Queen Of The South Part 5

"You're not ashamed to smoke them?... A former delegate to parliament defrauding Tabacalera, S.A., and the government?"

"Yeah, right. I'm on a pension, don't forget. Any idea how many packs I smoke a day?"

"So what about Santiago Fisterra?"

Cespedes chewed his halibut a moment, savoring it. Then he took a sip of his Barbadillo and looked at me.

"I don't know whether that particular individual smoked or not, but he never moved tobacco. One run with a cargo of has.h.i.+sh was worth a hundred bringing in Winstons or Marlboros. Has.h.i.+sh was a h.e.l.l of a lot more profitable."

"And more dangerous, I imagine."

"Much more." After painstakingly sucking them, Cespedes was arranging the langostino heads along the rim of his plate, as though lining them up in formation for inspection. "If you didn't have the Moroccans well greased, you were f.u.c.ked. Look at poor Veiga. But with the English there was no problem-they acted according to their usual double standard. As long as the drugs didn't touch British soil, they looked the other way.... So the traffickers came and went with their consignments, and everybody knew who they were. And when they were surprised by the Guardia Civil or Spanish Customs, they hightailed it to Gibraltar for shelter. The only condition was that first they had to throw their cargo overboard."

"It was that easy?"

"That easy." He pointed to the pack of cigarettes with his fork again, this time tapping it. "Sometimes the drug runners would post accomplices up on top of the rock with night-vision binoculars and walkie-talkies-monkeys, they called them-to keep track of the Customs boats Gibraltar was the hub of an entire industry, and billions, billions were moved through it. Mo- roccan, Gibraltar, Spanish cops, everybody was on the take They even tried to buy me." He laughed out loud at the memory, the gla.s.s of wine in his hand. "But how could they? Back then it was me who bought off other people!"

After that, Cespedes sighed.

"Now," he said as he polished off the last langostino, "things are different. In Gibraltar, money moves in another way now. Take a walk down Main Street and look at the mailboxes, count the number of ghost corporations. You won't believe it. They've discovered that a financial paradise is more profitable than a pirates' den, even if it's the same thing, underneath. And customers, add it up: the Costa del Sol is a gold mine, so the foreign mafias move in and set themselves up in everything you can think of. Plus, from Almeria to Cadiz there's heavy surveillance of the Spanish waters because of illegal immigration. And although the has.h.i.+sh business is still good, c.o.ke is catching on, too, and the methods are different. Let's just say that the old days of independent operators-the heroic days-are over, and now there are suits instead of old sea wolves. Everything is decentralized. The smugglers' speedboats have changed hands, tactics, and bases. And the dough is different, too."

Having said all this, Cespedes leaned back in his chair, signaled Manolo/ Muhammad for a coffee, and lit up a tax-free cigarette. That old cardsharp's face of his smiled nostalgically; he raised his eyebrows. They can't take that away from me, he seemed to be saying. And I realized that the former parliamentary delegate missed not just the old days, but a certain kind of men as well.

"What happened," he concluded, "is that when Santiago Fisterra appeared in Melilla, the Strait, if not the world, was his oyster. It was a golden age, as the locals in Gibraltar would say. Whew ... Round-trip runs, b.a.l.l.s out. Every night was a game of cat and mouse between the drug runners on the one hand and the Customs guys, police, and Guardia Civil on the other.... Sometimes you won and sometimes you lost." He took a long drag on his cigarette, and his sly eyes narrowed, remembering. "And out there- jumping out of the frying pan so she could land directly in the fire-is where Teresa Mendoza wound up."

People say it was Dris Larbi who ratted out Santiago Fisterra, and that he did it despite Colonel Abdelkader Chaib, or maybe even with Chaib's knowledge. That would have been easy in Morocco, where the weakest link was the small-time smugglers that weren't protected by money or politics: a name dropped here and there, a few bills changing hands, and the police would have some big new numbers to add to their statistics. At any rate, no one could ever prove that Dris Larbi dropped the dime. When I raised the subject-I had saved it for our last meeting-he clammed up like an oyster and there was no way to get another word out of him. It's been a pleasure. End of confidences, bye-bye, and never again.

But Manolo Cespedes, who was still a delegate to parliament in Melilla when the events took place, maintains that it was was Dris Larbi who, intending to run the Gallego off so as to keep Teresa behind the bar, pa.s.sed the word to his contacts on the other side. Generally, the motto was, Pay up and the Strait's yours, and go with G.o.d. Dris Larbi who, intending to run the Gallego off so as to keep Teresa behind the bar, pa.s.sed the word to his contacts on the other side. Generally, the motto was, Pay up and the Strait's yours, and go with G.o.d. Iallah bismillah. Iallah bismillah. And that motto applied to a vast network of corruption that ran from the mountains where the cannabis was harvested to the border or the Moroccan coast. The payments rose according to rank: cops, soldiers, politicians, high-level officials, and members of the government. To justify themselves to public opinion-after all, the Moroccan minister of the interior had observer status at the antidrug meetings of the European Union-gendarmes and soldiers would carry out periodic antidrug operations; there would be dragnets, raids, arrests. But it would always be on a pretty small scale, and the guys arrested would never belong to the big official mafias, so n.o.body would care much one way or another if they got hauled in. People as often as not were ratted out, or pushed out, by the same contacts that got the has.h.i.+sh for them. And that motto applied to a vast network of corruption that ran from the mountains where the cannabis was harvested to the border or the Moroccan coast. The payments rose according to rank: cops, soldiers, politicians, high-level officials, and members of the government. To justify themselves to public opinion-after all, the Moroccan minister of the interior had observer status at the antidrug meetings of the European Union-gendarmes and soldiers would carry out periodic antidrug operations; there would be dragnets, raids, arrests. But it would always be on a pretty small scale, and the guys arrested would never belong to the big official mafias, so n.o.body would care much one way or another if they got hauled in. People as often as not were ratted out, or pushed out, by the same contacts that got the has.h.i.+sh for them.

Commander Benamu of the Moroccan Gendarmerie Royale's coast guard division had no hesitation in telling me about his role in the Cala Tramon-tana episode. He did so on the terrace of the Cafe Hafa, in Tangiers, after a mutual friend, police inspector Jose Bedmar-veteran of the Central Brigade and intelligence agent in the days of Cespedes-located him and made an appointment; all this came about after a great deal of fax- and phone-praise of my work, to soften the commander up.

