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  Pablo wanted to know why Rodriguez now chose to distance himself from the benefits and responsibilities of their relationship.

  Rodriguez said, “Representative Escobar, it has been too long. I hope you are finding these accommodations adequate until we can get this silliness with the norteamericanos behind us.”

  It had been eight years since Pablo left office, yet Francisco noted that callers still frequently used the title. He assumed Rodriguez used the honorific because he would want to be called General until his dying day.

  Before replying, Pablo located Francisco along the wall, and through their eyes passed an understanding. Pablo said, “It is fine here, General. If I stop enjoying my stay, I will leave. Can I get you a drink?”

  Francisco had allowed the officers to keep their sidearms. He felt that holding their weapons gave the soldiers a feeling of security, a sense that this was a negotiation. This atmosphere would perhaps help Pablo get more nuanced information than would gunpoint intimidation.

  “Coffee, please. The Argentinian Malbec was bountiful at dinner. The Argentines should be proud of their Malbec. Thank you for sending your man to pay for our dinner,” Rodriguez said, nodding over his shoulder toward Francisco.

  Pablo answered, “Yes, the Malbec and Maradona, no?”

  “Sí, and when will we see Maradona wearing Medellín’s colors?”

  Pablo’s deepest public disappointment was when Maradona, possibly the greatest football player of all time, refused his entreaties to play in Colombia. Francisco was shocked that Rodriguez was bold enough to broach the subject. Perhaps he had consumed too much of that Malbec.

  The small talk between the general and El Capo continued until the coffee arrived. After stirring in his leche, Rodriguez asked, “Representative Escobar, may I inquire as to why you requested our presence at La Catedral this evening?”

  Whenever this group came together, Francisco was jarred by the differences between Pablo and the general: the general’s lack of Indian blood; his proper, well-enunciated Spanish; his formal education and his acute attention to personal appearance. But mostly, he contemplated the differences in each man’s sense of pride.

  Pablo’s pride was in possessing absolute control of his destiny and those within his orbit. If, instead of killing you, he bribed you for cooperation, it wasn’t because he didn’t think he could kill you. It was because bribing you gave him the result he wanted quicker or easier. He could kill you later if he desired.

  The general’s pride was that others believed that he was a man who controlled not only his own fate but also the fate of others. The general did not visibly mind lacking the power he projected, and Pablo found this a useful trait. Knowing that the general valued appearance more than silver, Pablo traditionally tolerated this talk as equals in front of crowds.

  “Yes, General. I am concerned. You see, I haven’t seen much of the world this year. So, I don’t understand some of the changes. I hope you can explain them to me.”

  “Of course. I will do my best, Representative. What may I explain?”

  Pablo suddenly sighed, looking tired of the game before it even began. Francisco thought he had spent too many years like a cat flipping mice in the air to enjoy the drama.

  Pablo asked, “Why have you not accepted my most recent offering of silver?”

  The general stammered, his fear showing. His shaking hand rattled his coffee cup on the saucer. He became aware of the arc of rough men surrounding the door.

  Pablo sipped his coffee, awaiting an answer. To Francisco, Pablo seemed to fill more with fatigue than rage.

  Once they started, the general’s words flowed quickly. Francisco listened to some of what was said but mostly watched the mannerisms of the general’s men to see whether there were any worth saving. Certainly, one of these young officers was bright enough to understand the hopelessness of their situation, to step up, be spared, and receive Pablo’s patronage to replace General Rodriguez? But Pablo saw nothing of the kind, nothing that would provide any of the men earthly salvation.

  Finally, Pablo held up his hand to stop the general. “Thank you, General Rodriguez. I understand now.”

  The general regained his composure. His shoulders rolled back, and he was the powerful man again, an inch taller and two inches broader. He handed his coffee cup and saucer to one of his men. Although there had been no physical altercation, his thin hair had become disheveled during the explanation. He ran his hand through it to smooth it down.

  “It is always a pleasure, Representative Escobar.” The general nodded to his men to prepare to leave.

  “Likewise, General. Good night.”

