The Power Of The Dog (82 page)

—What kind of armaments?

—Rifles. AK-47s.

—You call them “goat horns.” That’s rather good. How many do you wish to purchase?

—A small order at first. Maybe a couple of thousand.

Li is stunned by the size of the demand. And impressed that Barrera—or maybe it was the woman—took the care to phrase it as a “small” order, which gives them much face. Which I will now lose if I cannot fill such a “small” order. Good also how they dangled the at first as bait. Letting me know that if I can satisfy this gigantic order, there will be even more.

Li turns back to Adán.

—We don’t usually deal in such small numbers.

—We know you’re doing us a favor. Perhaps we could make it worth your while if we were to purchase some heavier armaments as well? Say some KPG-2 rocket launchers?

—Rocket launchers? Are you expecting a war?

Nora answers, The peace-loving Chinese people know that one purchases arms not so much to fight a war, but to prevent the necessity of fighting one. Sun Tzu wrote, “Invincibility depends on oneself; the enemy’s vulnerability on him.”

Nora had put the long hours on the airplane to good use. Li is impressed.

—Of course, Li says, given the modest volume, we would not be able to offer the same price as we can for larger orders.

Adán answers, Given as this order is just the beginning of what we hope will be a long business relationship, we were hoping that, as a good-faith gesture, you will offer us a price that will allow us to come to you for future needs.

—Are you saying you cannot pay full price?

—No. I’m saying I won’t pay full price.

Adán’s done his homework, too. Knows that the PLA is as much a business as it is a national defense force, and that they are under great pressure from Beijing to produce revenue. They need this deal as much as I do, he thinks, maybe more, and the size of the order is nothing to sneeze at, nothing at all. So you are going to give me my price, General, especially if—

—Of course, Adán adds, we would pay in American dollars. Cash.

Because the PLA is not only under pressure to produce revenue, it’s under pressure to produce foreign currency, and fast, and they don’t want any unstable Mexican pesos, especially in the form of paper. They want the long Yanqui green. Adán likes the cycle: American dollars to China for guns, guns to Colombia for cocaine, cocaine to the United States for American dollars …

Works for me.

Works for the Chinese, too. They spend the next three hours haggling over the details—prices, delivery dates.

The general wants this deal. So does the businessman. So does Beijing. GOSCO is not only building facilities in San Pedro and Long Beach, it’s also building them in Panama. And buying up huge tracts of land along the canal, which not only splits the American fleet in half but also sits astride the two emerging left-wing insurgencies in Central America—the FARC war in Colombia and the burgeoning Zapatista insurrection in southern Mexico. Keep the Americans busy in their own hemisphere for a change. Let them become more concerned about the straits of Panama than the straits of so-called Taiwan.

No, this arrangement with the Barrera cartel can only increase Chinese influence in the Americans’ backyard, keep them busy putting out Communist brush-fires and also force them to spend resources on their War on Drugs.

A bottle of wine is procured and a toast made, to friendship.

“Wan swei,” Nora says.

Ten thousand years.

In six weeks’ time, a shipment of two thousand AK-47s and six dozen grenade launchers, with sufficient ammunition, will be shipped from Guangzhou on a GOSCO freighter.

San Diego

A week after returning from Hong Kong, Nora crosses the border at Tecate, then takes the long, back-country drive through the desert and into San Diego. She checks into the Valencia Hotel and gets a suite with a view of La Jolla Cove and the ocean. Haley meets her and they have dinner at Top of the Cove. Business is good, Haley tells her.

Nora goes to bed early and gets up early. She changes into sweats and takes a long jog around La Jolla Cove, on the path that skirts the cliffs overlooking the ocean. She comes back tired and sweaty, orders her grapefruit and black coffee from room service and showers while she waits for her breakfast to be delivered.

Then she dresses and goes shopping in La Jolla Village. All the trendy shops are within walking distance, and she has a handful of bags before she hits her favorite boutique, where she selects three dresses and takes them into the changing room.

A few minutes later she comes out with two of the dresses, lays them on the counter and says, “I’ll take these. I’ve left the red one in the dressing room.”

“I’ll hang it up,” the owner says.

Nora thanks her, smiles and walks back out into the gorgeously sunny La Jolla afternoon. She decides on French cuisine for lunch and has no trouble getting a table at the Brasserie. She kills the rest of the afternoon with a movie and a long nap. She gets up, orders some consommé for dinner, then puts on one of her new black dresses and does her hair and makeup.

Art Keller parks three blocks away from the White House and walks the rest of the way.

He’s lonely. He has his work and little else.

Cassie is eighteen now, soon to graduate from Parkman; Michael is sixteen, a freshman at the Bishop’s School. Art goes to Cassie’s volleyball matches and Michael’s swim meets, and he takes the kids out afterward if they don’t already have plans with their friends. They have awkward once-a-month weekends at his downtown condo—he makes extravagant efforts to entertain them, but they mostly just hang around the complex pool with the other “visitation daddies” and their kids. And his own kids increasingly resent the mandated visits, which interfere with their own social lives.

