The Threateners (9 page)

I interrupted. “What’s an Ochoa?”

Mark looked impatient at my ignorance. “That is the Medellín family that, with certain associates, manages the big Colombian drug cartel that gets all the publicity. However, a few years ago some of those associates, led by an older gentleman named Gregorio Vasquez Stussman, a man who had for many years been satisfied to serve the cartel in a subordinate capacity, formed a new organization. No one expected it to survive against its entrenched opposition, and as a matter of fact little was heard of it for a while, but gradually it began to emerge as a giant criminal conglomerate that has quietly managed to gain effective control of all the South American drug operations, including the Medellin group. ” He gave a grim little laugh. “ ‘Quietly’ may not be the proper word. There was considerable violence, but there is so much violence connected with drugs anyway that a little more went almost unnoticed except, of course, by the people directly concerned, who were suitably impressed. A measure of the effectiveness of Vasquez’s tactics, and the ruthlessness of his companions, is that by murder, kidnapping, torture, and intimidation on the one hand, and liberal financial inducements on the other, he has managed to gain power over some very tough and wealthy and important people on both sides of the law—people one would have said would be quite immune to threats or bribery.” He looked up. “May I have another beer?”

I waited until Madeleine had brought it; then I asked, “At what point did Mr. Vasquez Stussman become interested in you?”

“When my first book came out, of course.” Mark took a swig of Carta Blanca from the bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “As a matter of fact, his violent reaction to
Empire
was what led me to consider a sequel. It seemed like overreaction. To be sure, he had reasons not to be happy with me, I had given his drug super-cartel unfa-vorable publicity and revealed some unpleasant truths about him, but it was done. The book was in print; it would not be withdrawn no matter what happened to me. To have me killed for writing Empire would be mere childish retaliation, and he is not a childish man. Clearly he was offering a million dollars for my death, not because he was so very angry at what I had written, but because he was afraid of what I intended to write next. Which told me that there was something to be written next. I looked for it and found it.”

He drank some more beer, and glanced toward the fire as the cedar snapped again. I got up and kicked a couple of coals off the floor and put the screen in front of the fireplace, although I always feel that a fire burning behind a screen is half-wasted.

Madeleine said impatiently, “Well? Don’t keep us in suspense!”

Mark said, “As a matter of fact, that title you suggested, Matt, is inaccurate, and so were the geographical limits suggested in
Empire
. Vasquez’s combine is no longer dealing merely with cocaine. He’s not satisfied with being the king of coke, he’s reaching for control of cannabis in all forms from marijuana to hashish to ganja, and of all significant opium-morphine-heroin operations, not only in South America—where the opium poppy doesn’t do very well, although it’s being tried—but elsewhere in the world, like the Golden Triangle and the Golden Crescent.” He glanced at me, saw me looking blank, and explained: “The Golden Triangle is the Southeast Asian poppy-growing countries of Burma, Laos, and Thailand. When their production started to lag in the late 1970s, the slack was taken up by the Southwest Asian countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran; the so-called Golden Crescent. This is what Vasquez did not want me to put into a book: the fact that he is well on the way to having a worldwide monopoly of the more popular mind-altering drugs. He also feared that I would reveal his motive in creating this monopoly.”

Madeleine stirred. “Is there a mystery? Everybody wants to be rich.”

Mark shook his head. “The Medelín people take care of their own and they have fantastic amounts of money to spread around. Vasquez had become wealthy enough, working for them in an administrative capacity. No, it was not the money. However, his son, Jorge, a pilot for a small Colombian airline owned by them, also flew occasional smuggling runs for them—moonlighting, I suppose you would call it. One of Papa Vasquez’s duties had been to set up a smuggling route through the Bahamas with a transshipment point on one of the smaller islands, Roman Cay, that boasted an airstrip of sorts. He had made financial arrangements with the proper Bahamian authorities—one might call them improper Bahamian authorities—to ensure that the operation on the island would be ignored; and he had organized a small fleet of speedboats to carry the shipments across the Florida straits to a ‘safe’ marina in the Florida Keys. One day son Jorge was called upon to take over a run from a pilot who was indisposed. Flying into Roman Cay with a sizable shipment of cocaine, he ran into an unexpected welcoming committee. Secretly, the U.S. had put pressure on the government in Nassau, and the Bahamian police, accompanied by some American agents of the DEA, were waiting to arrest him. However, as Jorge was coming in to land, somebody fired a burst from an automatic weapon. It hit nothing; it is believed that one of the Bahamian officers who’d been paid by Gregorio was trying to warn Jorge off; but the effort backfired badly. The armed and trigger-happy officials on the ground all opened up at the first sound of gunfire . Riddled, the plane crashed and burned, incinerating Señor Vasquez, Junior. This did not meet with the approval of Señor Vasquez, Senior; and of course he blamed the U.S. of A.”

