F Paul Wilson - Novel 04 (10 page)

It stank in here. Carlos Salinas
could barely breathe in the thick, wet, sulfurous air. And the glare from the
overhead bank of 600-watt sodium lamps spiked his eyes through his sunglasses.

And yet, Carlos Salinas was
impressed. Deeply impressed.

He’d come to this tiny
apartment in Southeast D.C. to inspect a business opportunity. Instead
he’d found… a miracle.

“Behold my own dwarf
hybrid,” said their host, a thin, bearded, middle-aged ex-hippie who wore
a cowboy hat and referred to himself only as “Jeff.” Carlos knew he
was really Henry Walters, age 45, who lived off Dupont Circle and had been an
independent drug dealer—strictly hallucinogens—for most of his
adult life. “I call it Lizard King Indica Hybrid. Look at those buds, will
you? I cloned out these babies barely six weeks ago and you could start your
harvest right now.”

Carlos stared at the “sea of
green”— Jeff’s term— and marveled. The entire front
room had been taken over by eighteen-inch plants with serrated leaves and hairy
tops—“calyxes,” Jeff called them—waving back and forth
in the gentle breeze from a trio of oscillating fans. They clustered in
children’s plastic swimming pools that in turn sat on metal platforms.
Shades, duct tape, and heavy drapes sealed the windows. Rubber tubing snaked
from plant to plant, supplying water and fertilizer; heaters warmed their roots
from below while the sodium lamps above bathed them in artificial sunlight
twelve hours a day. A large metal tank kept the air rich in carbon dioxide for
maximal growth.

“And the beauty part of the
operation,” Jeff said, “is it’s all computerized. The whole
room is rigged with sensors that monitor light, temperature, humidity, CO
₂
,
and water levels. The computer’s modem allows me to keep tabs on every
one of my seas of green from a phone booth, and a smart interface lets me make
adjustments over the wire. I’ve rigged the place with motion detectors so
I know if someone’s broken in. And last, all my computers are infected
with Deicide, a virus that wipes out the hard drive should the wrong dude try
to access it.”

“You appear to have thought
of everything,” Carlos said.

Inside his suit he was bathed in
sweat. A man of his weight should not frequent jungles, even indoors. Yet
despite his discomfort, he was almost mesmerized by the gentle swaying of the
leaves and calyxes. They seemed almost… happy. Where had plants ever been
treated so well?

A wave of nostalgia engulfed him
for an instant. His first brush with the drug trade had involved marijuana.
Many moonless nights on the beach west of Cartagena, transferring bale after
bale of Colombian Red from trucks to trawlers bound for the Gulf Coast of the
United States. The “square groupers,” as they were known, were the
most profitable “catch” for those crews in the early seventies when
America’s domestic marijuana was so poor.

Smuggling… it was in his
blood. After all, he was a paisa. His ancestors had left the Basque regions of
Spain in the 1600s and settled in the Andes, in Antioquia Province around what
would later become the city of Medellin. When Spain fixed the price of gold in
Colombia, his forebears smuggled it out to Jamaica where they got the higher
market price. Down the centuries it became an Antioquian tradition: Sneak out
coffee, emeralds, and quinine; smuggle electronics, appliances, and perfumes
back in past the rapacious import duties.

True to another paisa tradition,
his father had kicked him out at age sixteen, telling him: If you succeed, send
money; if you fail, don’t come back.

He had succeeded.

“Yeah, the technology’s
great,” Jeff was saying, drawing Carlos back to the present, “but
it’s the plants that are truly awesome—four pounds of top-grade
sensemilla per hundred. This ain’t no Maui Zowie, you know what I mean?
The stuff I started smoking in the sixties was maybe one percent THE. Lizard
King is connoisseur stuff, man—tests opt to fourteen percent. An
absolutely bodacious high. Brings down a minimum of five hundred bucks an ounce.”

“How many plants in this
room?” Carlos said.

“Two hundred.”

Carlos glanced at Alien Gold, his
lean and lupine chief bean counter. “Alien?”