  With that, Pablo raised his eyelids to Francisco. The cannons in his men’s hands erupted, and the officers were dead.

  When the echoes from the gunfire subsided, Francisco asked, “El Capo, shall I take them to the jungle?”

  “No, Francisco, you may leave them here. I will dispose of them.”

  Francisco questioned El Capo’s judgment for the second time this evening. Killing the men here was a poor decision, but making no move to hide the killings was far worse. It would lodge a fiery stick into the government’s eye. Francisco considered what this act could do other than force the government into an action neither side wanted.

  Unknowingly, Pablo had been right when he spoke to the general: He had not seen much in the past year, and there were changes he did not grasp. He no longer understood the influence of his true opposition—not the Cali or other young bandits, but the powerful norteamericanos. The shell government in Bogotá largely conceded its sovereignty to the norteamericanos, who sought to eliminate their own country’s drug problem by meddling in other countries. It made no difference. The norteamericanos’ policy ignored the law that supply will always rise to meet demand; a snake can always tunnel a new hole. Francisco understood that it was easier for the norteamericano politicians to gain favor by making war in a strange country, rather than among their own citizenry.

  The Colombian politicians and generals still accepted the silver or received the lead, as General Rodriguez’s prone body attested, but Francisco doubted their ability to stop the foreign army exploring the countryside. Inside these stone walls, Pablo didn’t feel this invading army’s buildup. He hadn’t seen the planes at the airports and the hard-faced men in camouflage driving through the country in armored vehicles.

  Francisco approached Pablo to explain these changes, but Pablo waved him off. Pablo picked up the phone and dialed the warden, staring at the men leaking blood and excrement onto his living room floor. Francisco walked away, surprised to realize that Pablo’s mistakes would soon make this his empire. He found this insight not altogether unpleasant.

  2015

  3

  FOR TWENTY YEARS, he’d flown for Uncle Sam. Now Cale operated a one-man charter business. His twin-engine turbo prop was a workhorse for the East Coast business traveler or hurried vacationer trying to unhurry. Occasionally, there were more interesting folks. At $2,500 an hour of flight time plus expenses, he wasn’t cheap, but he wasn’t NetJets either.

  This was a quick round-trip across the state to pick up friends from his hometown. Cale was hosting a bachelor party at his house northeast of Wilmington, North Carolina, which was a bit of a summer destination. Air traffic control kept the flight at twenty thousand feet, a tailwind pushed the speed over 350 knots, and they enjoyed a high-pressure system, blue skies, and a smooth landing.

  The party was for Blake, who—along with Van, Barry, Dan, and Jay—Cale grew up with. Phil was Blake’s new friend Cale had just met. The six grew up together the way kids used to grow up together: They’d shared the same neighborhood bike trails, schools, sports teams, and crowd of friends from the ages of five to eighteen. After high school, the guys lost touch with Blake, briefly reconnected for his first bachelor party and wedding twenty years ago, and had seen him fewer than five times since. If Cale were forced to render judgment, he would conclude that in the interim Blake
had cultivated his bad habits at the expense of his good ones. But he remained entertaining since a bachelor party was no place to render judgment.

  Cale taxied the King Air to the FBO, where his aircraft got fueled, had routine mechanical service performed, and picked up hospitality services. For this flight, rather than order a car service, Cale crammed the guys into his faded light blue Toyota Land Cruiser. He had left the windows open for the three hours he was gone, but the steering wheel was still too hot to grab firmly for most of the short drive to the house.

  On the way, Barry asked, “Why’d Toyota stop making vehicles this shade of blue?”

  Dan answered, “Because in the second generation of the twenty-first century, there aren’t enough people who want to stick out like 1970s pimps to sell a production run.”

  Cale thought that was delusional, but perhaps he was just being defensive. He figured it was too hard to get the tint right without the lead in the paint.

  Cale’s house was ideal for both his waterman hobbies and the survivalist instincts he’d honed over the last few decades. The house sat well off a little-used ribbon-paved road, where the entire driveway could be seen from the front windows. Traffic on the road was light enough that Cale recognized by sound any car that did not belong to one of his few neighbors. His lot stretched seven hundred feet from the asphalt to the water and nine hundred feet from side to side. Marsh bordered his property to the north and south, giving a visitor—or intruder—only two means of approach, both of which were long and visible.

