm, and the sky was still clear. It promised to be a good day. Eugene waited until they were clear of the harbor, then introduced himself to the Germans.
“I’m Eugenio, but everybody calls me Eugene,” he said in English. “Welcome to Venezuela and Isla de Margarita. Your first time to our island?”
He got to know the group a bit as the converted fishing boat rolled up one side of the waves, then slid down into the troughs. Even four-foot seas could be unsettling in a small wooden boat, but the Germans seemed okay with the motion. The trip to Los Frailles, a group of seven uninhabited islands off Margarita’s east coast, was about forty-five minutes. Eugene took the time to explain the different sites they would be diving.
“We’ll dive Penâ first. It’s a deep dive, about a hundred and ten feet. Visibility today should be forty to fifty feet. There’s a bit of a drift, so keep with me. Remember, when I knock my index fingers together like this,” he said, holding out his hands with his two index fingers extended and touching them together a few times, “I want you to stay close to your buddy. Visibility and currents can change quite quickly down there. This is a good dive to see big stuff, like groupers, and maybe even barracuda. But keep in mind that barracuda are dangerous. They won’t think twice about attacking you if they feel threatened. Don’t approach them, let them come to you. If they open their mouths as they swim past, think of that as the same as a rattlesnake shaking its tail. They’re warning you. Barracuda are far more dangerous than sharks.”
They neared the dive site and Eugene watched the divers ready themselves and their gear. Two of the three were proficient with their regulators and slid their buoyancy control devices over the air tanks and easily attached their first stages to the tanks. The third diver, a tall blond man named Hans, was all thumbs. He set his tank in the BCD backwards and fit his second stage so it was coming over his left shoulder. Eugene moved up in the swaying boat and stopped the man.
“Scuba is a right-hand sport,” he said, removing the straps on the tank and spinning it around so the mouthpiece was accessible over the right side of the BCD. He checked the pressure on the first stage and opened the valve. The pressure was dead on at 3000 psi. “Okay, guys, I have to check your certification cards before we dive. Standard procedure.”
All three dug out their cards. Eugene glanced at the two belonging to the competent divers, but looked closely at Hans’s. The picture matched. He handed it back. “I’ll buddy up with you, Hans,” he said, still wary of the man’s abilities. Larry had the boat in position, and they finished suiting up. They rolled gently in the protected waters just off Los Frailles, perhaps two hundred yards from shore. One by one they dropped backwards off the edge of the boat into the water, Eugene going in last. Hans was already descending when Eugene entered the water. The German seemed more under control now, equalizing the pressure in his ears every few feet as he floated down through the light green water. Maybe I was wrong, Eugene thought.
They reached the bottom and checked their depth gauges. One hundred and twelve feet. Eugene gave the okay sign. All three returned it. He pointed to the north, and they started kicking their fins and moving slowly in that direction. The sea life was abundant even beneath a hundred feet of water. A few grunts swam past, then a couple of creole and some yellowhead snappers. An occasional sea snake slithered across the ocean floor and Eugene caught one, holding it for the other divers to feel. He released it and moved on toward a sheer wall to their left. It rose at least seventy feet from the seabed, the entire wall a living reef of urchins and coral. The colors were slightly muted at this depth; the sunlight had trouble penetrating through a hundred feet of water. Eugene found an eel and all four divers hovered near the tiny hole in the wall staring at the eel’s open mouth as it protected its home. When they turned back to the open ocean, they saw the barracuda.
An entire school of the deadly fish was only feet from them, trapping them against the wall. Eugene motioned to the Germans to stay calm, that the fish would swim past and leave them alone if they didn’t panic. Too late. Hans was sucking air too fast and that gave him positive buoyancy. He started to rise, then made a crucial mistake. He pumped air into his buoyancy control device. The air entering the bladder made him even more buoyant, and he began to rise quickly. Eugene had a split second to react. He motioned to the other two divers to stay together and to surface. Then he pumped air into his own BCD, and shot up at an alarming pace, passing eighty feet, then seventy, then sixty. Hans was just ahead of him, but Eugene could see no bubbles. The man was holding his breath. Eugene had only a couple more seconds before Hans would be critically injured. Or dead.
