The Queen of the South (37 page)

"We're paid," said the one who spoke, after looking at the money and then at his comrade. And it occurred to Teresa that either Yasikov paid his people very well or they had a lot of respect for him. Maybe both. She never learned what their names were. Patty always called them Pixie and Dixie.

The two packages have been located," Yasikov reported. "A colleague who owes me some favors just called. I'll let you know what happens." He spoke to Teresa by phone the day before the meeting with the Italians, giving the news no apparent importance, in the course of a conversation about other matters.

Teresa was with her people, planning the purchase of eight thirty-foot rubbers that would be stored in a large warehouse in an industrial park in Estepona until they were to be launched. When she got off the phone she lit a cigarette to give herself some time, wondering how her friend the Russian was going to solve this problem. Patty looked at her. Sometimes, Teresa decided irritatedly, it's like she can read my fucking mind.

Teo was in the Caribbean, and Eddie, relegated to an administrative role, was overseeing the bank paperwork in Gibraltar. So besides Patty, two new board members for Transer Naga were present: Farid Lataquia and Dr. Ramos. Lataquia was a Lebanese Maronite who owned an import firm, the front for his real activities, which amounted to getting his hands on things that people needed. Small, charming, nervous, his hair thinning at the crown of his head but compensated for by a bushy moustache, he had made some money in arms trafficking during the Lebanese war—he was married to a Gemayel daughter—and he now lived in Marbella. Given enough money, personnel, and equipment, he could find anything. Thanks to him, Transer Naga had reliable transport for cocaine: old fishing boats from Huelva, private yachts or over-the-hill low-tonnage merchant vessels that before loading salt in Torrevieja would pause on the high seas to take on drugs that had entered Morocco via the Atlantic, and in certain cases act as feeder ships to speedboats operating off the eastern coast of Andalucia.

As for Dr. Ramos, he had been a physician in the merchant marine, and he was Transer Naga's tactical officer: he planned operations, specified loading and drop-off points, designed diversionary tactics, camouflage. In his fifties, with gray hair, tall and very thin, careless in his dress and, apparently, his personal hygiene, he always wore old knit cardigans, flannel shirts, and wrinkled pants. He smoked old pipes with burned-out bowls, filling them slowly and deliberately—he was the calmest man in the world—with an English tobacco he carried in its original tin, which, with the keys, coins, lighters, tamps, and other unpredictable objects he always had about him, made his pockets lumpy and deformed. Once, when he pulled out a handkerchief—embroidered with his initials, as in the old days—Teresa saw a miniature flashlight on a Danone yogurt promotional keychain fall out. He sounded like a metal-recycling truck when he walked.

"A single ID," the doctor was saying. "All the Zodiacs with the same registration and name. Identical, for all practical purposes. And since we'll put them in the water one by one, there's not the slightest problem. On each trip, once they're loaded, you take the ID tag off and they're anonymous. To be even safer, we can abandon them afterward, or have somebody pick them up. Pay us for them, of course. So we can make back part of our investment."

"Isn't it risky, all with the same registration?"

"Like I say, they'll go in the water one by one. When A is on an operation, we'll put the number on B. That way, since they're all alike, we'll always have one tied up at the pier, clean. Officially, it won't ever have moved from there."

"What about port security?"

Dr. Ramos' face betrayed only the slightest smile, of sincere modesty.
That
was also his specialty: harbor police, mechanics, sailors. He haunted the docks, parking his old Citroen Deux Chevaux anywhere, chatting with anyone he ran into, his pipe between his teeth and that absentminded, respectable, avuncular appearance of his. He had a little motorboat in Cabo-pino that he went fishing in. He knew every spot along the coast and every soul between Malaga and the mouth of the Guadalquivir.

"That's under control. No one will give us any trouble. Of course, they might come in from outside to investigate, but I can't cover that flank. Outside security is not within my purview."

