“I’ll have my driver take you back to the airport in Rurrenabaque when we’re finished,” he said. “You’re entitled to feel safe.”
Rojas heard the note of derision in DeVane’s voice and held his hands apart.
“Things happen,” he said. “I expect no problems, but as always will be relieved when the shipment reaches its destination.”
In fact, Rojas thought, his relief would begin the moment he was out from under the hard eyes of DeVane’s bodyguards. And away from Kuhl. Kuhl seemed less a human being than a cold precision weapon… and how dangerous it was for such a murderous instrument to be controlled by someone with a boundless appetite for wealth and power. Kuhl had acquired a forbidding reputation on his own, but there was no doubt that his association with DeVane had enhanced his innate capacity for violence and given it a chance for its fullest, bloodiest expression.
Yes, it would be good to be elsewhere.
Rojas reached for his glass again and took a long drink. This was not the first time he had met with these men, and by now he ought to be able to curb his uneasiness. The trick was to steer his attention away from Kuhl and the armed guards. Concentrate on his physical surroundings. He would try, and be satisfied if he were halfway successful. Certainly the scenery was pleasant. They were at a table shaded by a flowering mimosa in the foreyard of DeVane’s impressive ranch house, a place of rambling sunbaked walls and a tiled roof that might have been built for a Spanish Don — some descendent of the Conquistadores perhaps — with only the swimming pools and tennis court on its desultory grounds betraying its far more recent vintage. Quite grand indeed, and just one of many lavish homes DeVane kept around the world, traveling continuously between them as he oversaw his far-reaching business empire.
Out across the grassland, the
“Your ability to keep the Indians loyal is extraordinary, Harlan,” he said. “I’d never ever have expected it.”
DeVane studied his face.
“How so?” he said. “They’ve traded with Americans before.”
Rojas tried to make his shrug look casual. “Yes, but not on the terms you have set. It is a singularly unusual arrangement. Buying from the Peruvians, employing the local
He let the sentence fade.
DeVane kept his eyes on him.
“Go on,” he said. “Please.”
Rojas hesitated, then said, “The laborers are poor and the Chapare crop is their main resource. A hundred kilos might bring three million dollars in greenbacks if they handled production from beginning to end. Instead, they must either find other buyers for their plants or have them rot in the field.”
Devane smiled, his small, even white teeth showing suddenly and briefly. “Give your people too little and they resent you. Too much and they no longer need you. The secret of holding onto their loyalty is to let them have just enough, Francisco.”
“I would still think that your dealing with outside growers would cause resentment,” Rojas said, his curiosity momentarily overbalancing his caution. “And that the Sendero Luminoso would have its own reasons to balk. They have long had their own processing system in place, and are adamant about protecting their interests.”
“No more so than I am, and they know it,” DeVane said. “I have my reasons for keeping the leftist rebels part of the operation. And they have their unprecedented earnings to make them happy.”
Rojas decided to back off, feeling vaguely as if he’d been maneuvered.
“As I say, you have my admiration,” he said. “It is a dance of devils that I could never manage.”
DeVane didn’t seem inclined to end the conversation. “The devil can be the best of partners once you know his steps,” he said. “You are aware, I’m sure, that the nickname he has been given by the tin miners in the southern mountains is
Rojas’s discomfort was escalating again.
“Appropriate gifts for the Lord of Hell,” he commented.
“Precisely.” DeVane flashed his quick, icy grin again. “Their reasoning is wonderfully pragmatic. If you’re going to work where it’s dark and hot, you must learn how to get by. And appease the gods whose bounty you seek.”
There was a long period of silence. The sun had climbed into the center of the sky and hammered the livestock across the field into immobility. Rojas glanced around at the young guards standing near the table with their Kalashnikovs in plain view, then turned his attention back toward the airstrip and the workmen moving heavily between their trucks and the plane. He felt tired and depleted, and once more wished he were somewhere else.
DeVane took a small sip from his glass, then placed it carefully down on the table.
“I’d like your assistance with something, Francisco,” he said. “A matter of considerable importance.”
Rojas had been waiting for this moment. In most instances he would have sent a courier along with payment for a shipment of product, but when DeVane had insisted on his presence today he’d obliged without asking for an explanation — aware the American wouldn’t offer one until he was good and ready.
“If it concerns the Guzman fiasco, then you may be pleased to know I’ve gone ahead and intervened,” he said. “Give me another day and I’ll have him out of his prison cell and back across the border.”
“I appreciate that and will provide whatever funds are necessary to secure his release,” DeVane said. “But this has nothing to do with him.”
Rojas lifted his eyebrows. Eduardo Guzman was a bottom runner in DeVane’s organization, an errand boy whose arrest on suspicion of narcotics and weapons trafficking had resulted from his involvement with a prostitute who was cooperating with the anti-drug police. In ordinary circumstances he would have been beneath DeVane’s notice, a scrap to be thrown to the wolves, but because it was widely known that his uncle was one of DeVane’s major executives in Sao Paulo, Rojas had assumed the American would want him pulled out of his own shit, and made discreet overtures to the prosecutors getting ready to arraign him on formal charges. Little to his surprise, nearly all of them had hinted they might be influenced into changing their minds for a price.
However, DeVane had just made it very clear that he did not want to talk about Guzman. Leaving what he did want to talk about a mystery.
“Forgive my confusion,” Rojas said. “I’d thought—”
“There was an incident last night in the Mato Grasso, a break-in of sorts at an American industrial site,” Kuhl interrupted. It was the first time he’d spoken since Rojas’s arrival. “Did you hear anything about it before starting out this morning?”
“I don’t think so,” Rojas said. In fact, he knew that he hadn’t. But as a rule, it paid to stay out of the water until you knew which way it was flowing.
“Rest assured, you will before too long,” Kuhl said. “What you should know is that a number of the intruders were captured or killed by this facility’s private security force. I can’t tell you how many survived, or even if they’ve been turned over to the gendarmerie. But that is certain to occur. When it does, you must see that these men are never interrogated. I don’t care whether they are freed or executed or simply disappear. My sole interest is making sure that they do not talk to their captors.”
Rojas looked at him, trying to think of a response. Eight months ago his relationship with DeVane had begun with a straightforward purchase of cocaine, but almost before he knew what was happening, it had grown into a complicated tangle of affairs. He had helped DeVane to cloak transactions that might otherwise have attracted the unwanted interest of the Brazilian government. He had been a conduit to political and law-enforcement circles. He had been a small link in a very long chain, a tiny drop of oil in an immense machine, and he’d been handsomely rewarded for it. There had been money and women, stays in extravagant hotel suites, and trips to foreign countries.
