Poso Wells

by GABRIELA ALEMÁN

  And even if Carnegie was right, so what? She had to stay alive.

  PART THREE

  THE CLOUD FOREST

  XII

  Checkmate

  “We’ve got the first concession. It’s for 20,000 acres, Eagle I and Eagle II.”

  “And the price?”

  “$110,000, no expiration date. We were the only bidders in the auction.”

  “Congratulations, Vinueza.”

  “The only problem is that too many people had gotten wind of it, so I was almost lynched when I showed up. There’s a public letter opposing the concession, signed by the local authorities, the mayor, the Cotacachi County council, and every grassroots organization in the county.”

  “Which will no longer be a problem once you’re elected at the polls on Sunday,” Holmes replied.

  Vinueza was not as convinced, but he wasn’t going to talk the gringo out of that belief. He’d reported what happened, which was as far as his responsibility went. What the letter said to him, on quick reading, was that open pit mining would turn the forest into a desert. Removing all the soil to unearth the copper would mean shoveling out sixty tons a day. Goodbye trees, orchids, birds. Goodbye cloud forest, in short. Well, bon voyage, because looking at the bright side, he would make millions and so would the Canadians. The next few days would tell the tale. Something was going to happen before the week was out, he was sure of that. The atmosphere was too heated, the residents of the Intag region had been given the run-around for too long. The area granted to Eagle Copper Corporation lay within the Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve, which the notary who drew up the documents had overlooked but the local people and officials did not. The outcome remained to be seen. Well, there was a time and place for everything.

  Varas had a decision to make about what to do. Once Valentina had calmed down and he’d turned off the TV, she started to talk and didn’t stop till nearly dawn. Varas was dumbfounded. He had trouble accepting all of it, yet he had no doubt it was true. It was unheard-of, monstrous, and staggering—but believable, absurdly so. Though Valentina couldn’t make even a rough estimate of how many women were down in the tunnels, she knew there were a lot, of all ages, the majority of them driven to madness to one degree or another. She didn’t know how long they’d been prisoners, how long they’d gone without seeing the light of day. During her time down there she’d spoken with very few of them. They avoided each other because in the darkness you couldn’t tell who was who until someone was practically on top of you. The blind men didn’t always wear their rattles, and their assaults in those dark passageways were frequent and common. As soon as she’d been kidnapped and dragged underground, her captors had taken off her clothes. The whole time she was there she’d had no way to cover herself. The encounters with the men were grotesque: while they assaulted her, they recited their convoluted speeches about the perpetuation of their civilization and its customs. They repeated the history of trading their cool, fresh Andean valley for the suffocating heat and damp chill of the tunnels—knowing that their mission was to prevent their people’s disappearance on the day soon to come when the flames of Cotopaxi would flow like rivers of fire down the volcano’s flanks as the elders had foreseen. They had moved to the estuary to survive, and this they had done, though without success in their desperate race against extinction. This they repeated, endlessly, as if trying to keep their story alive. Just as in the past they had been overcome by the sudden onset of blindness, now for more than half a century their seed had failed to produce life. Valentina had never heard any babies crying in the tunnels where she was imprisoned, and she, in spite of the many assaults, had never become pregnant.

  Those five wretched men were the perpetrators of the crime of holding hundreds of women captive. Now they were advising the future president, in what manner nobody knew, but it clearly offered them the possibility of escape.

  Holmes had never doubted that Vinueza would manage to get the concession granted, but he did have his doubts that this was the man to control the population opposed to mining in the area. Therefore, without the candidate’s knowledge, he had contracted a retired general as the Eagle Cooper Corporation’s community relations officer. Gen. Jorge Villavicencio, with a past that no one could call unblemished, had carte blanche to do whatever he thought necessary to dissuade the opponents of mining development. Getting right to work, he assembled a group of unemployed men in the area of Vinces, promising them land in the cloud forest if they’d undergo a course of basic training in an army camp to prepare them to get rid of some pesky squatters, after which they could take legal possession of their new property. What the retired general did not tell the nearly sixty men he hired, outfitted in camouflage and armed with machetes, chainsaws, pistols, knives and tear gas canisters, was that they would be invading the community preserve of Junín and that those they would find there would not be squatters but members of the local cooperative. The day of the takeover, the general also brought along the mining corporation’s head of security, in a jeep with five pit-bulls trained to obey his voice and none other. And he crafted the worst plan of attack in history. It was such a disaster that the press soon learned that a group of unarmed peasants had surrounded the paramilitary group during its lunch break, taken possession of their weapons, and locked them up in the local church until the authorities could arrive. Since no one wanted to take responsibility for this disaster, the television channels had enough time to arrive and interview the detainees, who explained exactly what Villavicencio had promised them. With that lead, it was not difficult to connect the dots that led from the ex-general to the recent grant of the Eagle I and Eagle II concessions to the Eagle Copper Corporation. As a public relations specialist, the general was a total flop. Holmes immediately called on Vinueza to get them out of this jam, but Andrés was in the final days of a tumultuous and dramatic electoral contest that demanded all his attention, because his candidacy was in danger of dissolving under accusations of unconstitutionality. Still, acutely aware of the importance of the agreements signed with Holmes, he assigned the task of hastening to the area to José María. This struck him, too, as a fine way to divert attention from the way the blind men had been reduced in number after the fatal denouement of their night in the capital. He was fed up with the suspicions of the reporters, who repeatedly demanded to know what had happened to the fifth man. If he sent the remaining four away with José María, people would forget about them until he was in power.

