The Clayton Account (22 page)

By the time Tony Salazar got back to his room at two-thirty on Thursday morning, it was ten-thirty on Wednesday evening in Colombia. The Mayor of Medellín looked at his watch and decided that it was time to go home. He got out of bed slowly and glanced at Alicia’s tranquil figure as she slept after an evening of lovemaking. She slept like a child, lying on her left side with her knees tucked in against her stomach, her left arm comfortingly under the pillow, right thumb hidden in her mouth. Romualdes stood for a moment watching the generous curves of her body and the firmly rounded bottom that had first caught his attention at the Municipality. He felt himself stir and wanted to get back on the bed alongside her, but then an image of Morales flashed ominously in his mind and his ardour faded. He walked into the small bathroom of his downtown love nest and turned the shower on.

A few weeks earlier Romualdes had been flying high. The programme he had helped design for the Foundation had been taking shape, and even if the power behind the scenes was and would remain Don Carlos, the Mayor’s was the palpable face of the power. He loved it. Businessmen and contractors queuing up to see him, solicitously grovelling for a share of the thirty or forty million dollars’ worth of contracts that he, Miguel Romualdes, had in his power to dispense. At first Romualdes had agonized over the lost opportunities, signing away fat contracts without a single miserable peso in kickbacks, but he knew for certain no amount of money was worth risking Morales’ rage. Some of those benefiting from his munificence had, as a matter of course, delivered tightly
packed
envelopes which Romualdes could not even allow himself to open lest he succumb to temptation. He could almost guess the values by size and weight.

One by one he had returned the offerings to the astonished bearers. ‘The Morales Foundation is a
charity
,’ he would say to them gravely, ‘for the benefit of the poor people of Medellín.’ His callers would express their admiration while attempting to hide their embarrassment. If their quotations included a hefty sum for mayoral bribery, it was clear that the Foundation was being overcharged.

Invariably they would state that, should the Mayor ever need whatever took his fancy, they would always be delighted to be of service. He was at first dismissive but soon learned to make capital of a less than ideal situation. Feigning surprise at the unexpected suggestions, he would introduce his requests most casually – ‘Well, now that you mention it …’ – then start accumulating payments in kind. The use of a yacht moored in Cartagena, the loan of a private plane, catering for his daughter’s birthday, chauffeur-driven transportation for his wife. It was never quite the same as cash but at least it would not offend Morales. Generosity and acts of friendship were, after all, simply good manners amongst the rich and powerful of Latin America.

And then, as Romualdes rode highest and the sun promised to shine ever brighter each tomorrow, a bolt of lightning shattered the dream and started it on a relentless spiral dive into nightmare. For this turn of events, he knew, he had that Guatemalan son-of-a-whore Robles to thank. Him and his perverse Yankee paymasters.

Romualdes had already questioned Alicia and was satisfied she told the truth. She did not know who Robles was, though the latter had called at the house once, and she’d never told anyone about her lover’s business – except,
of
course, she’d had to tell her sister and Andres about the houses they would be given. How could she possibly keep secret the greatest event about to happen in their lives?

Romualdes had nodded approvingly and accepted her innocence. Robles, thank God, appeared to have left Colombia just as he said, but the Mayor was not prepared to call the BID in order to find out.

Next time he met a BID official, he would ask casually and see what he could learn. But the bastard had got the details of the banks in Uruguay and Spain. Banks, Romualdes presumed, which held a lot of Morales’ money.

And that worried him sick.

Thank God only he and Robles knew what had transpired that evening in his study. For his life, Romualdes could not see what Robles had to gain by telling Morales. But the gringos had tentacles that spread across the globe and maybe the power to snatch that money. The very notion was making the Mayor’s ulcers bleed.