  And then there was Jimmy, Cale’s security team. Jimmy was a 120-pound mixed breed. Smarter and lazier than the average dog, Jimmy held down the fort when Cale was out. Sometimes Cale left Jimmy in the yard, sometimes in the house. There’d never been a problem with the unwelcome sneaking around.

  At the water, a long dock extended east across the tidal grass before reaching open water. His twenty-four-foot center-console Boston Whaler with twin 150-horsepower Mercury outboard motors sat on a sling lift. To the southwest, pines shaded the house from late morning on, and a trailer with rotted tires held an eighteen-foot Hobie catamaran.

  A bait shop Cale frequented had stocked the Whaler with squid and Budweiser in advance of their arrival. They fished flounder that afternoon in the marshes, with a light breeze and ample applications of DEET. Van saw a sheepshead snacking on barnacles stuck to a pylon. One by one, they tried to hit it with a compound bow that Cale had tied a 10-pound test line to. After a dozen misses, Cale put on a mask, slipped into the water, took a deep breath, and shot it with a spear gun.

  Blake passed out on the aft bench of the boat during the afternoon, his face under a towel and his pasty feet soaking in the summer sun. Back in the marsh, Cale found an oyster bed perfectly located just below the waterline at low tide. He’d revisit the oyster bed in winter with a hammer and thick rubber work gloves.

  That evening, they pulled Cale’s crab pots. They were heavy, filled mostly with blues and a few stone crabs. Cale tossed the female blues out and calmed the jimmies with ice. With each stone crab, he held a claw stationary with channel locks and stuck a screwdriver in the elbow joint. The crab unhinged the endangered claw from its body. Cale then tossed the now one-clawed stones back, wished them well in regenerating their missing arms, and hoped they’d find their way back to his pots.

  The main kitchen at Cale’s house was outside. He had installed two oversized burner racks twelve inches off the ground, where beer kegs with sawed-off tops served as kettles. The tops were now fastened with wooden cabinet knobs so they could be used as lids. Cale dumped the blue crabs into one while Jay slid the stone crab claws into the other. Barry prepped the fish on a long, blood-stained, plastic countertop and browned the flounder and sheepshead in cast-iron skillets.

  Dan helped Cale spread newspapers over the two sun-worn teak picnic tables, and they spent the next few hours cracking shells and shooting the shit, downing beers and tossing the bottles into a plastic trashcan.

  When everyone had their fill, they folded the graveyard of crab shells and dead man’s fingers, the yellow “mustard,” and the orange dusting of Old Bay into the apple cider vinegar-splashed newspaper. They dumped the package into Hefty bags, and Cale put each in a second plastic bag, then placed those inside trash cans and clipped down the lids to frustrate scavenging raccoons, opossums, and black bears.

  Cale thought of himself as an environmentalist, but plastic was just so … convenient. He wasn’t a global warming environmentalist anyway—more a “clean up our waterway day” kind of environmentalist (and, in all honesty, he used plastic bags on those days too).

  They left Frogmore stew on the burner to simmer overnight for breakfast and moved to a row of Adirondack chairs facing the waterway for drinks. Van and Barry tossed a set of oversized lawn darts that could impale a skull at improvised targets in the yard. The sun set behind the chairs, but they watched its reflection in the windows on the island across the waterway. In those houses on the other side, there were five CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, three former United States senators, and two hall-of-fame college basketball coaches.

  Dan emptied the last bottle of Evan Williams at two in the morning, and they finished the last hand of no-limit Texas Hold’em minutes later, without a clear winner. Then they all fell asleep while Robert Earle Keen played on the iPod to a set of empty chairs.

  Friday started early. The men played thirty-six holes of golf, which was thirty-six more than Cale had played in a decade. His clubs’ ancient technology did not go unnoticed.

