Thousands of people in the same traffic jam. Not one knowing why. A single person had made a bad decision, and it changed everyone else’s night, maybe even their tomorrows, missed meetings were missed chances, expectations for change turned into the carbon dioxide emissions of idling cars.
He straightened up, stared out the window at nothing. A few drops of tea left, some throat lozenges, which lay in a rolled-up bag in the door compartment. Then the phone rang. The on-duty officer calling back with traffic information. That was fast.
“Yes?” Atmospheric disturbances. Electronic crackling. But no one spoke. “Yes, hello? Wilson here.” Disturbances, crackling, still there. But there was something more. Breathing.
“Are you alone?”
A crack to the head. That’s what it felt like. Something burst and out came a sea of relief. He’d never felt anything quite like it.
“Yes. I’m alone.”
Not one phone call over all these years. They’d agreed on that. The risk was too high for something to be traced. But now, after a kill list, the road to life.
“I need your help, Erik, because the situation has changed.”
They had a single point of contact. The place he’d urge Hoffmann to go to.
“I’ve been trying to get ahold of Sue Masterson and Lucia Mendez for four hours. Both of the numbers I have for them have been disconnected. I got my latest phone only thirty-six hours ago. I can’t reach them.”
Piet. Paula. El Sueco. Anyone listening to you now, intercepting our conversation, would think you sounded calm, matter-of-fact, almost bored. But I hear something else. Fear. A kind of fear I’ve never heard in your voice before.
A sharp, persistent scratching noise. And then, silence. The connection had been cut off.
Wilson had had no clue if Piet was aware of what was going on. If this afternoon’s message had reached him—that he was officially marked for death. Now he knew Piet knew. The best informant he’d ever seen could prepare now, plan for his survival. And the sea of relief continued to overflow and fill the car.
His right hand vibrated. Wilson responded after a single ring. “It got disconnected. I—”
“They’ve already started, Erik. Just now, the first one. Commander Bloque Amazonas. His whole family.”
“The King of Hearts.”
“What?”
“That’s what he’s called. On the kill list.”
“Was called.”
Fear. Which only he could hear. It was clearer now. His whole family. A fear that had never been there before.
“You’re in danger, Piet. But not immediate danger. That’s not how this works. This isn’t a regular war—it’s a war against a terrorist organization and that kind of war is implemented slowly, systematically. One target at a time. The invasion of Iraq, fifty-two playing cards—it’s been over ten years now. And they took them out one at a time, methodically. They’re still doing it.”
“Drones, Erik. That’s what they used. What about next time? Missiles? Car bombs? Snipers? I can protect myself, you know that. But I can’t protect Zofia, Rasmus, Hugo, while continuing to work with the PRC, Sánchez, this pretend life.”
“You have to.”
“This isn’t just about my own safety!”
“If you suddenly disappear from the PRC, they’d know. If not immediately, very soon. Then they’d kill you. You. Zofia. Your kids.”
A breath. Wilson listened, waiting, trying to guess where Hoffmann was, what he looked like, what kind of mission he was on.
“Erik, what the hell should I do? A kill list? What a fucking joke! You know, and Sue Masterson knows, and her superiors know, and they sure as hell—”
“In two days. Go to number one. The same time as always.”
“Number one? You mean you’re coming here?”
“The usual time, Piet.”
In the distance, something was finally moving. A tow truck had reached the crash site on the shoulder of the highway, had taken hold of the truck and was pulling it away now, bit by bit. A predator tearing at its wounded prey. Soon, uniformed colleagues were waving through traffic, redirecting it to the left lane.
Then he felt nothing, in his chest. Nothing in his whole body. Whatever had broken, opened, gushed out—he’d run out of it. A fucking traffic jam—and a strange, insistent calm. He knew Piet was alive. Grens was on his way. He trusted them both, trusted their expertise. He’d done what he could, for now.
