The sticky hair was distinctly gray at its roots, below the dye. Her other arm showed clear marks of another kind of needle in its fold, further up there was an irregular pattern of scars from thin razors—she had once cut herself, again and again. The top of her hands looked the same as the bottom of her feet, hole after hole, hundreds of needle pricks that had become bluish pus-filled sores. A note on a string around her ankle and she could just as well have been in a morgue.
El Mestizo moved to her bed, searched for her hand, grabbed it. And she woke up. Or, maybe she had already been awake, and just opened her eyes. “Hi, Mom.”
She blinked her eyes against the bright glare of the fluorescent ceiling lights. “Johnny.”
A creaky voice, faint, as if it wouldn’t hold up much longer. And then it did, held up, became clear as she raised it. “Where is my money?”
El Mestizo held her hand, now with both his hands, and nodded toward the open window, toward the sky. “Only God knows where your money is, Mom. But I assume you mean my money?”
The fragile patient had been still, like a newborn bird with no stability. Then she changed, sat up with a jerk, the tender arm became powerful as it pointed, as she screamed. “You dirty fucking pathetic half-breed—I want my money! Now!”
At the same time the door opened behind Hoffmann and a middle-aged man in a white coat came in. The plastic tag on his chest meant he was a doctor.
“Good morning.” He greeted El Mestizo. They had obviously met before. He took the cooler. “We’ve stopped the acute infection I informed you of last night. It gave in a few hours ago.”
The doctor spoke to El Mestizo, looked only at him—no eye contact at all with the woman sitting in the bed, red in her face, breathing rapidly. The white coat obviously didn’t like his loud patient, he preferred communicating with the patient’s son, the man who paid, and no one else.
“Given her general condition, it remains crucial that you continue to deliver the medicine promptly.” The doctor nodded to El Mestizo and Hoffmann and disappeared out into the corridor with the cooler.
“Now you’ve got what you need—paid for with my money.” El Mestizo looked at his mother, who was about to start yelling again, but forestalled her. “But you didn’t get what you want.”
He kissed her cheek and left. Hoffmann followed, one last look at the woman, who was definitely no longer reminiscent of a fragile newborn bird anymore. A white woman. So it must be El Mestizo’s father who was indigenous.
Her sharp voice chased them through the closed door, curse words in Spanish, the same South American varieties Hoffmann had heard in the market without knowing what they meant, only the last one, which was his mother’s version of go to hell.
They waited for the elevator that would take them eighteen floors down. And everything was so clear now. The anxiety. The heavy sleep. It hadn’t been about a man who started to feel something when he injured another man, who couldn’t stand the terrible screams of a tortured body in a dark jungle. It was this scream, his mother’s contempt. This was it. They rode down. In silence. Until Hoffmann couldn’t keep quiet anymore.
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“She poured gas over you? And lit you? She threw you out when you were eleven and didn’t want to have any contact with you?”
“Yes.”
“And yet you give her . . . this?”
“It’s my mother. She’s my blood. Don’t you understand things like that where you’re from, Peter?”
The echoing entrance hall—wheelchairs along the walls and patients in white hospital gowns on their way for some fresh air or a visit to the café tables. They had started walking toward the exit when El Mestizo suddenly stopped.
“She lives in a little house that I bought for her. I come over regularly with the cooler, antiretroviral drugs for HIV that you can’t get here. And I give her food. Not money to buy food—but food.”
Hoffmann looked down, away, to indicate that he didn’t need to know. But El Mestizo continued, he wanted to tell.
“I could give her a lot more—and she demands more, as you could see and hear—but I’m not going to help her do drugs or drink herself to death.”
They continued through the entrance hall, and glass doors opened as they approached. Down here there was almost no wind. They had just reached the illegally parked car when an ambulance with flashing blue lights passed them on its way to the emergency room. El Mestizo kept the car keys in his pocket and hurried after. As the first of the two paramedics opened the back door to pull out a stretcher, he caught up and stood in their way, grabbed the paramedic’s arm.
“What happened?”
“I can’t tell you.”
Before the paramedic had finished talking, El Mestizo had pulled out his wad of money, removed the rubber band, and released a hundred dollars.
“Again. What happened?”
The paramedic shrugged, leaned close. “Okay. I guess the guy can’t hear you anyway.” He nodded toward the stretcher and someone lying under a blanket, completely still. “A shooting.”
“Is it serious?”
“Death’s pretty serious.”
“How was he shot?”
“Twice. Once in the chest, once in the forehead.”
El Mestizo glanced at the stretcher, then at Hoffmann. Both of his errands were done.
HOFFMANN PARKED IN one of El Mestizo’s parking spots in front of La Casa Heaven, dropped off his employer, and headed for his own car, which was waiting in the rear parking lot. He’d just started his car when El Mestizo popped up by the passenger-side door and leaned in. “Come with me.”
“I really want to go see Maria. And the boys.”
“A quick one. Coffee? A beer? A woman—completely free?”