  He placed a call to Chicho Salém.

  “Hey Chicho, hermano, how are you doing?”

  “Andrés? Am I speaking to Andrés Vinueza, in the flesh?”

  “In the flesh, and needing you on an urgent matter.”

  “Whatever you need, hermanito, whatever you need. By the way, since I haven’t had a chance before, congratulations on your candidacy,.”

  “That’s exactly why I’m calling, because I’ve got something that needs doing and I can’t handle it personally during the election. I need your guys to fix a problem created by a first-class asshole, that’s now landed in my lap.”

  “A problem where?”

  “García Moreno. In Intag.”

  There was an instant’s hesitation before the reply.

  “I’ll go you one better. I’ll attend to it myself. I’ve got something that needs doing with an ex-congressman who lives around there. I’m tired of the way he’s been treating me. More than tired, I’m through with it.”

  “Perfect,” Vinueza said, and smiled. “Go to the Eagle Copper Corporation camp tomorrow, where you’ll find my associate José María, who’ll tell you what to do. And, of course, whatever you want, afterward. Once I’m seated in that yellow velvet chair in the Presidential Palace, anything you want.”

  Relaxed and happy, Benito returned to the apartment at eleven a.m. to find Varas and Valentina asleep on the living room couch, fully dressed and completely entwined, with Témoc watching attentively at their feet. The windows were open, with a gentle
breeze lifting the curtains so they billowed like sails on the high seas. Bound for where? He went to the kitchen, made coffee, and set the table. He’d managed to convince the woman at the store that things were about to change and that he’d pay off his and Varas’s tabs by the end of the month. For music, he opted for the mellifluous JJ. The album Sombras seemed appropriate.

  Varas was the first to wake up. He carefully extricated his arm without disturbing Valentina and smiled at his friend. Before saying anything, he went to the bathroom and threw water on his face.

  “And where have you been?” he asked once back in the kitchen.

  “From what I can see, you ought to be glad I was gone,” Benito said.

  Varas smiled and poured himself a cup of coffee. He sat down at the table before saying anything else.

  “Not really, Benito. I’m done in. I’ve heard too much. I feel like something is shooting off rockets inside my head.”

  Benito saw that he’d misread the situation once again. He needed to change the soundtrack to something much more upbeat that could coax a smile from Varas. Jackson do Pandeiro would be perfect. Forró do Jackson was an album to cheer the soul, and, in honor of Martirio, the track a mulher que virou homem. Two birds with one stone, or almost, anyway.

  “Hermano, I leave you alone for a day and a half and come back to find you’ve turned Cassandra on me. Spit it out. You’ve got everything you need: a friend, coffee, even a betrayal of Café Tacuba.”

  Benito had won the battle of tone. He knew that whoever sets the tone leads the conversation where he wants. Varas told him what Valentina had said but managed to skim some of the horror from her words. Words hid as much as they revealed, and while Varas spoke they turned into things that had happened, that was all. Things that had happened to Valentina and a hundred other women. The details were hazy, but there was no need to stir the coals to set them aflame. Not now, not yet.

  “So what are we going to do?” Benito asked.

  “Go to the public prosecutor and file charges against the blind men.”

  “And about the women?”

  “The police wouldn’t go looking for them before. What do you think would happen if we asked them to send a squad into the tunnels?”

  “They’d toss you in jail for coming to them with frivolous lies.”

  Varas nodded and turned to look at Valentina.

  “It did her good to talk. I think this is the first time she’s slept peacefully since I found her.”

  “What’s her voice like?” Benito asked.

  “Like crystal clear water dripping slowly through yards of blue velvet,” Varas said.