PART THREE
THE USUAL BOOTH, usual table—the owner’s table. Ten o’clock in the morning and La Casa Heaven had just opened. There were fewer people than Johnny expected during the night, ninety-seven hostesses—that’s what he called them on their employment papers—who sold 1,364 drinks, two compulsory drinks to everyone who visited the double beds with red velvet bedspreads on one of the hotel’s other three floors. Now there were ten or so women ready to take on the day’s first round of customers, already dressed according to their job description—black high heels and bright lacy underwear, nothing else. One of them served coffee to the owner’s table with a smile, and Piet Hoffmann smiled back, because he too was an actor in this play, playing his part, speaking his lines to avoid any questions from his boss, both of them forced to endure this because neither had a choice. He met her gaze, those eyes tried to look happy but they weren’t. She was probably no more than twenty years old, maybe younger, in the evening when she washed off all that makeup and took off that professional smile, all that was left was a little girl.
And that’s just the sound they’d heard since they sat down. A little girl. From the still empty stage with its abandoned stripper pole, from the space behind the bar—the laughter rippled, as intensely as stubborn hiccups. Light, clattering footsteps. She came running now, winding her way through one of her father’s offices. Alejandrina. Johnny’s daughter. All the way up to the table and into Johnny’s outstretched arms. He looked so happy, only she could reach him.
“Daddy? Daddy? You know what I want more than anything in the world?”
“No, sweetie, how should I know what you want more than anything in the world?”
He lifted her in his arms, caressed her cheeks with the back of his hand like always—then higher, Johnny held her straight up toward the ceiling, glanced at Hoffmann as if to show him how beautiful she was and Hoffmann nodded, she was indeed lovely.
“Daddy, I want to go swimming. In your pool.”
Johnny smiled, caressed her cheeks again. “You’re Daddy’s little girl—but I have to work. With Uncle Peter.”
“But I really, really, really wanna swim now!” She balanced one foot on each of his broad thighs, kissed his forehead, his hairline. She knew exactly what to do. “Please, please, Daddy?”
The first customers sat down by one of the tables in the otherwise desolate great hall and ordered their drinks. One of them downed both drinks, the other put them aside, never planning to touch them, instead signaling immediately by taking the young woman’s hand—the one who’d served their table—and she smiled as professionally as before as she and her customer walked up the stairs with their arms around each other.
“Please? Come on? Favorite daddy?”
Johnny laughed and stretched his arms up in the air, as if giving up. “Alejandrina, you know what?”
“Noo . . . what, favorite daddy?”
“We’re gonna go up to the roof. And go swimming.” He walked toward the stairs with the girl in his arms. Hoffmann followed and ended up behind a new couple hand in hand, another hostess, also in her twenties, and her early-morning customer.
“Johnny?”
On their way up the stairs, they met a woman going down. Zaneta. Her smile was identical to Alejandrina’s—mouth, eyes. So beautiful, so nice, after just a few times of meeting her, Hoffmann had the impression of a very easy person to like. Her husband embraced her, kissed her, then pointed to their daughter. “Somebody’s decided we have to go swimming.”
“But you were supposed
to . . . Johnny, you wanted me to pick up . . .”
“Mommy—Daddy promised!” Her five-year-old eyes were indignant, looking at a father she could always control and a mother who occasionally she couldn’t.
“There’s always time for the pool. Right, my princesses?” Johnny placed their daughter on his shoulders and they continued up four more floors, used a key card to unlock the door that led to the roof. The little girl in charge jumped out of her clothes, and her mother didn’t even have time to pick them up before the first splash.
“Daddy! Hurry!” The girl jumped up and down, up and down in water that smelled strongly of chlorine.
Johnny was wearing a black pinstriped suit, black shirt, black boots. He stripped off everything but his black socks—as if he were in such a hurry to please his daughter that he forgot them—and he rushed to the edge of the pool and stopped there with his arms pointing at the bouncing, excited five-year-old.
“What do you think . . . should I do the cannonball?”
“Cannonball, Daddy! Cannonball! A huge cannonball!”
And then he jumped. He jumped out and up, pulling his knees to his chest, locking his arms around his shins, clasping them tight with his hands. But he didn’t exactly land, it was more like he plowed along the surface while a tsunami rained down on everyone in his vicinity, Hoffmann’s pants ended up soaking wet, Zaneta’s perfectly styled hair was plastered.