Teresa took care of that aspect herself, through Teo and some of Patty's contacts. One-third of Transer Naga's income went to "public relations" on both sides of the Strait; politicians, government personnel, state security agents. The key was in negotiating—depending on the situation—with either information or money. Teresa never forgot the lesson of Punta Castor, and she had let some sizable shipments be intercepted—overhead, she called it—in order to throw good publicity in the way of the director of the Costa del Sol organized-crime section, Commissioner Nino Juarez, an old friend of Teo Aljarafe's. The various regions of the Guardia Civil also benefited from privileged information and lowered operational security to make interceptions and boost their statistics. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours—and suddenly, you owe me one. Or several.

There were a few lower-ranking officials, police officers, and Civil Guardsmen on whom this sort of delicacy was wasted; with them, a trusted contact would simply lay a sheaf of banknotes on the table, and that was that. Not everyone let themselves be bought, but even then, unit solidarity tended to kick in. It was rare for an officer to rat out a colleague, except in the most egregious cases. Besides, the line between drug running and fighting crime was sometimes not all that clear; many people worked both sides at once— paying informers with drugs, for instance—and money was the only rule that was never broken.

With regard to certain local politicians, not much tact was needed there, either. Teresa, Patty, and Teo had dinner several times with Tomas Pestana, the mayor of Marbella, to talk about the rezoning of several pieces of land they were interested in building on. Teresa had quickly learned that the more profits you brought to those you deal with, the more support they gave you. In the end, it was in the interest of even the guy in the corner store that you run drugs. And on the Costa del Sol, like everywhere else, introducing yourself as a person with a large amount of money to invest opened many doors. After that, it was all a question of ability and patience. A question of compromising people step by step, without scaring them off, until finally their well-being depended on you. Letting it happen easy. Vaseline. Like with the courts: You started off with flowers and candy for the secretaries and you wound up taking the judge to bed. Or several judges. Teresa had managed to put three on the payroll so far, including the presiding judge of a regional court, for whom Teo Aljarafe had just purchased an apartment in Miami.

She now turned to Lataquia. "What about the motors?"

The Lebanese man made an ancient Mediterranean gesture, the fingers of one hand together, then turning and swiping upward.

"It hasn't been easy," he said. "We still lack six units. I'm making inquiries."

"And the accessories?"

"The Wiseco pistons came in three days ago, no problem. The ball bearings for the connecting rods, too ... As for the motors, I can complete the order with different makes."

"I specified," Teresa said slowly, emphasizing every word, "two-hundred-twenty-five-horsepower
pinche
Yamahas.... That's what I specified."

Lataquia looked to Dr. Ramos for support, but the doctor's face remained inscrutable. He sucked at his pipe, lost in a cloud of smoke. Teresa smiled inside. They were all on their own in this game.

"I know," Lataquia said, still looking at the doctor, his tone somewhat resentful, "but finding sixteen motors all at once is not easy. Not even an official distributor can guarantee that many on such short notice."

"All the motors have to be identical," Dr. Ramos reminded him. "Or else
adios,
cover."

On top of it, he's a collaborator,
Lataquia's eyes said.
Ibn charmuta.
You people must think we Phoenicians can do miracles. "What a pity," he finally said. "All that expense for one trip."

"Look who's crying over the expenses," Patty chimed in, lighting a cigarette. "Mister Ten Percent." She expelled the smoke hard, pursing her lips. "The bottomless pit."

She laughed softly, out on the margin of the conversation as usual. Enjoying it.

Lataquia assumed his expression of a man misunderstood. "I'll do what I can."

"I'm sure you will." Teresa smiled.

Never show doubt in public, Yasikov had said. Surround yourself with advisors, listen carefully, take your time giving orders if necessary, but afterward, never hesitate in front of the people working for you, never let them debate your decisions once they're made. In theory, a boss is never wrong. Oh, no. Everything you say has been carefully considered beforehand. The most important thing is respect. "If you can, make them love you. Of course. That ensures loyalty, too. Yes. But if you have to choose, it's better to be respected than loved."

"I'm sure," she repeated.

Although even better than being respected is being feared, she thought. But fear can't be imposed all of a sudden; it has to come gradually. Any psychopath can scare people. What's hard is making people fear you little by little.