Wednesday at the town hall had been heartbreaking. One after another the contractors had called, and each time he or De la Cruz called the Bank of Antioquia the answer had been the same: no transfers received. The problem was that Romualdes, in an effort to impress the druglord, had moved fast. No sooner had the purchase contracts on the sites been signed than the bulldozers moved in. Holes were dug deep, access roads carved, and within the week foundations were being filled with concrete. Orders for building materials had been placed, many outside the province, with deposits paid and deliveries agreed to take place in half the usual time. Underwriting this activity was the promise of payments in cash, right on their due dates and without a single administrative hold-up. And now the bills presented to the
main
contractor, Constructora de Malaga, amounted to nearly seven million dollars, for the settlement of which not one penny was at hand.

Romualdes had planned to spend the coming weekend shopping in Panama’s Freeport with Alicia, but at the last minute the private jet he had been promised – by the plant-hire company – was ‘urgently needed in Caracas’. Romualdes wished his was no longer the face of the Foundation, as, unlike the bewildered De la Cruz, he had at least an inkling of what exactly might be happening. The last thing he wanted was to meet Morales, so he had told Aristides to deal with the problem and report to Don Carlos as he saw fit. Aristides De la Cruz, who had no reason to fear a meeting with his most esteemed client, had done just that. First, he had gone to the Bank of Antioquia and sat himself behind closed doors with the manager. The latter had, at the lawyer’s insistence, called the banks in Montevideo and Seville and asked why payments had not been made. Both banks stuck to the position that they were unable to discuss the account they held with anyone other than the mandated signatories, though the officer he spoke to at Banesto hinted they were themselves waiting to be placed in funds before they could make the appropriate transfers. Accordingly De la Cruz had telephoned his client at home – only to be told that Morales was away until Friday. Aristides suspected ‘away’ meant in the jungle, personally supervising another large shipment to the north.

De la Cruz was right about his client’s whereabouts, but the shipment Morales was about to make was going south. He put on his webbing belt, pistol holster to the right, police baton to the left, and came out of the house accompanied by his two Arawac bodyguards, Tupac and Amaya.
They
were small, compact men of Indian blood, natural fighters who wielded their Kalashnikovs as though they had carried them from birth. They were illiterate and had no monetary ambitions. Of their needs and those of their families, their boss took care. Amongst their people, prestige was what mattered most. They were warriors doing a man’s job, not farming the land or demeaning themselves in the city for the sake of a meagre wage. Such men Morales could trust absolutely, and the rest of the band feared them.

Morales took the wheel of his Nissan Patrol and drove to the processing plant where those present at the airstrip, when the plane had blown up, had been summoned. Had one worker not turned up, Morales would have known the traitor, but all eleven were present.

It was going to prove difficult, he thought. The scum in Cali must be paying their spy well.

The refinery was a ramshackle assemblage of enclosures and upright poles supporting tin roofs, all easily dismantled and transported by mule a few miles along the hills as the sites were moved periodically. Coca-leaf paste came in from Peru and Ecuador, drums and bundles to be processed into 100 per cent pure powder. Sixty men worked on makeshift benches, supervised by a chemist who tested the end product before pronouncing it sound. Now all sixty had been ordered to stop work, and they stood in small groups in the shade of vegetation bordering the hillside encampment. The suspect eleven, separated from their weapons, sat terrified on the ground. Retribution had to be public. The bombing had cost Morales an aircraft, its pilot and four hundred kilos of cocaine. The following day, six of Morales’ men had vanished without a trace, perhaps to look for work far away from Medellín. The drug baron knew the rules. If
ever
he was perceived as vulnerable, his operation would collapse in a matter of days.

‘One of you,’ Morales said for all to hear, ‘has betrayed me. One of you put a bomb in my plane. You have five minutes to tell me who. Otherwise you are all dead.’

The Indians clicked first rounds into their chambers and raised their AK-47s. The loaders gazed fearfully at one another, terrified.

‘You, Dominguez,’ Morales said to the loading supervisor. ‘You were in charge. I want to know who did it.’

‘I didn’t see it, boss, I swear,’ replied the man standing up. ‘I swear by my children’s lives, Don Carlos.’

‘I
pay
you to see, you imbecile!’ exploded Morales drawing his Colt .45 revolver from its holster. He walked up close and pressed the pistol muzzle to Dominguez’s forehead.