El Mestizo was always demanding—his voice, eyes, their intensity—but this was different from his usual demands, where power was used to threaten, and if that threat was challenged, to kill. Now he was . . . happy, almost exhilarated, seeking out contact like he did when a job went well, and he wanted to relive it. It was as if he had no one to share that kind of joy with—that he was alone despite the eighty women waiting inside, treated like products, investments that generate returns.
“I’m sorry, Johnny. I promised Maria, and I need to go home.” He started the car again, and only now, after driving away from El Mestizo’s appeal and the row of brothels, did the stories really start to reach him. As long as he’d had El Mestizo next to him in the car or helicopter or guerrilla camp, he’d refused to listen, but now, completely alone, on his way home, he couldn’t ignore them anymore. Not the story of the electricity and the barbed wire through a man in a cage—that kind of story was a part of his daily reality here, and the reason that Zofia had finally insisted they go home. The other ones. That very recent description of a pitch-black, gaping, relentless threat. The story of drones and a kill list, which despite Wilson and El Mestizo’s assurances of a slow war, had taken just one day to eliminate its first name. The story of an exploding family. Of rubble, fire, smoke. The remains of a man and a wife and two children identified by dental records and DNA.
“Hey, it’s me.”
He shouldn’t call from the car. But her voice. He needed it, needed the calm it gave him.
“You’re alive.”
Now it sounded brittle, about to break, no matter how hard she tried to hide it.
“I’m alive.”
“Piet? We have to talk.”
The whole day. He knew that, of course. She too had had to bear the death sentence that had been passed on him. On them. Without ever getting the chance to talk to each other privately, to bear this together. He wondered where she’d been when she saw the news, realized it was her husband who was doomed to die. He should have been with her, held her hand, because when they held each other, nothing else existed.
“Rasmus and Hugo, Zo. I’m picking them up.”
He wondered how he sounded. He was aware that he shou
ld be more affected, it wasn’t normal to react like this. His life was threatened, and he should feel fear or anger or be on the run. Probably all three. But this had been his life for so long. Children killed on assignment, shooting someone in the forehead, torture, people who buried other people for a few thousand dollars. He was just so jaded, or “damaged” as Zofia would say.
“You’re the one person who shouldn’t pick them up.”
“Zo, I’m the only one who can make sure they stay safe between Señora Vega’s and our home.”
For the first year Zofia spent her days with the boys hidden in the house, teaching them herself. They’d learned Spanish together using an educational CD-ROM and some lesson plans, and pretty soon the boys were better than their mom and dad. They’d been forced to seek out a new solution. Zofia longed to live a fuller life, and Rasmus and Hugo needed someone who could provide knowledge beyond where hers ended. She got a job as an English teacher, and they hired a private teacher who passed the background check his handler Lucia Mendez ran. Señora Vega taught the brothers at her home, which Hoffmann kept secure using the same risk analysis—motive, intention, ability, time—that he would for any other protected property. Academically, his six-year-old and eight-year-old were advanced for their ages, thanks to the benefit of constant contact with a teacher, but socially the lack of proximity to other children was starting to be a problem. They were paying a high price for the life Piet forced them all to live.
“Okay. You pick them up. And then, Piet, we have to talk.”
About what they couldn’t talk about on the phone. About if they were going to die. If two little boys were also at risk because of their father’s actions.
“Yes. Later. But first, Zofia—an ordinary evening. Just us four together. Dinner and TV and bedtime and . . .” He hung up. He hadn’t been prepared. He never cried.
The entrance to the three-story building on Valle del Cauca. A well-kept building in the same comuna in which they lived, the white-and-yellow facade was newly cleaned.
He parked and got out, headed over to the beat-up Volkswagen Golf on the opposite side of the narrow street, and knocked on the dark tinted window of the driver’s side. It took a few seconds before it was rolled down. He greeted the armed guard from the private security company Lucia had recommended, noted that the strap on top of the gun holster had been unsnapped, a reflex when someone approached the car. And Hoffmann immediately handed a small bag of dog treats to the Rottweiler with the expectant eyes in the backseat.
“Everything okay today, Zacarias?”
“Everything’s okay, sir.”
“Good. You can head home for the day. Send my regards to Palmira.”
Hoffmann crossed the street again, taking in his surroundings, everything seemed normal. He pushed in the access code and checked, without being completely aware of it, that the surveillance cameras were in place and searching like they should. Three staircases, the apartment at the very top and farthest from the landing.
Rasmus opened the door, he usually did. “Daddy!”
He still gave his dad a hug, he didn’t feel ashamed of him yet.
“What’s that?”
Rasmus, in his arms now, pushed his soft childish fingers into a hole on the left side of his jacket, at approximately chest height. Hoffmann hadn’t noticed the sooty tear until now—from one of the small flashes of electricity that danced around El Mestizo during the most intense part of the torture session.
“A hole. Because I . . . got stuck. On a big shrub with nasty thorns, you know, like you do sometimes.”
The curious finger slid further into the hole, and soon more—three small fingers could fit inside, and Hoffmann gently removed the unwilling arm. He had to remember to throw out this jacket, replace it with a new one.
“Dad?” Now Hugo was here, a pair of headphones still above his ears. No hug. But his head held a bit to the side. “Can I drive home? Like last time, when Rasmus was sick and you picked up just me?”