Eugene knew that air at one hundred feet is compressed to one quarter its volume at the surface, and that when a diver rises, the air expands. The shallower the diver gets, the faster it expands. The air in Hans’s BCD was expanding, and the German was going to the surface fast. Too fast. Without a slow ascent and a safety stop at fifteen feet to release the nitrogen in his body, he would get the bends. And the nearest decompression chamber was in Guatemala. Total disaster. But worse, if the German was holding his breath, the air in his lungs would expand until his lungs burst. Worse than disaster. Death.
Eugene had one shot at the German. If he missed, he’d have to break off and stop his ascent, or pay the price of decompression sickness himself. He grabbed Hans’s ankle, his grip a vise on the man’s leg. Then he released the air from his own BCD and grabbed a handhold in the wall. It stopped their ascent. But the air in the German’s BCD was pulling toward the surface and Eugene was losing his grip on the coral. Hans was no help. He was panicking, thrashing about like a trapped fish. Eugene kicked off his left flipper and rammed his foot in another break in the reef. Then he released his handhold, pulled his knife from its sheath and rammed the blade into the German’s BCD. The air poured out and Eugene felt the upward tug subside as their buoyancy returned to neutral. He tried to pull the man down to his level, but a sudden surge of pain shot through his body. He’d felt it before and he knew the cause. Grabbing the diver’s leg and stopping their ascent had dislocated his shoulder.
Without releasing the panicked diver, he made a controlled ascent, stopped for the safety break at fifteen feet, then broke the surface. Larry leaned over the gunwale the second they appeared and helped pull them out of the water. They flopped into the boat and Eugene sat gingerly against the gunwale. He spoke to Larry in Spanish, and then the pilot took Eugene’s arm and lifted it over top of the motor. Eugene steadied his ribcage against the side of the motor and nodded. Larry gave his arm a sharp tug and the bone popped back into its socket.
“Mother of God,” Eugene screamed as it popped. He slowly rotated his arm, then let it drop to his side. “What the hell were you doing down there?” he said to Hans. The German didn’t answer him and Eugene leaned forward. “I’ve never met a certified diver who would do something that stupid. No one fills their BCD, then holds his breath on the way up. Where did you get that C-card?”
Hans took a couple of deep breaths, then said, “It’s not mine. It’s my twin brother’s.”
“And you’ve never dived before?” Eugene asked.
“No.”
“Christ Almighty,” Eugene said. He ran his hand across his forehead and pushed his hair back out of his eyes. “Larry, get us back to Margarita. We’re finished for today.”
Julie Escobar heard the Vespa and glanced out the window of her modest bungalow. Her husband was home. She leaned on the kitche
n sink and watched him hoist his scuba gear from the box over the rear tire, the muscles in his arms and chest rippling from the exertion. His shoulders were broad and well defined, his hands calloused and rough. He was brown, but from the sun, not his heritage. She knew his parents well. His father had enjoyed a long and auspicious career as a plastic surgeon in Caracas, and his mother dedicated her life to the children. They were of European descent and tended to fair skin and light-colored hair. Eugene had inherited their genes and was often mistaken for a gringo rather than a native Colombian. He had also inherited his father’s handsome facial features and curly hair. He finished unloading the gear and entered the house.
“You’re home early,” she said, wrapping her slender arms about his waist. Julie Escobar was an attractive woman, with fair skin and brown hair that fell past her slight shoulders. Her nose and cheeks were dotted with a few freckles, and her eyes sparkled with mischief. She was tall for a woman and he only of average height, so they looked eye to eye. He smiled and she saw his even white teeth appear from behind lips dried from salt water.
