5.
Beginnings
CHAVEZ AWOKE WITH the headache that accompanies initial exposure to a thin atmosphere, the sort that begins just behind the eyes and radiates around the circumference of one’s head. For all that, he was grateful. Throughout his career in the Army, he’d never failed to awaken a few minutes before reveille. It allowed him an orderly transition from sleep to wakefulness and made the waking-up process easier to tolerate. He turned his head left and right, inspecting his environment in the orange twilight that came through the uncurtained windows.
The building would be called a barracks by anyone who did not regularly live in one. To Chavez it seemed more of a hunting camp, a guess that was wholly accurate. Perhaps two thousand square feet in the bunk room, he judged, and he counted a total of forty single metal-frame bunks, each with a thin GI mattress and brown GI blanket. The sheets, however, were fitted, with elastic at the corners; so he decided that there wouldn’t be any of the bouncing-quarter bullshit, which was fine with him. The floor was bare, waxed pine, and the vaulted ceiling was supported by smoothed-down pine trunks in lieu of finished beams. It struck the sergeant that in hunting season people—rich people—actually paid to live like this: proof positive that money didn’t automatically confer brains on anyone. Chavez didn’t like barracks life all that much, and the only reason he’d not opted for a private apartment in or near Fort Ord was his desire to save up for that Corvette. To complete the illusion, at the foot of each bed was a genuine Army-surplus footlocker.
He thought about getting up on his elbows to look out the windows, but knew that the time for that would come soon enough. It had been a two-hour drive from the airport, and on arrival each man had been assigned a bunk in the building. The rest of the bunks had already been filled with sleeping, snoring men. Soldiers, of course. Only soldiers snored like that. It had struck him at the time as ominous. The only reason why young men would be asleep and snoring just after ten at night was fatigue. This was no vacation spot. Well, that was no surprise either.
Reveille came in the form of an electric buzzer, the kind associated with a cheap alarm clock. That was good news. No bugle—he hated bugles in the morning. Like most professional soldiers, Chavez knew the value of sleep, and waking up was not a cause for celebration. Bodies stirred around him at once, to the accompaniment of the usual wake-up grumbles and profanity. He tossed off the blanket and was surprised to learn how cold the floor was.
“Who’re you?” the man in the next bunk said while staring at the floor.
“Chavez, Staff Sergeant. Bravo, 3rd of the 17th.”
“Vega. Me, too. Headquarters Company, lst/22nd. Get in last night?”
“Yep. What gives here?”
“Well, I don’t really know, but they sure did run us ragged yesterday,” Staff Sergeant Vega said. He stuck his hand out. “Julio.”
“Domingo. Call me Ding.”
“Where you from?”
“L.A.”
“Chicago. Come on.” Vega rose. “One good thing about this place, you got all the hot water you want, and no Mickey Mouse on the housekeeping. Now, if they could just turn the fucking heat on at night—”
“Where the hell are we?”
“Colorado. I know that much. Not much else, though.” The two sergeants joined a loose trail of men heading for the showers.
Chavez looked around. Nobody was wearing glasses. Everybody looked pretty fit, even accounting for the fact that they were soldiers. A few were obvious iron-pumpers, but most, like Chavez, had the lean, wiry look of distance runners. One other thing that was so obvious it took him half a minute to notice it. They were all Latinos.
The shower helped. There was a nice, tall pile of new towels, and enough sinks that everyone had room to shave. And the toilet stalls even had doors. Except for the thin air, Chavez decided, this place had real possibilities. Whoever ran the place gave them twenty-five minutes to get it together. It was almost civilized.
Civilization ended promptly at 0630. The men got into their uniforms, which included stout boots, and moved outside. Here Chavez saw four men standing in a line. They had to be officers. You could tell from the posture and the expressions. Behind the four was another, older man, who also looked and acted like an officer, but ... not quite, Chavez told himself.
“Where do I go?” Ding asked Vega.
“You’re supposed to stick with me. Third squad, Captain Ramirez. Tough mother, but a good guy. Hope you like to run, ’mano.”