On a closed-off and empty street. Hugo had seemed worried when his father suddenly swung off and maneuvered the car past a fence with warning signs on it. And he let out a loud belly laugh when he realized why.
“We’re in a hurry today, Hugo. And in that case, I would also have to let Rasmus drive. Right?”
“He’s too little.”
“Hugo, sweetie? So are you.”
Fourteen minutes, and they stopped at another house. This time, it was their own. He could see her through the window already, despite the distance, easy to read her face, trying to radiate calm, but fighting off panic. She hadn’t slept, not since the last time they saw each other; it was that kind of face. She’d probably been waiting there for a while, and now she hurried out.
“My darlings.”
Rasmus, a bear hug. Hugo, a reserved hug, he was a little ashamed of his mother too. So they held each other, husband and wife, and for a moment there was only this—an embrace, peace, security. And she thought of the day she’d decided to go with him, flee side by side, how she’d done so on one condition: from that moment on he had to tell her everything. No more endless lies. Which through the years changed in form and content, adapting to each new reality.
A whole evening. And they acted just as he’d wished. They didn’t speak of the one thing they should be talking about—what was pushing against both their chests. An ordinary evening. Eat, play, nagging about homework, sitting in the living room together. And reading a story, Rasmus and Hugo on either side of the bed, eyes closed, and light snoring. There was only one moment when reality intruded on the ordinary. A loud, unexpected bang from upstairs, and he reacted instinctively and from intense anxiety, three quick strides up the stairs with gun in hand. And there stood Rasmus with a broken flowerpot. And a Daddy, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. Like a gunshot, that’s what a smashed pot sounds like, he knew that now.
She was sitting at the kitchen table when he crept downstairs from their two sleeping sons. An unsolved crossword in front of her, pen in hand, held in a lazy grip. A ballpoint pen—she usually preferred a pencil so she could erase and try again. And with the pen still capped.
This evening’s crossword would remain unfinished. He kissed her cheek and took her hand. Waited.
She put down the pen and looked at him. “It’s begun.”
They both knew what this was about.
“And not just him. His whole family. Do you know that, Piet?”
“Yes. I know that.”
She grabbed the remote control hidden in a fruit platter on the kitchen table and turned on the local news. Explicit images from a drone strike, generic pictures of the White House, and a slow-motion listing of names next to the symbols of playing cards. She changed the channel, to the national news on Señal Colombia. The same images. CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera—the same. And the confusion on her face when he got home disappeared. Her eyes were clear and bright.
“You see? This is for real. It’s going on right now, Piet.” She didn’t scream. A voice that was neither panicked nor angry, more calm, slow, almost over-enunciated. Objective. That was how it sounded. “They’re searching for you. Us. They know you’re called El Sueco, that your appearance is Northern European, someone on the news was even talking about your Scandinavian traits. That you could be Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic. How long do you think it will take them to start being curious about a Peter Haraldsson who lives in Comuna 5 in Cali?”
She grabbed his hand and held it tightly. His three remaining fingers.
The hotel room in Frankfurt—the first stop on their flight from Sweden, the high-security prison, and the Polish mafia Piet had infiltrated. She’d held his hand then too, but felt only inflamed fingers. When he’d climbed out of the ventilation shaft after four days of hiding there, without even noticing it—so full of adrenaline—he’d cut his fingertips to the bone while loosening the metal frame. Zofia had realized that two of them were so mangled they’d never heal and would have to be amputated. She’d
carefully stripped away all the dead tissue and washed and wrapped the rest in sterilized bandages, which she changed several times a day, while she forced him to take hefty doses of antibiotics. After eight days, when she was sure there was no infection, she gave him five morphine pills, cut off the extra bone—tried first with a boiled kitchen knife, but had to switch to a pair of pruning shears when she hit bone—then cleaned the surfaces and glued the extra skin together with Super Glue.
“I’m not staying here. Not in Colombia or South America. The boys aren’t staying here either. No matter how friendly and kind the people are. Not when the people you meet threaten you with death.”
“I can’t go home. I’ve got a life sentence waiting for me there, Zo. I can’t take it. We can’t. It would mean abandoning you—my family.”
“It’s not negotiable.” She emphasized every word, articulating them with painful slowness, as if their meaning should be weighed—like what she said was going to change the course of their lives. “At least life in prison means you’d be alive. Dying here, Piet, is just another way of abandoning your family.”
“Zo, I—”
“When are they coming for us? If you won’t leave, then we’ll leave without you. Head home. For good.”
“This is not that kind of war. It will take time for them to round us up one by one. And I’m the only one who they haven’t identified.”
He stroked her cheek. And she pulled away, a little.
“Zo? We have to take it one step at a time—and the first step is to increase our security. From now on, the boys can’t go to Señora Vega. And you can’t work at your school. And we can’t live here. We’ve been visited here before and if the guerrillas can find us, others can too. Tomorrow, before dawn, we’re leaving Los Guayacanes. We have to stay away until I can solve this.”
Three Minutes Page 22