  “Hey Cale,” Dan said. “I accidentally opened some of your mail. There was a letter from Sam Snead asking for his clubs back.”

  At the turn, they each buried their first round’s sweat-soaked shirts into their bags. The college-age beer cart girls in golf shorts, polos, and soft spikes were seasoned from a summer of flirting golfers. The guys made off-color jokes—more funny than creepy. The girls over-served them, and Barry told Cale as much—Cale objected, but was too drunk to effectively argue the point.

  Even sober, he’d never been much for arguments. That’s why being a pilot in the DEA fit him so well. He didn’t argue about where to go, usually, and nobody ever argued with him about how to get there. Sure, he wasn’t a badass who went undercover into the belly of the beast, with a cellphone as his only link to backup stationed half an hour away. Those dudes were nuts. He didn’t need to be a rock star. He was content being the horse bringing the cavalry—essential, in the mix, but protected by teammates’ overwhelming firepower.

  At dinner Friday, the waiter rolled out plastic-wrapped cuts of meat for their inspection, and their picks arrived later, seared to pink perfection and served on white plates. The sommelier earned his pay, bringing them bottle after bottle, and the men’s laughter eventually attracted a crowd. Introductions were made. Chairs and wine shared.

  After the meal, it was time for the obligatory strip club send-off of the bachelor. The strip club—men at their finest and women on the brink of the world’s oldest profession. Cale noticed a lower abdominal scar on “the lovely Roxanne from Calabash.” What did her sitter tell the kids? Cale thought about how he’d struggled to break the news to his two daughters about the Easter Bunny.

  His daughters weren’t debutantes, but they weren’t strippers either. At least, not that they ever told him. And they told him everything, right?

  Bachelor parties leeched reason out of twenty-year-olds and forty-year-olds alike—even reluctant partygoers nursing a lifelong friendship that hadn’t held common ground in twenty-five years. Cale wondered why they were still friends. Emotion? Nostalgia? No reason at all? For some reason, their youthful bond was strong.

  Four forty-something women had followed the party from dinner to the club. Van tipped the host and committed to bottle service so they could be seated in an M-shaped combination of sectionals. Time and money disappeared. The women bought each other dances. In his final memory of the evening, Cale found himself in the champagn
e room being a poor steward of his resources with two of the party ladies and a dancer. One of the ladies poured a shot on the dancer’s arched back, and the other drank it off her bottom. Cale took the next shot. It was from a bottle of Patrón but tasted like strawberry lotion.

  Cale didn’t remember leaving the club but remembered getting cold on the ride home. Too much sun, wind, and alcohol. His dehydrated skin couldn’t get warm until he climbed under the covers. He wasn’t sure why he awoke on the living room floor, covered by a beach towel and with Jimmy’s head creating nerve damage in his calf.

  Yes, bachelor parties were no place to make judgments.

  4

  “NEGOTIATING WITH OUR enemies is an extremely difficult task. War is easier. War is far more spectacular than peace. I know because I was Colombia’s minister of defense; I delivered the most devastating military setbacks to the FARC in their history. Peace, on the other hand, requires patience, discretion, and beating seemingly insurmountable odds. And peace has many enemies. Yet nothing is more urgent than achieving it.”

  This was the message Juan Manuel Santos, president of Colombia, gave readers of The Wall Street Journal as he prepared to sign a treaty with the guerillas, bringing peace to his country after over fifty years of civil war. In this country of fifty million people, over two hundred thousand had been killed. Countless lives had been stunted by the constant shadow of arbitrary violence.

  President Santos continued his message, saying, “It is not often that the interests of the United Nations; the European Union; the Organization of American States; and countries like the United States, Cuba, Venezuela, Chile, and Norway, among others, converge for a common purpose.”

  A strange set of bedfellows created the treaty. Its ink was still wet as Francisco entered Bogotá International Airport. The government won, but so had the rebels. Officials now slept without exploding, and the rebels gained autonomy. Francisco won too, gaining new passports, the ability to move money, and the opportunity to settle his past grievances. All of his rights lost during America’s War on Drugs had been restored. Was it a victory for the recolectores de café?