“I’ll try not to crap out on ya’,” Chavez replied.
Vega turned with a grin. “That’s what I said.”
“Good morning, people!” boomed the voice of the older one. “For those of you who don’t know me, I am Colonel Brown. You newcomers, welcome to our little mountain hideaway. You’ve already gotten to your proper squads, and for everyone’s information, our TO and E is now complete. This is the whole team.”
It didn’t surprise Chavez that Brown was the only obvious non-Latino to be seen. But he didn’t know why he wasn’t surprised. Four others were walking toward the assembly. They were PT instructors. You can always tell from the clean, white T-shirts and the confidence that they could work anyone into the ground.
“I hope everyone got a good night’s sleep,” Brown went on. “We will start our day with a little exercise—”
“Sure,” Vega muttered, “might as well die before breakfast.”
“How long you been here?” Ding asked quietly.
“Second day. Jesus, I hope it gets easier. The officers musta been here a week at least—they don’t barf after the run.”
“—and a nice little three-mile jog through the hills,” Brown ended.
“That’s no big deal,” Chavez observed.
“That’s what I said yesterday,” Vega replied. “Thank God I quit smokin’.”
Ding didn’t know how to react to that. Vega was another light infantryman from the 10th Mountain, and like himself was supposed to be able to move around all day with fifty pounds of gear on his back. But the air was pretty thin, thin enough that Chavez wondered just how high they were.
They started off with the usual daily dozen, and the number of repeats wasn’t all that bad, though Chavez found himself breaking a slight sweat. It was the run that told him how tough things would get. As the sun rose above the mountains, he got a feel for what sort of country it was. The camp was nestled in the bottom of a valley, and comprised perhaps fifty acres of almost flat ground. Everything else looked vertical, but on inspection proved to be slopes of less than forty-five degrees, dotted with scruffy-looking little pine trees that would never outgrow the height for Christmas decorations. The four squads, each led by an instructor and a captain, moved in different directions, up horse trails worn into the mountainside. In the first mile, Chavez reckoned, they had climbed over five hundred feet, snaking their way along numerous switchbacks toward a rocky knoll. The instructor didn’t bother with the usual singing that accompanied formation running. There wasn’t much of a formation anyway, just a single-file of men struggling to keep pace with a faceless robot whose white shirt beckoned them on toward destruction. Chavez, who hadn’t run a distance less than three miles, every day for the last two years of his life, was gasping for breath after the first. He wanted to say something, like, “There isn’t any fuckin’ air!” But he didn’t want to waste the oxygen. He needed every little molecule for his bloodstream. The instructor stopped at the knoll to make sure everyone was there, and Chavez, jogging doggedly in place, had the chance to see a vista worthy of an Ansel Adams photograph—all the better in the full light of a morning sun. But his only thought on being able to see over forty miles was terror that he’d have to run it all.
God, I thought I was in shape!
Hell, I am in shape!
The next mile traced a ridgeline to the east, and the sun punished eyes that had to stay alert. This was a narrow trail, and going off it could involve a painful fall. The instructor gradually picked up the pace, or so it seemed, until he stopped again at another knoll.
“Keep those legs pumpin’!” he snarled at those who’d kept up. There were two stragglers, both new men, Chavez thought, and they were only twenty yards back. You could see the shame on their faces, and the determination to catch up. “Okay, people, it’s downhill from here.”