Benamu was a nice fellow-elegant, with a small, neatly trimmed moustache that gave him the look of a Latin lover from the 1950s. He was wearing civilian clothes, a jacket and white s.h.i.+rt, no tie, and he spoke to me for easily half an hour in French, without the slightest hesitation, until, feeling more at ease, he switched to almost flawless Spanish. He was a born storyteller and had a certain dark sense of humor; once in a while he would gesture out toward the ocean that lay before our eyes, below the cliff, as though it had all happened right out there, just off the terrace where he was sipping his coffee and I my mint tea.

When the events took place, he was a captain, he said. Routine night patrol in an armed cutter-he spoke the words "routine night patrol" looking out at an indefinite spot on the horizon-with radar contact to the west, at Tres Forcas, all perfectly normal. By pure chance there was another patrol on land, connected via radio-he was still looking out at the horizon when he spoke the word "chance." Between them, within Cala Tramontana-like a little bird in its nest-a speedboat in Moroccan waters, very near the coast, loading a cargo of has.h.i.+sh off a skiff pulled up directly alongside.

They issued the warning to halt, a parachute-descending flare lighting the rocks off Charranes Island against the milky water, the standard shouts and warnings and a couple of shots in the air as a sign they were serious. As far as they could see, the speedboat-low, long, as thin as a needle, painted black, outboard motor-was having some problems with the engine, because it took some time to start moving. By the spotlight and the flare, Benamu saw two figures aboard the speedboat. One was in the pilot's seat, the other running toward the stern to release the line from the skiff, on which two more men were at that very second throwing overboard the bales of the drug that hadn't been loaded onto the speedboat. The starter ratcheted, but the engine wouldn't catch, and Benamu-following orders, he noted between sips of coffee-ordered his sailor on the bow to fire off a burst from his 12.7, shooting to kill. Noisy, of course. Scary, according to Benamu. Then another flare.

The men on the skiff raised their hands. Just then the bow of the speedboat reared up out of the water, the propeller kicked up a fountain of spray behind it, and the man that was standing in the stern toppled into the water. The patrol boat's machine gun was still firing-rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. The gendarmes on land followed its lead, timidly at first- The gendarmes on land followed its lead, timidly at first-bam, bam, bam- but then more enthusiastically. It sounded like war. There was a last flare, and the spotlight illuminated the ricochets and strikes in the water, and suddenly the sound of the speedboat deepened, and the boat took off, roaring, growling, in a straight line, so that by the time they looked off to the north it had disappeared in the darkness. They approached the skiff, detained its occupants-two Moroccans. They fished out of the water three bales of has.h.i.+sh and a Spaniard with a 12.7 round in his thigh; Benamu indicated the circ.u.mference of his coffee cup. "A hole that big." but then more enthusiastically. It sounded like war. There was a last flare, and the spotlight illuminated the ricochets and strikes in the water, and suddenly the sound of the speedboat deepened, and the boat took off, roaring, growling, in a straight line, so that by the time they looked off to the north it had disappeared in the darkness. They approached the skiff, detained its occupants-two Moroccans. They fished out of the water three bales of has.h.i.+sh and a Spaniard with a 12.7 round in his thigh; Benamu indicated the circ.u.mference of his coffee cup. "A hole that big."

Interrogated while being given the appropriate medical attention, the Spaniard told them that his name was Veiga and that he was the crew on a smuggling boat captained by one Santiago Fisterra; it was this Fisterra, he told them, who had slipped through their fingers at Cala Tramontana. "And left me in the water," Benamu recalled his prisoner complaining. The commander also thought he recalled that this Veiga, tried two years later in Al Hoceima, got fifteen years in the prison at Kenitra-his look told me not to consider this spot among the possibilities for a summer residence-and that he had served out half the sentence.

Had Fisterra and Veiga been ratted out? I asked.

Benamu repeated the phrase a couple of times, as if it were totally unknown to him. Then, looking out at the cobalt-blue expanse of ocean that separated us from the Spanish coastline, he shook his head. He recalled nothing along those lines. Nor had he ever heard of any Dris Larbi. The Gendarmerie Royale had a competent intelligence service of its own, and its coastal surveillance was very effective. Like your own Guardia Civil, he noted. Or more so. The Cala Tramontana operation had been completely routine, a brilliant catch like so many others. The war against crime, and all that.

It took him almost a month to come back, and the fact is, she had never expected to see him again. Her Sinaloan fatalism led her to think of him as gone forever-"He's not the type who'll stay around," Dris Larbi had said-and she had accepted his absence the same way she now accepted his reappearance.

In the last few years, Teresa had come to the conclusion that the world worked by its own incomprehensible laws, which played out through chance events such as coincidences, appearances and disappearances, presences and absences, lives and deaths. And the best she could do was accept those rules as her own, float along, allow herself to be part of a huge cosmic joke as she was swept downstream by the current-dog-paddle sometimes to stay afloat rather than exhaust herself by swimming upstream. To struggle for anything but the concrete moment, the act of inhaling and exhaling, the sixty-five heartbeats a minute-her heart had always beat slowly and regularly-that kept her alive was absurd. G.o.d was busy with other, more important matters.

As for her religious beliefs-those that had survived the routine of her new life-Teresa was still going to ma.s.s on Sunday, mechanically reciting her prayers before she went to sleep, Padre Nuestro, Ave Maria, Padre Nuestro, Ave Maria, and she sometimes surprised herself by asking Christ or the Virgin (a couple of times she also invoked St. Malverde) for this or that. For example, that Guero Davila be in heaven, amen. Although she knew very well that despite her good wishes, it was unlikely that Guero was in f.u.c.king heaven. He was almost surely burning in h.e.l.l right now, the son of a b.i.t.c.h and she sometimes surprised herself by asking Christ or the Virgin (a couple of times she also invoked St. Malverde) for this or that. For example, that Guero Davila be in heaven, amen. Although she knew very well that despite her good wishes, it was unlikely that Guero was in f.u.c.king heaven. He was almost surely burning in h.e.l.l right now, the son of a b.i.t.c.h cabron, cabron, just like in the songs of Paquita la del Barrio- just like in the songs of Paquita la del Barrio-Are you burning, you worthless son of a gun? As with all her prayers, the prayer for Guero was spoken without conviction, more out of protocol than anything else. Or perhaps in the case of Guero, out of loyalty. Whatever, she did it the way you'd take a request to a powerful government minister-without much hope that the plea would be heard, much less that it would be granted. As with all her prayers, the prayer for Guero was spoken without conviction, more out of protocol than anything else. Or perhaps in the case of Guero, out of loyalty. Whatever, she did it the way you'd take a request to a powerful government minister-without much hope that the plea would be heard, much less that it would be granted.

