In the police car’s backseat, the lean, ascetic man in first officer’s dress had ridden most of the way with his eyes downturned, a bony hand on the satchel beside him, his lips moving in a nearly constant whisper. He had looked out the window only twice — the first time, by simple chance, when they had passed Calle Sagárnaga, crammed as always with customers of the Witches’ Market. There at the outdoor vendors’ stalls were charms, potions, powders, and fetuses carved from the wombs of llamas for their alleged luck-bringing properties, their dessicated skin pulled tight over unformed bones, forcing them into contortions that resembled, or perhaps preserved, a state of final agony. There, indigent chola mothers, wearing traditional bowler hats and shawls, walked beside women of means in Parisian and Milanese vogue, a rare mixing of classes in this city, fear or reverence for pre-Christian deities being perhaps all they had in common. There, yatiri witch doctors eyed the crowd for potential clients, estimating their worth in bolivianos or U.S. dollars, cannily deciding how much might be charged to read their fortunes or work fraudulent magic on their behalf.
The car’s single passenger had frowned disapprovingly. He spent much of his time among the poorest of society and knew they reached out to the ancient superstitions in ignorance and desperation. But the moneyed, well-educated elite, what was their reason? Did they think to apportion their faith like cash in separate bank accounts, placing small deposits in each, giving their full trust to no god while hoping to prejudice the will of all?
As his escort had left Calle Sagárnaga behind, remaining on the boulevard that traced the subterranean flow of the Choqueyapu River to the city’s outskirts, he’d briefly looked out his window again, his eyes going to the slum housing on the face of the mountain. At first glance it seemed an insult to the divine scheme, heaven and hell inverted, those in the bowl of the earth living without need, those on the heights needing for everything. But that was to ignore the more sublime visual message of Illimani in the background: its sharp white peaks at once reminders of God’s soaring majesty and a warning that He had teeth.
Bowing his head again, the passenger addressed his inner preparations for the next thirty minutes, fingers spread atop the satchel, quietly reciting the prescribed lines of verse from memory.
Now his car swung over to the right side of the road, slowed, and turned gently into a circular drive. Ahead and behind, the flanking carabineers throttled down their motorbikes. At the end of the drive he could see the large gray hospital building rising above a handsome lawn with tiled walks, shaded benches, and a glistening multitiered fountain that drizzled off wavery rainbows of sunlight.
The Hospital de Gracia was the newest and best-equipped medical facility in Bolivia. The physicians recruited for its staff held model credentials. Like the luxurious homes in its surrounding neighborhood, it had been built and financed with money from the illicit cocaine trade and was affordable only to those of high status and privilege.
How ironic, then, that the patient admitted under absolute secrecy ten days ago had vowed before the nation to eradicate the cartels and to apprehend and prosecute the mysterious foreigner called El Tío, who had unified them in his recent ascendancy.
The man in the officiales uniform plunged deeper into his recitation, his lips fitting comfortably around the Latin.
“Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis, et omnes iniquitates meaas dele…”
Turn away thy face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities…
“Cor mundum crea in me, Deus, et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis… ”
Create a clean heart in me, oh God, and renew a right spirit within my bowels…
“Ne proicias me a facie tua, et spiritum sanctum tuum ne auferas a mei.”
Cast me not away from thy face, and take not thy holy spirit from me.
The motorcade pulled into a wide space that had been left vacant in front of the hospital’s main entrance, the carabineers lowering their kickstands to dismount. One of the lead riders came around back and opened the door for the passenger. Lifting his satchel off the seat by its strap, he let himself be helped from the car. He could almost feel the eyes watching from other vehicles around the parking area, peering at him through tinted windows.
It was to be expected, he thought. There would be a great many secret police.
He climbed the stairs to the hospital entrance with his head still slightly bent and the carabineers on either side of him, sensing their unease as he continued giving whispered utterance to Psalm 50, the Miserere, one of the preliminary invocations for the dying.
“Libera me de sanguinibus, Deus. ”
Deliver me from blood, oh God.
A somber delegation of hospital officials and white-coated doctors met the visitors in the lobby and guided them toward the elevator bank with a minimum of formalities. A pair of soldiers in gray green fatigues were posted at the head of the corridor. They held submachine guns and wore the insignia of the Fuerza Especial de Lucha Contra el Narcotráfico, the military’s elite anti-narcotics task force.
The soldiers hastily checked the small group’s identification papers and motioned them into an elevator. A third FELCN guard stood at the control panel. He pressed a lighted button, and they hurtled up three floors.
Moments later, the elevator doors reopened, and they started toward the intensive care ward.
Humberto Marquéz, the vice-president-elect, was waiting in an anteroom. He stepped toward the man in the officer’s uniform and gave him a firm handshake.
“I thank you for your swift response to our summons,” he said. “And for your tolerance of the rather unusual security measures we’ve had to adopt in bringing you here.”
“Would there had been no cause for any of it.”
“Indeed.” Marquéz ushered him inside. “Our coalition government is bound together by a fragile thread. If news of why you’ve come leaks out before I can meet with old rivals whose differences were just lately reconciled…”
“That thread might well begin to fray even before you are sworn into office. I understand.” The man placed his canvas bag on a low table beside the doorway. Though the committee of doctors and hospital officials had entered the room with him, he noted that his police escort had stayed respectfully out of earshot in the hall. “Please, tell me of his condition.”
Marquéz did not reply immediately. An attorney by background, he possessed an automatic verbal restraint that had served him well since his entry into politics. His manner formally polite, his frame as tapered as his dark gray suit, he nodded his chin at one of the doctors.
“As the one in charge of this case, Dr. Alvarez, it is perhaps best that you address such questions,” he said.
The doctor looked from Marquéz to the uniformed man.
“The presidente is semiconscious and on a ventilator,” he said. “I hope you will forgive any impropriety, but let me be direct in my advice: Omit whatever rites you can, for time is short.”
The visitor kept his eyes on the doctor for two or three seconds. Then he nodded silently. What more was there to say?
He unbuttoned the officer’s blouse he’d been given to conceal his black clerical shirt, shrugged it off, and draped it neatly over the back of a chair. His other vestments were in the satchel with the articles he would require for the sacrament. He opened the bag and began arranging them on the table.