And it was, mostly, but that only made it more dangerous. Legs rubbery from the fatigue that comes from oxygen deprivation had to negotiate a downward slope that alternated from gradual to perilously steep, with plenty of loose rocks for the unwary. Here the instructor eased off on the pace, for safety as everyone guessed. The captain let his men pass, and took up the rear to keep an eye on things. They could see the camp now. Five buildings. Smoke rose from a chimney to promise breakfast. Chavez saw a helipad, half a dozen vehicles—all four-wheel-drives—and what could only be a rifle range. There was no other sign of human habitation in sight, and the sergeant realized that even the wide view he’d had earlier hadn’t shown any buildings closer than five or six miles. It wasn’t hard to figure out why the area was sparsely settled. But he didn’t have time or energy for deep thoughts at the moment. His eyes locked on the trail, Ding Chavez concentrated on his footing and the pace. He took up a position alongside one of the erstwhile stragglers and kept an eye on him. Already Chavez was thinking of this as his squad, and soldiers are supposed to look out for one another. But the man had firmed up. His head was high now, his hands balled into tight, determined fists, and his powerfully exhaled breaths had purpose in them as the trail finally flattened out and they approached the camp. Another group was coming in from the far side.
“Form up, people!” Captain Ramirez called out for the first time. He passed his men and took the place of the instructor, who peeled off to let them by. Chavez noted that the bastard wasn’t even sweating. Third Squad formed into a double line behind their officer.
“Squad! Quick-time, march!” Everyone slowed to a regular marching pace. This took the strain off lungs and legs, told them that they were now the custody of their captain, and reminded them that they were still part of the Army. Ramirez delivered them in front of their barracks. The captain didn’t order anyone to sing a cadence, though. That made him smart, Chavez thought, smart enough to know that nobody had enough breath to do so. Julio was right, probably. Ramirez might be a good boss.
“Squad, halt!” Ramirez turned. “At ease, people. Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Madre de Dios!” a voice noted quietly. From the back rank, a man tried to vomit but couldn’t find anything to bring up.
“Okay.” Ramirez grinned at his men. “The altitude is a real bitch. But I’ve been here two weeks. You get used to it right quick. Two weeks from now, we’ll be running five miles a day with packs, and you’ll feel just fine.”
Bullshit. Chavez shared the thought with Julio Vega, knowing that the captain was right, of course. The first day at boot camp had been harder than this ... hadn’t it?
“We’re taking it easy on you. You have an hour to unwind and get some breakfast. Go easy on the chow: we’ll have another little run this afternoon. At 0800 we assemble here for training. Dismissed.”
“Well?” Ritter asked.
They sat on the shaded veranda of an old planter’s house on the island of St. Kitts. Clark wondered what they’d planted here once. Probably sugarcane, though there was nothing now. What had once been a plantation manor was obviously supposed to look like the island retreat of a top-drawer capitalist and his collection of mistresses. In fact it belonged to CIA, which used it as an informal conference center, a particularly nice safe house for the debriefing of VIP defectors, and other, more mundane uses—like a vacation spot for senior executives.
“The background info was fairly accurate, but it underestimated the physical difficulties. I’m not criticizing the people who put the package together. You just have to see it to believe it. It’s very tough country.” Clark stretched in the wicker chair and reached for his drink. His personal seniority at the Agency was many levels below Ritter’s, but Clark was one of a handful of CIA employees whose position was unique. That, plus the fact that he often worked personally for the Deputy Director (Operations), gave him the right to relax in the DDO’s presence. Ritter’s attitude toward the younger man was not one of deference, but he did show Clark considerable respect. “How’s Admiral Greer doing?” Clark asked. It was James Greer who’d actually recruited him, many years before.
“Doesn’t look very good. Couple of months at most,” Ritter replied.
“Damn.” Clark stared into his drink, then looked up. “I owe that man a lot. Like my whole life. They can’t do anything?”
“No, it’s spread too much for that. They can keep him comfortable, that’s about all. Sorry. He’s my friend, too.”
“Yes, sir, I know.” Clark finished off his drink and went back to work. “I still don’t know exactly what you have in mind, but you can forget about going after them in their houses.”
“That tough?”
