“The storeowner? Abel?”
“Yes. He says Jefferson doesn’t read books, so they’re going to put it in a DVD box set of American action movies.”
Ah. That made sense. On CENTRIXS, the secure data system connecting U.S. and American intelligence, Juan Pablo had seen discussion flying back and forth as to which American movies were most likely to be appreciated by a bloodthirsty former paramilitary possible communist narco. One faction had been championing the works of Sylvester Stallone, another those of Steven Seagal. Last time he’d checked, Seagal was winning.
“Have the Jesúses been classified yet?”
“It will happen. There seem to be political considerations.” Carlosama put his cigar to his lips and puffed, but most of the embers had died and he barely pulled in any smoke. “I won’t mind them being Class A.”
“More business for us?”
Carlosama scowled and waved his hand dismissively. “We’ll have more business than we can stand with the Urabeños soon. No. But I don’t like the Jesúses. One, I don’t like how a tiny group in Norte de Santander has reached all the way to Bogotá. Two, I don’t like their Venezuela connections. And three, I really don’t like the feeling that they’ve been playing us. I’d rather have my narcos stupid and violent than smart and quiet.”
Carlosama pulled again on his cigar, this time getting nothing.
“We won’t be doing anything prematurely, though,” he said. “You handle this like it was any other drug dealer. I’m sure you can do that . . . despite . . .”
“My daughter being at risk.”
“Oh, I don’t think she’s at risk,” Colonel Carlosama said. “She just got in with some bad people.”
Carlosama lit another match, once again putting his cigar end right into the flame. Juan Pablo looked down at the dead embers on his own cigar.
“Hold it above the flame, not in it,” Juan Pablo said, not quite caring if he was giving offense. “You want to taste tobacco. Not ash.”
—
Lisette sat in the back of the Land Rover with Jefferson, unsure of whether or not she was still kidnapped. The guard in the passenger seat had what looked like an M60 sitting awkwardly between his knees, muzzle sticking up in the air. It was a huge gun, way too long to handle easily in the car.
Just a few days ago, being in a car like this, looking at the handle of Jefferson’s gun resting against his ample belly, would have been terrifying. Now, she was just so very, very tired. And so very much in need of an aspirin. But to show them, and to show herself, that she still had some pluck, she decided to talk.
“You should buy M4s,” she said. “I understand that a gun, a big gun . . . it seems scary. An M4 seems a toy. But to leave the car rapidly, M4 is better.”
Jefferson smiled. “You like guns?” he said. He grabbed the gun in his pants by the barrel, pulled it out, and turned it over, as if offering it to her. He waited a second, then laughed again, and put it back in his pants, an awkward process that involved him pulling at his waistband while pushing against his belly fat and inserting the barrel in the space created. Why not just use a holster? This guy could afford a nice holster.
“Yes. I like guns,” Liz said. “I used them when I was a girl.”
“Good.”
He leaned back and scowled, as if in pain, and that was it for conversation. As they left the village behind and crested a ridgeline, Jefferson took out an Iridium satellite phone, punched in some numbers, and began what was apparently an upsetting conversation.
“But how?” he said. “How? I have her.”
What followed was rapid-fire Spanish that Liz quickly lost interest in trying to track. Her body was sore. She wondered idly if she’d end up with PTSD after all this. She’d once read that only 4 percent of the survivors of the Hanoi Hilton had PTSD, as compared to something like 85 percent of American POWs in Japanese camps during World War II. She tried to remember why. The Hanoi Hilton guys had all gotten lifetime passes to Major League Baseball games. That probably didn’t factor in.
She tried to think of the techniques of other captured journalists. Exercise, establishing a routine. Someone had said that was important. Writing letters to family in your head. Prayer, if you’ve got religion. The first time he was captured, by Qaddafi loyalists in Libya, James Foley claimed that prayer had helped him. That path wasn’t open to Lisette, but perhaps it was basically the same as meditating, or the mindfulness training that was supposedly popular with CEOs. She imagined a slightly paunchy corporate so-and-so in the sauna at the Harvard Club on Forty-fourth Street in New York, a towel draped across his neck, his legs crossed yogi-style, finger and thumb delicately touching as he gathered his energy, focused on his breathing, and prepared himself for a day of attentiveness to the moment, to his stock options, and to positive thoughts.
Jefferson ended his call, his face red, and looked her in the eye.
“You stupid whore,” he said.
Lisette decided she was probably still kidnapped.
—
It amazed Abel how quickly the curse had taken effect. He didn’t understand at first. When they were taking the journalist, he simply panicked, too much in terror to think about what it meant. It was only later that he realized, when a delivery truck pulled up to his store. A delivery truck with nothing to deliver, but inside the truck were the same two men from military intelligence who had asked him, a year ago, everything he knew about El Alemán and his links to both the Urabeños and the guerrilla.
“The store is closed,” he told them. “We don’t get deliveries anymore.”
“Okay,” one of the men said. “Then you’ll help us change a tire.”
They took a tire off a back wheel. One of the men followed Abel into the store, and while the other worked he asked Abel about the kidnapping. Was it really the guerrilla,