But she didn't pray for Santiago Fisterra. Not once. Neither for his well-being nor for his return. She kept him at arm's length deliberately, refusing to see him as officially linked to the problem. No repet.i.tions, no dependency- she'd been down that road once. Never again.

And yet the night he returned to her house and she found him sitting on the steps as though he'd left just hours earlier, she felt an incredible relief, and a happiness, almost a joy, that shook her between her thighs, in her womb, and in her eyes, and that made her open her mouth and breathe deep. It was a brief second, and then she found herself calculating exactly how many days it had been since that last time, figuring out how long it took to go there and back, miles and hours-enough time for telephone calls, enough time for a letter or a postcard to have gone from point A to point B, so she'd know he was all right. She thought about all that, although she uttered not a word of reproach, while he kissed her, and they went into the house together without a word, straight for the bedroom. And she was still thinking of the same thing when he lay quietly at last, relieved, atop her, and his labored breathing began to grow softer against her throat.

"They got Lalo," he said at last.

Teresa lay even more still. The light from the hall fell over the male shoulder in front of her mouth. She kissed it. "They nearly got me," he added.

He lay motionless, his face huddled into the hollow of her throat. He was speaking very softly, and his lips brushed her skin with every word. Slowly, she put her arms around him.

"Tell me about it, if you want to."

He shook his head a little, and Teresa didn't insist, because she knew she didn't need to. She knew that he'd talk when he felt calmer, if she maintained the same att.i.tude and the same silence. And she was right. After a while, he began to talk. Not as though telling a story, but rather in short phrases, like images or memories. He was actually recalling it aloud, she realized. In all those days, this may have been the first time he had talked about it.

And so she learned, and so she imagined. And above all, she realized that life plays nasty tricks on people, and that those tricks mysteriously link up into chains with other nasty tricks that are played on other people, and that you might even be able to see yourself at the center of some absurd network of links, like a fly in a spider's web. And so she listened to a story that she knew beforehand, a story in which only the places and characters were different-and she decided that Sinaloa wasn't as far away as she had thought. She, too, saw the spotlight from the Moroccan patrol boat cutting through the night like cold sweat, the white flare in the air, Lalo Veiga's face with its mouth open, calling out in shock and fear-The Mows! The Mows! And there they were, with the stupid grinding of the starter, Lalo's silhouette in the spotlight as he ran back to the stern to free the mooring rope, the first shots, the muzzle flashes near the spotlight, the water kicked up by the gunfire, the And there they were, with the stupid grinding of the starter, Lalo's silhouette in the spotlight as he ran back to the stern to free the mooring rope, the first shots, the muzzle flashes near the spotlight, the water kicked up by the gunfire, the zi-i-ing, zi-i-ing zi-i-ing, zi-i-ing of the bullets flying past, and more muzzle flashes from the sh.o.r.e. And suddenly the engine roaring to life, the bow of the speedboat rising toward the stars, and more bullets, and Lalo's cry as he fell overboard-first one cry and then many- of the bullets flying past, and more muzzle flashes from the sh.o.r.e. And suddenly the engine roaring to life, the bow of the speedboat rising toward the stars, and more bullets, and Lalo's cry as he fell overboard-first one cry and then many-Santiago, wait, wait, Santiago, don't leave me, Santiago, Santiago, Santiago. And then the powerful rumble of the engine at full throttle, and the last glance over his shoulder to see Lalo falling behind in the water, framed in the cone of light from the patrol boat, one arm raised to grasp, futilely, at the speedboat as it ran, leapt, fled, its keel slapping the dark waters. then the powerful rumble of the engine at full throttle, and the last glance over his shoulder to see Lalo falling behind in the water, framed in the cone of light from the patrol boat, one arm raised to grasp, futilely, at the speedboat as it ran, leapt, fled, its keel slapping the dark waters.

Teresa listened to all that while the lips of the naked, motionless man on top of her continued to brush the skin of her throat. He did not raise his face, did not look at her. And did not let her look at him.

The crowing of roosters. The chant of the muezzin. Once again, the dirty-gray hour, the undecided limbo between night and day. This time Santiago was not asleep, either; she could tell from his breathing that he was still awake. All that night she had felt him moving restlessly in the bed next to her, jerking when he managed to fall asleep for a few minutes. Teresa was lying on her back still, controlling her desire to get up or smoke a cigarette, her eyes open, looking first at the darkness of the ceiling and then at the gray stain that crept in from outside like some malignant slug. "I want you to come with me," he whispered, out of nowhere. She was absorbed in the beating of her own heart. Every morning, every dawn, it seemed slower and slower, like that of an animal hibernating. One day I'm going to die at this hour, she thought. That dirty light that always comes at this hour is going to kill me. "Yes," she said.

That same day, Teresa searched in her purse for the snapshot she had saved from Sinaloa: her with Guero Davila's protective arm around her, gazing out on the world in amazement, without a clue about what was lurking there. She contemplated the photo a good while, and then went to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror, still holding the snapshot. Comparing herself to herself. Then, carefully and very slowly, she tore it in two, kept the half that she was in, and lit a cigarette. With the same match she lit a corner of the other half of the photo and stood motionless, the cigarette between her fingers, watching the image sputter and burn away. Guero's smile was the last thing to disappear, and she told herself that was just like him-laughing at everything right up to the end, not giving jack s.h.i.+t. The same man in the flames of the f.u.c.king photo as in the flames of the Cessna.

5.

