EPISODE XXIX
“Please, forgive me so that I could go on in peace, for God´s sake let us meet in person, with or without Valentina”.
Passport: Letter of safe passage delivered to enemies, where the itinerary and suitable places for accommodation and luggage storage are stipulated.
Nugaró, Colombia, March 14th 2018
René set up in his own house the office where he usually does the planning of intelligence activities. To that end he had adapted an old storage of junk, whose walls were now decorated with portraits of the most renowned secret agents in modern history. The ideology of the countries they –in theory– represented, had nonetheless been brushed aside at the moment of hanging them. A safe contact telephone, a laptop and his instinct constituted the basic arsenal with which he handled the daily spying businesses. While his wife was teaching at school, Valentina studying at the university and Alejandra at school too, René the householder ceased to exist and then Boina Verde the secret agent would take his place. It was under these circumstances, alone in his office, that the self-chosen isolation he adored so much came over and lingered on until his family returned home, becoming René again thereafter. Until further notice. The D.N.I. gurus prophesized that March would bring new challenges, though René prevented himself from following the omens of the desk seers, trusting mostly on his superstitions instead. The sky was overcast on the fourteenth of the ongoing month, a persistent rain was expected as per the weather forecast; the storm found René reflecting on the operation related to the infiltration of an Israeli snitch within the D.N.I. ranks. The John Doe was covered from all angles, but struggled to seek a way out furiously nevertheless. Boina Verde remained watchful waiting for the Zionist fop to make a false move in order to wring his neck, and then, in case he survived, to apply “the method for straightening crooked spies” upon him. René –when playacting the role of Boina Verde– couldn´t stand those people who spend their time boasting about their sophistication and refinement until someone decides to rummage through the layers of his personality, so as to bring to light the hidden boor. It was for this reason that apart from gearing all of his energies and efforts towards the operation Yezid (such the name of the Israeli snitch after whom the operation was named), René added to his behaviour a great dose of animosity, somehow fostered by his aversion against anything related to the Hebrews. His target, to catch Yezid in flagrante delictum, became an obsession, as much as he dreamt on the punishment to inflict to him for his intrusion on the ranks of the D.N.I.
“Intruders like him must pay four-times the price, they will pay dearly for their mistakes and ultimately won´t succeed in their attempts to slip away from the clutches of fate. In the underworld of espionage, snitches are often whisked off outside the village to get their scores settled with the betrayed, they might run into nice guys willing to crack down on them far-off in the outskirts they were carried to, in particular when the flaw involves serious offences of a terrorist nature” –that´s the way Boina Verde stirred up his feelings of revenge against the Israeli every morning during March”.
In addition to the untold anguish job issues have been causing him, René was wrestling with a growing inner feeling of violence which he needed to get rid of, as a result of the evolution of the Balou´s gate. The fact is that the latter had been sending reconciliation messages to René, in which he urged him to have a meeting at a bar wherein the writer would offer him apologies for the course the events had taken. René as well as Valentina, were being pestered by the Argentine writer; his hopeless plead “Please, forgive me so that I could go on in peace, for Gods’ sake let us meet in person, with or without Valentina” ended up altering René´s sleep cycle, leaving him open to insomnia together with an outburst of wrath. The operation Yezid succeeded in diverting Rene´s attention off the Argentine, which fitted him like a glove.
And to add fuel to the fire, René got a phone call at seven o clock that morning from a guy he was well acquainted with:
- Do you want to implement the Zeta technique?
Among the colleagues of the D.N.I. the Zeta technique implied a sudden change in the methods employed in operations, missions or tasks under implementation, it may also mean to redress a procedure or to create a new one, unforeseen at the initial stages of planning. The tone of Haroldo Cuéllar denoted imminent threat. Boina Verde got frightened and the first thing he thought of was that something happened to his daughter, that Balou had broken the restriction order and finally neared the apple of his eye with the intention of rape. Taking into account how unacceptable it is in the world of spies –almost a taboo– to show their emotions, coldness is pretty well appreciated; the non-expression of emotions, their concealment is the summum for the Seniors D.N.I. officials, in respect to their subordinates. Even if it´s a tight knit, as in the case of Haroldo and René, a show of emotional weakness will be a sign of mutual trust being undermined, which gives rise for loosening up the observance of tacit codes of conduct. So, Boina Verde gathered up the courage and with self-imposed temperance asked Haroldo Cuéllar:
- Anything wrong with Heart that I am not aware of?
- Negative –replied Haroldo–, there is no news on the wiretapping, however, I have some information to share.
A shiver of danger hit on René´s bones, turning into a trembling that gave him goosebumps all along his coppery skin. He reckoned that the safety of Valentina would be assured with an escort squad and the tapping of her cell phone.
- Spit it out please! –Boina Verde urged Haroldo to speak.
