Hotel Cartagena

by Simone Buchholz

Secondly, and this was less easy to push away than Esteban’s indications of his power, when you got right down to it, the bar didn’t even belong to Henning, but to Esteban. Yes, there was the document in Henning’s desk that said it was Henning’s bar, but he knew perfectly well that Esteban could take it away again at any time. He’d simply buy it off him for a token price, as he’d bought it from the previous owner to give it to Henning.

  If you didn’t go along with that kind of suggestion, you might as well hold a pistol to your head. When you’re mired in those kind of dealings, you feel as though you’ve been sewn into a pillowcase.

  The only way to get out once and for all would be to orchestrate the perfect deal. After that, he’d have to sell the bar in good time and scarper to Buenos Aires with Mariacarmen and Arturo. Regardless of the fact that Mariacarmen would never voluntarily leave Cartagena, this also posed the increasingly pressing question: where could he find the perfect deal?

  And then one day, the perfect deal just slouched in through the door.

  A guy from Miami.

  An American of Mexican descent. Some kind of gringo then, but a Latino gringo, so maybe you could trust him. At first he posed as a tourist, then as a businessman, then he asked about cocaine, and then about someone who knew about these things, about cocaine and business, that was. He snorted the stuff up his nose while he sat at the bar and talked.

  Henning told José about it, because he could assess the Mexican better. José reckoned that the Mexican sounded like a pro and he saw no reason why they shouldn’t pass him on to Esteban. That was exactly what Henning had hoped to hear, because the Mexican had spoken about ‘serious business’.

  He called Esteban and arranged to meet him for dinner. He didn’t want to bring the two of them together in his bar just like that, even if Esteban would have turned up there anyway, by Friday at the latest. He wanted to let Esteban decide for himself if the Mexican was of interest to him.

  And he wanted to finally get the hell out of the sticky shit he was still trapped in.

  Esteban bit.

  ‘Introduce the man to me,’ he said. ‘If it turns into a lucrative business, you’ve paid off your bar.’

  Henning couldn’t pin down where this gracious attitude suddenly sprang from, but he shook on it. They had a new deal.

  One more, thought Henning. The last one.

  Esteban and the Mexican got to know each other over Cuba libres in Henning’s bar; the next week, Esteban brought with him a couple of men that Henning hadn’t seen before. The men came from Medellín. Compared to them, Esteban looked small, and he acted like he was too.

  There was quiet talk.

  After that, Henning didn’t see much of Esteban. Likewise, the Mexican only turned up in the bar sporadically. Sometimes the two came together to drink a rum with Henning, but it was more likely that one of them would come on his own, and even that was rare. Esteban didn’t speak to Henning about the business, but that wasn’t surprising. He’d never done that unless Henning had been involved.

  The Mexican, on the other hand, dropped hints now and then, but not in any odd kind of way. After all, he’d met all these people through Henning. In the circumstances, it was fine to say: thanks, going well, great contact, super, come on I’ll buy you a drink.

  Henning always turned it down.

  And with every glass he turned down, he felt a little freer.

  Everything was on track.

  But then, a few days after New Year, there was the big row with Mariacarmen. It started with her just checking. Because she’d met this woman, a friend of a friend of a friend, who allegedly knew something about his alleged dealings with an Esteban, and what the hell kind of a guy was he. Henning had dropped a few half-hearted lies around the place and got tangled up in one or two contradictions, but he’d immediately realised that something was going wrong, and anyway, he didn’t fancy telling her cock-and-bull stories anymore.

  So it had come out.

  That Henning hadn’t happened to get the bar cheap, as he’d always told her. That instead, their entire financial fortunes rested on the international cocaine trade.

  She’d threatened to leave Henning, to give him the biggest kick up the arse of his life. She hadn’t cried or shouted or anything, she’d become quieter and quieter, turned more and more in on herself, in the end she hadn’t even answered when he asked her what was wrong now, and then she’d disappeared to her parents with Arturo, just over the weekend, so she said, but he knew that the shit had hit the fan.

