Soothed by the vomiting, Agudelo cleaned himself, splashed water on his face, and considered his situation objectively. Perhaps some residual mental trauma had been triggered. Perhaps his older, weaker body was less equipped to handle such things. Which meant he needed to care for his body so that he could be useful. Sharp. He needed a walk.
He left the bathroom and headed through the offices, trailing his hand along the uneven wall. Terrible construction. Ugly, yellow-tinged paint. He walked out and down the steps to the bakery. Two old men sat at a table. In the back, two thin, young ex-combatants, young enough that if you’d added their ages together you’d still have fewer years on earth than he did, pulled bread out of the oven.
Luisa had built a good thing here, but good things were fragile. La Vigia was underdeveloped and bordered Venezuela. It was surrounded by difficult terrain that couldn’t be effectively policed. It would never generate enough legitimate business to be worth the government’s time, but it would always produce enough illegal profit to make it key territory for narcos. What did protecting human rights look like in a place like that? It looked like ugly bargains. Which was what Luisa, who hadn’t so much as blinked when she learned that the man responsible for the death of her father had returned to La Vigia, was good at.
Ricardo walked past the door of the bakery, saw Agudelo inside, and poked his head in.
“I’m heading to the Defensor del Pueblo,” Ricardo said. “To go over a few things.”
Yes, he thought. The work continues. And though he wanted to join him, he instead walked out to the central square and looked at birds and thought about the last hour of his friend Alejandra’s life, and whether there was a God and a devil, whether Alejandra would live again in paradise, or whether that was it, the end of her story a mind full of pain and terror, no redemption, nothing saved.
—
Rather than continue their work in their rooms, Valencia and Sara snuck out to the internet café and wrote down a list of crimes. They edited it three times, combing through for compromising details that might help identify victims. They didn’t want anyone targeted. But they also wanted to add substance to the accusations, so that any journalists they tagged would have his backstory laid out.
“But they already know,” Valencia said. “It’s public record.”
Sara said, “Yes. But there’s knowing, like, Oh yeah, I’m pretty sure I know that. And then there’s knowing, like, Yes, absolutely, I have seen the evidence. And then there’s people talking with each other about knowing. And that’s the most important thing. People don’t have the guts to believe what they believe unless other people are talking about it.”
“Who told you that?”
“My dad.”
“The journalist.”
“Yeah.”
Valencia wondered what her father would say. When she started at Nacional, he’d explained to her the difference between information and intelligence. Information, he said, was just that. Data. Ones and zeros. Intelligence was relevant, actionable, secret information you could use. Think of the difference between holding a booklet with the rules of a card game versus that moment when you’re playing the game and suddenly things click. Ah, this is how you play. Intelligence was what you used to play the game. At universities, they claim to be offering knowledge. But knowledge was only information until you learned to weaponize it.
“Why does it have to be on Twitter?” Valencia asked. “Why not just set up a fake email account and email a reporter?”
“Then it’s just an anonymous accusation,” Sara said.
“This is an anonymous accusation, too.”
“If we put it on Twitter, along with a recent photo, that’s news. Reporters don’t need to verify the accusations. They can report on the existence of the accusations, which is just as good. Two months before the peace vote, this is a good story. A former paramilitary kidnapping a reporter.”
“Within hours the foundation is going to say it was the guerrilla.”
“Perfect. It’ll be a mess, with lots of different theories for people to argue over. Don’t you see it’s better this way? If we give them something to argue over, it keeps the story alive. It keeps Jefferson’s name in the news.”
Ah, Valencia thought. Intelligence.
“And,” Sara said, “if we want to be extra clever, we create another account, and a few hours after the first thread have that account respond, adding more charges, along with at least one thing they can verify.”
And so that is what they did.
—
Jefferson woke up in pain, as he did every morning. Exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept at all. The doctor warned him about this. It would only get worse. He got up, walked to the bathroom, and popped some pills for the pain before even urinating. He hated this. Not the pain so much as what it made him. Weak. The drugs interfered with his mind, his clarity. But recently the pain had begun interfering with his mind even worse than the drugs. It was a battle he felt himself losing. He’d rather kill himself than lose, and though he didn’t fear death, he did have unfinished work that required his attention. That required his mind, and his energy, and most cruelly, his time.
Does Javier know? It seemed impossible that Javier didn’t know. But he kept