Lataquia was thinking, pulling at his moustache.

"If you authorize it," he said, "I can make inquiries elsewhere. I know people in Marseilles and Genoa.... It will take a bit longer. And there's the question of import permits and so on."

"Just do it. I want those motors." She paused, looking down at the table. "One more thing. We have to start thinking about a big boat." She raised her eyes. "Not too big. With all the legal cover in place."

"How much do you want to spend?"

"Seven hundred thousand. Seven-fifty, tops."

Patty wasn't following the conversation. She was just watching Teresa from a distance, smoking, saying nothing. Teresa avoided looking at her. Bottom line, she thought, you always say that I'm the one that runs the business. That you like it like that.

"For an Atlantic crossing?" Lataquia, who had caught the connotation of the extra fifty thousand, wanted to know.

"No. Just to be able to be more mobile, out there."

"Something up?"

Dr. Ramos allowed himself a frown of censure. Too many questions, said his phlegmatic silence. Look at me. Or at Senorita O'Farrell sitting over there, quiet as a mouse.

"Could be," Teresa replied. "How long do you need?"

She knew how long she had. And it was not much time. The Colombians were on the verge of a quantum leap. A single shipment, everything at once, that would supply both the Italians and the Russians for months. Yasikov had approached her about the possibility, and Teresa had promised to think about it.

Lataquia pulled at his moustache again. "I don't know," he said. "A trip to look around, the formalities, and the payment. Three weeks, minimum." "Less."

"Two weeks." "One."

"I can try," Lataquia sighed. "But it'll cost more."

Teresa laughed out loud. She loved this
cabrons
act. One out of every three words was money with him.

"No me chingues,
Lataquia. Not a dollar more. And get a move on, your beans are burning."

The meeting with the Italians was held the next afternoon, in the apartment in Sotogrande. Maximum security. Besides the Italians—two men from the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta who'd arrived that morning at the Malaga airport—only Teresa and Yasikov attended. Italy had become the main European consumer of cocaine, and the idea was to ensure a minimum of four shipments of seven hundred kilos a year.

One of the Italians, a mature man with gray sideburns and an impeccably tailored jacket that gave him the air of a sporty, fashionable, prosperous businessman, spoke for the pair; the other man was silent the entire time, except for when he leaned over once in a while to whisper a few words in his colleague's ear. The spokesman explained the plan in detail, in acceptable Spanish. The time was ripe for establishing this connection: Pablo Escobar was being hunted down in Medellin, the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers had suffered reverses that severely limited their ability to operate directly in the United States, and the other Colombian clans needed to make up in Europe for the losses they had suffered from being elbowed out of the U.S. by the Mexican mafias. They, the 'Ndrangheta, but also the Sicilian Mafia and Neopolitan Camorra—all on good terms, and all men of honor, he added very seriously, after his companion whispered to him—needed to guarantee themselves a constant supply of cocaine hydrochloride with a purity of ninety to ninety-five percent. They'd be able to sell it for S60.000 a kilo, three times as much as in Miami or San Francisco. They also needed coca paste to be sent to local underground refineries. At this point, the other man—thin, with a close-cropped beard, dark suit, and an old-fashioned look about him—whispered something else in his colleague's ear.

The first man raised an admonitory finger, furrowing his forehead the way Robert De Niro might in a gangster movie. "We keep our word to those who keep their words," he intoned.

It struck Teresa that in a world where gangsters went to the movies and watched television like everybody else, reality often imitated fiction.

"A broad-based, stable business," the man was now saying, "with a good outlook for the future, as long, of course, as the first operations meet everyone's expectations." Then he told Teresa something she'd come to the meeting knowing, thanks to Yasikov: The Colombians already had the first shipment prepared: a container ship, the
Derly,
was even now at the dock in La Guaira, Venezuela, ready to take aboard a roll-on, roll-off truck containing seven hundred five-gallon drums of automobile grease, each of which held a large package of coke. The rest of the operation was nonexistent, he said, shrugging and looking at Teresa and Yasikov as though it were all their fault.