  Perhaps he ought to have left her in peace for a few hours then gone after her, quick-quick.

  Perhaps that would have been exactly the wrong thing to do, though, he didn’t know.

  At any rate, accepting José’s invitation to spend the weekend with him in Medellín: definitely the wrong thing to do, although Henning didn’t know that at the time either. Esteban and the Mexican were having a party, it would do him some good to take his mind off things a bit, said José, and after all, Henning knew them all, ah, come on, amigo, it’ll be fun.

  OK, he thought.

  It wasn’t a party; it was drug heaven.

  Henning got off his head with everything there was on offer.

  And they all hung the flags out for him, not just José, the Mexican and Esteban, but also the big men from the cartel; he was even introduced to one of the most important producers from the mountains.

  Henning—

  Great guy—

  Brokered our deals with Germany for ten years—

  Hamburg, what a city—

  Henning, amigo—

  And now this—

  Awesome—

  Soon we’ll be shifting a ton of coke a week to Miami—

  What a deal—

  Whole new level—

  Because of you—

  We love you—

  Henning said nothing in reply.

  He was blown away, but not in a good way.

  By the quantities of cocaine that were going to Miami, and by the quantities that were shot down that little tube into his brain.

  He grasped something as if through a glassy mist: the Mexican wasn’t his exit, he’d dragged him in even deeper. He still couldn’t get the fuck out of the fucking affair. He clung on to the bar table he’d just bent over, he laughed, but the laugh broke something in his head, something inside splintered against the top of his skull.

  Crystal confetti.

  He waved to one of the girls with the trays and took another two drinks.

  When Mariacarmen came home on Monday and he tried to touch her, to speak to her, to reconnect with her, he could no longer get through to her.

  A few days later, the bang came.

  Just as the first delivery was meant to go out to Miami, the Bogota drugs squad and the DEA raided the harbour in Cartagena in a joint operation. The Mexican had vanished, Esteban was dead, so was José: the police hadn’t messed around after the dealers opened fire. Three other cartel members had been busted and another five arrested.

  Virtually the whole organisation had gone sky high.

  Miguel stormed into Henning’s bar, screamed at him, just kept on yelling: ‘What have you done? WHAT! HAVE! YOU! DONE!’

  It took a while for Henning to understand exactly what Miguel meant – José, the drugs deals themselves, the Mexican, or all of it?

  ‘Get lost,’ said Miguel, ‘and I’m not just advising that because I never want to see you again.’

  There was a rage in his face the like of which Henning had never seen in a person before, not even in Mariacarmen, and Mariacarmen was very good at rage.

  ‘Take your wife, your kid and your guitar and then piss off, as fast as you can. Your best chance is to vanish into thin air.’

  Henning gulped and nodded.

  Then he took all the money from the till and all the money from the little safe behind the kitchen and switched himself off. His emotions, his thoughts, his panic.

  He went home and told Mariacarm
en in short sentences what had happened. He stood around like concrete. He had no plan for what to do. He couldn’t go back to Hamburg. It was pretty certain that there’d be an arrest warrant out for him there, the police there weren’t entirely stupid these days. He couldn’t go to the USA if the DEA had been involved in the raid at the port. The DEA were more dangerous for people like him than anyone else.

  But they wouldn’t be safe anywhere in Colombia, the cartel was everywhere, he’d learnt that much in the last thirteen years.

  ‘Curaçao,’ said Mariacarmen, ‘we’ll go to Curaçao.’

  ‘Curaçao? Why Curaçao?’

  ‘Shut up and pack your things.’

  Arturo sat on his bed and cried.

  They travelled all night long, on one of those minibuses that are held together only by a nerve-jangling clatter. Always following the sea, then across the green border towards Maracaibo, Venezuela.

  They must’ve been unimaginably lucky, Henning said over the rattling after the border. Cos the bus hadn’t been checked.