Gold stood near the door, his arms
folded across the front of his Armani suit, the sodium lights reflecting off
his blond hair and the wire rims of his glasses. “That’s sixty-four
thousand per crop,” he said without hesitation. “At roughly eight
crops a year, figure half a mill per room per year.”

Carlos looked at Jeff. “That
is a good living. Why do you need me?”

“I want to expand,”
Jeff said. “Look. Grass is a thirty something-billion-dollar industry. I
can’t produce it fast enough to keep my customers happy. I’m ready
to move up to warehouses.” He extended his arms over his tiny jungle as
if blessing it. “Imagine it, man. A twenty thousand-square-foot sea of
green. Cosmic!”

“You are not afraid of
President Winston legalizing your crop?”

“Never happen. This is a
growth industry, and I need a banker—somebody with connections… you
know, for security and such. You’re that guy.” Gold’s cell
phone beeped before Carlos could reply.

He saw a troubled look steal over
the young MBA’s features as he muttered monosyllables into the receiver.
“Everything is all right?” he said as Gold turned toward him.

“It’s Llosa,” he
said. “He just got a call from your new contractor saying something about
the package being defective. He insists on speaking to you right away.”

Defective? Carlos felt a sudden
tightness in his chest. Had something gone wrong? Had the child been hurt? He
prayed not.

“Have Llosa tell the
contractor to give a number and wait. I’ll call him from my
office.”

As Gold passed on the instructions,
Carlos turned toward the door. “We must go,” he said.

“That’s it?” Jeff
said. “I took a risk bringing you here, you know.”

“We will be contacting
you.”

“I’d like an answer
soon,” Jeff said. “After all, I ain’t getting any younger.”

“You must be patient,”
Carlos said, giving the man’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Otherwise
you could be worried about getting older, eh?”

Jeff blanched behind his beard.
“Hey, I didn’t mean any—”

“You will be
contacted,” Carlos said, smiling grimly as he walked out into the cooler,
fresher air of the dirty hallway. He didn’t like to be rushed.

“Any details from our friend
that you didn’t mention?” he said to Gold when they were seated in
his Lexus and his driver was gliding them back to Georgetown.

Gold shook his head. “No.
Pretty damn enigmatic.” His voice took on a whiny tone. “Just like
the rest of this kidnapping thing. If you’d let me in on the big picture,
maybe I could help.” As much as Carlos trusted Gold, this “big
picture” was best left under wraps.

“All in good time.
Alien,” he said. “But tell me: What did you think of that little
demonstration back there?” Carlos did not really want to talk about
marijuana— he was more concerned about the “defect” in the package
MacLaglen had picked up—but he did not want to listen to Alien’s
whining about not being trusted.

“A warehouse-sized setup like
that could be very profitable But I hope you’re not considering
investing—”

“Not me,” Carlos said.
“But I can connect him with some money people—”

“And take a cut.” Gold
smiled. “That’s my man. For a moment there I was afraid you were
thinking about getting back into handling product.”

“No.” Carlos shook his
head slowly. “I’ve handled more than enough in my day.” How
many years had he been in the trade? Certainly half his life—and he was
looking down the barrel at fifty.

His first brush with cocaine had
come when he joined up with fellow paisa Pablo Escobar, who was transshipping
kilos of the white powder from Chile to the U.S. in spare tires. Cocaine was a
small business back then, a cottage industry run out of Chile. But everything
changed when Pinochet took over in 1973. The cocaine refiners fled to Colombia
and into the arms of Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa… just about the time
cocaine use exploded in the U.S.

Colombia, Medellin, the
world—especially Carlos’s world—would never be the same.

Carlos had done his share of mule
work in “Los Pablos,” but along the way he became the group’s
peacemaker. He discovered a knack for bringing warring factions together,
striking a deal, and letting each feel that the other party had given up more.

And so when Jorge
Ochoa—“El Gordo”—called a summit meeting of all the
major players in the cocaine trade, it was only natural for Pablo Escobar to
send Carlos Salinas to represent his interests.

April 18, 1981, the day he landed
on Ochoa’s private mile-long airstrip at his estate on the Caribbean
coast near Barranquilla. Jorge Ochoa—“the Fat Man”—
personally came down to the air strip to greet them and bring them up to the
main house. Hacienda Veracruz, as Ochoa called his estate, was the size of a
small province, with its own zoo, a private bullring, and a stable of prized
caballos de paso—walking horses.

