Three Minutes Read online

  A white plaster house. Bars on several of its windows. On the short sides of the house red bricks that hadn’t been laid straight. A few simple cars parked just outside and some kids playing down the street, a cluster of telephone lines a few meters above their heads, like long, untuned guitar strings. Central Medellín near the end of Calle 3 Sur and the intersection of Carrera 52. A staircase marked number 17. A tiny, filthy elevator that El Mestizo walked past—he always avoided them, climbing the stairs resolutely, because then he was in charge, no machine was going to decide if he got stuck somewhere. Hoffmann followed him, counting the steps, eighteen between each floor, seventy-two to the fourth floor, and the door with RODRIGUEZ engraved on a gold-plated metal plaque.

  The doorbell was a small, round, black button that didn’t work. El Mestizo, who stood in front of Piet, knocked instead. Several times. Until they both heard steps. Hardly light, not much of a bounce, more like shuffling. Someone who was tired, or perhaps sick or old. The latter. A man with long, thin, silver-gray hair opened the door hesitantly, peering out through a narrow slit. A pair of glasses with taped-up frames hung from a twisted band over his bare chest. Hoffmann guessed he was seventy-five. The same age his father would have been. With a voice that was unexpectedly powerful.

  “What do you want?”

  El Mestizo grabbed hold of the edge of the door and tore it open. The older man came along with it into the stairwell. “We’re looking for Prez Rodriguez.”

  “He doesn’t live here. I live here. Alone.”

  “And who the hell are you?”

  “Luis Rodriguez.”

  “If he doesn’t live here, then why do the tax authorities disagree?”

  “And why exactly do you think it’s my job to keep track of what the tax authority records say?” The elderly man used his long, skinny arms to try to pull the door shut. El Mestizo held tight and took a step closer.

  “Rodriguez. It’s on your fucking mailbox. It’s your job to keep track because it’s your fucking son who bears your name!”

  “Listen, if I did have a son, then it would be none of your goddamn business what I named him.”

  Hoffmann didn’t smile, not outwardly anyway. The old man was doing his job. As a parent. He was protecting his son. Which a parent does no matter how old that son is.

  “You got that, you Indian bastard?”

  “This is the way it is. This son, who you named and who you think that I should forget about, has now been warned through you that he has exactly three days to pay up what he owes. And this, papi, is his only warning.”

  Luis Rodriguez took a step forward too. Stood very close to El Mestizo. Frail and well into retirement, but with the same attitude he probably had when he was young and strong.

  “Are you standing at my door threatening my family?”

  “Yes.”

  There were no more steps to take. So Luis Rodriguez just stared. Those watery eyes, now covered with a film, had probably once been sharp, penetrating.

  “If you hurt my family, you Indian bastard, I’ll kill yours.”

  Hoffmann was still smiling, on the inside. It was . . . well, sweet. And real. Somewhere inside of that hissing, spitting, fighting man, he saw his own father, whom he missed.

  “Three days. Are you aware, old man, while you stand there calling me names, what the consequences of not paying your debt to the PRC are? You can be goddamn sure your son is. That’s why he’s not here. That’s why he took off and left you to face the consequences.” El Mestizo let go of the door, turned, started to leave. Then he stopped on the third step and turned around again. “Luis?”

  “Yes?”

  “You shouldn’t have threatened me.”

  Back in the car, behind the wheel and headed down Carrera 52 toward Medellín city, it was as if nothing had happened. Even though El Mestizo’s life had just been threatened. Because that’s just how it goes, part of everyday life, rarely leaving any traces.

  “A petty dealer. Next time we pass by, if the son still owes us, we might as well kill one of them, simple enough, no one will mourn them. But this thing with his old bosses at the cartel, well, that complicates things, Peter. You realize that, right? There are competing operations in this region. If this plan is to be executed, we can’t be seen to be involved—we’d be starting a war. The last time we did that, we won eventually—but it cost us thirty-six employees. I’ll find another way this time.”

