Red Jungle (15 page)

“I’ve hired a PR firm in New York.”

“That’s where you got Nesbitt, I suppose?”

“Nesbitt is a fool,” Antonio said. “He’s no good for what’s coming.”

“I don’t understand?”

“War.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Elections are wars in Latin America, Mr. Price. It’s the way it’s always been. The difference is that I actually want to do something for the country. I want to drag it out of the dark ages and make it run like it should have been run from the very beginning.”

“I’m a little lost,” Russell said.

“No, you aren’t. You know exactly what I mean. I need your help. I need the support of all the important decision-making papers in Europe and America. You write for one of the most important. I need your help. I need you to support me. That dumb thug that’s running against me is a danger to the country. The military here are bought and sold like so many cows. I want you to help me win. What do you say? I read your editorial concerning the privatization option. I was very impressed with your ideas.”

“I’m a journalist,” Russell said. “Not a politician.”

“Don’t pull that objective crap with me. I’ve looked into you, Mr. Price; we are very similar. Anyway, none of you journalists are really objective. You
all
have your agendas. It just so happens that you and I share one. I want to bring financial stability and prosperity to millions of people who have known nothing but war and corruption for almost a hundred years. Are you going to help me do that or not?”

Russell had taken out his neatly typed list of questions. He had his pen in his hand, and he opened it. For some reason he thought of Flora, his secretary, the way she’d come to his office so lost, looking for a job. He thought about the hundreds of thousands of peasants that every day were being thrown off the land because coffee prices had crashed and plantation owners were turning their plantations over to the banks. No one knew how those people were going to eat. There were no jobs in the cities; the
maquiladoras
were all shutting down and moving to China and Vietnam, where they paid half of the miserable wage they paid here. He, better than most, knew the extent of the crisis and its aftermath of misery.

“I’d like to ask you these questions, if I could, about the crisis,” he said calmly.

“But you’re on my side? I can tell. If you weren’t, you’d be giving me the asinine speech about objectivity, and the Fourth Estate, or some other plate of bollocks,” Antonio said.

Russell didn’t answer, but he knew that he was going to help him. By the time they’d worked their way through his questions, he knew that De La Madrid probably could, with a little luck, and help from people like him, get the country going in the right direction, and avoid becoming an Argentina. There wasn’t much time; the forces of economic chaos, both men agreed, were moving in on the country in a hurry.

“General Selva is the man I have to beat. He wants to kill me. We went to the same high school,” Antonio said. “We were friends once. He’s already tried once to kill me, we think. The little shit. You know he bought Sylvester Stallone’s house in Miami, just the other day. His army pay is thirty-two thousand dollars a year. The house cost twenty million. What do you make of that?” Antonio asked, smiling.

“A difference of significant proportions,” Russell said.

“You know, Price, you’re funny. You don’t try to be funny, but you are.”

They shook hands as Russell was leaving. He wanted to ask De La Madrid everything he knew about Selva’s wife. He wanted to ask him if it was true that the general had met her in a strip club in London. He wanted to ask if he, Antonio De La Madrid, was truly a good man Russell could believe in—a man he could trust—or if he was just having him on about bringing real change. He wanted to ask him if he’d ever been lost. He doubted it. Antonio was one of those men who, because of their class and their advantages, are never lost, Russell supposed. He wanted to ask him if he was afraid of being assassinated.

“I told my wife I was meeting a very unusual American this morning. She remembered you. She met you at a party at the French embassy. She said that you weren’t really an American, you were too smooth to be one. She thought you might be lying,” Antonio said, and laughed. “If you write about me favorably, and say bad things about the general, you know that Selva won’t like it.”

“Yes, I understand,” Russell said.

“Often times people that the general doesn’t like have big problems,” Antonio said. “The kind of problems it’s hard to recover from.”

“Yes, I know.”

“A difference of significant proportions—those kinds of problems,” Madrid said. They both smiled.

Antonio slapped Russell on the back. It was a significant slap and hug, the kind Latin men give someone they want to be their
compadre
. He’d seduced Russell into a conspiracy against the general, whom they both knew was a shit and a mass murderer.

Russell didn’t really feel frightened about it. It was the first time he’d felt good about himself in years.

THIRTEEN

He’d gotten the hotel room he wanted, only after he’d complained when he’d checked in late. He’d driven up to the lake by himself. At night it was never a good idea. His shotgun rode on the seat next to him. Kidnappings were constant on the road to Lake Atitlán
,
especially at night. And being white, he knew he was a target. White people— foreigners in general—were all thought to have money.

He woke up Saturday morning and threw open the curtains of his hotel room. Lake Atitlán sat quiet, like some kind of blue goddess among three volcanoes, reflecting a few cotton-white clouds. Below his room, the hotel’s beautiful lakeside garden spread out along the shore. Everything had been watered by the gardeners first thing, and was sparkling in the morning sun. Huge azaleas bloomed red and white, exotic white roses spilled over a trellis by the elegant black-bottomed pool. A pool boy was busy laying out white cushions over lounge chairs.

He lay on the bed and read Delacroix’s journal while he waited for Beatrice. Delacroix had lived in a time of promise and hope, a vibrant time that felt itself going forward toward the modern, the rational, the harmonious, the beautiful. Paris had symbolized all the hope that was lying just ahead for mankind. The painter saw his art as a gift to this new rational world, a world no longer dominated by superstition and religion, when nation-states themselves were the ideal of modernity and sanity. Paris had become civilization’s high-water mark. Democracy and Art lived for each other in an atmosphere of rationality and reason. What had happened to all that hope, Russell wondered.

