The Power Of The Dog (65 page)

He leans across the table and strokes her hair with the back of his hand. And softly murmurs, “I know. I know,” as with his other hand he places another piece of the bread to her lips. She opens her mouth and takes it on her tongue, then a sip of wine, and then the strychnine hits and her head snaps back, her eyes open wide and her death rattle gurgles moistly between her parted lips.

He has her body thrown over the fence to the dogs.

Parada lights a cigarette.

Sucks on it as he bends over, putting on his shoes, and wonders why he’s being awakened in the small hours of the morning, and what is this “urgent personal business” that could not wait until the sun came up. He tells his housekeeper to make the minister of education at home in the study and that he’ll be right down.

Parada has known Cerro for years. He was bishop in Culiacán when Cerro was the Sinaloa governor, and even baptized two of the man’s legitimate children. And hadn’t Miguel Ángel Barrera stood as godfather on both occasions? Parada asks himself. Certainly it was Barrera who had come to him to make arrangements, both spiritual and temporal, for Cerro’s illegitimate offspring, when the governor had taken advantage of some young girl from one of the villages. Oh, well, at least they came to me as opposed to an abortionist, and that is something in the man’s favor.

But, he thinks as he pulls an old wool sweater over his head, if this is another teenage girl in an interesting circumstance, I am prepared to be seriously annoyed. Cerro should know better at his age. Certainly, he might have learned from experience if nothing else, and in any case, why does it have to be at—he glances at the clock—four in the morning?

He rings for the housekeeper.

“Coffee, please,” Parada tells her. “For two. In the study.”

Recently his relationship with Cerro has been one of alternate arguing and cajoling, begging and threatening, as he has petitioned the minister of education for new schools, books, lunch programs and more teachers. It has been a constant negotiation in which Parada has tiptoed on the edge of blackmail, once protesting to Cerro that the rural villages were not going to be treated like “bastard children”—a remark that was apparently worth two primary schools and a dozen new teachers.

Perhaps this is Cerro’s revenge, Parada thinks as he goes downstairs. But when he opens the door to his study and sees Cerro’s face, he knows it’s far more serious.

Cerro gets right to it. “I’m dying of cancer.”

Parada is stunned. “I am terribly sorry to hear this. Is there nothing …”

“No. There is no hope.”

“Would you like for me to hear your confession?”

“I have a priest for that,” Cerro says.

He hands Parada the briefcase.

“I brought you this,” Cerro says. “I didn’t know who else to bring it to.”

Parada opens it, looks at the papers and the tapes and says, “I don’t understand.”

“I have been a conspirator,” Cerro says, “in a massive crime. I cannot die … I am afraid to die … with this on my soul. I need to at least try to make restitution.”

“Certainly if you confess you will receive absolution,” Parada answers. “But if this is all evidence of some sort, why bring it to me? Why not to the attorney general, or …”

“His voice is on those tapes.”

Well, that would be a reason, Parada thinks.

Cerro leans forward and whispers, “The attorney general, the secretary of the interior, the chairman of the PRI. The president. All of them. All of us.”

Good God, Parada thinks.

What is on these tapes?

He goes through a pack and a half listening to them.

Lighting one cigarette from another, he listens to the tapes and pores through the documents. Memos of meetings, Cerro’s notes. Names, dates and places. A fifteen-year record of corruption—no, not just corruption. That would be the sad norm, and this is extraordinary. More than extraordinary—language fails.

What they did, in the simplest possible terms: They sold the country to the narcotraficantes.

He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t heard it himself: Tapes from a dinner—$25 million per plate—to help elect this president. The murders of election officials and the theft of the election itself. The voices of the president’s brother and the attorney general planning these outrages. And soliciting the narcos to pay for it all. And to commit the murders. And to torture and murder the American agent Hidalgo.

And then there was Operation Cerberus, the conspiracy to fund, equip and train the Contras through the sale of cocaine.

And Operation Red Mist, the right-wing murders funded in part by the drug cartels in Colombia and Mexico and supported by the PRI.

Small wonder Cerro is afraid of hell—he’s helped to build it here.

And now I understand why he brought this evidence to me. The voices on the tapes, the names on the memos—the president, his brother, the secretary of state, Miguel Ángel Barrera, García Abrego, Güero Méndez, Adán Barrera, the literally scores of police, army and intelligence officers, PRI officials—there is no one in Mexico who can or will act on this.

So Cerro brings it to me. Wanting me to give it to …

Whom?

He goes to light another cigarette but finds to his surprise that he’s sick of smoking—his mouth tastes filthy. He goes upstairs and brushes his teeth, then takes an almost scalding shower and, as he lets the water pound the back of his neck, thinks that perhaps he should give this evidence to Arthur Keller.

He’s maintained frequent correspondence with the American, now unfortunately persona non grata in Mexico, and the man is still obsessed with bringing down the drug cartels. But think it through, he tells himself: If you give this to Arthur, what will happen to it, given the shocking revelation of Operation Cerberus and the CIA’s complicity with the Barreras in exchange for Contra funding? Does Arthur have the power to act on this, or will it be suppressed by the current administration? Or any American administration, as focused as they are on NAFTA?