  Mariacarmen said: ‘Idiot, nobody checks here.’

  By sunrise they’d reached Coro.

  It cost them a decent whack of their cash to get onto the boats, the floating markets, which would set off for Curaçao in the grey of the morning. At first nobody had wanted to take them, or at least the market people had acted like they didn’t want to take anyone. But Mariacarmen had managed to arrange a crossing all the same.

  So they arrived on Curaçao, the gangster island, as Mariacarmen called it, the place where you could park yourself if there was no room for you anywhere else, if you had to vanish.

  They crawled out of the depths of the vegetable boat they’d been lying in. Then they stood for a few more minutes by the front made up of squat, colourful houses, and looked around, before diving into the turmoil of Willemstad. Mariacarmen in front with a light rucksack on her back, towing eleven-year-old Arturo in her wake, Henning following with his old, heavy kitbag over his shoulder and his guitar in his hand.

  The label ‘imbecile’ was branded on the back of his neck.

  OPEN BAR

  Thirty-seven people. The ten of us, then the two barmen and the barwoman; the technician, along with two very young men who’d been alone there from the start; four guys of around thirty, whose wives have gone; two middle-aged men and a woman who seems to be with one of them; and then there’s the two guys in the expensive suits.

  Plus twelve hostage-takers.

  That’s the line-up. This is how you play.

  We hostages may, should, OK fine: must sit down. So we’re all sitting at the back of the bar. The kidnappers have spread themselves out well with their guns, none of us has the least intention of not listening to what they say.

  Number One stands at the long bar.

  ‘I think you’ll understand us not introducing ourselves to you,’ he says.

  His voice has taken on a confidential hue. As if it were important to him that we’re not afraid. I’m not sure if it’s working, but I register it and make a note of it for later, in case it comes in handy.

  Memo to self: I’m finding the man who has power over me rather likeable, actually.

  ‘And even if we are compelled to remain strangers,’ he says, ‘I don’t want you to lack anything. If anyone needs the toilet, for example, just let one of my colleagues know, and he’ll accompany you, at least as far as the door. Besides which…’ he looks at the bar staff, ‘… open bar, OK?’

  The barwoman shrugs.

  ‘Fine by me.’

  Her two colleagues stare at the floor, they’re acting more and more as if they weren’t even here.

  Memo to self: Just cos we’re all hostages, that doesn’t mean I automatically find the hostages more likeable than the hostage-takers.

  ‘Are there food supplies here?’ asks Number One.

  The barwoman nods.

  ‘I can fetch something.’

  ‘Just tell me where.’

  ‘In the aisle behind the liquor cabinet,’ she says. ‘Asian-style rice crackers. The proper food comes from the restaurant kitchen and that’s presumably shutting right about now. But the crackers are OK. Low calorie.’

  Faller pulls a face.

  Oh no.

  You can’t be serious.

  He was the one who wanted his party here.

  Now we’re just partying with Asian-style rice crackers and automatic weapons. And hey, at least there’s an open bar.

  I stand up and point to the wall of spirits.

  ‘May I?’

  Number One scans me once, it starts off at my face, then his look wanders down to my boots, he evidently marks me as a pass and says: ‘Sure, lady, help yourself.’

  I take myself behind the bar and hunt for clear, high-percentage alcohol.

  Left-hand cabinet.

  On the second shelf is Finnish vodka.

  I pour a decent slug of it into a large tumbler, take a few ice cubes from a cooler, throw them into the glass and walk back to our table.

  Then, as unobtrusively as possible, I stick my left thumb into the cold liquid.

  It burns like all the fires of hell.

  Now Faller stands up and goes to the beer tap. In passing, he glances briefly at Number One again and says: ‘Open bar, have I got that straight?’

  Number One nods, Faller nods too, and then he draws himself a beer.

  When he comes back to our table, he says: ‘Mine was kind of flat.’

  He sits down.

  I’d really like to ask for the rice crackers right now, just to see how Number One would react, but then I don’t want to draw too much attention to our table, after all.