His cell phone rang at ten. He sprang up from the bed, dropping the book.

“How are you?” she said.

“Okay.” Speaking with her still seemed strange.

“I’m going to be late. Maybe eleven-thirty; is that okay?” she said.

“Yes. Eleven-thirty,” he said.

“You saw the boat dock? In front of the restaurant.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Have you missed me?” she asked. The question took him aback.

“Yes. Very much,” he said.

“I’ll see you at the dock then,” she said, and hung up.

He closed his phone and sat on the edge of the bed. He was completely drained, and didn’t understand why. It was as if he’d run several miles. His heart was pounding with both desire and fear.

“Shit,” he said out loud. “Shit. I don’t know if I can do this.” He went to the tray and tried to pour himself another cup of coffee, but the thermos they’d brought with breakfast was empty. He put the cup down and looked stupidly around the room, then walked to the window.

He saw fishermen’s canoes nestled together. The
pangas—
small wood canoes—rode nose to nose out on the small lagoon below his window. The fishermen were talking together, eating breakfast. Their boats made the shape of a brown star on the water.

“What’s wrong with me? I’m out of my mind. I can’t wait to see her. I can’t wait.” He said it out loud, as some kind of affirmation. Everything seemed wild. He was frightened of her for some reason. Her beauty? Her intelligence? Her station? Her role as mother? He didn’t know. He couldn’t answer. All he knew was that he wanted to have her again, all to himself. He wanted to make love to her. He wanted to see her climax. He wanted her to be that woman-girl she’d been in the Hotel Procedes, after they’d left the club. He hadn’t been afraid then. He’d been an equal. He’d been a sexual partner. It was better when she didn’t speak, when neither of them spoke.
That was impossible
. Perhaps people like them shouldn’t speak, but exist only sexually.

He went into the shower and looked in the mirror. He looked every bit of his age, he thought. She was much younger. She never looked tired.

He looked tired. He’d been up late at the office finishing the article on De La Madrid, and then emailing it to London. It might run as soon as the next weekend. He’d gotten very little sleep with Mahler in the bush. They had cut through to a place Mahler thought they might find the Jaguar. The work had been hellish. It had rained all day. They found nothing, again. Exhausted, they’d ridden back to the plantation without saying a word to one another. He’d had to come back to the capital, as his job was the only thing paying for their search.

Waiting for Beatrice to show up, Russell was slightly confused about the arrangements. He decided not to take his day pack, as he had no idea where they were going. He had a cold drink at the hotel’s bar, nursing it.

He was at the pier waiting for Beatrice at eleven-thirty. As he stood there in his jeans and T-shirt, his sunglasses very dark, he watched a helicopter land on a pad built for the wealthy when they came from the capital to eat lunch at the hotel. A young couple got out of the helicopter with one suitcase and made their way up the steps toward the hotel. The pilot cut the engine. Russell watched the propeller blades slowly twist to a stop.

He wondered about the couple. She was a beautiful blonde, her boyfriend was very dark. He decided for some reason that the boyfriend was a narco-trafficker. There was something about him, something—
the fancy cowboy boots
. That was it. They didn’t belong to the elites; at least, the young man didn’t, as he was dark-skinned. The young man had fought his way to this hotel through the underworld. The young man made Russell think of his own great-grandfather, who had also been self-made. You got dirty on the way up, it seemed, whether it was selling coffee or selling dope. But everyone on the bottom wanted out. That was the rule. It applied to everyone in every time. Everyone wanted a luxury berth, even if it was on the
Titanic
.

Beatrice was late. Russell was sitting on the dock looking at the blurring horizon when he finally saw a small boat, a Boston whaler, coming towards the hotel. She was alone behind the wheel, in a two-piece suit with an orange sarong. Her hair was wet and the color of honey.

She pulled up to the dock and cut the engine. She moved up to the bow and threw him a rope. He grabbed it and looked at her.

“You have to tie it off. I thought we’d have a drink. I’ve been for a swim,” she said. He did as she asked him, although he wasn’t too good at knots. She looked at it as he helped her up from the boat.

“You weren’t in the Navy,” she said, joking.

“No,” he said.

“We can’t show any affection here,” she said. “So pretend I just kissed you.”

“All right,” he said. She looked at him, then knelt down and re-tied the boat off. He realized he’d been monosyllabic since they’d spoken on the phone. He had been even in the hotel, when they’d been alone.

“I’m sorry. I just—well, it’s new to me, the intrigue,” he said, watching her work.

“No married women in the repertoire?” she asked. As she knelt, her back to him, he saw the beautiful curve of her ass. He wanted to touch her, to feel her wet hair, but couldn’t.

“How are we supposed to act right now?” he said

“Well, not like lovers, that’s for sure,” she said, standing up. “The place is crawling with my husband’s friends.”

“How are you going to explain me being here?” he asked.

“You are doing a story on my husband, and wanted to speak to his wife. You called me, and we decided to meet here. I’ve already told Carlos that. I’m here for the week at the house. We have a house on the lake.”

“But I’m not doing a story on your husband,” he said. “I’ve finished it.”

“I suggested the idea to him yesterday. He agreed it was a good idea, and said I should call you. He wants to be seen like Al Gore. I’m supposed to be his Tipper,” she said.

“So, I’m here to interview you?” he said.

“Yes. And to see the lake house, and the children, and have dinner tonight.”

“Is Carlos with you here?”

“He flies in this afternoon. Here, to the helipad; I’m to pick him up.”

“What about me?” he asked.

“What about you? You’re staying at the hotel. We’ll have some friends over to the house tonight. He wanted you to come. . . . It’s up to you.”