NAFTA, Parada thinks with disgust. The cliff we are marching toward in lockstep with the Americans. But there is hope. Presidential elections are coming up, and the PRI’s candidate—who will, perforce, win—seems to be a good man. Luis Donaldo Colosio is a legitimate man of the left, who will listen to reason. Parada has sat down with him, and the man is sympathetic.

And if this stunning evidence that the dying Cerro brought me can discredit the dinosaurs in the PRI, that might give Colosio the leverage he needs to follow his true instincts. Should I give him the information?

No, Parada thinks, Colosio mustn’t be seen to be going against his party—that would only rob him of the nomination.

So who, Parada wonders as he lathers his face and begins to shave, has the autonomy, the power, the sheer moral force to bring to light the fact that the entire government of a country has auctioned itself to a cartel of drug merchants? Who?

The answer occurs to him suddenly.

It’s obvious.

He waits until a decent hour of the morning, and then phones Antonucci to tell him that he wants to relay important information to the Pope.

The order of Opus Dei was founded in 1928 by a wealthy Spanish lawyer-turned-priest named Josemaría Escrivá, who was concerned that the University of Madrid had become a hotbed of left-wing radicalism. He was so concerned that his new organization of Catholic elite fought on the side of the fascists in the Spanish Civil War and spent the next thirty years helping to entrench General Franco in power. The idea was to recruit talented, elite young lay conservatives who were headed into government, the press and big business, imbue them with “traditional” Catholic values—especially anti-Communism—and send them out to do the Church’s work in their chosen spheres.

Salvatore Scachi—Special Forces colonel, CIA asset, Knight of Malta and made Mafia wise guy—is a tried-and-true member of Opus Dei. He met all the requirements—attended Mass daily, made his confessions only to an Opus Dei priest and made regular retreats at Opus Dei facilities.

And he’s been a good soldier. He’s fought the good fight against Communism in Vietnam, Cambodia and the Golden Triangle. He’s fought the war in Mexico, in Central America through Cerberus, in South America through Red Mist—all operations that the liberation theologist Parada is now threatening to expose to the world. Now he sits in Antonucci’s office considering what to do about the information that Cardinal Juan Parada wants to pass on to the Vatican.

“You say Cerro went to see him,” Scachi says to Antonucci.

“That’s what Parada told me.”

“Cerro knows enough to bring down the entire government,” Scachi says. And then some.

“We can’t burden the Holy Father with this information,” Antonucci says. This Pope has been a major supporter of Opus Dei, even to the point of recently beatifying Father Escrivá, the first step toward canonization. To force him to confront evidence of the Order’s involvement in some of the harsher actions against the Communist world conspiracy would be, at the very least, embarrassing.

Worse yet would be the scandal that would erupt against the present government, just as negotiations are proceeding to return the Church to full legal status in Mexico. No, these revelations would scuttle the government, and with it the negotiations, and swing momentum toward the heretical liberation theologists—many of them well-meaning “useful idiots” who would help bring about Communist rule.

It’s been the same story everywhere, Antonucci thinks—stupid, misled, liberal priests help bring the Communists to power, then the reds slaughter the priests. It was certainly true in Spain, which is why the blessed Escrivá founded the order in the first place.

As members of Opus Dei, both Antonucci and Scachi are well versed in the concept of the greater good, and for Sal Scachi the greater good of defeating Communism outweighs the evil of corruption. He also has something else on his mind—the NAFTA treaty, still under debate in Congress. If Parada’s revelations were ever made public they would scuttle NAFTA. And without NAFTA, there will be no hope for the development of a Mexican middle class, which is the only long-term antidote for the poisonous spread of Communism.

Now Antonucci says, “We have an opportunity here to do something great for the souls of the millions of faithful—to return the true Church to the Mexican people by earning the gratitude of the Mexican government.”

“If we suppress this information.”

“Just so.”

“But it’s not that simple,” Scachi says. “Parada apparently has certain knowledge, which he’ll come forward with if he doesn’t see—”

Antonucci gets up. “I must leave such worldly details to the lay brothers of the order. I don’t understand such things.”

But Scachi does.

Adán lies in bed at Rancho las Bardas, Raúl’s large estancia-cum-fortress, off the road between Tijuana and Tecate.

The ranch’s main living compound, composed of separate houses for Adán and Raúl, is surrounded by a ten-foot wall topped with razor wire and shards of broken glass bottles. There are two gates, each with massive, steel-reinforced doors. Spotlight towers are set in each corner, manned by guards with AK-47s, M-50 machine guns and Chinese rocket launchers.

And to even reach the place, you have to drive two long miles off the highway down a red-dirt road, but the chances are you’re not even going to get on that road, because the junction with the highway is guarded twenty-four–seven by plainclothes Baja state policemen.

So this is where the brothers came as soon as possible after the attack on the La Sirena disco, and now the place is on high alert. Guards patrol the walls night and day, squads in jeeps patrol the surrounding countryside, technicians electronically sweep the area for radio transmissions and cell-phone calls.