Days of the Dead

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He smiled to himself and resumed walking, heading up Cinco de Mayo towards the hotel he had stayed in nineteen years before. It was still there, but either his standards had risen or the hotel’s had dropped, and a cursory look at one room was enough to send him back on to the street. A few yards further on he found one of the places the guidebook recommended. The room he was shown seemed clean and the hotel itself seemed suitably anonymous. He checked in, left his bag in the room and continued on up Cinco de Mayo in search of something to eat.

The old city seemed seedier than he remembered, and not so lively; he supposed a lot of the night-life must have moved to the Zona Rosa a couple of miles to the east, where the streets would doubtless look much like modern streets did everywhere else. No matter, he told himself – he’d get the business with Toscono out of the way and then spend a few days in the real Mexico. He’d take the overnight train to Oaxaca, drink mescal sours in the main square, and see the world spread out beneath his feet on Monte Alban.

Sir Christopher Hanson was only a few minutes late arriving at his club for lunch, but his guest was already there, skimming through one of the hunting magazines with an amused expression on his face.

‘These’ll be like porn soon,’ Manny Salewicz said as he got up, flourishing the magazine.

‘What?’ Hanson asked, taken aback.

‘The way we hear it,’ the American said, ‘banning blood sports will be the only thing a new Labour government can give its activists which doesn’t cost anything. And then the nobility will have to hide magazines like this under their four-posters.’

The MI6 chief smiled despite himself. Since their first meeting a couple of years earlier Salewicz’s observations had often had that effect – the CIA man had a refreshing, and sometimes alarming, habit of cutting gleefully through the crap. The last time they’d had lunch together Hanson had been requesting American help for an SBS mission to Azerbaijan, and Salewicz had taken great pleasure in pointing out all the potential pitfalls before agreeing to provide it.

Now, as then, they spent the actual lunch in small talk. Salewicz was fascinated by Euro 96, mainly because the game itself left him completely cold. ‘What’s so great about a sport where you can’t use your hands?’ he demanded of Hanson, who could only shrug sympathetically. They then talked about President Clinton’s problems with Whitewater, the Queen’s with her children, and the Russian election. ‘You know what they say about globalization?’ Salewicz asked between mouthfuls of roast lamb and mint sauce. ‘The only thing worse than its failure would be its success.’

It was only when they were nursing large glasses of port in the members’ lounge that Hanson brought up business. ‘I want to talk to you about Angel Bazua,’ he told the American.

Salewicz raised a quizzical eyebrow.

‘In the last week we’ve connected him to a large heroin shipment,’ Hanson went on. He told the American about the timber yard, the hollowed-out logs packed with the stuff, the arrests of the local wholesalers and their Turkish distribution ring. ‘We traced the list of buyers back to a fax machine in a Panama City office, and in that office one of our people intercepted an incoming fax from Providencia. There’s no room for doubt here,’ Hanson said, pulling a file from his briefcase and handing it to the CIA man, ‘the trail leads right to Bazua’s door. His prison door,’ he added with evident disgust.

Salewicz was rifling through the file, playing for time. He’d suspected that Bazua would come up, but his bosses in Washington hadn’t given him many cards to play. ‘There’s no copy of a fax from Providencia here,’ he said, looking up.

‘It was taken from him.’

The CIA man gave Hanson a hurt look. ‘No proof?’ he asked.

‘He saw it. He’ll tell the President he saw it if you like.’

Salewicz shook his head. ‘If you want us to get heavy with the Colombians we need real proof, cast-iron, irrefutable, on-paper proof.’

Hanson took a deep breath. ‘In there,’ he said, indicating the file, ‘you’ll find documented evidence that Bazua is stockpiling weapons. In a prison! He already has two boats, both of which could transport a couple of hundred men. In Argentina his people are openly advertising for “patriotic soldiers of the motherland”.’

‘We know. But two boats? Give me a break.’

‘When Castro and Guevara set out from Mexico in 1957 they only had eighty men in one boat, and by the time they reached the mountains there were only twelve of them. Who’s ruling Cuba now?’