Clark nodded. “That tough. It’s a job for real infantry with real support, and even then you’re going to take real casualties. From what Larson tells me, the security troops these characters have are pretty good. I suppose you might try to buy a few off, but they’re probably well paid already, so that might just backfire.” The field officer didn’t ask what the real mission was, but he assumed it was to snatch some warm bodies and whisk them off stateside, where they’d arrive gift-wrapped in front of some FBI office, or maybe a U.S. courthouse. Like everyone else, he was making an incorrect guess. “Same thing with bagging one on the move. They take the usual precautions—irregular schedules, irregular routes, and they have armed escorts everywhere they go. So bagging one on the fly means having good intel, which means having somebody on the inside. Larson is as close to being inside as anybody we’ve ever run, and he’s not close enough. Trying to get him in closer will get him killed. He’s gotten us some good data—Larson’s a pretty good kid—and the risks of trying that are just too great. I presume the local people have tried to—”
“They have. Six of them ended up dead or missing. Same thing with informers. They disappear a lot. The locals are thoroughly penetrated. They can’t run any sort of op for long without risking their own. You do that long enough and people stop volunteering.”
Clark shrugged and looked out to seaward. There was a white-hulled cruise ship inbound on the horizon. “I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised at how tough these bastards are. Larson was right, what brains they don’t already have they can buy. Where do they hire their consultants?”
“Open market, mainly Europe, and—”
“I mean the intel pros. They must have some real spooks.”
“Well, there’s Félix Cortez. That’s only a rumor, but the name’s come up half a dozen times in the past few months.”
“The DGI colonel who disappeared,” Clark observed. The DGI was Cuba’s intelligence service, modeled on the Soviet KGB. Cortez had been reported working with the Macheteros, a Puerto Rican terrorist group that the FBI had largely run to ground in the past few years. Another DGI colonel named Filiberto Ojeda had been arrested by the Bureau, after which Cortez had disappeared. So he’d decided to remain outside his country’s borders. Next question: had Cortez decided to opt for this most vigorous branch of the free-enterprise system or was he still working under Cuban control? Either way, DGI was Russian-trained. Its senior people were graduates of the KGB’s own academy. They were, therefore, opponents worthy of respect. Certainly Cortez was. His file at the Agency spoke of a genius for compromising people to get information.
“Larson know about this?”
“Yeah. He caught the name at a party. Of course, it would help if we knew what the hell Cortez looks like, but all we have is a description that fits half the people south of the Rio Grande. Don’t worry. Larson knows how to be careful, and if anything goes wrong, he’s got his own airplane to get out of Dodge with. His orders are fairly specific on that score. I don’t want to lose a trained field officer doing police work.” Ritter added, “I sent you down for a fresh appraisal. You know what the overall objective is. Tell me what you think is possible.”
“Okay. You’re probably right to go after the airfields and to keep it an intelligence-gathering operation. Given the necessary surveillance assets, we could finger processing sites fairly easily, but there’s a lot of them and their mobility demands a rapid reaction time to get there. I figure that’ll work maybe a half-dozen times, max, before the other side wises up. Then we’ll take casualties, and if the bad guys get lucky, we might lose a whole assault force—if you’ve got people thinking in those terms. Tracking the finished product from the processing sites is probably impossible without a whole lot of people on the ground—too many to keep it a covert op for very long—and it wouldn’t buy us very much anyway. There are a lot of little airfields on the northern part of the country to keep an eye on, but Larson thinks that they may be victims of their own success. They’ve been so successful buying off the military and police in that district that they might be falling into a regular pattern of airfield use. If the insertion teams keep a low profile, they could conceivably operate for two months—that may be a little generous—before we have to yank them out. I need to see the teams, see how good they are.”
“I can arrange that,” Ritter said. He’d already decided to send Clark to Colorado. Clark was the best man to evaluate their capabilities. “Go on.”
“What we’re setting up will go all right for a month or two. We can watch their aircraft lift off and call it ahead to whoever else is wrapped up in this.” This was the only part of the op that Clark knew about. “We can inconvenience them for that long, but I wouldn’t hope for much more.”
“You’re painting a fairly bleak picture, Clark.”