  Hoffmann sat in the passenger seat, looking out at drab houses, any of which might contain Prez and Luis Rodriguez. And he knew what another way looked like. He hated it. The only time he’d spoken openly about what he thought of El Mestizo’s world, the only time the discussion got close to raised voices and fists, the only time he chose to jeopardize his undercover mission, was when he couldn’t stand to swallow and spit out this life.

  Teatro Metropolitano. They had arrived. It was there, outside the main entrance, that El Mestizo usually stopped when they had business in Medellín—and where they parted ways. Therefore, the rest of Hoffmann’s employer’s journey was unclear. After a couple of visits—with Hoffmann insisting he was responsible for protection and wasn’t even supposed to leave his side—El Mestizo let it be known that he would be at Carrera 7 in a hospital called Clínica Medellín. That—but no more. And they always met again outside the theater exactly two hours later. Piet, as the protector, knew where, but not what, why, had never received any answers, and eventually quit asking. And Hoffmann had found the perfect way to utilize his free time.

  That’s when he usually met Lucia Mendez, the meetings that were his one and only true mission.

  Their meeting places always had at least two entrances and two exits on two different streets. And they arrived at different times. They took place in empty apartments that were under renovation, plastic covering every piece of furniture. They’d sit down at someone’s kitchen table, drink someone else’s coffee. No matter if they met in Medellín, Cali, or Bogotá. The same principle as the meetings he’d had with Erik Wilson, his handler in Stockholm.

  Scaffolding in the stairwell. Paint, rollers, toolboxes, and men in identical caps and jeans. Hoffmann nodded and started to zigzag past them up a stairwell enclosed by plastic. A glance out the window at the terrace that marked the first floor, he knew she had come from that direction, crossed the courtyard and in through the rear staircase, gone all the way up to the attic that connected this building to the other one, and down these stairs.

  Third floor. ORTEGA on the door. Same last name at every meeting place. He rang the doorbell, listened to the drilling taking place somewhere on the property. One more ring. And he caught a shadow observing him through the peephole.

  She opened the door. Dark, curly hair, eyes that had the kind of seriousness he looked for in someone before almost trusting them. “Come in. It’s just as messy as usual.”

  Lucia Mendez, special agent in charge of both of the DEA’s Colombia offices. El Mestizo had informed Hoffmann late last night that they’d be headed to Medellín for a collection and a hospital visit, and Hoffmann had contacted her in turn, as they’d agreed, and left the branch in Cartagena. He could never say exactly when, because El Mestizo always withheld when and how until they were on their way, and so she had to be in place for a few hours already—it was the same at every one of their twenty-eight meetings over the last two and a half years.

  They walked through a dusty hallway, continued on to the kitchen, and she pulled plastic off the table and chairs while he unwrapped the cupboards and found a jar of instant coffee and peeled more plastic off the stove. Poured water into a saucepan and lit a flame that flickered blue and red. Just like in Stockholm—Erik had pulled off the plastic, and he’d put on the coffee.

  “Lucia.”

  “Paula.”

  Wilson had given them Piet’s codename in Sweden and the DEA had decided to continue using it. So he was Paula in this room. El Sueco to El Mestizo and the guerrillas. Peter Haraldsson to his neighbors in
Cali. Piet Hoffmann inside. Lies, truth, it was difficult to know where the line stood, to even know if there was a line.

  She put a couple of porcelain cups between them on the table, smiled. “How’s it going?”

  “Just a regular day.” He liked her quite a bit. Two and a half years of service and no contact with Sweden and Erik, no contact with the US and Masterson, who recruited him, so Lucia Mendez, by definition, was his only colleague. Sounding board. Security. She wasn’t Erik, who’d had nine years, but on her way.

  “And Zofia?”

  “Fine, as usual.”

  She’d been trained, like Erik, at a base called FLETC located in Glynco, Georgia. And you could tell. Like Erik, she did her best to form emotional ties with him, get close to him, get him to risk his life for her every day, for just a shard of information. He hadn’t realized it with Erik. He’d been young and naive and grateful to be accepted with open arms after serving time in prison. He could see through it now. The manipulation followed the same pattern. But it didn’t bother him. This time he was the one in need, in need of work in order to survive.