Art understands and usually lets them cancel with a fake-cheery “Next time.”

He doesn’t date. He’s had a few short-term relationships with a couple of divorced women—convenience fucks scheduled between the demands of busy careers and the single parenthood of teenage kids—but they were more sad than satisfying, and pretty soon he quit trying.

So most nights he keeps company with the dead.

They’re never too busy and there’s no lack of them. Ernie Hidalgo, Pilar Talavera and her two kids. Juan Parada. All collateral casualties in Art’s private war with the Barreras. They visit him at night, they chat with him, they ask him if it was worth it.

At least for now, the answer is no.

Art’s losing the war.

The Barrera cartel now makes a profit of approximately $8 million a week. Fully one half of the cocaine and a third of the heroin that hits American streets comes through the Baja cartel. Virtually all the methamphetamine west of the Mississippi originates with Barrera.

Adán’s power is unchallenged in Mexico. He’s put his uncle’s Federación together again, and he is the undisputed patrón. None of the other cartels can touch his influence. Furthermore, Barrera has established his own cocaine supply in Colombia. He’s independent of Cali or Medellín. The Barrera drug operation is self-sustaining from the coca plant to the corner, from the poppy flower to the shooting gallery, from the sinsemilla seed to the brick that hits the streets, from the base ephedrine to the rock of crystal meth.

The Baja cartel is a vertically integrated polydrug operation.

And none of the above takes into account his “legitimate” businesses. Barrera money is heavily invested in the maquiladoras along the border, in real estate throughout Mexico—especially in the resort towns of Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas—and the southwest United States and in banking, including several banks and credit unions in the States. The cartel’s financial mechanisms are fully enmeshed with those of Mexico’s wealthiest and most powerful business concerns.

Now Art reaches the front door of the White House and rings the bell.

Haley Saxon comes into the foyer to meet him.

Smiles professionally and hands him the key to a room upstairs.

Nora’s sitting on the bed.

She looks stunning in her black dress.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

The red dress was her signal that she had to see him personally. For over two years now, she’s been leaving him messages in “dead drops” all over the city.

It was Nora who gave him the details of the Orejuela brothers’ meeting with Adán, the info that allowed the DEA to arrest them as they flew back to Colombia.

Nora who has given him a rundown on the new organization of the Federación.

Nora who has provided him with hundreds of pieces of intelligence, from which he’s been able to glean a thousand more. Thanks mostly to her, he has an organizational chart of the Barrera organization in Baja and in California. Delivery routes, safe houses, couriers. When drugs were coming in, money going out, who killed whom and why.

She’s risked her life to bring him this information on her “shopping trips” to San Diego and Los Angeles, on her visits to spas, on any trip that she takes outside of Mexico and without Adán.

The method they use is surprisingly simple. The fact is that the drug cartels have a bigger budget and therefore better technology than Art does, and they don’t have the constitutional restrictions. So the only way to beat the Barreras’ superiority in high-tech is to go low-tech: Nora simply sits in her hotel room, writes down her information and mails it to Art at a post office box that he established under a false name.

No cell phones.

No Internet.

Just the good ol’ U.S. Mail.

Unless there was an emergency; then she would leave the red dress in the changing room. The boutique owner was looking at a possession rap that could have sent her to prison for five years. Instead, she agreed to do this favor for The Border Lord.

“I’m fine,” Nora says.

But she’s angry.

No, angry doesn’t describe it, she thinks as she looks at Art Keller. You said that with my help you would take Adán down quickly, but it’s been two and a half years. Two and a half years of pretending to love Adán Barrera, of taking a man I loathe inside me, feeling him in my mouth, my pussy, my ass, and pretending to love it. Pretending to love this monster who killed the man I really loved, and then guiding him, molding him, helping him to get the power to commit more of his filth. You don’t know what it’s like—how could you?—to wake up in the morning with that beside you, to crawl between his legs, to open yours, to scream your phony orgasms, to smile and laugh and share talk and meals, all the time living a nightmare, waiting for you to act.

And so far, what have you done?

Besides the Orejuela arrest, nothing.

He’s been sitting on this information for two and a half years, waiting for the right moment to act.

Now Art says, “This is too risky.”

“I can trust Haley,” she says. “I want you to take some action. Now.”

“Adán’s still untouchable. I don’t want to—”

She tells him about Adán’s deal with FARC and the Chinese.

Art looks at her with awe. He knew she was smart—he’s been tracking her as she’s helped to steer Adán through the shoals—but he didn’t know that she was this perceptive. She’s thought it through.

Damn right I have, Nora thinks. She’s been reading men all her life. She sees the change come over his face, his eyes are lit with excitement. Every man has his own turn-on. She’s seen them all, and now she sees Keller’s.