The traders arrived as suspicious
competing factions, feudal lords, viciously protective of their individual
fiefdoms; they left with an agreement to pool their resources and their product
in a combined effort to keep the lines of supply wide open into their biggest
market: the United States. Later the Americans would say that this meeting
marked the birth of the Medellm cartel. True, he guessed, but none of them ever
referred to themselves as a cartel. They were la compania.

“Call him,” Carlos told
Llosa as he entered the sumptuous back office of his restaurant. Llosa dialed,
then handed him the receiver of the Louis XVI-style telephone.

When Carlos recognized
MacLaglen’s voice, he did not let him speak. He said, “Hold now
while we check the line.” He signaled to Llosa to run a scan. Llosa was
good at this.

Carlos Salinas shifted his
two-hundred-eighty pounds in the oversized chair as he waited. His back was
killing him.

Even though only a handful of
people knew his private numbers, Carlos hadn’t accepted an incoming call
in years. Who knew where they were originating? His research had assured him
that MacLaglen was just as careful as he, but even public phones could no
longer be trusted. America was turning into a fascist state. Almost as bad as
his homeland.

So he always called back, using his
secure line—and never to a cellular phone. Even his own line was suspect;
he constantly had it checked and rechecked.

He wondered which of
MacLaglen’s favorite phones he was calling from. He knew most of the
man’s habits, his favorite hotel lobbies and street phones, his
accomplices, Paul Dicastro and Poppy Mulliner. He probably knew more about
Michael MacLaglen than anyone else in the world.

Carlos could have used some of his
fellow paisas for this job. After all, kidnapping was an art in Colombia. But
he’d decided an American would be better. He did not want any Colombians
involved should anything go wrong.

Carlos had become aware of
MacLaglen when he kidnapped a gun runner Carlos had dealt with. He watched
MacLaglen then, saw how he handled his next snatch— a videotape
bootlegger. Very smooth. He had talent. Here was their man.

Llosa looked up from the lights and
dials on his scanner box and nodded. Carlos pressed the recorder button before
speaking.

“So, Miguel. You have picked
up the package, I am told. I am delighted that the first phase is
completed.” Clean scan or not, Carlos believed in revealing as little as
possible over the telephone.

“Yeah. That went fine. But
the contents are defective.”

“So my associate informed me.
How so?”

“You ever hear of
epilepsy?”

“Epilepsy?” Carlos
smoothed his mustache and glanced at Gold. Epilepsy?

He’d seen people convulse
after too much cocaine. Was that what this child would be doing? “You are
saying that epilepsy is involved here?”

Gold stood near the window. He
spread his hands and shrugged, offering his that’s-news-to-me expression.

“Damn right it is,”
MacLaglen said. “Why didn’t anyone know about this?”

Good question, Carlos thought.
He’d received excellent in-depth intelligence on the President and his
doctor friend, all of it free. That something this important could have been
overlooked annoyed him. Well, as the saying went, you get what you pay for.

“Or did somebody know about
it,” MacLaglen was saying, and Carlos could hear the anger rising in his
voice, “and neglect to tell me?”

“Calm yourself, Miguel. No
one neglected to tell you anything. It was somehow missed. It is not, after
all, something that one parades around. Certainly for a man of your talents
this is not an insurmountable difficulty.”

“Don’t give me that.
This is a major glitch. It shows incompetence right at the source. What else
don’t we know, señor?”

“I have the utmost confidence
in you, Miguel. I am certain everything will be fine.”

“This means more contact with
the package’s point of origin. It broadens the interface. The more
contact, the more chance of something going wrong.”

Carlos was growing impatient with
MacLaglen. Time to put him in his place. “I have three words for you,
Miguel: Deal with it.” Cold silence on the other end of the line. Carlos
let it continue for a few seconds. He’d used the stick; now for the carrot.

“By the way,” he said
cordially, “you are due the second installment. You may pick it up today,
at which time I will inform you of phase two.”

“I’ll be over around
five.” The line went dead.