blindfolded, and taken up in Kalatis’s plane. The pilot had flown for over an hour along the Gulf Coast and then had turned in several slow, wide banking maneuvers and returned an hour later to Houston. A two-and-a-half-hour diversionary flight The guest was not told his destination, but had been led to believe he was somewhere on the coast of Mexico or Central America. Kalatis’s men had been instructed to speak only Spanish or, when they had to communicate with the guest, English with a Spanish accent.
After the plane had landed, the guest had been led along the dock, up the beach stairs, and across the lawn to the house where his blindfold was removed only after he had been seated on the veranda. Then he was introduced to Kalatis who assumed the name of Borman for each of these meetings.
Though it was two o’clock in the morning, and they had been drinking Cuba Libres and talking since midnight, both men were wide awake. For the first hour Kalatis had talked about everything except the subject of their meeting. That was Kalatis’s way. He had learned from his past mistakes-they were decades behind him now-that your quarry was more easily taken if he first was put at ease.
In the past hour, however, Kalatis finally had started way out at the margins of the subject and had been working his way in. Sometimes he had seen American businessmen grow impatient with this leisurely approach- they tended to think of themselves as ball-busters and wanted to get right to the business of “crunching numbers” and talking about “the bottom line.”
But he insisted on doing everything his way from the very beginning, for two reasons. First of all because they would see in the long run that he had been right in everything he said. And secondly, having demonstrated this, he achieved an authoritative position at the outset They tended to believe what he said after that, and every time he was right about something else he gained credibility. Everything was on his terms, or they didn’t do business together. He was always polite; he was always gracious. But only by doing business on his terms could he gain even a semblance of control in what was essentially a very dicey enterprise. His guest was never allowed to suspect that Kalatis had only a semblance of control, however. The weight of that responsibility was Kalatis’s alone. That was how he earned his living.
Even though the man had come to Kalatis on the recommendation of someone else, someone the man already trusted, Kalatis felt obligated to present very carefully as many facets of the arrangement as he thought wise, anticipating the questions his guest would want to have answered. Eventually, he would bring the presentation full circle, and the actual commitment to the deal would be as abrupt and as final as the thrust of a gaff through the gills of an exhausted marlin.
They were just about at that point now. Kalatis could smell it on the salty breeze coming across the lawn; he could taste it in the dark tobacco, hand-rolled by brown fingers in the steamy Vuelta Abajo. But still Kalatis spoke slowly, his voice mellow, his accent, usually kept in check, creeping more and more into his pronunciation. He was the picture of stability, assurance, right thinking.
“And, as I was telling you,” he concluded, “it doesn’t matter who is coming or who is going in Medellin or in Cali. It doesn’t matter if the Escobars or Marquezes or Orejuelas are on top or if they have all fallen to the sicarios or the agents of the Direccion de Policia Judicial e Investigacion. It just doesn’t matter… the stuff is going to move regardless. The market environment is stable.
“Look at it this way. Last year was a bad year for the business in Colombia. Cocaine seizures reached record levels-fifty-five tons seized inside Colombia itself-and the three leading cartel bosses were arrested or killed in the last six months. Cocaine consumption in the U.S. is declining-though that is partly due to more people turning to heroin… and heroin sales are exploding. The extradition situation continues to be troubling, not much stability there. The DEA has once again wheedled its way into a stronger role, as has the U.S. Army, and of course the CIA. Sounds gloomy for the spice barons, huh?”
He shook his head slowly with a smile, drew on his Cohiba, and blew the aroma into the Gulf breeze.
“Not so. Last year nearly twelve hundred tons of cocaine was shipped out of Colombia. A very good year, a record year. Where is it going if the consumption rate is declining in the U.S.? Well, a lot of people don’t believe it is declining. But even if it is, it’s not declining much, and besides that in the past five years the cartels’ expansion plans have paid off and their distribution routes have now established a solid footing in Europe and Japan. The rest of the world is going to become what the U.S. was in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. But don’t think that leaves the U.S. in a backwater situation. Heroin is making a comeback… all over the world. Big time. The point is, the trade is not going away. If it’s not cocaine in some form or heroin in some form, it’s going to be the synthetics. A world of synthetics. It’s only going to get bigger.”
