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Of course, these Trojan Horse bills benefited both parties, and so a lone Senator’s voice meant little when it came to how the Senate and House actually voted. But if Robinson took the White House, he could issue a Presidential Executive Order that could immediately close those loopholes—perhaps not permanently, but long enough to bring down the house of cards on which Zeta Nation was funding itself.
And without that inflow of American money, Zeta Nation could easily be swallowed up by the Colombian or Mexican Cartels, both of which were experiencing a resurgence thanks to the inflow of Chinese money along with the chemical raw materials to make methamphetamine and fentanyl, the new cash-cows of the drug trade.
“Business as usual,” Diego muttered as he slowed down to let a State Trooper with flashing lights pass him. He exhaled as the Trooper zipped down the highway and raced up an exit ramp. “So our new owners have made no move to sell our bonds to someone else at a discount?”
“Correct. The only change is that now I must deposit the interest payments into a Grand Cayman bank account.” Ernesto paused, took a quick breath. “But of course, all of it depends on us continuing to receive foreign aid money from theYanquis. We are covered until the end of the year under the last big bill passed by Congress. But we must be included in a Trojan Horse bill for next year too. The Northrups had the connections in Washington. They were paying the lobbyists. They were donating to the Congressmen and Senators. They had the Ivy League degrees and the connections that came with them, Diego. So yes, it is business as usual for now. But next year could be a different story. Especially with the elections and a new American President taking over the White House.”
“We are still writing next year’s story,” Diego said thoughtfully as he saw the signs for Baltimore coming up on his right. “If our new bosses have not attempted to offload us from IMC’s portfolio by now, it means they understand what is going on and are waiting and watching.” He took a breath, thought back to his recon mission at the Robinson homestead. “Watching to see what happens in the Presidential Primaries. To see whether Robinson wins the nomination.” He rubbed his new beard, tightened his jaw, nodded as the exit to Southeast Baltimore approached. “If Robinson wins the nomination, our new bosses at IMC will almost certainly package up our bonds along with those of the Kendos and the Urzis and everyone else, dump them all and write off the loss. But if we make it so that Robinson is no longer alive to be on the ticket, then perhaps our new bosses will finally reach out to us. Perhaps they will open up a dialog. They might have connections just like the Northrups did. They might have American-based shell companies from which to donate to Congressmen and Senators, to pay lobbyists legally in ways that we cannot from outside the United States.”
“Si,” said Ernesto. “Listen, I know one of the Cayman bankers from my days with the Juarez Cartel. He cannot get me any names of the IMC owners, but he has confirmed that IMC has accounts in not just Grand Cayman but also Cyprus. They move large amounts of capital, in the tens of billions every month.”
Another wave of relief passed through Diego, followed by a surge of excitement. Cyprus was a hotbed of underground banking activity because of privacy laws that rivalled those of the Swiss. In fact, much of the truly dark money had moved to Cyprus over the past decade, thanks to the Swiss bankers bowing to U.S. pressure and revealing their client lists. Cyprus, on the other hand, was both tighter and looser with their rules, and the little island off the coast of Greece had a bustling shadow economy of shell companies and local agents who rented out offices and answered phones on behalf of these shell companies and their secret owners.
Diego took the Southeast Baltimore exit, listening in silence as Ernesto rattled off instructions to access funds transferred to the United States, money for Diego’s extended “vacation” north of the border. Moving money was getting more and more complicated these days, with U.S. banks increasingly freezing accounts with even the smallest sign of sketchiness. But Ernesto was very good at his work, painstakingly maintaining dozens of small bank accounts all over the United States, utilizing regional banks and credit unions, avoiding the mega-banks which were scrutinized much more closely by both U.S. Treasury and the NSA—perhaps the CIA too.
Diego hung up the phone and rubbed his jaw, thoughts of the CIA bringing John Benson’s name to mind once more. But he pushed aside the thoughts, told himself again that nobody knew for sure that Zeta Number One was in the United States on holiday.
He grinned at the memory of Ernesto’s lighthearted jab about Diego being on vacation. But there was some truth to it, Diego admitted in the privacy of his mind as he took a left turn at the top of the exit ramp and rumbled the van towards the Hispanic neighborhoods of Southeast Baltimore.
Yes, Diego had certainly been enjoying some of the luxuries of the Land of Milk and Honey. Even neighborhoods that were called “ghettoes” by the American elite looked vibrant and thriving to Diego’s jaded eyes. He’d grown up inrealghettoes down in Mexico City, his childhood home just a shack built from salvaged metal and plywood from one of the city’s garbage dumps which were the size of mountains.