‘It’s not the same.’

‘No, but it’s not that different either. We can’t afford to leave our garrison on the Falklands for ever, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a Labour government doesn’t bring it home sooner rather than later. A force of highly motivated mercenaries would be hard to dislodge with what’s there now, and who knows? – if Bazua picks his moment the government in Buenos Aires may find it easier to back him up than wash their hands of him. The man has to be stopped.’

Salewicz raised both hands in surrender. ‘OK, I get it – he’s one of the bad guys. But what can we actually do – invade Colombia?’

‘You’ve used special forces against the drug labs on the mainland.’

‘Maybe, but not against a prison.’

‘It’s not a prison – it’s a luxury fortress. And if your people don’t do something, then I’m afraid we shall have to.’

‘All that beef’s gone to your head,’ Salewicz said jokingly, but he could see that Hanson wasn’t amused. The English were certainly in a kick-ass mood these days, what with beef and their goddam football tournament. Even the reference to Cuba had probably been deliberate – all the Europeans were pissed off about Washington trying to tell them who to trade with. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘just hold your horses for a few days. I’ll let Langley know how strong your feelings are on this one, OK? I can’t promise anything, but…’ He raised his hands again.

Hanson smiled at him. ‘That would be most useful,’ he said.

I doubt it, Salewicz thought, taking another sip of port. But maybe he’d find out what his own people’s aversion to taking on Bazua was based on, and then convince the Brits accordingly. He certainly couldn’t see Washington giving the Brits a green light to go rampaging in the Caribbean.

Docherty woke up feeling good, without any real idea why. Don’t fight it, he told himself, and after winning a long battle with a recalcitrant shower, he felt even better. A café a few doors down supplied a Mexican egg sandwich – complete with avocados, onions and peppers – a papaya shake and coffee, and for the first time in several years he had a hankering for a cigarette. It was the city, he decided. It remembered that he used to smoke.

The streets were a lot fuller than the night before, and not only with milling pedestrians and honking traffic – goods for sale now seemed to cover most of the pavements. He walked back to the hotel intending to call one of the car-hire firms, but decided to ask the receptionist instead. And yes, of course he could get their English guest a car, especially if cash or traveller’s cheques were involved. A short phone call to a relative confirmed as much – a brand-new VW Golf would be there in half an hour.

Docherty then spent a couple of minutes with the hotel’s city directory, which confirmed the two numbers Gustavo Macías had given him. Toscono’s business address was on Balderas, a street running south from the Paseo de la Reforma; his home was in the rich man’s suburb of Las Lomas de Chapultepec. Docherty returned the directory to the receptionist, walked out to the bank of public phones he had noticed on his way back from breakfast, and called the home address.

A woman answered, which surprised him. ‘Can I speak to Señor Toscono?’ he asked.

‘He is not here,’ she said, and if the tone of her voice was any clue she didn’t seem too upset by the fact. ‘Who is this?’ she asked, as if she’d suddenly remembered the correct procedure.

Docherty hung up and walked back across the street to the hotel. By the time he’d returned from his room the hire car was waiting for him. ‘Brand-new’ was perhaps something of an exaggeration but at least it started, and the furry breasts hanging alongside the Virgin Mary seemed a typically local touch. He drove west until he reached the Paseo, then turned south down the wide boulevard with its towering palms, over-the-top monuments and modern skyscrapers. One new building which caught his eye looked like a giant Stanley knife, the tip of its blade poised to scratch the low-hanging smog.

In 1977 it had nearly always been possible to see Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, the two volcanoes which loomed over the city, but Docherty sensed that such clarity was gone for ever. ‘Progress,’ he murmured to himself.

He followed the Paseo as it swung west along the northern edge of the vast Chapultepec Park, and five minutes later he was entering the suburb from which the park derived its name. ‘Hill of the locust’ was the translation, he remembered, and the name seemed appropriate enough – the people who lived around here probably hadn’t noticed Mexico’s economic crisis, much less suffered from it.