I said, “Why not? Everyone else does.”

"Actually," Mark said, "the DEA agents present claimed that they had not fired a shot, but this was ignored. In Vasquez’s view, that great, overbearing bully, Uncle Sam, had coerced the officials of a small independent neighboring nation into betraying their contractual obligations to him, and their honor as gentlemen, and murdering a fine young man whose only crime, if it could even be called a crime, was transporting some merchandise to American citizens who, whatever their government’s irrational attitude might be, were eager to have it and willing to pay well for it.”

Madeleine said, “I’d think Mr. Vasquez would be mad at either the Bahamians who did the shooting or the cartel that sent his son into a trap."

Mark shook his head. “The Bahamians he considers beneath contempt, mere tools in the bloody hands of the wicked USA. As I’ve already indicated, he did turn against the Medellin people; but like the late ayatollah, he reserves his big hate for the Great Satan, as Khomeini liked to call you. And he’s going to fix you, amigos. He is going to get a stranglehold on all the major sources of drugs in the world. And then he is going to destroy the U.S. by flooding the country with drugs at bargain prices that no one can resist. ”

There was a short silence. I grimaced. “Well, like his bounty routine, it’s not exactly a new idea. I seem to remember that the British used opium in just about the same way, in China a century or two ago. So Vasquez is going to turn us into a nation of helpless hopheads? Cute.” I frowned. “Can he do it? I mean, does he have the power to control all the members of his far-flung conspiracy well enough to make them forgo the fantastic profits to which they are accustomed and market their products at more reasonable, and popular, prices?" 

Mark shrugged. “
Quien sabe?
Who knows? I address that question in my book, but I’m afraid my answer is inconclusive. I do believe he thinks he can do it, and he is not a man given to deluding himself. But there is another, equally important question to which you
Americanos
can probably give a better answer than a transplanted Peruvian.”

“And that question is?” I asked.

“Given the opportunity, will the American people destroy themselves in this way?”

He glanced at Madeleine, who said, “If truly cheap drugs became readily available, there would certainly be a lot of people flying high at first In the long run . . .” She shook her head dubiously. “I really don’t know. ”

I said, “Hell, there’s a liquor store on every street comer now, and we aren’t all running around drunk; and it isn’t the price of Scotch, or beer, that’s keeping most of us sober most of the time. I think Mr. Vasquez is kidding himself, with the help of a whole lot of guys and gals like Dennis Morton, whose livelihood depends on making us, and maybe themselves, believe that drugs can sink the good ship America and only they can save Old Glory from drowning in a sea of coke and hash. Well, I’ve spent a good deal of my life working for this country in various risky and unpleasant ways and my impression is that it’s a fairly tough country inhabited by fairly tough people who may have some bad habits but aren’t about to commit national suicide on some bargain-basement happy dust. Wow, listen to me, you’d think this was the Fourth of July or something! So Vasquez put a price on your head after your first book came out.”

