Perfect Hatred (23 page)

Arnaldo looked at Silva over the rim of his coffee cup. “You’re not going to tell the Director, are you?”
“Not on your life,” Silva said.
It was an hour later. He was back in his office. The door
was closed, and they were alone.
“If I mentioned any of this to Sampaio,” Silva said, “he’d
only start thinking about how he could use it. And, in the
end, he
would
use it. And it would all come out.”
“You think Bruna knew?”
“I don’t think so. I hope not.”
“She’s not in on the money deal, is she?”
“No. She doesn’t need it. Bruna’s family is wealthy. It was
Senhora Cataldo I was worried about.”
“So what’s Stella going to do for her?”
“There’s an insurance company, based in Curitiba. Cataldo
had a policy with them. They’ve been refusing to pay out on
it, told the widow he’d committed suicide by cop.” “So?”
“Stella’s going to get them to approach Jessica Cataldo,
tell her they’ve reconsidered their position about suicide
by cop, tell her, too, that Cataldo brought the value of the
policy up to a million Reais the week before he died.” “They’re going to pay Cataldo’s widow a
million
Reais?” “Uh-huh.”
“After initially telling her they wouldn’t pay at all? What
possible excuse could they offer for having changed their
minds?”
“A lawyer is going to accept Senhora Cataldo’s case pro
bono. And he’s going to find a loophole in the new policy.” “What lawyer?”
“A friend of Diogo Mariano’s, Stella’s new Chief of Staff.” “What loophole in what new policy?”
“The loophole Stella’s going to write into the policy
Cataldo squirreled away and nobody’s been able to find.” “But if nobody’s been able to find it—”
“It will be discovered, by one of their sterling employees,
in the company archives. That employee, in turn, will bring
it to the attention of a concerned directorate. It’ll be a nice
public relations ploy for the company, show how honest they
are, how dedicated to their policy holders.”
“Jesus Christ, Mario, you
do
have a devious mind.” “Thank you.”
“What makes you think Senhora Cataldo will believe all
this claptrap?”
“Why should she not? Why should she look a gift horse in
the mouth?”
“Where’s the money coming from?”
“Plínio had a policy, a big one. If it wasn’t with the same
company as Cataldo’s new one, Stella will make sure it’s
transferred. She’s not giving Senhora Cataldo all the proceeds, though, just half.”
“Sounds to me like there are too many people involved in
this little scheme. What if someone talks?”
“Stella isn’t worried.”
“Why not?”
“Because, if it comes out at all, which it may not, everybody’s going to think she’s a wonderful person for treating
the family of her husband’s killer with such charity and tying
herself into such knots to do it.”
“And Stella would come out smelling like roses.”

“Sure. The money is hers. She can do whatever she wants with it. There’s no real fraud, only a subterfuge to help the widow Cataldo.”

“Pure genius,” Arnaldo said with admiration. “You know, Mario, I sometimes think you should have been a politician yourself.”

In the nineteenth century, she suffered the bloody War of the Triple Alliance, which cost her 70% of her population and 140,000 square kilometers of her territory.

In the twentieth, she suffered Alfredo Stroessner, the longest-ruling dictator in the history of South America.
And now, in this book, she might seem to be suffering calumny.
Not so.
In fact, I wish there were more fiction in what I have written about her in these pages.
The contribution of smuggling to Paraguay’s economy cannot be overestimated. It exceeds by five times the country’s official GNP.
More than half of everything brought legally into Paraguay is exported as contraband.
Seventy percent of the 600,000 automobiles circulating in the country are there illegally.
Her factories produce more than 65 billion cigarettes a year, most of which go directly to Brazil, where they drain the equivalent of US $2.5 billion a year from badly-needed tax revenues.
Paraguay is the continent’s biggest importer of whisky from Scotland. Only 5% of it is consumed locally.
She is Brazil’s principal source of illegal weapons. As of this writing, a criminal can walk across the Friendship Bridge, enter any one of the 32 specialized shops in Ciudad

del Este, buy a fully automatic AK-47 without showing any form of identification, and have it delivered to him in Foz do Iguaçu. The whole process takes less than 24 hours and costs US $400, a mere trifle for the drug dealers who are the illicit arms industry’s major clients.

More than US $1,000,000,000 a year is laundered by Paraguayan banks and exchange businesses.
Along one strip of the river forming the border between the two countries, a strip barely 200 kilometers long, more than 3,000 clandestine ports have been identified by the Brazilian authorities. Identified, but not controlled—partly due to insufficient staffing and inadequate resources, but also due to corruption. Many customs agents, and many cops, earn more in bribes than they do in salary.
The porosity of its borders has allowed Brazil to become the principal conduit for the supply of cocaine to Europe and Africa. It enters Paraguay by way of Peru and Colombia, and enters Brazil by way of Paraguay. From there, it moves eastward by ship and airplane.
The area where Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil meet, often referred to as the Tri-Border-Area (TBA), is home to one of the largest Muslim communities in all of South America— and the one most closed to outsiders. Documentation concerning the TBA has been found by U.S. forces searching captured Al Qaeda facilities in Afghanistan.
Islamic terrorist groups with a presence in the region reportedly include Egypt’s Al-Gamaá Al-Islamiyya and Al-Jihad, Al-Muqawamah, al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hizballah.
In March of 1992, a TBA group linked with Hizballah staged an attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires. Two years later, in July of 1994, they followed up with an action against a Jewish community center, also in Buenos Aires.
From the sketchy information law enforcement authorities

were able to piece together, there was disagreement about both actions within the TBA’s radical community. One wing, the more pragmatic one, wanted to reserve the area as a safe haven. They defended the position that operations traced back to the TBA would call down the wrath of the authorities. The other wing, the more idealistic one, held that actions shouldn’t be prohibited for fear of reprisal.

The debate was settled when the pragmatic group’s position got a stamp of approval from Osama bin Laden.
Reports of a visit to the region by bin Laden himself remain unconfirmed, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was there in 1995, a fact that came to light following his capture in Pakistan in March of 2003.
It is unclear, at this moment, how much trouble might be brewing in the region, but all it would take to tip the balance would be the emergence of a few dedicated fanatics.

Santana do Parnaiba, SP Brazil April, 2012