But then the so-called War of the Cartels broke out in 1988, and nothing could stop the bloodshed. Carlos tried to get the message into their thick heads that there were enough billions to go around, but no one was listening. His old friend Pablo Escobar went crazy, declaring war on the rival Cali cartel, and on the Colombian govern ment itself. Blood quite literally flowed in the streets of Medellm.
Carlos Salinas watched the carnage with growing dismay. He had a new wife then, the beautiful Maria, and he wished to keep her out of the line of fire. But what else did he know? He decided to trade on his reputation as El Mediador by going into an ancillary service.
But he needed guidance. When he learned of a young man named Alien Gold, fresh out of the Wharton MBA program, who’d been arrested in a cocaine sting operation, Carlos got him off and hired him. Through various fronts set up by Gold, Carlos began investing heavily in the stocks of small independent banks up and down the East Coast. When he gained controlling interests, he began maneuvering his own people onto the boards of directors.
The best move he’d ever made. Even while the war raged, the white powder flowed unabated—as did the profits. And all that tainted money needed sanitizing. Who better to trust than El Mediador, Carlos Salinas? And even after the Cali compania eclipsed Medellin, the negotiating skills of Carlos Salinas remained in demand.
In 1992, Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, a Cali leader, retained his services to help NAFTA get through Congress. Carlos moved to the Washington area and made sure money from the Cali compania got into the right pockets. Of course, he took his cut, and pocketed a bonus when the bill was signed into law.
Free trade… it was wonderful. No more need for offshore air strips and risky flights across the border. Now the Mexicans were moving truckloads of Colombian product into Texas every day.
And along the way Carlos Salinas discovered that Washington was much more convenient than Miami as a center of operations for his banking business, especially after all the high-placed friends he’d made here during the NAFTA legislative battles.
Life got better. The landscape of the cocaine trade was changing yearly, but so what? The cocaine princes came and went—Pablo Escobar was dead, and most of the leaders of the Cali compania were in jail—but Carlos Salinas remained. Did the jailings and killings affect the trade? Not by an ounce. The only result was the consolidation of the power of the Colombian companias into fewer hands—mostly into Emilio Rojas’s—but no matter. As long as drugs remained illegal, the profits would need laundering. And Carlos was here to help… for a cut.
But there would be no cut for this service. Instead he’d been offered a simple flat fee for stopping President Winston’s plan: one billion dollars.
And if he succeeded, he’d‘be more than mindnumbingly rich. He’d be a legend. If he succeeded.
No, don’t think if—think when. Because if he didn’t succeed…
Better not to think about that. Better to think about how this opportunity to become a legend had dropped into his lap exactly ten weeks ago when he received the first of a series of anonymous calls. The caller used a voice distorter, but Carlos eventually learned who he was. And was shocked. This was a man no amount of money could have bought, yet he was giving him information about the president’s plan.
At first Carlos did not believe him. Legalize drugs? All drugs? Impossible… unthinkable! Never happen. Had to be a trick, part of some weird scheme to entrap him.
He passed the story—along with his misgivings—to Emilio Rojas, the current head of the Cali compania.
Rojas scoffed at first, but he began making inquiries, tapping la Campania’s many sources, even in the White House itself.
And Rojas learned it was true. Not just marijuana and the occasional mushroom—all drugs. Cocaine included.
How they’d all laughed back then, thinking what did it matter what this loco president wanted, the American people would never accept it. But then as more information flowed in from Carlos’s big shot source, la compania began serious research. What they learned scared the living mierda out of them. Emilio Rojas himself made a trip to the United States to meet with Carlos. Emilio came here.
Carlos remembered sitting in this very room, just the two of them, and listening with a sick feeling in his gut as Rojas told him how, with a plan promising lower crime rates and lower taxes, backed by support from the media, the pharmaceutical industry, and the tobacco states, this Thomas Winston just might do it. Not total decriminalization, perhaps, but a beginning that would eventually finish most antidrug laws. And where America went, the rest of the world would surely follow.
Rojas admitted that for a while he and la compania had been panicked. But when they calmed themselves, they set about making plans. They examined every possibility. No cost was too great. How could it be? With billions of dollars coming in every month, they would spend any amount necessary.
Although Rojas had tried to appear calm and confident, Carlos could sense his fear, his rage. This was not some little brawl for a bigger piece of the market—this was a war for their very lives. This upstart gringo, this Thomas Winston, could wipe out their global empire with the stroke of a pen.
Carlos agreed that he had to be stopped. But how?
A bullet was the first thought, but that was discarded immediately. Assassination would make a martyr out of Winston—the last thing they wanted. They could hear the speeches: A heroic president has been shot down by the evil drug lords. We must carry his brave plan forward and put an end to these criminals so powerful and arrogant that they will kill our president to preserve their profits! Do not let the drug lords get their way! Honor the slain president’s commitment! Legalize drugs now!
No… a martyred President Winston would be an even more formidable enemy than a live and healthy one. They had to find a way that would look like an accident—or his own fault.
La compania peered into Winston’s past with a microscope and found many instances of youthful wildness, but nothing that would discredit or disgrace him. It had looked hopeless until… until Carlos’s mystery source came through with a bit of history that Winston had thought he’d destroyed. Some U.S. agency had unearthed it in a background check during his first run for office and filed it away.
Carlos had passed it on, attaching little importance to it. But it had proved to be very important.
And so the two of them had sat here in this very safe room and devised a wonderful and terrible plan…
“It’s about drug decriminalization, isn’t it?” Gold said.
Carlos bolted from his reverie. “What do you mean?”
“The kidnapping. You’ve had it poised to go for weeks. And then as soon as the President speaks last night, boom!—you’re on the phone to MacLaglen. There’s got to be a connection.”
Was I that obvious? Carlos wondered as he hoisted his bulk out of the chair and waddled around the office. Or was Gold simply too bright? That was why Carlos had brought him in.
He knew Alien would not be shocked by a plan against his President, but the fewer who knew, the better. An old paisa saying went: Three can keep a secret—if two are dead.
He stopped before a framed autographed photo of Richard Nixon. It was inscribed to someone else, but that didn’t matter. The man was what mattered.
“I am not worried about a pipsqueak like Thomas Winston. He has no courage.” He pointed to Nixon’s photo. “How does he have the gall to sit in the same office as this man? Here was a president!”
“Nixon?” Gold said, his voice jumping an octave. “He was a jerk.”
Carlos turned as quickly as his girth would allow and pointed his finger in Gold’s face.