Mark laughed shortly. “In a way, he did me a favor. Who was going to read a dull nonfiction work about distant South American problems? My American publishers printed a few thousand copies and thought they’d probably be stuck with many of those; but the press got wind of the reward and, as with Rushdie, turned my book into a big best-seller. The publicity brought me to the attention of Dennis Morton’s superiors, who hadn’t bothered to read
Empire
when it first came out. They decided that I was someone to be protected since I seemed to have considerable amounts of potentially useful information beyond what I’d already revealed— protected at least until I could be wrung dry. Now they keep telling me that it is my patriotic duty to jettison, or at least postpone, my new book and turn all my data over to them for appropriate action. Patriotic? To what country? I am a Peruvian citizen, amigo, and no official of my country has requested enlightenment. In fact, we left Lima very hastily after being warned that I was to be arrested and silenced, presumably at the request of some very influential and wealthy Peruvian gentlemen. I have no proof, but I am certain that Vasquez, the source of their drug-based wealth, put them up to it. So I told your Yankee officials: make me an
American
citizen and then we can discuss my patriotic
American
duty. But that branch of your government is apparently not willing to cooperate, at least not rapidly. In the meantime, I told them, the information is probably still available where I found it. If you want it, I said, why do you not simply obtain it from the source, as I did?" He gave me a wry look. “Why is it that these law enforcement agencies always expect us journalists to do their work for them and then turn it over to them gratis?"

I laughed at that. It was the ancient complaint of the working press. “So they’re giving you a hard time, but at least they’re keeping you alive after a fashion, right?”

“Yes, and while they could not keep Ruth from being abducted, they did find her and set her free, although it was a close thing and the hounds brought down and killed the man who had gone in to liberate her.”

I said, “I suppose the idea of the kidnapping was to trade her for your notes and tapes and whatever.”

“Yes.”

His voice was curt; he didn’t want to be asked if, had the lady not been liberated, he would have made the trade. It’s not a choice we ever have to make, thank God. The standing orders are rigid: no matter who dies, we don’t deal, ever.

Madeleine said, “And then you were moved out here, to keep you safe.”

Mark said grimly, “Yes. Safe until they found us again.” “If you don’t mind my asking,” she said, “I get the impression you haven’t been married very long, but you said your daughters were eleven and thirteen. . . ."

“Ruth is the mother of the girls, but I am not the father. Her husband was in the U.S. Foreign Service, stationed in Peru. He died in a car-bombing incident about four years ago. I had met him and become friends with the whole family while covering various diplomatic functions in my capacity as a journalist. After Richard Harrington’s death . . .” Mark shrugged. “Please do not think there was anything between Ruth and me before that; but afterward . . . Anyway, we were married. I consider her children as my own; and I flatter myself that they accept me as an adequate substitute papa. Please do not judge Ruth by the little you have seen of her. She has never really recovered from the trauma of the kidnapping; she has lived with fear ever since. Fear not so much for herself as for her children."

Madeleine had another question: “Who are Vasquez’s companions?” When he looked at her sharply, she said, “You talked about Vasquez’s ruthless companions. Companions? It seems a funny choice of words. Do you mean his business associates?”

Mark laughed shortly. “Not exactly. They are his acolytes rather than his associates. They call themselves
Los Compañeros de la Hoja
.”

He pronounced it “Oh-Ha,” and it was a new word to me; my Spanish vocabulary is fairly limited. “What’s an
hoja?
” I asked.

“
Hoja
means ‘leaf.’ The Companions of the Leaf. Of the coca leaf.” Mark grimaced. “I told you it was a religion. Gregorio Vasquez is the high priest. For business and personal reasons he has become involved with other drugs, but cocaine is more than mere merchandise to him. And the people shadowing me, I think they are all Companions of the Leaf, prepared to do the old man’s bidding when he sends them the word, after purifying themselves by certain dark rituals involving the sacred drug.”

I said, “They’re also watching Madeleine and me, you know, and have been for some weeks.”

He frowned. “That is strange. Are you certain?”

“I can show you one sitting just up the street from here.” After a moment I went on: “Let’s work it out. You disappear from your old haunts after the kidnapping. They track you out here somehow. Their instructions state, presumably, that you can’t be killed until it’s certain that your research materials can be confiscated or destroyed at the same time. It’s also customary, before drastic action is taken, to learn something about the habits and acquaintances of the victim, to see if they could cause any problems. I don’t know how many friends you and your wife have made in Santa Fe—”