“Yeah, but is he looking for drugs, or what?” Lau persisted. “He should have a reason.”
Malagga’s heavy eyebrows rose.
Before Vargas could reply, he heard Lau’s friend, the anthropologist, come to his aid. “John, will you shut up, for Christ’s sake? Let the guy do his job, don’t bug him.”
“I just don’t like to see a cop act like that,” Lau answered, still glaring at Malagga. “I hate that crap.”
“So do I, but look around, we’re not in Seattle at the moment, if you haven’t noticed. This is Colombia. This is the Amazon jungle. Different rules.”
Lau, thank God, appeared to see the sense in this, even if reluctantly. “Okay, forget it,” he said to Vargas.
Now Malagga’s eyebrows lowered behind his sunglasses. He didn’t like Lau’s tone.
The crazy Lau looked anything but apologetic, but Malagga, with a shrug, chose to let the matter pass.
Tim Loeffler, the gangly student, held up his hand. “Is it okay if I go to my room for a minute first?” he asked in reasonably good Spanish. “I want to get some—”
“No, it is not all right,” snapped Malagga in Spanish. “You will wait here with the others.” He slapped the manifest and permits back into Vargas’s hand. “These appear to be in order.” In fact, he had hardly looked at them.
Malagga’s head swung toward the bar and Vargas thought he was going to demand an explanation for the broken, boarded-up glass pane, but instead he remarked amicably on how fortunate Vargas was to have all those bottles of Scotch, and how difficult it was to get decent whiskey in this miserable jungle outpost, where all that was available was the miserable, homemade
Vargas, lamentably slow on the uptake, finally leaped willingly for the bait. “I hope, Colonel,” he said, “that you will accept from me as a friendly gift a bottle of our finest—”
Malagga’s brow lowered. His mouth pursed again.
“—I meant to say, four bottles—
The colonel’s brow relaxed.
“—of this fine Scotch whiskey for the pleasure of you and your men, when you are not on duty, of course.”
“That is most kind of you, Captain, and I accept with pleasure on behalf of my officers. You can have someone bring it to the office.” He extended his hand in a limp, three-fingered handshake. “I wish
you a safe continuation of your journey,” he said, and jumped up on the gangplank.
Vargas’s world, so dark for the last hour, lit up. Was that it then? They could go? There would be no inspection after all?
No such luck. The other two men and the dog stayed. “Do your work, Sergeant,” he said to the older one, who wore no insignia of rank. “Captain Vargas, accompany them, if you please.”
The next twenty minutes, spent in the hold of the ship, were the worst of Vargas’s life. With the two soldiers dourly tagging along, the little dog merrily explored every crevice, every item, sniffing away at the lumber, the boots, the guitar...and finally the coffee sacks, stowed neatly in stacks of three. Stopping at the very first stack, he put his nose right up against the bags and went over them like a vacuum cleaner gone crazy. Then, God in heaven, he
The younger soldier leaned curiously over the stacks, poking at them with a finger, as if that would tell him something. Vargas, about ready to faint by now, crossed himself with a trembling hand. Hidden deep in thirty of the forty-eight sacks of beans were sealed, white, plastic bags, each containing five kilos of coca paste. Scofield, damn him, had said it would be impossible for a dog to—
“Open this one,” the sergeant said to him, slapping the central sack.
“Open the sack? Are you serious?” Vargas babbled. There was a tiny sign, a black triangle made with a marker pen, under the folded down tops of the sacks that contained the paste, but Vargas, in his panic, couldn’t remember whether that particular sack was one of
them or not. “I can’t open any sacks. Can’t you see they’re sewn shut? They’re not my property, I can’t—”
At a tilt of the head from the sergeant, the soldier shoved the top sack off, produced a stubby folding knife, and sliced into the burlap of the center sack, slashing it from top to bottom. The contents spilled like beige lava onto the floor, filling the hold with the sharp aroma of dried, unroasted coffee beans. Vargas, grasping at the corner of a crate to keep from collapsing, closed his eyes. He was hyperventilating. He could feel his soul flying away, leaving him. This was what it was like to die. He heard the soldiers burrowing through the pile of beans. And to make it even worse, he had wasted—thrown away—six 1.14-liter bottles of Cutty Sark, his best—