Clark leaned forward. “Sir, if you want to run a covert operation to gather usable tactical intelligence against an adversary who’s this decentralized in his own operations—yes, it’s possible, but only for a limited period of time and only for a limited return. If you increase the assets to try and make it more effective, you’re going to get blown sure as hell. You can run an operation like that, but it can’t be for long. I don’t know why we’re even bothering.” That wasn’t quite true. Clark figured, correctly, that the reason was that it was an election year, but that wasn’t the sort of observation a field officer was allowed to make—especially when it was a correct one.
“Why we’re bothering isn’t strictly your concern,” Ritter pointed out. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to, and Clark was not a man to be intimidated.
“Fine, but this is not a serious undertaking. It’s an old story, sir. Give us a mission we can do, not one we can’t. Are we serious about this or aren’t we?”
“What do you have in mind?” Ritter asked.
Clark told him. Ritter’s face showed little in the way of emotion at the answer to his question. One of the nice things about Clark, Ritter thought to himself, was that he was the only man in the Agency who could discuss these topics calmly and dispassionately—and really mean it. There were quite a few for whom such talk was an interesting intellectual exercise, unprofessional speculation, really, gotten consciously or subconsciously from reading spy fiction. Gee, wouldn’t it be nice if we could ... It was widely believed in the general public that the Central Intelligence Agency employed a goodly number of expert professionals in this particular field. It didn’t. Even the KGB had gotten away from such things, farming this kind of work out to the Bulgarians—regarded by their own associates as uncouth barbarians—or genuine third-parties like terrorist groups in Europe and the Middle East. The political cost of such operations was too high, and despite the mania for secrecy cultivated by every intelligence service in the world, such things always got out eventually. The world had gotten far more civilized since Ritter had graduated from The Farm on the York River, and while he thought that a genuinely good thing, there were times when a return to the good old days beckoned with solutions to problems that hadn’t quite gone away.
“How hard would it be?” Ritter asked, interested.
“With the proper backup and some additional assets—it’s a snap.” Clark explained what special assets were needed. “Everything they’ve done plays into our hands. That’s the one mistake they’ve made. They’re conventional in their defensive outlook. Same old thing, really. It’s a matter of who determines the rules of the game. As things now stand, we both play by the same rules, and those rules, as applied here, give the advantage to the opposition. We never seem to learn that. We always let the other side set the rules. We can annoy them, inconvenience them, take away some of their profit margin, but, hell, given what they already make, it’s a minor business loss. I only see one thing changing that.”
“Which is?”
“How’d you like to live in a house like that one?” Clark asked, handing over one of his photographs.
“Frank Lloyd Wright meets Ludwig the Mad,” Ritter observed with a chuckle.
“The man who commissioned that house is growing quite an ego, sir. They have manipulated whole governments. Everyone says that they are a government for all practical purposes. They said the same thing in Chicago during Prohibition, that Capone really ran the town—just one city, right? Well, these people are on their way to running their own country, and renting out others. So let’s say that they do have the de facto power of a government. Factor ego into that. Sooner or later they’re going to start acting like one. I know we won’t break the rules. But it wouldn’t surprise me if they stepped outside them once or twice, just to see what they might get away with. You see what I mean? They keep expanding their own limits, and they haven’t found the brick wall yet, the one that tells them where to stop.”
“John, you’re turning into a psychologist,” Ritter noted with a thin smile.
“Maybe so. These guys peddle addictive drugs, right? Mostly they do not use the stuff themselves, but I think they’re getting themselves hooked on the most powerful narcotic there is.”
“Power.”
Clark nodded. “Sooner or later, they’re going to OD. At that point, sir, somebody’s going to think seriously about what I just proposed. When you get into the majors, the rules change some. That’s a political decision, of course.”