  “And Rasmus? Hugo?”

  “Both good.”

  She was the one who helped Zofia find a job as an English teacher in Cali. She’d arranged protection for the boys when he’d feared retaliation. Arranged protection for his family when he exposed them to danger—they’d almost been shot up once, in his car, they’d all been sitting there just moments before, and the vehicle shortly after looked like a colander, a childish thought, but that’s exactly what occurred to him as blood flowed from his right shoulder and the windows, doors, and roof were covered with black holes. And—when a man going by the name of El Sueco was wanted by the police for attempted murder and extortion, and bribes were not enough to make it go away, she was the one who made charges disappear, twice.

  The water was boiling now, and he filled the cups to the brim.

  “I don’t know how it tastes. But it has to be better than the coffee of our mutual friends, which is mixed with another, much stronger powder.” They drank. About half a cup each. And then it was time.

  “Here.” From one breast pocket he pulled out the GPS receiver and placed it on the table in front of her. She read the decimal degrees on the display,

  57.308326, 15.1241899

  and scribbled down the coordinates of the place he’d visited yesterday—latitude and longitude in code—on a fresh white page in a small notebook. They would give her the location of a PRC-controlled cocaine kitchen in the Amazon jungle when she ran those numbers through the converter back in her office in Bogotá.

  “Lucia—no sooner than eight weeks. Okay?”

  “Four weeks is what we’ve agreed on. That’s when we’ll strike.”

  “Last time you waited exactly four weeks. This time you need to wait at least eight.”

  “In eight weeks the kitchen, the drug factory, will be gone.”

  “This cocina, it’s central to the operation in that region. And it’s so remote, so lavish—rest assured it will be there for a while.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “No. But it’s a risk we have to take in order to avoid any appearance of a pattern related to my visits.”

  An incubation period. Which had to vary. In order to minimize the risk that Hoffmann’s information—which provided the entire foundation for a strike by the US authorities—could be linked to a certain Peter Haraldsson, who the PRC were paying to protect that very same cocaine kitchen.

  “You’ve got the place. And time. But I have to give you a warning as well.”

  She looked at him, expectantly.

  “This cocina, Lucia . . . it’s not like the others. It’s bigger, the biggest I’ve been to. It has a whole other level of defense—heavier weaponry, skilled soldiers—ones I helped train. You have to be prepared, more manpower, more firepower. Otherwise, you’ll be the ones left lying in that jungle.”

  Afterward they draped the plastic back over the cabinets, tables, chairs, washed up the two porcelain cups, changed the name on the door from ORTEGA back to SILVA—as if they’d never been there.

  He was supposed to leave first, take the northern exit she’d entered by. He hugged her good-bye, that’s how they’d always said good-bye, and it would feel wrong and weird to suddenly stretch out a hand instead. He’d made it out the door and halfway across the landing, when she caught up with him and grabbed his arm.

  “The phone?”

  His other breast pocket. He pulled it out while she took another one out of the inside pocket of her blazer. The same system as when he worked in Sweden. That phone received calls from a single number. Sent calls to a single number. Two burner phones that only called each other, two anonymous subscribers that could never be traced.

  “It’s been a month. Time to change.”

  She had put a paper bag on the wrapped hat shelf in the hall and grabbed it now and took out a new phone.

  “If you could give me your old one.”

  He did so and took the new one. With a single preprogrammed number.

  “From now on, use this one instead. And—we’ll see you at the fourth if we meet in Bogotá, or the second if it’s Medellín, or the first if it’s Cartagena.”

  Hoffmann passed by more construction workers as he made his way down the stairwell than he did on the way up, they were bolting together metal scaffolding that blocked off large parts of the space, and his clothes were covered with a layer of dust and paint chips by the time he stepped out the front door.

