The Mongolian Conspiracy Read online

  Filberto García’s heart is a greater mystery, to himself. Marta has fled to his apartment, and is staying there under his protection. Why?”Could it be that Marta wants me to kill someone?” “Is Miss Fong an agent for one of the groups involved?” “Might be pure love, might be pure distrust.” Even when she makes it obvious that she is romantically available, García treats her with chaste and considerate tenderness, like a “father. Fucking fathers!” His unacknowledged yet clearly inhibiting scruples about their age difference, and his own anxieties about the failing virility that comes with aging, torment him. “Fucking faggot!” he repeatedly taunts himself. “I didn’t take advantage of her when she was afraid and now I’m not taking advantage of her when she’s grateful.” For the first time in his life, Filiberto García learns to feel unconditional love, and even how to merit it in return, and close to the novel’s end, he actually seems on the verge of the most unexpected late happiness. “All I know is how to start down this road, how to live carrying my solitude. Fucking solitude!”

  In this very dire, unprecedentedly violent and corrupt moment now in Mexico’s history, Filiberto García’s voice feels more urgent and more necessary than ever. Not silence but the voice within: it’s the essential antidote, defiance, survival, the inexpungible road out of the past, where we can discover what we might be strong enough to finally give.

  FRANCISCO GOLDMAN

  MEXICO CITY, JULY 2013

  The Mongolian Conspiracy

  I

  At six o’clock in the evening he got up from bed and put on his shoes and a tie. In the bathroom, he rinsed his face and combed his short, black hair. He didn’t need to shave; he’d never had much of a beard, and one shave lasted three days. He splashed on a little Yardley cologne, returned to the bedroom, and took his .45 out of the drawer of the nightstand. He checked that the magazine was in place and that there was a cartridge in the chamber. He wiped it carefully with a chamois and slipped it into his shoulder holster. He picked up his switchblade, opened and closed it, then slid it into his pants’ pocket. Then he put on his beige trench coat and Stetson hat. Fully dressed, he went back to the bathroom to look at himself in the mirror. The coat was new, and the tailor had done a good job; you could barely see the bulge of the gun under his arm and over his heart. Standing there looking at his reflection, he unconsciously lifted his hand and touched the gun through his coat. He felt naked without it. Once, at La Ópera cantina, the professor said that was because of his inferiority complex, but the professor, as usual, was drunk, and anyway — the professor can go to hell! That .45 was a part of him, part of Filiberto García, as much as his name and his past. Fucking past!

  He went from the bedroom into the living room. His small apartment was immaculate, its Sears furniture almost brand new. Not brand-new time-wise — brand-new wear-wise, because so few people visited and nobody ever used them. It could have been anybody’s room or a room in a cheap but decent hotel. There was not a single personal item: no pictures on the walls, no photographs, no books, not one armchair more worn out than another, no cigarette burns or rings on the coffee table in the middle of the room. He’d often thought about this furniture — his only belongings besides his car and the money he’d saved. He bought them when he moved out of the last of the many rooming houses he’d always lived in; they were the first ones they showed him at Sears, and he left everything exactly where they’d been set down by the deliveryman, who’d also hung up the curtains. Fucking furniture. But if you have an apartment, you have to have furniture, and when you buy an apartment building, you have to live in it. He stopped in front of the mirror on the console in the dining area and straightened his shiny red silk tie, then did the same with the black silk handkerchief in his chest pocket, the handkerchief that always smelled of Yardley. He examined his perfectly trimmed and polished nails. The only thing he couldn’t fix was the scar on his cheek, but the gringo who’d made it couldn’t fix being dead, either. Fair is fair. Fucking gringo! Seems he knew how to handle a knife, but not lead. His day had come in Juárez. Or, rather, his night. And let that be a lesson not to wake people up in the middle of the night, because the early bird doesn’t always get the worm but the worms got that gringo.

  His dark face was inexpressive, his mouth almost always motionless, even when he spoke. Only his big, green, almond-shaped eyes had any life in them. When he was a kid, in Yurécuaro, they called him The Cat, and a woman in Tampico called him My Tame Tiger. Fucking tame tiger! His eyes might suggest nicknames, but the rest of his face, especially his slight sneer, didn’t make people feel like using any.

  The doorman downstairs greeted him with a military salute:

  “Good evening, Captain.”

  That chump calls me Captain because I wear a trench coat, a Stetson, and ankle boots. If I carried a briefcase, he’d call me professor. Fucking professor! Fucking goddamned captain!