Piet Hoffmann sat down on a lounge chair that was as wet as his pants, but at least protected from the morning sun by an umbrella. Watched as a little girl happily splashed water onto her father, as her father splashed water back, as her mother lay down in another chair and watched as well.
Johnny. El Mestizo. A guerrilla since the day he turned twelve. And five years later sent abroad for further training. In order to become a perfect soldier. And once home, he worked his way up in the organization. To the top. To Julio Vargas and to a position as one of his two assistants, one of his two right hands. One hand, El Loco, took care of the business, and the other, El Mestizo, murdered people. When Vargas had been taken into custody and deported to the United States, he’d left behind a power vacuum and war broke out between the two. A violent and bloody war that took six hundred lives in a matter of a few months. El Mestizo’s employees took just over two-thirds of them, four hundred, and lost two hundred of their own. In the final months, the police arrested the other right hand and locked him up, while El Mestizo was left free—the advantage of owning a few treasury friends on the presidential level.
Johnny swam to the edge of the pool and pulled himself up smoothly, water dripping off his big body, his wet socks making a squish every time they encountered the flagstones.
“Daddy, come back!”
Johnny sat down on the sun bed between Hoffmann and Zaneta, waved to his daughter. “Daddy has to go out now.”
“Cannonball! Cannonball!”
“But Mommy is going to stay here—so you can swim some more.”
He leaned back and worked on pulling off his wet socks, which at first refused to budge, then squeezed out the water.
“My darling . . . are you up here?”
A new voice, coming from the door. Yolanda—El Mestizo’s other life partner, who spent her days in his other hacienda, which lay on the west side of Cali. Piet Hoffmann had never seen the two women in the same place at the same time before. Yolanda was young, not yet thirty, and she walked with a youthful, springy step that knew where it was headed. To Johnny. And she embraced him, sank down onto his wet lap, and got just as soaked as him, her dress, skin. They both laughed. Then she continued to the next chair, to Zaneta, and kissed her cheek.
“Zaneta, you get more beautiful every day. Johnny is lucky to have you.”
And the slightly older woman did the same, kissed the younger.
“Yolanda, darling, Johnny is lucky to have you.”
And then it was over. Hoffmann smiled. Nowhere else, only here. A hit man, brothel owner who swam in his socks with his child. His wife and mistress side by side on the pool deck. Johnny kissed Yolanda, kissed Zaneta, went to the edge of the pool and waved to Alejandrina, who swam toward him with the strokes of a beginner. He bent down and grabbed hold of her, fished her up, and kissed her on both cheeks, then on the tip of the nose.
“Daddy is coming home again tomorrow night.”
“Cannonball, Daddy? One more time? Please!”
“Tomorrow. But here comes another cannonball!”
He held her tight, tossing her little body back and forth while she screamed, howled, but not out of fear, out of anticipation, until he released her, threw her a good way out and her plop became a small, short-lived fountain. He waited until she came to the surface, then waved to her, and threw her a kiss. She waved back, threw him a kiss.
The car was parked in front of the brothel by the post El Mestizo had put up to mark his private parking space. He drove, as usual, always in control. They’d passed the city limits by the time he began his short briefing on today’s job.
“Or, rather, two jobs. First Libardo Toyas needs a little reminder. Then we’re headed to a cage. Gonna try to help the man in that cage talk.” El Mestizo looked pleased. Almost as pleased as at the pool. And he waited for follow-up questions. Even though he never shared any more information than was necessary.
“A cage? And you’re gonna make the person inside it talk?”
“Yep. And this time I can go as far as I want. As long as I don’t kill him.”
Piet Hoffmann had trouble sitting still. He felt that worry that sometimes hunted him, wouldn’t give until he knew what was awaiting him, what his next step should be.
A cage. A hostage. They’d done this several times before. But El Mestizo looked so happy, so proud, this wasn’t your run-of-the mill torture session.
“Is it . . . him?”
Normally El Mestizo, with half a day to go, would have told him to shut up and wait. But he wanted to tell him. And after a few kilometers of silence he nodded slightly. “It’s him.”