Diego had grown up scavenging those dumps for anything that could be sold. That was where he’d first learned how to fight—the garbage dumps were free-for-alls where might was right. He’d seen old women fight ten-year-old girls for the rights to a piece of shiny aluminum or a cardboard box of old clothes. Many of those fights drew blood. Some of them ended with a body added to the towering mountains of filth.
So yes, perhaps Diego had taken his sweet time getting settled after swimming ashore like a rat, sneaking into the Brooklyn barrios and then making his way to Baltimore. Perhaps moving on Robinson earlier would have been smart, but Diego had held off.
He told himself it was because of the uncertainty of Northrup Capital’s takeover. After all, there would be no benefit to killing Senator Robinson if the new owners decided to dump the Zeta Nation’s bonds. The money train would come to a crashing halt.
In which case Diego had wondered if he would be better off starting over in the United States.
The admission made his cheeks burn with guilt. Even the thought felt like a betrayal. After years of leading his Zetas like a prophet to the promised land of a Zeta Nation, how could his heart so quickly yearn for the comforts of the United States?
Diego huffed out a breath as he pulled onto Garfield Avenue, not far from the apartment complex with his one-room studio that would be considered a hovel by American standards but was a palace compared to where Diego had lived with his mother and two sisters for the first eleven years of his life. On his left was a miniature strip mall with a laundromat, a nail salon, two pawn brokers, and a little Mexican convenience store calledMercy’s Placewhich sold fresh tamales.
Diego had been in Baltimore two weeks, and he’d visited the little store to buy rolling tobacco and instant coffee and cleaning supplies. The tamales had been a nice surprise, and he’d been coming back almost every day to grab a couple for lunch.
Of course, Diego thought as he pulled into the strip-mall’s six-car parking lot, that wasn’t the only reason he’d been visitingMercy’s Placeperhaps a bit more often than necessary.
“Hola,” came her voice from behind the counter as Diego walked in.
“Hola, Mercy,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant even though the sight of her made his heart hammer inside his chest in a way it hadn’t for years, decades, perhaps forever. “How are you?”
Mercy smiled and shrugged, then leaned forward on the glass-topped counter, her round-necked tee-shirt dipping just enough to give him an unintended glimpse of her cleavage.
Diego’s eyes darted towards that shadowy space between her brown breasts, and Mercy immediately straightened up and stepped back from the counter, tugging self-consciously at her neckline, blinking several times and then flashing a quick smile. She was perhaps in her mid-thirties, maybe five years younger than Diego, with soft brown eyes that hinted at a distant sadness, a sense of resignation that seemed to tug at something in Diego’s cold heart.
He strode past her, cursing himself for glancing down her shirt so obviously. The thought was comical, considering what Diego and his men had done to women over the years—taking what they wanted, when they wanted, how they wanted, again and again. Sex was a weapon in the kind of wars the Zetas had been fighting with the Cartels and the Narcos and the local police and everyone else who got caught in the crossfire. There was no better way to strike dread in the hearts of your potential enemies than by making it very clear what would happen to the women unfortunate enough to be their wives and daughters, their sisters and mothers.
He drew back his thick dark hair, strode to the milk cooler and grabbed a carton of heavy cream to mix into his instant coffee. He took his time in the middle aisle of the three-aisle convenience store, cursing himself again for giving in to this feeling that had drawn him back here almost every day.
“Tamales are almost ready, if you want to wait a few minutes,” Mercy said in Spanish when Diego placed the carton of cream on the glass counter and dug into his uniformed pocket for cash. “They are steaming in the back.”
Diego gulped back a steaming image of what he’d like to do in the back to Mercy. His eyes flashed with that wildness that usually didn’t need to be restrained when he was back with his Zetas, taking the wives and sisters of their enemies with violent relish.
“I have to get back to work,” he said gruffly, placing a crumpled ten-dollar bill on the counter.
Mercy popped open the cash register, glancing at his uniform as she made change. “You do building maintenance, yes?” she asked, handing him his change and smiling up at him, a glimmer of something in those storm-cloudy eyes.
Diego grunted out a yes, cursing inwardly again for coming in here in this damn fake uniform. He shoved the change into his pocket, was about to grab the carton of cream when Mercy snatched it away and turned to the back counter so she could bag it in brown paper.