‘Think again.
Who?
’

The man was speechless with fear. Probably he genuinely did not know. But Morales squeezed the trigger anyway and the top of Dominguez’s head simply disappeared. The rest winced at the loud bang, then remained motionless as blood, brain tissue and pieces of scalp struck them even before the dead man’s body had collapsed with an obscene thud on the dry earth.

‘Three minutes!’ shouted Morales and brandished his gun at each man in turn.

They started talking.

One spoke to his neighbour and the next man joined in. Another, three places away, asked a question and as the answer was given, several looked towards a colleague sitting alone at the back.

Suddenly they were all shouting at him. It was turning into a clear-cut case. No one actually had seen him plant the bomb, but most of the ten left knew of two or three
others
who could not have done so. In a one-minute anarchic process of elimination driven by survival instincts, all attention was focused on one man.

The kangaroo court had done its job. The presumed culprit leapt to his feet and ran towards the bush. Morales raised his hand at the Arawacs to stop them from opening fire.

‘Get him back!’ he ordered the remaining nine, and to a man they set off in pursuit. Fifteen minutes later they dragged their prey back, hate having replaced fear in their eyes. The saboteur on Cali’s payroll just stood there, resigned but almost defiant as Morales drew his baton and struck him a downward blow. They all heard the crack of the breaking shoulder and the renegade collapsed onto his knees.

‘Tell me who and I’ll make it quick,’ said Morales.

‘Ricardo Noriega,’ he muttered.

Morales nodded to his bodyguards and glanced at the open-sided shacks. They shouldered their Kalashnikovs, then picked the man up by his forearms and dragged him away. The rest watched in stunned silence as, now guessing his fate, he started screaming for a bullet in the head. The Arawacs lifted him with ease and threw him head-first into the large vat. He thrashed about for only a few seconds before the attendants winced as an acrid smell and chlorine vapour wafted forth.

‘When the acid has done its job,’ Morales told the site manager, ‘I want you to put the bones in a wooden box and bring them to my house. Then move this camp five miles north.’ He turned towards his station wagon, followed by his bodyguards. Tomorrow he would mail the box of bones to Noriega’s home in Cali.

On Thursday afternoon, as he tended his garden, De la Cruz received a call from Don Carlos, returning the
lawyer’s
earlier call. When told of the lack of funds, he suggested the latter should come up to Villa del Carmen and discuss it in person.

De la Cruz found Morales grave but in a good mood. The drug baron listened patiently as the lawyer recounted the mounting problems but did not, at least overtly, appear concerned. He invited the lawyer to spend a few moments looking at the models on the table and enjoying a cool drink, while he went into his study and made a call.

Morales then contacted Enrique Speer in San José and asked him to account for the uncharacteristic delay. The Laundry Man had in the past always kept his word. Speer told him of his earlier conversations. On Tuesday he had spoken to Salazar, who had given his word that the funds would be disbursed by him that very day. On Wednesday Richard Sweeney had telephoned to say he had just received the necessary funds and instructed his bank in Geneva to make the payments to Malaga, and to advise him when this had been done. Later that day Sweeney had called again to say both payments had been sent at 4.30 p.m. Swiss time, and that therefore both Banco Nacional and Banesto would be in a position to cable the funds through to Medellín by Friday morning at the latest.

Armed with that information Morales returned to his dining room and told Aristides that he and Romualdes could sign all the cheques on Friday and send them to the contractors. Returning to his office, the lawyer had attempted to contact the Mayor but was told that he had already left the municipality and not yet arrived home. De la Cruz guessed that Romualdes was probably ensconced in his apartment with his mistress. He was not about to interrupt him there. So he just left a message for the Mayor to call as soon as he returned home.

* * *

Romualdes shut off the hot tap and let the cold water shower down hard on him. In the ensuing discomfort, which he viewed as a mixture of offering and penance, he made a sign of the cross and prayed to the Virgin Mary. Please don’t let this go wrong, he silently pleaded. Please let whatever is the problem have nothing to do with me. Please remember this is for charity, for our children, for your poor. With the blessing of the bishop. Please.