  SPEAKER CROUSE STOOD in the corner of the barracks’ yard with his weight resting on his right leg. Standing for too long always made his left hip ache, and he was worried that someone might notice. He didn’t know why, after all he was a middle-aged man, and like other middle-aged men he walked around in a body that life was gradually dismantling. Maybe vanity. Maybe it was the fear of revealing weakness, a politician who didn’t radiate power got no voters, no votes, no missions. He stayed in motion, getting up and down from his chair at the conference table during long meetings, preferring to stroll during interviews, and when he had no choice, like at the lectern, he’d found his own solution—memorize what he was going to say and then lean forward on one elbow where others kept their papers, then the pain ceased and no one saw.

  A gentle drizzle was delivering its first drops—part of an eternal cycle that carried water the way he moved—up, down, all around. So fragile that the crackling-dry gravel continued to rise like smoke as the twenty-man squad moved in formation in front of him—left right left—the captain’s monotone shouts over the megaphone—left right left—black marching boots and uniformed arms whose gestures and movements were an exaggerated theater. Because that’s what it was. Spectacle, performance, because their spiritual father was watching them, the Crouse Force, from just a couple of marching steps away. Drills that were repeated ad nauseam. Crouse turned around, glancing up at the elegant officers’ club on the top floor of the building from which he’d just come. They usually insisted on inviting him up there, on the other side of that beautiful panoramic window, he was supposed to be impressed by the incorruptibles, convinced that the money he worked so hard to get mattered, was making some impact, building something new. But he’d never liked the red carpet and silver cutlery of the officers’ club. He preferred standing alone without the colonel, who he himself had carefully appointed, looking over his shoulder, without any of the other officers either, without Roberts scanning the area, concerned for his safety.

  He breathed in deeply, felt almost calm. Here. Of all places. In the corner of the courtyard, surrounded by eight bunker-like buildings, which housed the one hundred and fifty incorruptible soldiers that made up Camp Justice. A completely ridiculous name. But the Colombian politicians who’d made this possible had been so proud when they christened it with that name that Crouse let it be, and today, a few years later, was almost accustomed to it.

  Stillness. Despite the fact that Combat Platoon 1
—policing and reconnaissance—were now marching side by side, shouting out those drills, right turn and halt, which he loathed. He stared into the smoke of gravel dust swirling around them like a smokescreen and his mind wandered to other images—a murder streamed live via satellite followed by mass killings, bodies buried by a cleanup crew for a few pesos more. He usually argued that evil didn’t exist—that it was constructed to explain behaviors we didn’t understand. But when life was reduced to money, people paid to bury other people, he realized he might be wrong—evil might really exist. The whole evening, night, morning, he was flooded by these evil images, which could only be replaced by good ones. By people who couldn’t be bought. His fourth trip here, and it was only now that he understood that feelings won’t let reason and thought in until the strong were neutralized. There, in the corner of a barracks’ courtyard, the images changed again. Pushed away by contrasting images, the scene in front of him and the resistance it implied, to take on the drug world and dismantle it piece by piece—those bastards were never going to win, and if they did they’d lose so much in the process victory would be meaningless.

  Incorruptible. That’s what they were, the ones who were marching. Recruited after a long selection process from various professions—policemen, soldiers, paramilitary, customs officers, prison guards, and the occasional psychologist, or teacher, or political scientist—their most important attribute, besides performing well in combat, was that they were not for sale.

  It had started a few hours earlier, as soon as they landed at El Dorado International. Those images of the newly dug graves started to waver as soon as the pilot parked the plane on the runway. It really did work to come here, to visit the regiment, which stood in what used to be one of the few remaining green spaces in the center of Bogotá—a triangle framed by Carrera 60 in the southeast and Calle 53 in the northeast and Calle 25 in the west—knowing that he would soon see coca plantations burned to the ground or warehouses filled with chemicals explode or closely monitored storage facilities, filled with several tons of cocaine packaged and ready to be smuggled out the next day, taken over and seized. Images that replaced the filthy, disgusting ugliness and gave him the kind of serenity he only felt when he thought of his daughter as a child, back when he still believed she’d die after her parents, like she should have.