He was master of all he surveyed. At least that was the phrase that came to mind, and with all such aphorisms it could be both true and false at the same time. The valley into which he looked did not all belong to him; the parcel of land on which he stood was less than a thousand hectares, and his vista included a million. But not one person who lived within his view could continue to live were he to decide otherwise. That was the only sort of power that mattered, and it was a form of power that he had exercised on occasions too numerous to count. A flick of the wrist, a casual remark to an associate, and it was done. It wasn’t that he had ever been casual about it—death was a serious business—but he knew that he could be. It was the sort of power that might make a man mad, he knew. He’d seen it happen among his own business associates, to their sorrow on several occasions. But he was a student of the world, and a student of history. Unusually, for someone in his chosen trade, he was the beneficiary of a good education, something forced on him by his late father, one of the pioneers. One of the greatest regrets of his life was that he’d never expressed his gratitude for it. Because of it he understood economics as well as any university professor. He understood market forces and trends. And he understood the historical forces that brought them about. He was a student of Marxism; though he rejected the Marxist outlook for a multiplicity of reasons, he knew that it contained more than one grain of truth intermixed with all the political gibberish. The rest of his professional education had been what Americans called “on-the-job training.” While his father had helped invent a whole new way of doing business, he had watched and advised, and taken action. He’d explored new markets, under his father’s direction, and formed the reputation of a careful, thorough planner, often sought after but never apprehended. He’d been arrested only once, but after two of the witnesses had died, the others had grown forgetful, ending his direct experience with police and courts.
He deemed himself a carry-over from another age—a classic robber-baron capitalist. A hundred years before, they’d driven railroads across the United States—he was a genuine expert on that country—and crushed anything in their path. Indian tribes—treated like a two-legged version of the plains buffalo and swatted aside. Unions—neutralized with hired thugs. Governments—bribed and subverted. The press—allowed to bray on ... until too many people listened. He’d learned from that example. The local press was no longer terribly outspoken, not after learning that its members were mortal. The railroad barons had built themselves palatial homes—winter ones in New York, and summer “cottages” at Newport. Of course, he had problems that they’d not faced, but any historical model broke down if you took it too far. He also chose to ignore the fact that the Goulds and the Harrimans had built something that was useful, not destructive, to their societies. One other lesson he had learned from the previous century was that cutthroat competition was wasteful. He had persuaded his father to seek out his competitors. Even then his powers of persuasion had been impressive. Cleverly, it had been done at a time when danger from outside forces made cooperation attractive. Better to cooperate, the argument had gone, than to waste time, money, energy, and blood—and increase their own personal vulnerabilities. And it had worked.
His name was Ernesto Escobedo. He was one of many within the Cartel, but most of his peers would acknowledge that his was a voice to which all listened. They might not all agree, not all bend to his will, but his ideas were always given the attention they deserved because they had proven to be effective ones. The Cartel had no head as such, since the Cartel was not a single enterprise, but rather a collection of leaders who operated in close confederation—almost a committee, but not quite; almost friends, but not that either. The comparison to the American Mafia suggested itself, but the Cartel was both more civilized and more savage than that. Escobedo would have chosen to say that the Cartel was more effectively organized, and more vigorous, both attributes of a young and vital organization, as opposed to one that was older and feudal.
He knew that the sons of the robber barons had used the wealth accumulated by their antecedents to form a power elite, coming to rule their nation with their “service.” He was unwilling to leave such a legacy to his sons, however. Besides, he himself was technically one of the second generation. Things moved more quickly now. The accumulation of great wealth no longer demanded a lifetime, and, therefore, Ernesto told himself, he didn’t have to leave that to his sons. He could have it all. The first step in accomplishing any goal was deciding that it was possible. He had long since come to that decision.
It was his goal to see it done. Escobedo was forty, a man of uncommon vigor and confidence. He had never used the product which he provided for others, instead altering his consciousness with wine—and that rarely, now. A glass or two with dinner; perhaps some hard liquor at business meetings with his peers, but more often Perrier. This trait earned him more respect among his associates. Escobedo was a sober, serious man, they all knew. He exercised regularly, and paid attention to his appearance. A smoker in his youth, he’d broken the habit young. He watched his diet. His mother was still alive and vigorous at seventy-three; her mother was the same at ninety-one. His father would have been seventy-five last week, he knew, except for ... but the people who’d ended his father’s life had paid a savage price for their crime, along with all of their families, mostly at Escobedo’s own hand. It was something he remembered with filial pride, taking the last one’s wife while her dying husband watched, killing her and the two little ones before his eyes closed for the last time. He took no pleasure in killing women and children, of course, but such things were necessary. He’d shown that one who was the better man, and as word of the feat spread, it had become unlikely that his family would ever be troubled again. He took no pleasure from it, but history taught that harsh lessons made for long memories. It also taught that those who failed to teach such lessons would not be respected. Escobedo demanded respect above all things. His personal involvement in settling that particular account, instead of leaving it to hirelings, had earned him considerable prestige within the organization. Ernesto was a thinker, his associates said, but he knew how to get things done.