“Slight problem with one of the divers; he wasn’t certified. We headed back for Margarita after the first dive.” He kissed her on the lips, then broke away and pulled open the fridge, removing a bottle of water and spinning off the cap. “Idiot almost got himself killed.” He tipped his head back and drank from the bottle.
“What happened?” she asked. He steered her to the couch and told her the story. She gingerly rubbed his shoulder when he came to the part where Larry had pulled his bone back into the socket. “That must have hurt,” she said.
“Oh, yeah. It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. But Larry did a good job yanking on it.”
They both glanced up as the door opened and a teenage girl entered. She was dressed in tight jeans and a short top. Her skin was light, like her parents’, and her hair between blond and light brunette. She had inherited her dad’s blue eyes and warm smile. Her straight, white teeth had never needed braces. She grinned when she saw her parents sitting close to each other on the couch.
“You guys look like a couple of teenagers getting ready to kiss.”
“And how would you know about that?” her mother asked.
“Get a grip, Mother,” the daughter said, one hand on her hip. “I’m almost sixteen.”
“How was school, Shiara?” Eugene asked, changing the subject before mother and daughter got going on what was acceptable for a mature fifteen-year-old.
“Good, Dad,” she said, leaning over and giving both her parents a kiss on the cheek. “We’re studying American history in social studies class. It’s interesting.” She opened the fridge and pulled out a mango. “A lot of people died in their civil war.”
Eugene’s smile faded. “People die in wars, honey. All wars, not just the American ones.”
“I know, Dad,” she said lightly, then scampered back out the front door. Eugene caught a glimpse of a teenage boy on a bicycle near the fence, and then the door slammed behind his daughter.
He relaxed back into the couch. “How was your day? Kids behave themselves?” It was Friday just before Carnival was to start and classes were over at noon. An early day for the kids and the teachers.
Julie laughed. “They’re young, Eugene. They’re too full of energy to behave themselves. Remember back to when you were ten years old. Were you good all day long in school?”
“No. But I never had such a beautiful teacher as you,” he said.
“They’re too young to think of me as beautiful or ugly. They just see me as nice or mean.”
“And today you were…?”
“Nice.”
Eugene grinned. “Are you still nice?”
It was Julie’s turn to grin. “I think so. Want to find out?”
“Oh, yeah.” He followed her from the living room, a smile on his parched lips.
Chapter Two
A bank of clouds skirted the cordillera and slid down the Cauca valley, bringing cooler temperatures and the threat of rain to Medellín. Pedestrians walked a little quicker, wanting to be indoors before the weather turned brisk. Palms swayed as the breeze ruffled their fronds, and the air was charged with static electricity. A storm was brewing.
A black 740i BMW pulled up to the curb on Calle 52 and a well-dressed man in his mid-twenties jumped from the passenger seat and strode quickly through the gates of the Joaquín Antonio Uribe gardens. He branched off the main path and headed for the far side of the lake, where water lilies punctuated the crystal waters and rare orchids lined the pathway. He approached a man sitting on a bench beside the lake. Few people were in the park, and the setting was tranquil.
“Javier?” the young man said quietly, as if simply speaking could incur the man’s wrath.
The seated man turned and glanced at the newcomer. Javier Rastano was casually dressed in designer jeans and a Polo golf shirt. He wore sandals with no socks and no jewelry save a thin gold chain with a tiny pendant around his neck. He was thirty-six, but looked closer to thirty. He kept himself in excellent physical condition and his tanned skin still stretched tight over his facial bones. His eyes were deep brown, his hair jet-black and swept back from his face, falling halfway down his neck. When he spoke, his voice was deep, but soft.
“Yes? What is it?”
“Your father has requested a visit,” the young man said.
“Now?”
“Yes, sir. Now. I have a car waiting.”
“Very well,” Javier said, reluctantly lifting himself off the park bench. “Bad timing, Julian. It’s always the most beautiful here just before it rains.”
