Carlos had done his share of mule work in “Los Pablos,” but along the way he became the group’s peacemaker. He discovered a knack for bringing warring factions together, striking a deal, and letting each feel that the other party had given up more.
And so when Jorge Ochoa—“El Gordo”—called a summit meeting of all the major players in the cocaine trade, it was only natural for Pablo Escobar to send Carlos Salinas to represent his interests.
April 18, 1981, the day he landed on Ochoa’s private mile-long airstrip at his estate on the Caribbean coast near Barranquilla. Jorge Ochoa—“the Fat Man”— personally came down to the air strip to greet them and bring them up to the main house. Hacienda Veracruz, as Ochoa called his estate, was the size of a small province, with its own zoo, a private bullring, and a stable of prized caballos de paso—walking horses.
The traders arrived as suspicious competing factions, feudal lords, viciously protective of their individual fiefdoms; they left with an agreement to pool their resources and their product in a combined effort to keep the lines of supply wide open into their biggest market: the United States. Later the Americans would say that this meeting marked the birth of the Medellm cartel. True, he guessed, but none of them ever referred to themselves as a cartel. They were la compania.
“Call him,” Carlos told Llosa as he entered the sumptuous back office of his restaurant. Llosa dialed, then handed him the receiver of the Louis XVI-style telephone.
When Carlos recognized MacLaglen’s voice, he did not let him speak. He said, “Hold now while we check the line.” He signaled to Llosa to run a scan. Llosa was good at this.
Carlos Salinas shifted his two-hundred-eighty pounds in the oversized chair as he waited. His back was killing him.
Even though only a handful of people knew his private numbers, Carlos hadn’t accepted an incoming call in years. Who knew where they were originating? His research had assured him that MacLaglen was just as careful as he, but even public phones could no longer be trusted. America was turning into a fascist state. Almost as bad as his homeland.
So he always called back, using his secure line—and never to a cellular phone. Even his own line was suspect; he constantly had it checked and rechecked.
He wondered which of MacLaglen’s favorite phones he was calling from. He knew most of the man’s habits, his favorite hotel lobbies and street phones, his accomplices, Paul Dicastro and Poppy Mulliner. He probably knew more about Michael MacLaglen than anyone else in the world.
Carlos could have used some of his fellow paisas for this job. After all, kidnapping was an art in Colombia. But he’d decided an American would be better. He did not want any Colombians involved should anything go wrong.
Carlos had become aware of MacLaglen when he kidnapped a gun runner Carlos had dealt with. He watched MacLaglen then, saw how he handled his next snatch— a videotape bootlegger. Very smooth. He had talent. Here was their man.
Llosa looked up from the lights and dials on his scanner box and nodded. Carlos pressed the recorder button before speaking.
“So, Miguel. You have picked up the package, I am told. I am delighted that the first phase is completed.” Clean scan or not, Carlos believed in revealing as little as possible over the telephone.
“Yeah. That went fine. But the contents are defective.”
“So my associate informed me. How so?”
“You ever hear of epilepsy?”
“Epilepsy?” Carlos smoothed his mustache and glanced at Gold. Epilepsy?
He’d seen people convulse after too much cocaine. Was that what this child would be doing? “You are saying that epilepsy is involved here?”
Gold stood near the window. He spread his hands and shrugged, offering his that’s-news-to-me expression.
“Damn right it is,” MacLaglen said. “Why didn’t anyone know about this?”
Good question, Carlos thought. He’d received excellent in-depth intelligence on the President and his doctor friend, all of it free. That something this important could have been overlooked annoyed him. Well, as the saying went, you get what you pay for.
“Or did somebody know about it,” MacLaglen was saying, and Carlos could hear the anger rising in his voice, “and neglect to tell me?”
“Calm yourself, Miguel. No one neglected to tell you anything. It was somehow missed. It is not, after all, something that one parades around. Certainly for a man of your talents this is not an insurmountable difficulty.”
“Don’t give me that. This is a major glitch. It shows incompetence right at the source. What else don’t we know, señor?”
“I have the utmost confidence in you, Miguel. I am certain everything will be fine.”
“This means more contact with the package’s point of origin. It broadens the interface. The more contact, the more chance of something going wrong.”
Carlos was growing impatient with MacLaglen. Time to put him in his place. “I have three words for you, Migueclass="underline" Deal with it.” Cold silence on the other end of the line. Carlos let it continue for a few seconds. He’d used the stick; now for the carrot.
“By the way,” he said cordially, “you are due the second installment. You may pick it up today, at which time I will inform you of phase two.”
“I’ll be over around five.” The line went dead.
“Manajate!” Carlos muttered as he hung up and swiveled toward Alien Gold. “Our friend is angry.”
“I’d say he’s got a damn good right to be,” Gold said. “It’s inexcusable. We should have been told.” He shrugged. “Could be worse, though. She could be a diabetic. Then MacLaglen would have to learn how to give insulin injections.”
Gold was right: It could be worse and it was inexcusable. Bad intelligence could ruin everything. Carlos wished he could mete out suitable punishment to the man responsible, but that was not possible—not to someone so high in the United States government.
“MacLaglen is arriving later to pick up his second installment. Have the cash ready.”
“Sure thing,” Gold said, making a note in his everpresent scratch pad.
“How many more installments?”
“One.”
Gold whistled. “He’ll need a wheelbarrow to cart that one out in cash.”
“He won’t see a penny of it until this is all over.”
“Come on, Carlos. What’s this kidnapping all about? What’s our goal here?”
“All in good time, Alien.” He wondered if he’d ever tell him that the goal was to see President Thomas Winston either dead or out of office.
Carlos sighed and leaned back in his chair. He pressed a button to start the automated low-back massage. Heat and gentle, padded pistons began to ease his perpetual backache. Ah, good.
He wished he didn’t have to shoulder this entire burden himself, but it was far too sensitive to entrust to anyone else, even Alien.
I should have refused, he thought. I should have kept my mouth shut when I heard about Thomas Winston’s legalization plans.
But how could he have kept silent? What threatened the drug trade threatened him. And threatened la compania even more.
If only he weren’t El Mediador.
He’d earned that title after the 1981 summit at Hacienda Veracruz.
Carlos had impressed Jorge Ochoa at that meeting—enough so that El Gordo called on him whenever la compania needed someone to quell the all too-frequent flare-ups between rival subgroups.
He became El Mediador—the top negotiator for la compania. He dealt with the low-down and high-up. He arranged with cara de Piña Noriega to set up cocaine labs in the jungles of southern Panama. Later he was paying the Sandanistas for the use of their airfields to refuel la compania’s cocaine-loaded planes. All along he took his fee in product, which he sold off through his own network in Miami. Life was good.