Sometimes an already strange life got even stranger. Hoffmann was breathing in small, short bursts. The man who was the reason he’d been placed on a kill list. The man the whole world was talking about. That was where they were headed, they were going to visit him, speak to him later this afternoon.
And now he couldn’t hold back anymore. What had throbbed and burned in his chest since he read his name on that kill list, since Sue Masterson and Lucia had cut him loose, since a drone had destroyed an entire family. He’d decided to wait until they were alone. Until swimming pools, daughters, wives, and mistresses were behind them. Until he realized the absurdity in the fact that every step he’d taken so far, every single action he’d carried out here, he’d done for the US government, which was now hunting him down.
El Mestizo hit the brakes. But he didn’t curse, didn’t even roll down the window and shout at an old man with a dog trying to herd his sheep across the road. Satisfied. That’s what he was. Sure, he’d played with and held Alejandrina recently. He’d kissed both his wife and his mistress. But it was as if he refused to admit that their neighbor had bought an even bigger house in the neighborhood. The one they called La Muerte. Death.
“The drone attack.”
“Peter, let’s talk about something else. I’m not planning on playing the Americans’ game.”
“But you already are. I am too, and my family and your family as well. We have no choice. Just like the King of Hearts didn’t have a choice. They turned him into a fucking playing card and killed him and his family! Joaquín, wasn’t that his son’s name?”
Piet Hoffmann glanced at El Mestizo, who’d given up on the shepherd and took his hands off the wheel while they stood still. He pulled off the thin leather gloves he kept in the car, ran his bare hands through his hair and beard stubble.
“Joaquín. You liked the boy, right Johnny?”
Hoffmann followed those irritated hands as they made their way through long tresses,
readjusting his beautiful purple hair tie with its elaborate silver threads. He had reacted. With anger, anxiety. That was good. El Mestizo had to feel the danger they were in, feel rather than intellectualize—that was how he handled all his emotions in order to avoid them. If he could feel the danger he and his family were in, he would act more quickly when attacked than if he continued to reason, to think this away.
The old man with the crooked back and shuffling feet had shooed his last sheep across the road, and El Mestizo grabbed the wheel again, put it in gear, and hit the gas.
“Yep. We need to be cautious. But, Peter, this changes nothing. We’re always cautious. We’re always in danger, somebody always wants a piece of us. But they made a mistake. They came here—to my jungle! My friends died because they weren’t ready, but I’m ready! Nobody’s sneaking up on me here! They can’t affect our daily work, Peter. We have to be careful—but that damn well doesn’t mean we have to hide.”
Cartago. A city Hoffmann liked, lying on the road between Cali and Medellín. He sometimes came here on his days off with Zofia and the boys, shopping among the throng in the square, eating at a simple restaurant, stopping by the whitewashed cathedral with Hugo in one hand and Rasmus in the other, climbing the stairs that never seemed to end, standing in the tower together pretending to see across the Atlantic Ocean all the way to Sweden, all the way home.
Libardo Toyas lived in a hacienda east of the city. One of the very wealthy drug barons who sent large shipments to the United States. El Diablo, that’s what he was called. But this visit to his estate was not about sales, or smuggling routes, or who needed to be bribed or why. This time the rich man had refused to pay, a one-ton shipment of cocaine and a debt that was growing with interest, and El Mestizo stressed as they slowed down and rolled up to the hacienda’s wall that guerrilla leadership had been very clear about this mission—Toyas was only going to get one more warning, and it was their job to impress that upon him.
The iron gate had tightly placed bars with arrow-shaped tips stretching toward the sky, and the guard who stuck his head out of the guard station was wearing a cap and uniform in red. A single glance at El Mestizo, and he nodded in recognition, the gates unfolded backward, and they continued their journey into a courtyard that seemed to swallow the whole world. A work of art, that’s what it was, this hacienda. White columns interspersed with shooting fountains, golden swimming pools sparkling next to snorting horses, neat rows of palm trees and fiery red flowers everywhere, on the marble floors, in clay pots, framing each new section. A fan-shaped stone staircase led to the main building, and more columns painted in a shiny black stood together with the railing and its round ivory knobs.
Three Minutes Page 17