What I planted up there in the sierra

The wait. The ocean dark, and millions of stars clotting the sky. The shadowy expanse infinite to the north, limited on the south by the black silhouette of the coastline. Everything around so still, the water looked like oil. And a light, barely perceptible offsh.o.r.e breeze that brushed the water and stirred tiny sparkles of phosph.o.r.escence. Sinister beauty, she concluded. That was the word for it. She was not good at expressing that sort of thing. It had taken her forty minutes. But anyway, that was what this seascape was-beautiful and sinister, and Teresa Mendoza was contemplating it in silence. Since the first of those forty minutes she had sat motionless, her lips never parting, and had felt the damp night air soak her cotton sweater and the legs of her jeans. Listening attentively to the sounds of both land and water. To the m.u.f.fled murmur of the radio, channel 44-the volume so low she could hardly hear it. "Give a look," Santiago said.

He spoke in a barely audible whisper. The ocean, he had explained the first few times, transmits sounds and voices differently at different times. If the moment was right, you could hear things said a mile away. Same thing with lights, which was why the Phantom was running dark, camouflaged in the night, on the water, by the black matte paint that covered its fibergla.s.s hull and the engine casing. And which was also why she was not smoking and the two of them were sitting silently, unspeaking, hardly moving. Waiting.

Teresa put her face into the rubber cone that hid the screen of the Furuno eight-mile radar. At each sweep of the antenna, the dark line of the Moroccan coast was redrawn with perfect neatness on the bottom of the screen, with the arch of the cove down, between Punta Cruces and Punta Al Marsa. The rest was clean-not a blip on the entire surface of the ocean. She hit the zoom b.u.t.ton twice, widening the surveillance radius from one to four miles. With the next sweep, the coast appeared smaller and longer, and toward the east included the precise outline of Perejil Island. Everything clean there, too. No boats. Not even the false echo of a wave. Nothing.

"Esos cabrones"she heard Santiago mutter.

Waiting. That was part of the job, but in the time she had been on the job, going out to sea with Santiago, Teresa had learned that the bad part was not the waiting itself, but the things your imagination did while you waited. The sound of water against the rocks, the murmur of the wind that could be confused with a Moroccan patrol-the Moros, in Strait slang-or the Spanish Customs helicopter were not as unsettling or disquieting as that long calm during which your thoughts became your worst enemy. Even concrete danger, the hostile echo that suddenly appeared on the radar screen, the roar of the engine struggling to achieve speed and freedom and life, the fifty-knot run-for-it with a patrol boat glued to your stern, the slaps of the boat's keel on the water, the violent alternating discharges of adrenaline and fear were for her preferable to the uncertainty of the calm, the imagination. How terrible lucidity was. And how perverse the terrifying, coldly a.s.sessed possibilities that lurked in the unknown. That unending wait as you tried to pick up a signal from land, a contact on the radio, was like the gray dawns that still found her awake every morning, and that now had followed her onto the sea, with the night growing light in the east, and the cold, and the wetness that made the deck slippery and soaked her clothes, her hands, and her face. Chale. Chale. No fear is unbearable, she concluded, unless you've got time on your hands and a healthy imagination. No fear is unbearable, she concluded, unless you've got time on your hands and a healthy imagination.

Five months already. Sometimes, the other Teresa Mendoza she would catch sight of in the otherworld of a mirror, on some corner, in the dirty light of dawn, was still hovering, still spying on her, apparently curious to see the changes gradually being registered on her. That was why it was interesting, almost educational, to come and go from her own body, her own mind that way, and to be able to see herself from outside as well as from inside. Now Teresa knew that everything-fear, uncertainty, pa.s.sion, pleasure, memories, her own face, which looked older now than it had only a few months ago- might be contemplated from that double point of view, and with a mathematical lucidity that belonged not to her but rather to that other woman that throbbed in her. The apt.i.tude for this uncanny out-of-body experience, which had been discovered, or rather intuited, the afternoon (not even a year earlier) that the telephone rang in Culiacan, was what now allowed her to cast a cold eye on the motionless motorboat in the darkness of the sea that was becoming so familiar to her. She stood, once more, alongside the silent shadow of a man whom she didn't love-or perhaps just thought she didn't love-but with whom she was out here on this boat, at the risk of spending the rest of her life rotting in jail. It was an idea (the ghost of Lalo Veiga was the third crewman accompanying them on every run) that made her s.h.i.+ver.

But it was better than Melilla, better than anything she had expected. More personal and cleaner, somehow. At times she even thought that it was better than Sinaloa, but then the image of Guero Davila would come to her mind like a reproach, and she would feel guilty, deep inside, for betraying his memory that way. Nothing was better than Guero, and that was true in more than one sense. Culiacan, the pretty house in Las Quintas, the restaurants on the malecon, malecon, the music of the the music of the chirrines, chirrines, the street musicians that only Sinaloa in all of Mexico had, the drives to Mazatlan, the beaches at Al-tata, everything that she had believed to be the real world, and that had made her happy with life, was based on a mistake. the street musicians that only Sinaloa in all of Mexico had, the drives to Mazatlan, the beaches at Al-tata, everything that she had believed to be the real world, and that had made her happy with life, was based on a mistake.

Now, however, there was something new, something indefinable and not altogether bad in the darkness of the night, and in the quiet, resigned fear she felt when she looked around her, despite the nearby shadow of a man who-this she had learned in Culiacan-would never be able to persuade her to deceive herself again, allow herself to believe that she was somehow protected against horror, pain, and death. And strangely, that sensation, far from intimidating her, excited her and goaded her on. It forced her to a.n.a.lyze herself and other things more intensely, with a thoughtful curiosity not altogether free of respect. Which was why she sometimes stood looking at the snapshot that she and Guero had been in, glancing back and forth at the mirror, taking note of the ever greater distance between the three women: the young woman with the surprised eyes in the snapshot, the Teresa who was now living on this side of life and the pa.s.sage of time, and the stranger who observed the other two from her-increasingly less precise-reflection.

Chingale, she'd come a long way from Culiacan. Between two continents, with the Moroccan coast just ten miles from Spain: the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar and the southernmost limit of a Europe she had never in her life dreamed of visiting. she'd come a long way from Culiacan. Between two continents, with the Moroccan coast just ten miles from Spain: the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar and the southernmost limit of a Europe she had never in her life dreamed of visiting.