- My source of information is Marina, from Constitutional Guarantees. She received a complaint filed by a Dutch, who was threatened by a Uruguayan at the end of January. Koen the victim, is the owner of a company where the Uruguayan has worked for as an accountant. Koen submitted no supporting evidence to the court of Constitutional Guarantees, instead of bringing proofs for his allegation he recounted what had happened and suggested that the Uruguayan belongs to the Naples Mafia. As per Koen´s tale, this Mafia is watching him over in order to intimidate him. The Dutch feels that his life is in danger. Apparently, the Uruguayan accountant quitted his job during an outburst of rage, amidst his madness he told Koen to go to hell by means of foul language and curse words, some weeks later the quitter sent an email to everyone with a letter of farewell attached, a written way he chose to take out his anger on the Dutch and also to expose the threat of the Naples Mafia upon him. Even though there is no prosecution going ahead, the Dutch promised to come back to the office of Constitutional Guarantees, but prior to that he needed to weigh the two courses of actions that Marina provided to him: that the offender grants him a public act of atonement by releasing an apology letter in the mass media, wherein he retracts his offensive comments; or to skip the precedent show of politeness and in its place stand a claim on grounds of slander and false accusations.
- You know Boina Verde that, so long as Heart is involved, The Zeta Technique is always at hand.
There are some pre-set criteria to be learned if you want to decipher the encrypted language used by the secret services: when a demonym of any country is mentioned in a telephone call between spies, for example, a Dutch, they are in fact referring to a Belgian, a guy from the neighboring country; when a Uruguayan has been brought into the conversation, they are actually dealing with an Argentinian native and so on. Likewise with similar professions: the accountant for the financial manager; and the Naples Mafia turns into the Sicilian Mafia. With this ingenious method of disorientation any shifty hearer would be in trouble trying to decipher the records of intercepted calls.
- Do you mean –Boina Verde struggled to pick out the right words– the Uruguayan target is eligible to meet the same fate as Yezid once he is caught?
- I am afraid we have no choice. Infatuation is more dangerous than you can imagine. The D.N.I. took this matter in their own hands, in the belief that the Uruguayan might cause a big mess. If a simple act of resignation threw him off balance and prompted the complaint from the Dutch at Constitutional Guarantees, a rotten CEO to whom your target has no affection for –Haroldo Cuéllar said it sarcastically, underlying each expression– just think what love may lead him to do, how badly he may act with regards to Heart. Think it twice and spit it out too! The Uruguayan is scheduled to land tonight in Cali from Montevideo, at 11.30 pm.
Following the operation of misleading, Haroldo said Uruguayan meaning Balou, and changed Montevideo for Rosario.
- The target arrives in Cali tonight? Are you sure? –René got a little nervous.
- Look, Boina Verde –Haroldo answered back with sternness–, on January thirty first in the afternoon Marina came over to hand me the statement of the Dutch, just when you were heading to Florencia on official business for the Operation Yezid. Since I didn´t want to bother you then, I made my own decisions. I picked up the phone, talked to our colleagues in Uruguay and asked them to monitor the steps of your target while he was in his native country. From a prudent distance, of course. We watched him over during February and the first fortnight of March. To realise that we are dealing, Boina Verde, with a bipolar patient. Screwballs are equally menacing –if not more– than the Arabs responsible for crashing the planes against the twin towers in September eleventh two thousand one. The Uruguayan is capable of anything, that´s clear enough. You may be unaware of how ludicrously mentally unstable people react to unrequited love. It´s time for us –the D.N.I.– to learn the lesson from our Yankee fellows of the CIA. What do I mean? I mean the CIA itself relaxed in terms of monitoring presumably innocent Muslims inside the USA; despite they were long-standing suspects, duly identified. The end of the story is widely known: the supposedly harmless Muslims attacked on the twin towers. It´s a pity that they will be remembered as unwatched martyrs. I am afraid that the Uruguayan is ready to move forward, for he is gripped by his own Yihad, by his own loving personal crusade, which may often become more dangerous than the religious ones. Our services don´t care about the major causes of our enemy’s personal crusades; what interests us most is to stave off risks. Therefore, we cannot be taken off guard, we cannot be caught with our pants down. Let´s take timely and appropriate actions now that he is getting back to Cali.
René could hardly say a word: To apply the Zeta technique to Balou? René and Haroldo introduced the Zeta technique to the Colombian Secret Service, however it was applied only a few times. In level six extreme cases like Yezid´s, when domestic security has been put at risk, the D.N.I. recurs to the Zeta Technique in order to counteract the threat. Having learnt that Yezid´s squad –in collusion with the F.A.R.C. forces – had claimed responsibility for kidnapping for ransom in the regions of Casanare and Florencia, Caquetá, worked as the trigger for the D.N.I. to start applying it over the Hebrews. There was no way to respond otherwise, when it was confirmed that the team of Yezid works in partnership with enemy number one of the Colombian nation. That foreign legionnaires and national guerrilla have joined forces to sabotage domestic security is unspeakable, which made the upper echelons of the D.N.I. decide to send out its pawns against the Hebrews. Yezid the elusive, who is still at large, exhibited signs of sapience at slipping away every time he was on the verge of being captured. The gurus of the D.N.I. informed through its data collectors that Yezid was getting ready to fly to Tel-a-Viv from a hidden landing field located in the jungle of Guainía someday in March, and is supposed to carry a file whose content would incriminate him. Upon his arrest, the method for straightening crooked spies will be arranged ipso facto.