His wealth was so great that counting it had no point. He had the godlike power of life and death. He had a beautiful wife and three fine sons. When the marriage bed palled, he had a choice of mistresses. Every luxury that money could purchase, he had. He had homes in the city below him, this hilltop fortress, and ranches near the sea—both seas, in fact, since Colombia borders on two great oceans. At the ranches were stables full of Arabian horses. Some of his associates had private bull rings, but that sport had never interested him. A crack shot, he had hunted everything that his country offered—including men, of course. He told himself that he ought to be satisfied. But he was not.
The American robber barons had traveled the world, had been invited to the courts of Europe, had married off their progeny to that of noble houses—a cynical exercise, he knew, but somehow a worthy one that he fully understood. The freedoms were denied him, and though the reason for it was plain enough, he was nevertheless offended that a man of his power and wealth could be denied anything. Despite everything that he had accomplished, there were still limits on his life—worse still, the limits were placed there by others of lesser power. Twenty years earlier he had chosen his path to greatness, and despite his obvious success, the fact that he’d chosen that particular path denied him the fruits that he wanted, because lesser men did not approve of it.
It had not always been so. “Law?” one of the great railroad men had said once. “What do I care about law?” And he had gotten away with it, had traveled about at will, had been recognized as a great man.
So why not me? Escobedo asked himself. Part of him knew the answer, but a more powerful part rejected it. He was not a stupid man, far less a foolish one, but he had not come so far to have others set rules upon his life. Ernesto had, in fact, violated every rule he wished, and prospered from it. He had gotten here by making his own rules, the businessman decided. He would have to learn to make some new ones. They would learn to deal with him, on terms of his own choosing. He was tired of having to accommodate the terms of others. Having made the decision, he began to explore methods.
What had worked for others?
The most obvious answer was—success. That which one could not defeat, one had to acknowledge. International politics had as few rules as any other major enterprise, except for the only one that mattered—success. There was not a country in the world that failed to make deals with murderers, after all; it was just that the murderers in question had to be effective ones. Kill a few million people and one was a statesman. Did not every nation in the world kowtow to the Chinese—and had they not killed millions of their own? Didn’t America seek to accommodate the Russians—and had they not killed millions of their own? Under Carter, the Americans had supported the regime of Pol Pot, which had killed millions of its own. Under Reagan, America had sought to reach a modus vivendi with the same Iranians who had killed so many of their own, including most of those who thought of America as a friend—and been abandoned. America befriended dictators with bloody hands—some on the right and some on the left—in the name of realpolitik, while refusing to support moderates—left or right—because they might not be quite moderate enough. Any country so lacking in principle could come to recognize him and his associates, couldn’t it? That was the central truth about America in Ernesto’s view. While he had principles from which he would not deviate, America did not.
The corruption of America was manifest to Ernesto. He, after all, fed it. For years now, forces in his largest and most important market had lobbied to legalize his business there. Fortunately they had all failed. That would have been disaster for the Cartel, and was yet another example of how a government lacked the wit to act in its own self-interest. The American government could have made billions from the business—as he and his associates did—but lacked the vision and the good sense to do so. And they called themselves a great power. For all their supposed strength, the yanquis had no will, no manhood. He could regulate the goings-on where he lived, but they could not. They could range over oceans, fill the air with warplanes—but use them to protect their own interests? He shook his head with amusement.
No, the Americans were not to be respected.