Here, Santiago Fisterra ran a transport operation for other people. He rented a little house on a beach in the Bay of Algeciras, on the Spanish side, and kept his speedboat tied up at Sheppard's marina, under the protection of the British flag that flew over the Rock. The boat was a 24-foot Phantom able to go 160 miles on its gas tanks, with a 250-horsepower engine that could go from zero to fifty-five knots in twenty-two seconds. Santiago was a mercenary. Unlike Guero Davila in Sinaloa, he had no one boss, did not work for a single cartel. His employers were the Spanish, British, French, and Italian drug traffickers who ran their business on the Costa del Sol. Aside from that, though, it was more or less the same: transport s.h.i.+pments from one place to another. Santiago charged so much per delivery, and he paid for losses or failures with his life. But that would be only in the most extreme case. This smuggling- almost always has.h.i.+sh, sometimes tobacco from Gibraltar warehouses-had nothing to do with what Teresa Mendoza had known before. The world of these waters was hard, the people gruff, but both the world and the people were less hostile than in Mexico. There was less violence, fewer deaths. People were not shot down over one drink too many, nor did they carry AK-47s, like in Sinaloa. Of the two sides of the Strait, the northern, Spanish side was more easygoing, even if you fell into the hands of the law. There were lawyers, judges, rules that applied to the criminals as well as to their victims.

But the Moroccan side was different: there, it was a nightmare. Corruption at every level, human rights virtually unrecognized, prisons you could rot in. With the added problem of being a woman, and what that meant if you fell into the inexorable machinery of a Muslim society like that.

At first, Santiago had refused to let her take Lalo Veiga's place. Too dangerous, he had said, nipping the discussion in the bud. Or thinking that he had. It was one thing for her to come with him and stay onsh.o.r.e, but ride with him? Never. Real serious, totally macho, the Gallego, with that odd accent he sometimes had, less brusque than other Spaniards, who were so contemptuous, so rude when they talked.

But after a night Teresa spent with her eyes open, staring first at the darkness of the ceiling and then at the familiar gray light, she woke Santiago up to tell him that she'd made a decision. And that was that. She was never going to wait for anybody again, watching telenovelas in some house in some city somewhere-so he could choose: Either take her on the boat, or she would leave him then and there, forever, nice knowing you.

Santiago, his chin unshaven, his eyes red with sleep, scratched his tousled hair and asked her if she was crazy or had turned into a b.i.t.c.h or what. Until she got out of bed, naked, and still naked took down her suitcase and began to throw her things into it, trying not to look in the mirror or at him or think about whether she was sure she would truly leave. Santiago let her pack, watching her for a minute and a half without opening his mouth.

Finally convinced that she was actually leaving, he said, All right, you win, okay. f.u.c.k it. It's not my c.u.n.t the Moros are going to rip open if they catch you. Just try not to fall overboard like Lalo.

There they are." A click-clack, click-clack, three times, barely audible on the radio. A small shadow, leaving a wake of phosph.o.r.escence on the black, quiet surface. Not even an engine, just the m.u.f.fled splash of oars. Santiago was watching with the Baigish-6U night-vision binoculars. Russian. The Russians had flooded Gibraltar with them during the Soviet liquidation. Any boat, submarine, or fis.h.i.+ng boat that came into port sold off everything that could be unscrewed. "Those three times, barely audible on the radio. A small shadow, leaving a wake of phosph.o.r.escence on the black, quiet surface. Not even an engine, just the m.u.f.fled splash of oars. Santiago was watching with the Baigish-6U night-vision binoculars. Russian. The Russians had flooded Gibraltar with them during the Soviet liquidation. Any boat, submarine, or fis.h.i.+ng boat that came into port sold off everything that could be unscrewed. "Those hijos de puta hijos de puta are an hour late." are an hour late."

Teresa heard his whispers while her face was cradled in the rubber cone of the radar. All clear outside, she said, whispering also. Not a sign of the Moros. The speedboat rocked when Santiago stood up to move toward the stern with a rope.

"Salaam aleikem."

The cargo was well packed, in plastic shrink-wrap with handles for easier handling. Pills of has.h.i.+sh oil, seven times more concentrated, seven times more valuable than the conventional resin. Twenty kilos per bundle, Teresa calculated while Santiago pa.s.sed them to her and she stowed them in rows in the hold. Santiago had taught her to fit one pack tightly against another so they wouldn't s.h.i.+ft during the run across the open sea. This underscored the importance that good stowage had on the Phantom's speed-as much importance as the propeller's revolutions or depth in the water. One package, badly stowed, might mean a difference of two knots, two nautical miles per hour. And in this line of work two nautical miles, two and a third land miles, was not a distance to be sneezed at. It often meant the difference between prison and freedom.

"Anything on the radar?"

"Everything clean."

Teresa could make out two dark silhouettes on the little rowboat. Sometimes she could hear a few words in Arabic, spoken softly, or an expression of impatience from Santiago, who was still tossing bundles on board. She looked at the gray line of the coast to see if she could make out any lights. Everything was dark except a few distant dots on the black bulk of Mount Musa and on the steep profile she could distinguish from time to time toward the west, under the light from the Punta Cires lighthouse, where she could see a few fishermen's and smugglers' houses. She looked at the screen again, then clicked down the scale from four miles to two, then back up to eight. There was a blip at almost the outer limit. She looked through the 7X50 binoculars but saw nothing, so she picked up the Russian pair: a very distant light, moving slowly toward the west, no doubt a big boat on its way to the Atlantic. Still peering through the binoculars, she turned toward the coast. Now any point of light could be seen clearly in the green landscape, its rocks and shrubs neatly defined, and she could even see the slight undulations of the water. She turned the lenses on the two Moroccans in the rowboat: one young, in a leather jacket, and the other an older man, wearing a wool beret and a dark windbreaker. Santiago was on his knees next to the big outboard-motor housing, stowing away the last bundles in the stern: jeans, boat shoes, black T-s.h.i.+rt, his stubborn profile turning from time to time for a cautious look around. Through the night-vision lenses, Teresa could make out his strong arms, his muscles tense as they lifted the cargo. Even here, the cabron cabron was fine. was fine.

