The Lotus Eaters (25 page)

The town was situated in the caldera of a long dormant volcano. Because of that volcanic soil, the caldera was lush and green beyond the power of mere words to describe. Mathematics could describe it, after a fashion. Simply multiply the greenest thing imaginable by something approaching infinity. That would have been a fair approximation.

The hotel, itself, was almost snug up against the sheer western side of the caldera. This area was, if anything, greener still, except where it was an explosion of flowers. Too high up for mosquitoes, the place was almost supernaturally healthy. Some of this health may have derived from the sheer joy of being there.

Many well to do Balboans kept holiday places there, some, like the hotel and its name, quite rustic, other nearer to palaces. Legate Pigna, for example, of the Seventh
Legion
, kept a place there, as did several twigs of the Rocaberti family tree. For that matter, so did Arias, the senior man of those police still loyal to the old government and president Rocaberti. It had, in fact, been the policeman who, upon hearing of the mass ass chewing delivered by Carrera to all his senior leaders and staff, had found and sounded out Pigna before inviting him to this meeting.

* * *

"Oh, take the idiotic fake mustache off," said one of the men gathered in the back room of the Hotel
Rustico
. "It's not like any of us don't know who you are, Pigna. It's not like everybody who is anybody in Balboa doesn't know everyone else who is anybody."

Pigna glared down at the speaker, one of the rump President's nephews, a young but very fat man he knew only by sight. That clan tended to run to fat, anyway, and as far as he was concerned, they all looked alike. He was about to reply when he heard a group of Cadets or perhaps Young Scouts marching by the front of the hotel singing:

". . . together with the legions then,
Rise up together with the legions then.
In the morning we rise early
Long before the break of dawn,
Trixies screeching in the jungle,
Moonbats scurrying from the sun.
Now assemble,
mis compadres.
Gather, boys, and muster, men,
Hand to hand with butt and bayonet,
Let their blood across the homeland run.
And you are welcome,
Balboenses
.
Side by side we'll make our stand
Hand to hand with butt and bayonet.
We'll rise up together with the Legions then . . ."

"
That
," said one of the men present—Pigna assumed he was foreign, probably Tauran, Gallic, from his accent, "is a chilling thing to hear from the throats of barely post-pubescent teenagers. I'm de Villepin, by the way."

"Your children don't sing songs like that in Gaul?" Pigna asked.

Villepin shook his head, confirming his origins. "No . . . not anymore. The bureaucrats would have apoplexy. There they sing about peace and love, the Family of Man, and glories of the Tauran Union."

"It's aimed at you, you know," Pigna said. "They're raising a generation here that, with the best of democratic motivations, wants to rip out your throats and drink the blood."

"We know," Villepin replied. "It is . . . worrisome. It is even worrisome to my . . . superior, General Janier. We must put an end to it before that generation grows to manhood."

"Never mind all that," said another of the men present. Pigna recognized him as, the old head of the police, one of the Arias brood, now reduced to lording it over the couple of companies of police left to the old president in the old city. "We all know what the problem is and why we're here. We have to put a stop to all this . . . this . . . madness."

"It would be better if you could do that for yourselves," said Villepin. "Oh, yes, we would help behind the scenes. But still, in the long run, it is best if you take the initiative."

"With what?" said the policeman. "I've got less than five hundred men that I control and no more than that number that would go along with me in the hope of restoring old times again."

"Ah," said Pigna, "but I have over four thousand. And by the time I am in a position to do anything it will be closer to ten thousand."

"In a position?" Villepin enquired.

Pigna sighed. "On the scale of the force being created my one
legion
doesn't count for much. Applied in the right place, it could count for a lot. But I can't just mobilize it and move it. We'd be intercepted and destroyed on the road or in the air. On the other hand, in about a year or fifteen months we'll do our annual training at the
Centro de Entrenamiento Nacional
, at Fort Cameron, not all that far from here. That would put us in a position to seize certain key facilities."

"You've been giving this some thought," Arias accused.

Pigna didn't deny it, but did say, "Enough to know that I can't do it alone. I can possibly hoodwink my men into seizing President Parilla, for example, if I told them it was Carrera's order, but they would never, not in a million years for a billion drachma, seize Carrera. I can get them to, say, take over the television and radio stations, and seal the City off from traffic. They would not attack other regiments in the Legion, unprovoked."

He looked very pointedly at de Villepin and added, "Any plainly Tauran activity, any attack, made openly, would shatter the illusion I would create for those men, and lose me control over them."

De Villepin nodded agreement. This one
had
been giving it some thought.

"We can probably restrict our activities to the fairly clandestine," the Gallic intelligence chief agreed. "Say, using a commando group to take Carrera and sundry other of the Legion's highest ranking men. And perhaps Parilla if we decide that's would be best."

"The corps commanders and General Staff," Pigna said. "Get them and I'm a fair shot for first among equals. If my legion is in a position of control, I would
be
first among equals."

"I doubt we could keep such a vast enterprise secret, or hide our involvement long before being discovered," the Gaul objected.

"Block the road from the City to
Valle de las Lunas
and you would take more than half out of the picture, at least for a while. And, if you chose the right place and right method of blocking, it could be many days before anyone discovers your involvement."

This, de Villepin considered. "Perhaps," he conceded. "It would help if we could somehow convince the Federated States that we were acting in their interest in doing all this." He mused, "Perhaps a bit of lawfare would be in order."