Las Lomas de Chapultepec, a few kilometres further out, seemed even richer, and its shady avenues seemed depressingly free of traffic. He was going to stick out like a sore thumb, Docherty thought, not least because nearly every car he saw seemed to be a BMW or a Mercedes.

He found Toscono’s house without difficulty and immediately noticed the coils of razor wire interwoven with the tumbling bougainvillea. Driving on up the hill, he found a small park, and from this relatively innocent vantage-point he was able to get a good idea of the compound’s layout and take a sneak shot with his Polaroid. The camera’s definition might not be that good, but it was quick, and there was no need to involve a processing firm.

The place didn’t look any more inviting on the way down. He had seen no sign of dogs but that didn’t mean much; the wire was crossable but the neighbourhood was far too quiet, and probably well watched – in countries like Mexico the police had a clearer idea of who paid their wages. There had to be better ways of getting to Toscono than over that wall.

Docherty drove thoughtfully back into the centre of the city, trying to ignore the rattling noise somewhere beneath him. On the edge of the Zona Rosa he found an outdoor café which put together a passable chicken torta, and then sat in La Ciudadela square for an hour or more by way of a siesta. At about three he walked up Balderas to Toscono’s office address, which turned out to be a ten-storey glass tower. He waited outside until the lobby receptionist was busy with someone else’s query, then walked in and examined the plaques on the wall behind him. As far as he could tell, Malvinas Import-Export was the sole occupant of the fifth floor.

He walked back outside and circled the building, noting the entrance to the underground car park. A car was just going in, and it seemed that the only entry requirement was money. Docherty strolled down Balderas, collected the Golf and drove back to the office building. The man in the booth at the entrance to the underground park took his pesos without even looking up from his newspaper, and he was in.

There were two levels and he examined them both before parking on the upper, along one of the side walls with a good view of the lift doors. Then he settled down to wait, wishing he’d had the sense to bring a magazine or book with them. The car’s radio worked after a fashion, but there seemed to be only an unrelenting diet of Latino pop on offer, and he would rather have listened to country music. Well, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration.

Between four-thirty and five the car park began to empty, and Docherty became worried that only his and Toscono’s cars would be left, always assuming that the Argentinian was in his office. After all, he could be at the races, at a casino, or even, to judge from the tone of the woman on the telephone, in the arms of a mistress.

And then there he was – the slightly plump, slightly balding, impeccably dressed man from Gustavo’s photograph. The man with him looked and acted like a bodyguard, and as they walked straight towards the Golf, Docherty slowly lowered his head below the level of the dashboard.

He didn’t lift it again until he heard the sound of a car starting up. It was the big white BMW about twenty metres to his left, and Toscono himself was in the driving seat, looking pleased with himself. The other man, who was almost a head taller, seemed to be scowling at the world. It was probably something he had picked up at bodyguard school.

Carmen was a few minutes late arriving at the restaurant, but Detective Peña had phoned to say he would be later still. The table he had booked was beside a window, and she sat there with a glass of chilled white wine, thinking about him. In other circumstances, she thought, it was possible that something might have happened between them. Possible but not probable; he might be attracted to her but he was also happily enough married not to act on the attraction.

She had visited Victoria four times now, and each time it had been painful for both of them. Victoria might seem the less affected on the surface, but the fact that she was still hiding in the fiction of dreams suggested a degree of psychological damage which Carmen found almost as distressing as the story which was emerging between the lines of those dreams.

No real names had emerged, either of the people concerned or the place of the girls’ imprisonment. ‘He’ was the ‘Angel of Death’, the men were ‘his men’, the island was just that. The details that emerged – the squelch of a water-bed, the stuttering fan, birdsong through a window – seemed rooted in evasion; they were like a condemned man’s musings on the beauty of rope.

And yet sometimes there was clarity. ‘We all used to play cards in our room,’ Victoria suddenly said in one of their sessions. ‘I can remember Marysa making a joke about him and we all laughed so much…’

Obviously not every moment had been nightmarish, but then they never were. Marysa had always made good jokes, Carmen thought, and found a tear rolling down her own cheek. Seeing Detective Peña zigzagging through the table towards her, she quickly dabbed it away.