The problem with working as an independent runner, unconnected with the big narcomafias, was that somebody could get upset with you and whisper a few dangerous words in the wrong person's ear. Just like in pinche pinche Mexico. That might explain the capture of Lalo Veiga-Teresa had her ideas about that, and Dris Larbi was one of them. But Santiago had apparently learned his lesson, and now he was trying hard to keep the unexpected to a minimum with more money spread around in Morocco through an intermediary from Ceuta. That lowered his profits but at least in principle lowered the risk. Of course his modest means would never be enough to buy off everybody. Not to mention that there might always be some agent for the Moros, some Moroccan cop or gendarme that wasn't happy with his cut, some compet.i.tor that could pay more than Santiago could and blow the whistle on him, some influential f.u.c.king leech lawyer that needed clients to bleed. Or the Moroccan authorities might organize a roundup of little fish so they could have something to show at some big international narcocop convention. In any case, Teresa had acquired enough experience to know that the real danger, the concrete threat, came later, when they entered Spanish waters, where Customs and the Heinekens of the Guardia Civil- their colors were just like the beer's-patrolled night and day, looking for smugglers. The advantage with them was that unlike the Moroccans, the Spaniards never shot to kill, because if they did, the judges and courts would be all over them-in Europe certain things were taken more seriously than in Mexico or the United States. That gave you the chance to get away, if your boat could outrun them, although it was not easy to shake the Customs' powerful HJ turbocraft or their helicopter-the bird, Santiago called it- with its powerful detection systems, its veteran captains, and its pilots able to fly just feet above the water, forcing you to go throttle-out in dangerous evasive maneuvers, with the inevitable risk of engine or steering problems, the risk of being captured before you could reach the lights of Gibraltar. In those cases, the bales were thrown overboard- Mexico. That might explain the capture of Lalo Veiga-Teresa had her ideas about that, and Dris Larbi was one of them. But Santiago had apparently learned his lesson, and now he was trying hard to keep the unexpected to a minimum with more money spread around in Morocco through an intermediary from Ceuta. That lowered his profits but at least in principle lowered the risk. Of course his modest means would never be enough to buy off everybody. Not to mention that there might always be some agent for the Moros, some Moroccan cop or gendarme that wasn't happy with his cut, some compet.i.tor that could pay more than Santiago could and blow the whistle on him, some influential f.u.c.king leech lawyer that needed clients to bleed. Or the Moroccan authorities might organize a roundup of little fish so they could have something to show at some big international narcocop convention. In any case, Teresa had acquired enough experience to know that the real danger, the concrete threat, came later, when they entered Spanish waters, where Customs and the Heinekens of the Guardia Civil- their colors were just like the beer's-patrolled night and day, looking for smugglers. The advantage with them was that unlike the Moroccans, the Spaniards never shot to kill, because if they did, the judges and courts would be all over them-in Europe certain things were taken more seriously than in Mexico or the United States. That gave you the chance to get away, if your boat could outrun them, although it was not easy to shake the Customs' powerful HJ turbocraft or their helicopter-the bird, Santiago called it- with its powerful detection systems, its veteran captains, and its pilots able to fly just feet above the water, forcing you to go throttle-out in dangerous evasive maneuvers, with the inevitable risk of engine or steering problems, the risk of being captured before you could reach the lights of Gibraltar. In those cases, the bales were thrown overboard-adios forever to the cargo, and forever to the cargo, and hola hola to another kind of problem, maybe worse than the cops, because the people that s.h.i.+pped the has.h.i.+sh were not always understanding mafiosi, and you ran the risk that after all the books were balanced there might be a couple of sombreros too many. All that without taking into account the possibility of a bad bounce on the waves, a leak in the hull, a crash between your boat and the boats pursuing you, a submerged rock that would rip out the guts of the boat and its crew, running aground on the beach. "That's it. Let's go." to another kind of problem, maybe worse than the cops, because the people that s.h.i.+pped the has.h.i.+sh were not always understanding mafiosi, and you ran the risk that after all the books were balanced there might be a couple of sombreros too many. All that without taking into account the possibility of a bad bounce on the waves, a leak in the hull, a crash between your boat and the boats pursuing you, a submerged rock that would rip out the guts of the boat and its crew, running aground on the beach. "That's it. Let's go."

The last package had been stowed. Exactly three hundred kilos. The men in the rowboat were now rowing toward sh.o.r.e, and Santiago, after coiling the rope, jumped into the c.o.c.kpit and sat down in the pilot's seat, on the starboard side. Teresa moved to let him pa.s.s as she, like him, pulled on a life jacket. Then she gave another look at the radar screen: everything clean ahead, toward the north and the open sea. End of the immediate precautions. Santiago turned the key, and the weak light of the instruments illuminated the dash: compa.s.s, tachometer, oil pressure gauge. Throttle levers to the left of the pilot, trim-tab lever to the right. Rrrr. Roarrr. Rrrr. Roarrr. The needles moved, startled, as though they'd suddenly been shaken awake. The needles moved, startled, as though they'd suddenly been shaken awake. Roaaarr. Roaaarr. The propeller whipped up a froth of spray, and the Phantom's twenty-four feet began to move, faster and faster, cutting through the oily water as cleanly as a well-sharpened knife: 2,500 rpms, twenty knots. The vibration of the engine was transmitted to the hull, and Teresa could feel the power pus.h.i.+ng them forward, making the fibergla.s.s of the hull, which suddenly felt as light as a feather, quiver. 3,500 rpms, thirty knots, and hydroplaning. The sensation of power, of freedom, was almost physical, and as she felt it once again, her heart beat as though to the rush of the third drink of the night. Nothing, she thought once more, is like this. Or almost nothing. The propeller whipped up a froth of spray, and the Phantom's twenty-four feet began to move, faster and faster, cutting through the oily water as cleanly as a well-sharpened knife: 2,500 rpms, twenty knots. The vibration of the engine was transmitted to the hull, and Teresa could feel the power pus.h.i.+ng them forward, making the fibergla.s.s of the hull, which suddenly felt as light as a feather, quiver. 3,500 rpms, thirty knots, and hydroplaning. The sensation of power, of freedom, was almost physical, and as she felt it once again, her heart beat as though to the rush of the third drink of the night. Nothing, she thought once more, is like this. Or almost nothing.