The place was by no means upscale. Waitresses bantered with customers, cooks shouted out for orders to be picked up, flies buzzed lazily from table to table. In this restaurant of no great name or reputation, two men who took some pains to
have
neither name nor reputation sat over coffee. One was an assistant to one of the members of the increasingly powerful
Belalcázar
Drug Cartel; the other a specialist in moving drugs from Santander, where they were grown and processed, to Southern Columbia and Taurus where they were avidly consumed. Neither felt any guilt at being in the drug trade. Either, if asked about guilt, would probably have answered that drugs were a South Columbian and Tauran problem; that, even if the trade from Santander stopped, those who craved the drugs and those who profited from the craving would simply look to new sources and new—even home made—drugs.

After several hours of conversation the two men reached across the table to shake hands. The deal was struck. Seven tons of nearly pure "huánuco" paste (in fact, a extract of the leaves of a primitive plant, apparently brought to Terra Nova by the Noahs, that might or might not have been an ancestor to or relative of the terrestrial coca plant but which at least produced a very similar alkaloid) would leave Santander within the week to travel through Balboa on their way to the Federated States, Secordia, and the Tauran Union.

As with many public servants in the less developed parts of Terra Nova,
Señor
Donati was much underpaid. As with nearly all of those, he supplemented his income, where possible, through a mixture of cash for favors. Sometimes these were trivial, both the favors and the cash. Sometimes they could be quite substantial.

Chief of the main airport's customs office, Mr. Donati was well placed for both the doing of great favors and the receipt of great rewards. He was at the moment engaged in the former, in anticipation of the latter.

And it's so easy
, he though, quietly filling out the necessary forms to insure the easy passage of several crates of what he assumed were drugs. The crates were due in on a flight from
Belalcázar
later this afternoon. Twenty thousand drachma were already in the chief's wife's account; fair payment for little more than looking the other way and approving and amending a few forms. The payment had started considerably larger. But, of course, the chief had not been able to keep everything the Santanderns had given him. Some few thousands went to his men in the Aduana. Rather more went to certain high-ranking people in the rump government of the Republic, which still had considerable influence among the civil police and customs service.

In particular
, thought Donati
, the office of the President—the old President—always insists on its cut.

Still, what Donati had been able to keep made quite a tidy sum. Certainly in Balboan terms it did.

Almost as valuable as the money given directly, the Santanderns had also given the customs chief a bagged kilo of nearly pure stuff. This was neatly stowed in the chief's briefcase. He would turn it over to a street dealer this evening for many thousand dollars more.

And none of that had to be shared.

The Honorable Thomas Wallis, Ambassador to the Republic of Balboa from the Federated States of Columbia, shared few of the values of his more enlightened kindred. Wallis was an ordinarily friendly faced, medium height, slightly heavyset man, who wore his suit somewhat uncomfortably. There were reasons for that, as there were for the lack of shared values, as there were reasons why
he
had been made ambassador, to the complete surprise of himself and everyone else.

The reason for the lack of comfort when wearing a suit, and for the rest, was that Wallis had been a career soldier before entering his country's foreign service. Surprise or not, given how badly the Federated States had needed the troops of the Legion for the campaigns in Sumer and Pashtia, and given how few career soldiers it had in its ranks, Wallis had been a natural. Parilla and Carrera could
talk
to him, with confidence that what they said would be understood, and that their concerns would find a sympathetic ear.

"Ambassador," Carrera began, ". . . Tom, I don't know what you and the Federated States want from us. We're already doing everything possible to stop the trade through or near Balboa. The
classis
is engaged almost entirely in drug suppression."

"Which the Federated States pays for," Wallis corrected.

"Which the Federated States pays most, but not all, of the operating costs for," Carrera further corrected. "Which is a drop in the bucket, anyway, compared to salaries, food, wear and tear on the ships . . ."

"Which you would have to pay for anyway," Wallis finished.

"Which we would have to pay for anyway," Carrera conceded, with a sigh. "But that doesn't change that we're still doing everything we can."

"And yet the drugs still get through," Wallis said.

Parilla suppressed a sneer, not so much at Wallis as at the policies of his country. Still, he said, "They wouldn't if you hadn't split our country."

"The Tauran Union is
not
running drugs," Wallis insisted.

"No, they're not," Parilla agreed, with a shake of his old, gray head. "At least so far as I
know
, they're not. But the stinking corrupt oligarchs you people insisted have a safe base in the capital
are
running the drugs."

Wallis inclined his head, skeptically. "Can you prove that?"

"We're working on it," Carrera answered.

"Right. And you know what the rump government says?"

"I can imagine," Parilla said. "But they're lying sacks of shit."

"
I
could stop the drug trade," Carrera said, a wicked, nasty tone in his voice. "I could stop it
easily
."

Don't go there, Patricio
, thought Parilla. Though his friend was a lot better, a lot more human, these ten or twelve local months, there was still a monster lurking inside him, Parilla believed, which monster could emerge without warning. He sensed that monster's presence now.

"
I'd
just take all the drugs we seize in a year," Carrera continued. "Then I'd poison them—I might have to go to Volga for a suitable poison, something with a delayed effect, and then sell them to distributors in the Federated States and Tauran Union. No living drug users; no drug problem."

He sighed and Parilla sensed the monster retreating.

"Fortunately or unfortunately, though, I've given up the power to do that."

Fortunately
, Wallis thought.
Because whether that would solve the problem or not, it would likely be considered an act of war.

"Will the Federated States support us if we take measures against the rump government?" Parilla asked.

Wallis shook his head. "In the absence of overwhelming proof that they're guilty, probably not. Even with that proof, many in my government would not believe it. And even if they did believe it, the Tauran Union would not let you take serious measures against their charges. There
is
a minority in the FSC—a large minority—that would like you to simply disappear."

"And
still
you expect us to do something about this beyond what we're doing," Carrera said. "Well fine, but you won't like
that
either."