At the end of November two thousand sixteen René and Haroldo had gone to Bogotá to celebrate the accomplishment of a particularly complex mission ruled in favour of the D.N.I. The line managers covered travel expenses and allowances to all the staff somewhat involved in the successful ambush. The two friends were lodged at the same hotel. In the same room. Despite being drunken and tired post the gala-dinner, they got back to the chamber, took out the chessboard and engaged themselves in a long-lasting fierce game, resulting in a technical tie. As agreed, they followed the ritual of reading a passage of the book of the dead of Ancient Egypt. As pages were left behind, they came across the topic of the embalming process of the dead performed by the Egyptians, staunch supporters of the existence of life after death. And there appeared Hathor, the Goddess of the night sky and opponent of Isis, identified with the beauty, the dance and the music. Hathor was the abode of Horus, the great one God, who sometimes acted as his wife and others as his son. René spread out a piece of paper to draw a diagram: to the east was the Nile, the kingdom of life; to the west were the mountains of Libya, the kingdom of death. The priestess Hathor, perched on the sycamore of the Libyan mountains, would welcome the deceased so to facilitate their entrance into the afterlife, to the great beyond. That´s why she was also called the Goddess of the west. In its role as food and beverages provider for the souls in transit to the realm of the death, Hathor gained the status of Goddess that lights up the world as well as she rendered the union representative for all which in it there can be. Right after they internalised the eschatological context, the chess players explored the phases of the embalming process of the dead: first the evisceration (that is to say, the removal of the entrails from lifeless bodies; in other words, the disembowelment); the bandage of the corpse; the arrangement of amulets before the mummy is placed into the coffin. Further on, relatives of the dead together with Egyptian high priests would perform the recitation of ancient songs and litanies, within a joyous lyrical atmosphere typical of this kind of rituals in Ancient Egypt, unlike the tragic sense which would be given to death rituals by the Muslims, Christians and Jews believers throughout history. Large amounts of resources were allocated to the preservation of the body during the embalming process, in order to cleanse it by means of mumification; in this way the corpse was kept safe from evil entities so that the soul could travel to the great beyond in full serenity. It was believed that by overcoming the bitter enemies of death the preserved body might access to the realm of immortality, since by lavishing with care bodies are able to defy spoilage and decay.
On reaching this point (the resistance of inanimate bodies to spoilage), René came up with the idea of introducing to the Lords and Masters of Colombian secret services the mummification of crooked spies, betrayers, defectors and snitches, to whoever considered subversive to national interests. The elimination of offenders by embalming them is referred to as “Zeta technique” in the jargon of the D.N.I., while “the method for straightening crooked spies” is the informal humorous way to depict it.
“Bipolarity –a mild-mannered version of Haroldo started speaking softly– is a mental clinic syndrome which provokes a personality disorder; when left untreated, a manic bipolar might pose a danger for the society. You may not know, Boina Verde, that bipolar people hold delusional beliefs, they have delusions of grandeur for instance, euphoria, hallucinations, they indeed have their sex drive quadrupled, among other symptoms. They feel as confident enough as to embark themselves upon unfeasible undertakings. On top of that, as risks are cast aside the disordered mind will make its best to transfer its load into reality. So beware, there is nothing left to do but to apply the Zeta Technique over the Uruguayan. I prepare everything. The process could be done in my house, then we carry the corpse to the refuge. To be honest, I personally equal his degree of riskiness to that of Yezid.
René would have never dreamt of mummifying Balou, even though the idea liked him very much: “Does he have to rank poor Balou on the same level of riskiness as the swamp of Jewish corruption led by elusive Yezid?
- We´ve already gathered thirty-five guests in the refugee –Haroldo pointed out–. And as the advertising spot says: “Provided you choose our Rexina newly-developed soap, there is always room for one more customer”.
The refuge served as a sarcophagus for the D.N.I., for it was the burial site where the mummified Israelis found their dwelling place. Villa de Leyva, the iconic stone-built Colombian town, harboured the refuge since its very beginning. This mortuary turned, over time, into a sanctuary of worship for spies in-training, no one was exempted from getting there during the first semester of preparation. Novices were taken to the morgue under a delusion though, the professors´ trick consisted of masking a fieldwork visit; trainees were told that the goal was to carry out a topographic survey, while in reality the purpose of the visit consisted of showing them the mummies. When the time to leave was about to come, a subliminal message had been already engraved in the trainees´ minds: that the punishment for high treason, betrayals by trading secrets with declared enemies, being double agent, is death. The path to eternal immobility is thus assured.
- Roger that. Let me think about it, Haroldo. You´ll have my answer within short notice.
- I´ll be looking forward to hearing from you soon.