Santiago, concentrating on the boat's reactions, leaning slightly into the wheel, his jaw reddish from the instrument panel lights, eased the throttle forward: 4,000 rpms, forty knots. The winds.h.i.+eld was no longer enough to protect them from the wind, which was now wet and cutting. Teresa zipped up the life jacket and pulled on a wool cap; she tucked her hair, which was whipping into her eyes, under it. Then she gave another look at the radar and swept the channels on the Kenwood radio-the Customs agents and Guardia Civil used scramblers to talk back and forth, but even if she couldn't understand their transmissions, the intensity of the signal let her know whether they were close by. Once in a while she raised her face, looking for the menacing shadow of the helicopter against the cold lights of the stars. The firmament and the dark circle of the sea around them seemed to run with them, as though the speedboat were at the center of a sphere traveling swiftly through the night. Now, on the open sea, the slight swell made them bounce over the surface of the water, and in the distance she could begin to make out the lights of the coast of Spain.

How alike and how different they were, she thought. How much they resembled one another in some things-she had sensed this since the night at the Yamila-yet what different ways they had of facing life and the future. Like Guero, Santiago was quick, smart, determined, and very cold in his work, one of those men that never lose their head even when they're getting beat to s.h.i.+t. He also was good for her in bed-generous, thoughtful, always controlling himself very calmly, attentive to her reactions. Less fun, maybe, but more tender than Guero. Sweeter, sometimes. And there the similarities ended. Santiago was a man of few words, didn't spend money, had few friends, and distrusted everybody.

"I'm a Celt from Finisterre," he would say. "In Galician, fisterra fisterra means end, the end of the earth. I want to live to be an old man and play dominoes in a bar in 0 Grove, and have a big means end, the end of the earth. I want to live to be an old man and play dominoes in a bar in 0 Grove, and have a big pazo" pazo"-the Galician word for a country house or villa-"with a mirador, all gla.s.sed-in, that I can see the ocean from, with a telescope to watch the boats going in and out, and my own sixty-foot schooner beached down at the mouth of the river. But if I spend my money, or have too many friends, or trust too many people, I'll never live to be an old man or have any of that-the more links in the chain, the less you can trust it."

Santiago never smoked tobacco or has.h.i.+sh or anything else, and he would have as much as a gla.s.s of wine only now and then. When he got up in the morning he would run for a half-hour on the beach, through water up to his ankles, and then do push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups-Teresa counted, and it was always fifty of each. His body was lean and hard, with skin that was light but tanned dark on the arms and face, with his tattoo of the crucified Christ on his right forearm and another mark on his left shoulder, a circle with a Celtic cross and the initials I.A., whose meaning-she suspected they stood for the name of a woman-she always refused to ask. He also had an old scar, about three inches long, diagonal, at kidney level, on his back.

"A knife," he said, when Teresa asked. "A long time ago. When I was selling Turkish tobacco in bars and the other kids were afraid I'd take their customers away." And as he said this he smiled ruefully, melancholy, as though he missed those days when somebody could stab you in the back with a knife.

She would almost have been able to love him, Teresa thought sometimes, had everything not happened in the wrong place at the wrong time in her life. Things always happen too soon or too late. But she liked being with him, really liked it, watching TV as she leaned on his shoulder, looking through romance magazines, lying in the sun with a Bisonte laced with has.h.i.+sh between her fingers-she knew that Santiago didn't approve of her smoking the stuff, but she never heard him say a word against it-or watching him out on the porch, his torso naked, the sea in the background, as he worked on his wooden boat models. She loved to watch him build those little boats, because he was so very patient and painstaking, and incredibly skillful at constructing fis.h.i.+ng boats that looked exactly like the real ones- painted red, blue, and white-and sailboats with every sail, line, and cable in its place. It was strange about those boats, and the speedboat, too, because she had discovered that Santiago didn't know how to swim. Not even paddle along like she did, clumsy strokes that Guero had taught her in Altata- with almost no style, but at least swimming.

"I could never even float," he confessed once, a parenthesis while they were talking about something else. "It makes me feel weird."

And when Teresa asked him why, then, he risked his life in a speedboat, all he did was shrug fatalistically, with that grin of his that seemed to emerge after many twists and turns through his insides.

"Half of us Galicians don't know how to swim," he said at last. "We sink, we die-with resignation." He grinned.

And at first she didn't know whether he was altogether joking, or altogether serious.

One afternoon, over tapas at Kuki's-Casa Bernal, a tasca tasca in Campamento-Santiago introduced her to a man he knew, Oscar Lobato, a reporter for a Cadiz newspaper. Dark-skinned, fortyish, his face marked and scarred like a ruffian, which he wasn't, and loquacious-a born talker- Lobato moved as easily (like a fish in water, thought Teresa) among smugglers as among Customs agents and members of the Guardia Civil. He read books and he knew something about everything, from engines to geography to music. He also knew everybody, wouldn't reveal his sources even if you held a .45 to his head, and had moved in this murky world for some time, with his telephone book full of contacts. He always lent a hand when he could, no matter which side of the law you were on, partly out of an instinct for public relations and partly because despite the bitter aftertaste of his trade, people said, he was not a bad guy. Not to mention that he liked his work. in Campamento-Santiago introduced her to a man he knew, Oscar Lobato, a reporter for a Cadiz newspaper. Dark-skinned, fortyish, his face marked and scarred like a ruffian, which he wasn't, and loquacious-a born talker- Lobato moved as easily (like a fish in water, thought Teresa) among smugglers as among Customs agents and members of the Guardia Civil. He read books and he knew something about everything, from engines to geography to music. He also knew everybody, wouldn't reveal his sources even if you held a .45 to his head, and had moved in this murky world for some time, with his telephone book full of contacts. He always lent a hand when he could, no matter which side of the law you were on, partly out of an instinct for public relations and partly because despite the bitter aftertaste of his trade, people said, he was not a bad guy. Not to mention that he liked his work.

These days he was hanging out in La Atunara, the old fis.h.i.+ng neighborhood of La Linea, where a strike had turned fishermen into smugglers. Boats from Gibraltar would pull up onto the beach in broad daylight and be unloaded by women and children who painted their own pedestrian crosswalks on the highway so they could carry the packages and bales of contraband across the road. The kids played at being drug traffickers and Civil Guardsmen along the water, chasing each other with empty Winston cartons on their heads; only the youngest and most gullible of them could be persuaded to be the cops. And every enforcement operation ended in tear gas and rubber bullets, with real bullets only between the inhabitants and the riot police.