  Night began to spread dirty grays over the streets of Luis Moya, and the traffic, as usual at that time of day, was unbearable. He decided to walk. The colonel had told him to be there at seven. He had time. He walked to Avenida Juárez, then turned left, toward El Caballito. He could go slow. He had time. His whole fucking life he’d had time. Killing isn’t a job that takes a lot of time, especially now that we’re doing it legally, for the government, by the book. During the Revolution, things were different, but I was just a kid then, an orderly to General Marchena, one of so many second-rate generals. A lawyer in Saltillo said he was small-fry, but that lawyer is dead. I don’t like jokes like that. I don’t mind a smutty story, but not jokes, you have to show respect, respect for Filiberto García, and respect for his generals. Fucking jokes!

  People who knew him knew he didn’t like jokes. His women learned fast. Only the professor, when he was drunk, dared to crack jokes around him. But that fucking professor, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about dying. When they dropped the atom bomb on Japan, he turned to me with a straight face, and right there in front of everybody, he asked me, “As a fellow professional, what do you think of President Truman?” Almost nobody in the cantina laughed. When I’m there, nobody ever laughs, and when I play dominoes, just about all you hear is the sound of the tiles on the marble tabletop. That’s how men should play dominoes, that’s how men should do everything. And that’s why I like the Chinamen on Dolores Street. They play their poker and don’t waste time talking or telling jokes. Pedro Li and Juan Po probably don’t even know who I am. For them, I’m just most honorable Mr. García. Fucking Chinamen! Sometimes it seems like they don’t have a clue, but then it turns out they know everything. There I am pretending to be a big shot, and all the time they’re seeing what a chump I am, but they always, always, play it cool. Damn right I know all about their wheelings and dealings, their gambling and their opium. But I keep my mouth shut. If Chinamen want to smoke opium, let them smoke opium. And if kids want marijuana, it’s none of my business. That’s what I told the colonel when he sent me to Tijuana to find some guys who were moving marijuana across the border. Some were Mexicans and some were gringos and two of them ended up dead. But others keep moving marijuana across the border, and gringos keep smoking it, no matter what laws they’ve got. And the police on the other side make a big deal about respecting the law. All I can say is, the law is for suckers. Maybe all gringos are suckers. Because the law doesn’t get you anywhere. Take the professor, he’s a lawyer, and all he does is hang around the cantina mooching drinks. “If you get in trouble, he’ll get you out.” But I don’t get in trouble. I did once, but I learned my lesson: if you want to go around killing people, you’ve got to have orders. Just that once I stepped out of line. I had good reason to kill her, but I didn’t have orders. And I had to go all the way to the top and promise all kinds of things to get them to let me off. But I learned my lesson. That was during General Obregón’s time, and I was twenty years old. Now I’m sixty and I’ve put away a small stash, not a lot, but enough to pay for my vices. Fucking experience. And — fucking law
s! Now everything’s got to be done legally. Lawyers everywhere you look. And I don’t matter anymore. Beat it, old man. What university did you go to? When did you graduate? No, sorry, you need a degree for that. Before, you just needed balls, and now you need a degree. And you need to be in good with the gang in charge, and to be full of a whole load of shit. Otherwise all your experience isn’t worth a hill of beans. We are the ones building Mexico — to hell with you old timers. You can’t do what we do. All you’re good for is producing dead bodies, or rather stiffs — second-rate dead bodies. And in the meantime, Mexico keeps making progress. It’s moving forward. The battle you fought is over. Bullets don’t solve anything. The Revolution was fought with bullets — fucking Revolution. We are Mexico’s future, and you’re just holding us back. Move aside, out of sight, till we need you again. Till we need somebody else dead, because that’s all you know how to do. Because we’re the ones building Mexico, from our bars and our cocktail lounges, not your old-time cantinas. You can’t come in here with your .45 and your trench coat and your Stetson. Much less with those rubber soles. That’ll do in your cantina, for you boys who fought the old fight, you boys who won the Revolution and lost the old fight. Fucking Revolution! And then they come along with their smiles and their moustaches. “Are you an existentialist?” “Do you like figurative art?” “You’re one of those people who like those Casa Galas calendar paintings.” What the fuck is wrong with Casa Galas calendars? Well, it’s just that Mexico can’t be built like that: we’ll call you when we need another stiff. Son-of-a-bitch kids got the jump on us. The colonel isn’t even forty years old and he’s high up already. A colonel and a lawyer. Fucking colonel! I’m better off with the Chinamen. They respect old people, and old people run things there. Fucking Chinamen and fucking old people!

  The colonel wore English cashmere. He wore English shoes and tailored shirts. He attended international police conferences and read a lot of books in his field. He liked to implement new systems. People said he was such a tightwad he wouldn’t even give you the time of day. His fingers were long and delicate, like an artist’s.

  “Come in, García.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sit down, please.”

  The colonel lit a Chesterfield. He never offered one, and he sucked in as much smoke as his lungs could hold, not wanting to waste anything.

  “I’ve got something for you. Could be nothing, but we have to take every precaution.”

  García said nothing. All in good time.