Javier followed the messenger to the exit and slid in the back seat of the car. Julian got in the front passenger seat, and the driver pulled away from the curb. Javier knew where they were going—his father’s house in the upscale subdivision of El Poblado along the southern edge of the city. Morro El Salvador, the southernmost of the three hills inside the Aburrá valley, rose above the congestion of small houses and busy streets, its crest obscured by the increasingly thick clouds. The first few drops of rain splattered on the windshield. Javier turned his gaze from the window and let his mind drift to what his father might want.
Mario Rastano was a successful businessman in Medellín, one of the new breed of entrepreneurs who had invested heavily in the city after the downfall of the notorious narcos of the eighties and early nineties. Javier managed three of his father’s nightclubs and oversaw day-to-day operations of the six fitness centers in and about Medellín. He liked horses, and spent considerable time at the equestrian facility his father had built some five kilometers south of El Poblado. Javier’s handsome face was well known in the city’s best restaurants and clubs, and he was often touted as the most eligible bachelor in Medellín. Being his father’s son was not a great burden.
But shadows obscured the origins of the money that had built the nightclubs, the fitness centers and the other thriving business ventures that were part of the Rastano business empire. Prior to establishing themselves as one of Medellín’s premier families, Mario Rastano had often been linked to the drug cartel and, most notably, to Pablo Escobar and Carlos Lehder. Mario Rastano’s association with the kingpins of the Medellín drug cartel was common knowledge, but time had eroded the ties, and with his new image as a major benefactor to the prosperous city, the government turned a blind eye to his past. As did his neighbors, many of whom were judges and politicians. Mario Rastano and his son were legitimate business leaders who paid taxes and donated their money and time to charity. And that was the way things were.
Javier returned his gaze to the passing scenery as they entered El Poblado. Shiny glass and steel buildings towered over parking lots filled with Mercedes and Jaguar convertibles. Rows of royal palms lined the access roads to the buildings that housed the South American headquarters of many global companies, and shaded the pedestrians that sported Armani and Gucci outfits and accessories. The BMW passed an embossed sign that read Century Capitol, the fl
agship of the Rastano financial empire. The four-story building was surrounded by palms and water and tucked back from the main road. The parking lot out front was filled with employees’ cars. People hired to administer the Rastano fortune. Javier couldn’t resist a slight smile as the building disappeared behind a bend in the road. He liked being his father’s son.
The building complexes dwindled, and residential apartments and condos took over. Main Street brimmed with restaurants, trendy shops and pretty Latina women, their arms full of shopping bags. The driver veered right at a fork in the road and the scenery changed again. Gone now were the shops and condos, and in their place were walled estates with expansive, manicured grounds and monolithic houses set back from the winding road. Towering palms lined the cobblestone road; the grass and shrubs were impeccably cut and trimmed. The road gently rose as they neared the east side of the cordillera, and when the mountainside seemed almost upon them, the driver steered into the final driveway. He entered a code in the keypad and the iron gates slowly swung open. They cruised up the meandering driveway, past a duck pond and acres of lush lawns. A few gardeners were busy working, but none of them glanced up as the car drove past. They rounded a final curve, and the main house came into view. It was a two-story white colonial home, with sixteen evenly spaced pillars and a second-floor balcony that ran the entire length of the house. A tennis court and swimming pool were set off to the right of the main house, and three small cabanas were tucked in the trees on the left. Guest houses for Mario Rastano’s overnight visitors. The BMW pulled up in front of the main doors. The driver jumped out and opened Javier’s door.
The young millionaire eased himself off the leather seat and let himself in the house. He angled through the massive foyer, his sandals clacking on the Italian tile, past the main hall and into his father’s study. The room was a man’s room, with dark paneling and heavy draperies over thick, beveled glass. Bookshelves covered three of the four walls, with texts in Spanish, English and French. Thick carpets covered the floor and the chandeliers provided precious little light. Mario Rastano sat at his desk, a lamp casting light on the letter he read. He glanced up as Javier entered and motioned for his son to take a seat.