"Picture the scene," Lobato was saying. "The beach at Puente Mayorga, at night, a speedboat from Gibraltar with two guys unloading tobacco. A patrol from the Guardia Civil, old corporal and young private. 'Halt, who goes there,' et cetera. The guys on the beach take off running. The engine won't start, the young guardsman jumps in the water and climbs on the speedboat. The engine finally catches, and there goes the speedboat for the Rock, one drug trafficker at the helm and the other one beating the living s.h.i.+t out of the guardsman.... Now picture that speedboat stopping in the middle of the bay.... The conversation with the guardsman. 'Listen, kid,' they tell him. 'If you stay on this boat all the way to Gibraltar we'll be f.u.c.ked, and you'll get screwed over for chasing us into British waters. So let's think this over, all right?'... Bottom line: Speedboat returns to the beach, guardsman climbs off. Adios, adios, buenas noches. Adios, adios, buenas noches. And peace on earth, goodwill to men." And peace on earth, goodwill to men."

As that combination of Galician and drug runner that he was, Santiago distrusted journalists. But Teresa knew that he considered Lobato an exception: he was objective, discreet, didn't believe in bad guys and good guys, knew how to get along, paid for the drinks, and never took notes in public. He also told good stories and even better jokes, and he never spoke ill of those who weren't present. He had come into Casa Bernal with Toby Par-rondi, a speedboat pilot from Gibraltar, and some of Toby's friends. They were all young: long hair, tans, tattoos, gold rings in their ears, cigarettes and gold lighters on the table, high-powered cars with dark-tinted windows that they drove around in playing the music of Los Chunguitos or Javivi or Los Chichos as loud as it would go-songs that reminded Teresa a little of Mexican narcocorridos. At night I don't sleep, in the daytime I don't live, At night I don't sleep, in the daytime I don't live, went the lyrics to one, went the lyrics to one, in these four walls, this miserable prison. in these four walls, this miserable prison. Songs that were part of the local folklore, like those songs in Sinaloa, and with equally picturesque t.i.tles: "The Moorish Girl and the Legionnaire," "I'm a Stray Dog in the Street," "Fists of Steel," "To My Colleagues." The smugglers from the Rock differed from the Spaniards only in that more of them had blond hair and light skin, and they mixed English words into their Andalucian-accented Spanish. Otherwise, they were cut from the same cloth: gold chains with crucifixes around their necks, medals to the Virgin or the inevitable image of Camaron. Heavy-metal T-s.h.i.+rts, expensive jogging suits, Adidas and Nike sneakers, faded designer jeans with wads of bills in one back pocket and the bulge of a knife in the other. Very tough guys, as dangerous at times as their Sinaloan cousins. Nothing to lose and a lot to gain. Their girlfriends stuffed into stretch pants that showed off their tattooed a.s.ses and short T-s.h.i.+rts that showed off their navel-piercings, with lots of makeup and perfume, and all that gold. They reminded Teresa of the girls that ran with the narcos from Culiacan. And in a certain way they reminded her of herself-and realizing that made her think that too much time had pa.s.sed, and too many things had happened. Songs that were part of the local folklore, like those songs in Sinaloa, and with equally picturesque t.i.tles: "The Moorish Girl and the Legionnaire," "I'm a Stray Dog in the Street," "Fists of Steel," "To My Colleagues." The smugglers from the Rock differed from the Spaniards only in that more of them had blond hair and light skin, and they mixed English words into their Andalucian-accented Spanish. Otherwise, they were cut from the same cloth: gold chains with crucifixes around their necks, medals to the Virgin or the inevitable image of Camaron. Heavy-metal T-s.h.i.+rts, expensive jogging suits, Adidas and Nike sneakers, faded designer jeans with wads of bills in one back pocket and the bulge of a knife in the other. Very tough guys, as dangerous at times as their Sinaloan cousins. Nothing to lose and a lot to gain. Their girlfriends stuffed into stretch pants that showed off their tattooed a.s.ses and short T-s.h.i.+rts that showed off their navel-piercings, with lots of makeup and perfume, and all that gold. They reminded Teresa of the girls that ran with the narcos from Culiacan. And in a certain way they reminded her of herself-and realizing that made her think that too much time had pa.s.sed, and too many things had happened.

In this group there was the occasional Spaniard from La Atunara, but most of the kids were from Gibraltar-Brits with surnames inherited from Spain, England, Malta, and every other corner of the Mediterranean. As Lobato said with a wink, including Santiago in the gesture, "the best of every country."

"So, Mexican, eh?"

"Orale."

"You've come a long way." "Life's like that."

The journalist's smile was flecked with beer foam. "That sounds like a song by Jose Alfredo." "You know Jose Alfredo?" "A little."

And Lobato started humming "The Drunk Came In Drunk" as he signaled the waiter for another round. "The same for my friends and me," he said. "And for those gentlemen at that table, and their ladies."

Calling for five tequilas, and the bartender told him that'd be all for tonight.

Teresa sang a few lines with him, and they laughed at the end. He was simpatico, simpatico, she thought. And he wasn't a know-it-all. Being a know-it-all with Santiago and those guys over there was bad for the health. Lobato was studying her, trying to guess her weight, so to speak. Eyes that knew which side of his mouth the iguana chewed on. she thought. And he wasn't a know-it-all. Being a know-it-all with Santiago and those guys over there was bad for the health. Lobato was studying her, trying to guess her weight, so to speak. Eyes that knew which side of his mouth the iguana chewed on.

"A Mexican and a Gallego. Never thought I'd live to see the day."

That was good. Don't ask questions, but open the door so the other person could tell his story, if he wanted to. Smooth as silk, this one.

"My father was Spanish."

"From where?"

"I never knew."

Lobato didn't ask whether that was true or not, that she'd never known, or whether she was just closing that door. Giving up on the family questions, he sipped at his beer and gestured toward Santiago.

"They say you ride over to Morocco with this guy."

"Who says that?"

"People. There are no secrets here. Ten miles-not a lot of water, you know."

"End of interview," said Santiago, taking Lobato's half-drunk beer out of his hand, in exchange for another one from the new round that the blond guys at the next table had just sent over.

The reporter shrugged.

"She's pretty, your girl. And that accent."