  There were fifteen people gathered around the tree, all wearing binoculars on straps around their necks, all with their feet squeezed into rubber boots completely coated with mud. Some held their binoculars at the ready, while others had them up to their eyes. A dozen of the fifteen were in Bermuda shorts; some wore baseball caps and others had sunscreen slathered thickly on their noses. All were completely silent except for one who intermittently blew on a wooden whistle with a loud, high-pitched sound. Their facial expressions suggested mystical rapture or enlightenment, as if a collective epiphany had just occurred. They were looking upward. José María paid them no attention, nor did he turn back to gaze into the upper foliage of the tree. If he had done so, he would have seen a golden crown quetzal in all its magnificent glory. But he wasn’t there to birdwatch. His problem was that his car was stuck in a mud bank outside the town of Santa Rosa, and he needed to get to García Moreno before Salém and his hired crew, to tell them what to do. On top of which, here he was bushwhacking alongside the four blind men and an eight-year-old boy, the sole individual who had shown any willingness to guide them. The only thing that helped José María to maintain a degree of composure was the knowledge that, with Salém, he’d be in the hands of a professional—one who would insure his future earnings against the threat of idiotic ecologists.

  Chicho Salém and his men entered the village of Selva Alegre at midnight to avoid being seen. They headed straight for the Campo Sol hacienda, where they planned to surprise the ex-congressman Robert Bermúdez while he slept—but the house was empty and the surprise was on them. Particularly when they followed the road that led to the Río Pamplona and found sixteen cows riddled with bullets on its shore. Someone had been there before them. Salém was angry, because Bermúdez’s disappearance meant he wasn’t going to collect the 150,000 euros the ex-legislator owed him. There was no way to collect from the man’s family, because the wife and sister were in jail, charged with drug trafficking, and all their possessions were confiscated by the court. Nor could he get his hands on the land through which he and his men were now proceeding, because the titles had been tied up in court ever since the former owners filed charges of extortion against Bermúdez. He decided there was nothing to be done about all this tonight, so at least they should be able to sleep in comfort. He told his men to break down the door to the house. Before heading for the bedrooms, they drank up two bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label they found in the bar. They knew they’d have to wake up early to overtake the man Vinueza had sent to García Moreno, and indeed they did get up before dawn, gather their things, and pile into the double-cab all-terrain pickup parked outside. Then they set off in search of a route that would take them to their rendezvous. But the Lord works in mysterious ways. While they were rounding a sharp curve they met up with a cruiser belonging to the National Police coming in the opposite direction, driven by an officer who’d been assigned the night before to investigate a report of shots fired in Bermúdez’s hacienda but had spent much of his time on a binge in Apuela, nearby. The crash sent both vehicles tumbling down the cliff-side until they were swallowed up by the dense foliage of the Intag cloud forest. Neither would ever be seen again, other than by the majestic mountain caracaras, birds of prey whose numbers were already diminishing but who this morning received an unexpected gift, as if from heaven, of rare coastal delicacies soaked in alcohol for their scavenging delight.

  XIII

  The Prosecutor

  “This world feeds off those who are sent to the slaughterhouse and those who watch them go by. Those five guys aren’t the only guilty parties. They’ve got plenty of company.”

  So said Benito while he paced through the apartment, trying to reconcile what he’d just heard with the reality he knew. He’d spent hours in the attempt but hadn’t succeeded. “Kidnapping, imprisonment, rape, for years on end . . .”

  Benito stopped in mid-sentence and looked toward the sofa where Valentina had been. Then he looked back at Varas.

  “So? You’re going to have to pull some friend out of your pocket, because going through regular channels won’t produce any action,” the poet said.

  “You think I don’t know that?” Varas retorted.

  “So?” Benito repeated, pouring his third cup of coffee of the morning.

  “Banegas. He’s the only one we can count on. He’s not the world’s most orthodox prosecutor, but he is the only one who can help us. We used to swap copies of Batman in school, and I think he took the Caped Crusader’s idea of vengeance through justice seriously. He’s a good friend, even if he is flamboyant. Back in junior high, he tried to dress like Bogart in The Maltese Falcon and he was always a couple of payments behind on the pocket watch with the gold chain. It’s still hanging from his belt to this day. He won’t hesitate to call out a whole brigade to find the women, or to ask the city for help discovering the tunnels. I’m willing to bet on that.”

  “But is that enough? Where is he going to put all those women until someone shows up to identify them? If anyone even does . . .”

  Varas thought that over. The logistics of the operation didn’t worry him so much as the Ecuadorian legal system and the way it was applied. He doubted there was any specific law against the crime that had been committed against the women, and, even if there was, would anyone enforce it? But one thing at a time. He called the public prosec
utor’s office and made an appointment with his childhood friend.

  José María was late getting into García Moreno, but at least he’d arrived before Salém, so he sat in the plaza to wait. He dismissed the boy and went to the store for some water. Everyone who was out at this hour regarded him and his entourage with suspicion. He hadn’t been planning on any bushwhacking, and now his pants were covered in mud, as were his imported leather shoes. He and the blind men were all suffering from one degree or another of sunstroke, though the men seemed unusually alert. Throughout the trek, they’d been talking about angels and heavenly signs. José María had managed to figure out that their celestial beings were in fact the hundreds of birds that flocked to this region. If he had taken the time to study these, he would have realized that they really were from another world. Especially the tanagers, which looked more like apparitions from paradise than earthly birds.