  So I just lean back and ignore the fire that’s starting to blaze in my left hand.

  The other hostages are doing similar stuff, like fidgeting around on their seats, crossing their arms, scratching their heads. Everyone’s trying, in their own way, not to stand out, and to keep the nerves, which are scattering around the room like low-flying swallows, in check.

  But the big fear, which was until just now still the only significant emotion in this bar, is very slowly being joined by this one question: What the bloody hell do they want from us?

  Meanwhile, Number One mixes himself a gin and tonic, with Tanqueray.

  ARE THE NINJA TURTLES ON THEIR WAY?

  The patrol car’s tyres are smouldering gently away when Stepanovic arrives at the hotel. Nobody drove fast, but everyone invested the drive with such sacred importance that it must have felt as though they’d bombed down the extremely short stretch from the Davidwache police station to the River Palace Hotel at 280 kph. The police are in the middle of dragging in barricades, they’re closing the streets all around the crossroads. Guests and liveried staff are milling around in front of the hotel, making a colourful, uncertain huddle of maybe a hundred people, more every second. The people are streaming out of the large, open glass doors. Only a few have jackets or coats with them, but they all have panic in their luggage.

  Stepanovic has joined the group of evacuees before his colleagues who are barricading things even have time to catch on and send him away.

  Three dark saloon cars come to a stop at the barricade. Ten men in plain clothes get out.

  Aha, thinks Stepanovic, the SWAT team, here for a cautious recce and assessment of the situation.

  He lights a cigarette.

  The phone in his pocket buzzes incessantly.

  He doesn’t answer.

  His plain-clothes SWAT team colleagues run past him, he turns his face aside a little. After all, they might have inadvertently crossed paths back when he was still in the SWAT team himself.

  He finishes his smoke at his leisure. He needs those couple of minutes to grasp the fact that this is really happening. It’s important to grasp it. Once you’ve grasped it, you can think. But not before. Before, you can only react in some way, and the situation is too delicate for that.

  Then he throws his cigarette away and final
ly, OK, OK, answers the telephone.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Ivo!’

  ‘Sorry, I was busy.’

  ‘You’re not actually standing outside the River Palace Hotel right now, are you?’

  ‘…’

  ‘You’re standing outside the River Palace Hotel, OK.’

  ‘I’m not leaving here.’

  ‘We need you in the situation room, Ivo. This is a terror incident.’

  ‘My friends are up there.’

  ‘Friends? Since when did you have friends?’

  ‘Well, let’s just call them our colleagues then.’

  ‘You’re not serious.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Chief Inspector Calabretta, Stanislawski, Schulle and Brückner from murder.’

  ‘Oh shit. Anne.’

  ‘Georg Faller.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And Chastity Riley, the public prosecutor.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Got you.’

  ‘You see.’

  ‘Yes, OK.’

  ‘OK then, so what now?’

  ‘This means trouble, you know that.’

  ‘I can help here.’

  ‘Those aren’t the orders.’

  ‘You can sort that for me.’

  ‘Pff, I dunno, what can I sort, Ivo? But hey. They’re not exactly going to come and get you.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘I’ll pass that on then.’

  ‘Do that.’

  ‘And we’ll see about the rest.’

  ‘Exactly,’ says Stepanovic, ‘we’ll see about the rest. Have you lot got things started your end?’

  ‘Yes, we’re on it. You know how it goes, the SWAT team and mobile task force bosses have just turned up, federal police and GSG9 have been requested, investigators, SOCOs and two negotiators are on their way to the hotel.’

  ‘Good. Do I know any of them?’

  ‘Definitely. But you won’t care either way, will you?’

  ‘Probably not. Has the airspace been shut down?’

  ‘Course. And they’ve just started closing streets south of St Pauli this minute. Plus someone from the SCO in Wiesbaden is about to step onto a plane: apparently he settled a similar situation in Frankfurt neatly four years ago, we called him right away.’