light.
Chambers and Morales had taken over a small two-storey house at the far end of the main street. No-one paid them much attention, and they rarely went out. Throughout the day locals trotted by on their trusty steeds, while others postured and swaggered about street corners in their wide-brimmed hats and thick checked ponchos. Every one of them smoked tobacco, or chewed coca leaves, indulging in rowdy games with unfathomable rules, while the women inspected hanging slabs of meat for supper and kids scuffed around in the dirt.
It had been a quiet and easy couple of days after the ordeal of the journey, and should remain that way until Morales’s cohorts returned with word from
El Patron
that it was safe to move on, or necessary to stay put a while longer.
El Patron
– the boss – was a man without a name, though Chambers knew he was very probably paramilitary, for that was how members of such groups referred to their ranking officer.
Thanks to Morales he now knew the name of one of Rachel’s killers. Gustavo Zapata. It had come as no surprise to learn that the kid, for he was barely in his twenties, was a near relative of Hernán Galeano’s: this would account for the older man’s refusal to hand anyone over at the time the pressure was on. Morales had obtained Zapata’s identity from one of his ‘sleepers’ inside the Tolima Cartel, but so far the other two names were proving hard to come by. But there were ways of finding out, and Chambers wanted to be around when the Zapata kid squealed.
Morales was putting up no objection to that; he understood the need to look a killer in the eye and let him know how much worse it was going to be for him. What he didn’t understand was Chambers’s professed reluctance to execute the scumsuckers who had carried out the job on his girlfriend. But Morales was losing no sleep over it. It was Chambers’s call, he was only there to continue the payback for what the Galeanos had done to his son after the boy had been seduced by Galeano’s bitch of a cockteasing wife.
It was evening now, a time when the veil of rain was absorbed by the humid air and the strange stone statues on the hillsides, carved by the hands of long-dead craftsmen, basked in the fiery glow of sunset. Chambers was standing before one now, gazing at the curiously monstrous face and stout cribbed body. He wondered about its origins, its creator, its link to the long-lost civilization that had once inhabited these hills. He felt a sense of timelessness stirring inside him, connecting him to the past, or maybe the future. Rachel was never far from his mind. He wondered if she was with him now, looking at this ancient symbol of indecipherable meaning. Her presence felt so real, he was sure if he turned he would find her there. Would she speak to him? Would she tell him to give up on this earthly torment and come join her in a place where vengeance had no meaning or purpose? Or would she guide him to those who had wrenched her from the bonds of their love and consigned them to this hell of divided worlds?
Turning, he looked down over the hillside to where the village lay cradled in the bowl of the valley. It was several moments before he noticed the girl climbing the path towards him. Her thick dark hair hung loosely around her shoulders, her strong, athletic legs moved gracefully over the grassy ascent. She waved, and though she was still too distant for him to see her face, he could feel himself warming to the childlike brightness of her eyes and guileless beauty of her smile. Her name was Carlota: she was a whore’s daughter who had ridden with them from the nearby town of Popayán to this village where her grandmother lived. She looked fourteen, though insisted she was twenty.
‘I was looking for you,’ she said as she joined him. She was breathless from her walk; her clear olive skin was sheened in sweat. ‘They are saying in the bar that you are wanted in your country for more than a hundred
Chambers and Morales had taken over a small two-storey house at the far end of the main street. No-one paid them much attention, and they rarely went out. Throughout the day locals trotted by on their trusty steeds, while others postured and swaggered about street corners in their wide-brimmed hats and thick checked ponchos. Every one of them smoked tobacco, or chewed coca leaves, indulging in rowdy games with unfathomable rules, while the women inspected hanging slabs of meat for supper and kids scuffed around in the dirt.
It had been a quiet and easy couple of days after the ordeal of the journey, and should remain that way until Morales’s cohorts returned with word from
El Patron
that it was safe to move on, or necessary to stay put a while longer.
El Patron
– the boss – was a man without a name, though Chambers knew he was very probably paramilitary, for that was how members of such groups referred to their ranking officer.
Thanks to Morales he now knew the name of one of Rachel’s killers. Gustavo Zapata. It had come as no surprise to learn that the kid, for he was barely in his twenties, was a near relative of Hernán Galeano’s: this would account for the older man’s refusal to hand anyone over at the time the pressure was on. Morales had obtained Zapata’s identity from one of his ‘sleepers’ inside the Tolima Cartel, but so far the other two names were proving hard to come by. But there were ways of finding out, and Chambers wanted to be around when the Zapata kid squealed.
Morales was putting up no objection to that; he understood the need to look a killer in the eye and let him know how much worse it was going to be for him. What he didn’t understand was Chambers’s professed reluctance to execute the scumsuckers who had carried out the job on his girlfriend. But Morales was losing no sleep over it. It was Chambers’s call, he was only there to continue the payback for what the Galeanos had done to his son after the boy had been seduced by Galeano’s bitch of a cockteasing wife.
It was evening now, a time when the veil of rain was absorbed by the humid air and the strange stone statues on the hillsides, carved by the hands of long-dead craftsmen, basked in the fiery glow of sunset. Chambers was standing before one now, gazing at the curiously monstrous face and stout cribbed body. He wondered about its origins, its creator, its link to the long-lost civilization that had once inhabited these hills. He felt a sense of timelessness stirring inside him, connecting him to the past, or maybe the future. Rachel was never far from his mind. He wondered if she was with him now, looking at this ancient symbol of indecipherable meaning. Her presence felt so real, he was sure if he turned he would find her there. Would she speak to him? Would she tell him to give up on this earthly torment and come join her in a place where vengeance had no meaning or purpose? Or would she guide him to those who had wrenched her from the bonds of their love and consigned them to this hell of divided worlds?
Turning, he looked down over the hillside to where the village lay cradled in the bowl of the valley. It was several moments before he noticed the girl climbing the path towards him. Her thick dark hair hung loosely around her shoulders, her strong, athletic legs moved gracefully over the grassy ascent. She waved, and though she was still too distant for him to see her face, he could feel himself warming to the childlike brightness of her eyes and guileless beauty of her smile. Her name was Carlota: she was a whore’s daughter who had ridden with them from the nearby town of Popayán to this village where her grandmother lived. She looked fourteen, though insisted she was twenty.
‘I was looking for you,’ she said as she joined him. She was breathless from her walk; her clear olive skin was sheened in sweat. ‘They are saying in the bar that you are wanted in your country for more than a hundred
Similar Books