Kalatis paused to enjoy his cigar a moment It was a testimony to his abilities as a raconteur that the guest did not take advantage of this hiatus. In the gloam of the veranda Kalatis’s powerful figure was a dusky presence that presided ceremoniously over the occasion of this meeting. Presenting his strong profile to his guest, he looked toward the Gulf of Mexico and nurtured his Cohiba in silence while Jael appeared, barefoot and wearing something gauzy which afforded the guest a diaphanous profile of quite another sort, and replaced their drinks with fresh ones.
“Now, at this point I should mention the European opportunities,” Kalatis said as he reached out and picked up his fresh Cuba Libre and sat back again, resting the cold drink on the broad arm of his wicker chair.
“There are wonderful investment opportunities there now, too, primarily in heroin and morphine base. The Europeans are acting as if they had just discovered candy, consuming three to four tons per month. Street value consumption is approaching two billion dollars a month there now, and we expect enormous growth as the borders between the countries are relaxed. The poppy crops are grown primarily in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As with the South American situation, the opportunities for us are in transhipping. The war in the Balkans has disrupted our usual overland routes, so now, for the most part, we are using ships. Ships also allow us to regularly move from one to three tons at a time. Typically our freighters leave the port of Karachi, Pakistan, and onload at sea very near the Iran-Pakistan border. The freighters cross the Arabian Sea, go up through the Red Sea, and into the Mediterranean.”
A pause for a sip of rum, a tug on the Cohiba.
“At this point we listen very closely to what our counterintelligence people tell us. According to their recommendations we sometimes offload in Turkish ports, sometimes Creek ones. Other times it is best to go straight up the Adriatic to the Italian ports. Brindisi, Bari, Acona, Trieste. A good part of our investment goes to intelligence. This is a business. No one wants to lose money. We plan carefully, very carefully. As a result, our seizure rate is… zero.
“Of course, there are other European route investments too, but they involve relationships with the overlords of Istanbul’s organized crime community, while others involve relationships with the Kurdish separatist rebels in Eastern Turkey. Right now our intelligence cautions us about these groups. The returns are greater-fewer parties involved-but the risks are higher because of the volatile political situations in which these people are currently involved.”
Kalatis paused again. He knew his face was in the shadow so he took some time to regard his guest The man was mesmerized. Kalatis knew he liked to hear about the security, the intelligence behind these operations. He didn’t blame him. The drug business had long ago discovered the value of intelligence and counterintelligence, and they had developed it to a remarkably sophisticated degree. But Kalatis had taken his intelligence program well beyond the operational level. His intelligence capabilities were strategic. He was far ahead of the curve in that regard, and because of that his record was impeccable.
The guest waited for Kalatis to refresh himself with his tobacco and rum. If he had been anxious when he had arrived, the rum had settled him down. He felt no need to assert himself. And that was as it should be. He had come to listen to Kalatis.
“But for you, of course, the primary concern is Colombia,” Kalatis said, his voice resonant and rich. “There is a kind of aristocracy of wealthy families there, old families of four and five generations, who have weathered every tumultuous surprise that that exotic society has produced. Wars. Rebellions. Terrorists. Foreign occupation. Coups. And finally democracy and capitalism. Everything. The men of these families are always there to wave good-bye to every passing event, always there to greet the coming of the next one. They are known as ‘los hombres de siempre.’ The men of always. These are the men who are responsible for Colombia being the only Latin American country that makes its debt payments promptly every single year. They are the reason its economic growth rate purrs along smoothly at four percent They are the reason Colombia has a solid, educated, and growing middle class, the best universities in Latin America, and the oldest constitution in Latin America-which has just been revised, incidentally, and is a model of progressive politics.”