  “I’m not sure it’s in your line, García, but I don’t have anybody else to give it to.”

  He took another greedy drag off his cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly, as if sorry to let it go.

  “You know the Chinese on Dolores Street.”

  It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. This fucking colonel and lawyer knows a lot, more than he lets on. He never wants to let go of anything, so he never forgets. Fucking colonel.

  “You’ve worked with the FBI a few times before. They don’t particularly like you, and they aren’t going to like you working on this case. But they’ll get over it. I don’t want any friction — you’ve got to work together. That’s an order. Understood?”

  “Understood, Colonel.”

  “I don’t want any scandals, either — no deaths that aren’t strictly necessary. That’s why I’m still not convinced you’re the best man for this job.”

  “It’s your call, Colonel.”

  The colonel stood up and walked over to the window. There was nothing to see but the building’s dark courtyard.

  Fucking colonel! I don’t want any deaths, but you call me. That’s exactly why they always call me, because they want people dead and want to keep their own hands clean. That kind of killing ended with the popular uprising, and now everything’s done according to the law. But sometimes the law can only stretch so far, not quite far enough, and that’s when they call me in. It was so easy before. Take out that bastard. That was it, no questions asked. But now we are highly evolved and very well educated. Now, we don’t want any dead people or, at least, we don’t want to give orders for them to be killed. We’ll just drop a hint here and there, that way nobody’s to blame. Because now we’ve all got a conscience. Fucking conscience! Now they’re all squeaky clean, so they have to call in real men to do their dirty little jobs for them.

  The colonel spoke from over by the window:

  “There are only three men in Mexico who know anything about this. Two of them have read your file, García, and they don’t think we should hire you. They say you’re not a detective or a policeman, you’re just a professional hit man. The third one supports you. The third one is me.”

  The colonel turned around, expecting to receive gratitude. Filiberto García didn’t say a word. All in good time. The colonel kept talking:

  “I’ve recommended you for this investigation because you know the Chinese, you play poker with them and you know about their opium dens. I assume this makes them trust you and will make things easier for you. In addition, as I said, you’ve collaborated with the FBI on previous occasions.”

  “Right.”

  “One of the two men against your appointment is coming here tonight to meet you. No reason for you to know his name. Let me warn you, he not only questions your ability to carry out an investigation, he also questions your loyalty to the government, and even to Mexico.”

  He paused, as if waiting for García to object. He wants me to give a speech, but speeches about loyalty and patriotism are for cantinas, not for when you’re talking about a serious job. Fucking loyalty!

  “Also, García, you’ll be working with a Russian agent.”

  His green eyes widened imperceptibly.

  “I know, that might sound like a strange combination, but the man you’ll meet will explain it, if, that is, he deems it appropriate.”

  García took out a Delicado cigarette and lit it. There was no ashtray near him so he put the burned match back in the box. The colonel pushed the ashtray across the desk toward him.

  “Thank you, Colonel.”

  “I think that you are loyal to your government and to Mexico, García. You fought in the Revolution with General Marchena and then, after that unfortunate incident with that woman, you joined the police in the state of San Luis Potosí. When General Cedillo led a revolt, you opposed him. You helped the federal government with those problems in Tabasco and with a few other things. You’ve done some good work cleaning up the border, and you did a fine job on that secret Cuban operations center.”

  Yeah, a fine job. I killed six poor slobs, the only six members of the great Communist operations center for the liberation of the Americas. They were going to liberate the Americas from their operations center in the jungle of Campeche. Six stupid kids playing at being heroes, with two machine guns and a few pistols. And they died and there was no international conflict and the gringos were happy because they could take pictures of the machine guns and one was Russian. And the colonel told me that those poor slobs were violating our national sovereignty. Fucking sovereignty! Maybe they were, but once they were dead they couldn’t violate anything. They also said they’d violated the laws of asylum. Fuck the laws! And fuck the malaria I got in the jungle. And after all that, they come out in public saying I shouldn’t have whacked them. But it was I kill them or they kill me, because they were very keen on being heroes. And in a case like that, I don’t want to be the one who ends up dead.

  The door opened and a well-dressed man entered: he was thin, with salt and pepper hair, and gold-framed eyeglasses. The colonel stepped forward to greet him.

  “Am I on time?” the man asked.

  “Exactly on time, sir.”

  “Good. I’ve never liked to keep people waiting or wait for others. Here in Mexico, we must learn to be punctual. Good evening . . .”

  He held his hand out to García and smiled. García stood up. The colonel’s politeness was contagious. The man’s hand was hot and dr
y, like a bun right out of the oven.

  “Have a seat, sir,” the colonel said. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

  The man sat down.

  “Thank you, Colonel. I imagine Mr. García has already been briefed.”

  “I’ve explained that we have a special assignment for him, but that you and another person don’t think he’s the right man for the job.”