Wulff had pretty well kept himself under wraps on the way in. With two men to fight off at the estate and then three when they had taken him to the field, it simply did not seem worth it to make an issue of it. He might have had a small chance with the two, but the odds were not good enough; he had dropped his gun and let them take him. Three was even more difficult, although by that time and with a particularly rough, bouncing flight in, they were all getting distracted and kind of stupid. Still, no matter what excesses of energy and luck he had, even if he were able to take over the plane, what would he do then? He did not know how to fly. It was a survival trip, that was for sure, and if he wanted to survive, it was better to play it their way, at least for a while.
Besides, he was interested. He was interested in seeing the man who had trapped Carlin. He wanted to see this Montez, whoever he was. And of course he wanted to see Carlin. It might be worth the trip, it might be worth death itself to see Carlin, and in worse condition than Wulff would ever be.
They came from the airport in another limousine, the pilot doing the driving now, heavy and fast on the damaged roads, none of them saying anything. He had talked to them a good deal about narco on the plane flight, more to keep up his own spirits than for anything else but also because they had seemed genuinely interested, these men who looked vaguely Hispanic but had no accents at all and said that they were working for Montez for the money, not for anything else, that if things worked out for them in a few years they would be able to go into business for themselves. What that business was and exactly how hired thugs branched out in the world wasn’t quite clear to Wulff, but he didn’t pursue the issue. Maybe like ex-narcs they retired to half-pensions, heavy drink, jobs as postal clerks and early heart attacks. He certainly wouldn’t pursue it.
He sat back in the limousine and let them take him where they would. As always, after a spurt of activity it was almost pleasant to lie back, to have the feeling that fate was at least temporarily taking over and out of his own control. From too much control, from the need to do too much, there often came the reverse, which was complete lassitude, a feeling of succumbing to events, letting events completely take over. He had noted this in the faces of a good many of the men he had killed. They had accepted death almost gratefully, their faces creased into a receptivity so great that it almost might have been sexual. They had had enough of anxiety, of trying to extend the parameters of their control farther and farther, and with every extension that control had become more fluid, more tenuous, verging toward transparency … oh, it was agonizing to have a large operation to run, particularly if you were not sure who the hell you were running it over or against, and at the end death must have seemed almost pleasant, at least for some of them. They had lived with it for so long, they had in their way sought it so desperately and from such inner need that when it came it must have been as a lover.
Enough. He sat back in the car and watched the mountains unwind. The three men around him smoked cigarettes and said something in Spanish to one another every so often and gave Wulff beneficent, almost kindly, glances. He could see the respect they had for him. He was in their estimation one tough hombre if he had done what he had. Also they had to like him because at the end he had not resisted but had come with them easily. There was nothing in their business better than having a tough job turn suddenly into an easier one, like a long-planned seduction ending with the girl tearing off her clothing, leaping on you and begging to be fucked. They were high up. Wulff felt a little light-headed even in the sealed spaces of the car, the air-conditioning purring away. He could see why the American Olympic athletes had had such trouble here in 1968, had found it impossible to become acclimated even after having trained in the mountains for weeks. It was different air altogether. It took an entirely different kind of man to live here.
“We’re almost there,” the man next to him said, waving with his cigarette holder. They all looked the same, indistinguishable from one another. Wulff looked through the window and could just barely see an enormous construction straight ahead of them, angled off-center, something that looked like towers rising.
“He lives well, doesn’t he?”
“Oh yes,” the man said, “he lives very well.”
“They all live very well.”
“What is that?”
“People like him.”
“I do know what you mean,” the man said, “but that does not mean that people like us cannot live well too. Your narcotic cops, they lived very well, didn’t they?”
“No,” Wulff said, “you must have lost something in the translation. They didn’t live very well at all. They hated their lives.” He caved in further to the seat and the car kept on moving. The driver hummed something that sounded like American rock tune, faking the verses. It took all kinds, Wulff thought. Actually, these were not bad guys. As hired muscle they were far superior in all ways, cultural and intellectual, to the best that America had to offer. It had to do with the servant problem, he was sure; you couldn’t get decent help in America, the culture was too mobile, too many people thought that they could do better. In the southern hemisphere it was different; the finest people were willing to work, even at humiliating jobs. After all, if you did your job well and made good contacts and perhaps killed your boss, you had a chance to go into the drug-running business yourself in a few years. Ambition was what sustained the world, Wulff thought, ambition as the reverse coin of the fear of death. They interlocked, of course; the coin fell through to only one head. If you succeeded you could beat death, that was what kept one going. But at the end it was all a cheat. He had seen the eyes of his victims.
The car cut off the drive, went up at an angle, bounced through a difficult access road not unlike that which had crept up to Carlin’s property. All these men lived the same; they walled themselves off and looked for special positions of accommodation to verify their power. Wulff blanked all thoughts out of his mind and simply waited. It was best that way. It was best not to anticipate and to take situations exactly as they developed without undue anticipation, because anything else would only lead to greater difficulties.
A tall, elegant man in his middle fifties stood at the end of the drive waiting for them, rubbing his hands. He had an elegant moustache. He looked like a character out of Carmen. He was everything that Wulff could have anticipated.
So this is the face of the enemy, he thought, and damned if he didn’t feel the impulse to giggle. If this was the enemy, if this was the face of the enemy … then pity the victims without any conception of roles to play.
The men murmured around him and Wulff waited for the confrontation. Not that it would prove a damned thing. Confrontation proved nothing. Only murder did. But it certainly yielded satisfaction.