by brick, at the far back end of a steel sea container. The bricks were jammed from wall to wall and from floor to roof. When they were seven layers deep, a false rear wall had been welded into place, then sanded and painted, along with the whole of the rest of the interior. Only then were the hard green, unripe bananas hung on their racks to remain, chilled but not frozen, all the way to Europe.
Flatbed trucks had growled and snorted through the jungle to bring the export order to the coast, and there the San Cristobal had taken them aboard to become her deck cargo and complete her capacity. Then she cast off and headed for Europe.
Captain Vargas, a scrupulously honest mariner who did not know about the extra cargo he carried, had been to Hamburg before and never ceased to marvel at its size and efficiency. The old Hanseatic port is like not one but two cities. There is the city where people live around the Outer and Inner Alster waterways, and there is the sprawling port city containing the continent’s biggest sea container facility.
With 13,000 port calls a year, 140 million tons of freight moves in and out, docking at any of the 320 berths. The container port alone has four terminals, and the San Cristobal was allocated to Altenwerder.
As the freighter eased herself at five knots past Hamburg, coming awake on the western bank, the two men at the helm were served strong Colombian coffee, and the German sniffed the aroma with appreciation. The rain had ceased, the sun was struggling through and the crew were looking forward to their shore time.
It was close to midday when the San Cristobal slid into her allotted berth, and almost at once one of the Altenwerder’s fifteen gantries moved into position and began to heft the containers off the freighter and onto the quay.
Captain Vargas had said good-bye to the pilot who, shift over, had departed for his home in Altona. With engines closed down and standby power running the needed facilities, and with the crew, passports in hand, going ashore for the bars of the Reeperbahn, the San Cristobal seemed at peace, the way Captain Vargas, whose career and home she was, liked her.
He could not know that four containers up from his bridge, two layers down and three rows from the starboard side, there was a container with a small and unusual logo on its side. One would have to look hard to find it, for sea containers have all sorts of scratches, daubs, identity codes and owners’ names painted on them. This particular logo was in the form of two concentric circles, and in the smaller, inner one, a Maltese cross. It was the secret identity code of the Hermandad, or Brotherhood, the gang behind ninety percent of Colombian cocaine. And down on the quay there was just one pair of eyes that would recognize that sign.
The gantry was lifting the containers from the deck to a moving army of computer-driven wheeled drones called Automatic Guided Vehicles, or AGVs. These, controlled from a tower high above the quay, removed the steel crates from quay to storage area. That was when an official, moving unnoticed between the AGVs, saw the design with the two circles. He used his cell phone to make one call, then hurried back to his office. Miles away, a flatbed truck began to roll toward Hamburg.
At that hour, the director of the DEA was shown into the Oval Office. He had been there several times before, but the huge antique working desk, the draped flags and the seal of the Republic still impressed him. He appreciated power, and this place was pure power.
The President was in an affable mood, exercised, showered, breakfasted and casually dressed. He bade his visitor sit on one of the sofas and joined him on the other.
“Cocaine,” he said. “I want to know about cocaine. You have a huge amount of material about it.”
“A shedload, Mr. President. Files several feet thick if you put them in a column.”
“Too much,” said the President. “I need about ten thousand words. Not page after page of stats. Just the facts. A synthesis. Just what it is, where it comes from—as if I didn’t know—who makes it, who ships it, who buys it, who uses it, what it costs, where the profits go, who benefits, who loses, what are we doing about it!”
“Just cocaine, Mr. President? Not the others? Heroine, PCP, angel