El Mono, page 5
Karin laughed and hugged her friend.
‘You know I’ve nothing planned for tomorrow, let alone for next month and beyond. Even if it wasn’t necessary to avoid Martín, I’d love to go with you and meet your family and see where you live. I simply don’t know how to thank you enough.’
‘No need for thanks. It’s settled!’
The next few weeks saw the friendship between Karin and Claudia deepen and strengthen. They went shopping after classes, visited street markets, the occasional club or pub at night and lunched together most days. They exchanged notes on economics, boyfriends and the best places to go clubbing. By the last week of September they were eagerly discussing what they would do and where they would go during the seven days they would have free.
‘My parents live in Cali,’ explained Claudia, ‘but our finca is further south, near Popayán. It’s been in the family for generations. I normally go there to chill out, get the city out of my hair, go riding up into the mountains, that sort of thing. It is not the sort of place to party. I don’t do anything much but rest, enjoy the scenery and soak in the peace and quiet. I don’t know if that appeals to you – it sounds boring now I mention it – but I’d love to have you come and share the place with me. How would you like that?’
‘It sounds absolutely perfect to me! Life has been pretty hectic here from the moment I arrived. I’ve met so many people and seen so much of Bogotá; it seems as if I’ve been working all day and partying all night. A complete break plus a chance to see another part of this country would be lovely. Are you sure your parents would be happy to have me?’
‘Of course! They are quite used to me showing up with friends. That’s the way we do things here all the time. And they will be staying in Cali anyway so will be very pleased that I’ve got you to accompany me to the finca. Do you like horses?’
‘I do when I get the chance. I used to ride a bit on weekends when I was in school and then occasionally when I was at home from Durham … but I can guess from what you’ve said that you’re a real horsewoman. You will have to be patient with me!’
‘Don’t worry. It’s just for transport. We won’t do anything really testing but it’s just that for getting around and seeing the sights further afield we will need to ride.’
The farm was located above Popayán, its lands stretching from fertile valleys up to the páramo, or high moorland. In an earlier age it had generated income from breeding fighting bulls for the corrida, but now the family used it mainly for vacations and recreation. It was set among impressive mountain scenery close to the Puracé National Park – an area that had once had the reputation for harbouring guerrillas but which now, thanks to the army having cleared the area, was the perfect place for Claudia and Karin to go riding and exploring.
Claudia introduced Karin to Alfonso and his wife María who lived on site and were employed to look after the farm and its horses. Of indigenous extract, they were related to what seemed like half the local population and could trace their origins in the area further back than the farm itself.
‘Karin’s never been here before,’ explained Claudia, ‘so she really ought to ride Bella, our mare, Alfonso. You know, the one who is so good with visitors.’
‘I’m sorry, Señorita,’ apologised Alfonso, ‘she’s not here today.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘She was not too well last week. I think she needed some special love and attention so I asked El Mono to take a look at her. But we have another horse that will be just as good for the Señorita Karin, I assure you. Just wait a moment.’
Alfonso doffed his cap at the two girls, bowed and went off to saddle up two horses that he judged would suit them both.
Karin meanwhile asked, ‘Who is El Mono?’
Claudia shook her head. ‘I’ve never met him. He’s a complete enigma so far as I am concerned. But they all talk of him and he lives high up around here someplace. Like all the indígenas, the mountain seems to be in his blood but Alfonso says he is not one of them. He is El Mono – the fair one. They say he speaks not only the language of the tribes but also the language of the animals and birds. How about that? I always thought that Alfonso knew everything about horses but you heard him just now: if one of ours needs sorting out, he defers to El Mono.’
‘What is he like? Some old mountain man?’
‘Not so old, apparently. But whatever his age, he has had some impact on everyone around here. Let’s ask Alfonso …’
Two horses, fit and ready to go, were being led towards them by the farmhand. Karin took the initiative:
‘Alfonso, you mentioned El Mono just now. Can you tell me who he is? Is he your horse doctor?’
‘El Mono? He is a wonder, this young man. El Mono lives among the animals and birds on the mountain and they do his bidding. I have lived with horses all my life but I cannot talk to them as he does. They love him. And not just the horses, I have seen him conjure birds out of the sky. Some of us call him El Mago – the magician; others – the linguist. He talks all the languages.’
‘They do his bidding? How romantic! … Does he live near here?’
‘No one knows where he lives or where he is from. We see him some days but not very often. People say he has been raised by the animals and birds themselves. He is one of them and not one of us.’
‘And he has our mare?’ asked Claudia. ‘When will we get her back?’
‘Have no fear, Señorita Claudia. El Mono will return your horse better than ever. He always does. If you ride up high today, maybe you will meet him on his way down here – bringing her back to me.’
The two friends looked at each other and grinned. They both knew what the other was thinking: this was a chance that should not go begging – to search out the enigmatic El Mono.
They both mounted and Claudia led the way across the fields from the stables until they reached the surrounding woods. A narrow path led up between the trees which the horses knew well and Karin had little to do but accustom herself to her horse and follow the route taken by her friend. As they rode higher, the air became cooler, the size of the trees diminished and the mountain slope slowly steepened. During the next hours the vegetation around them changed from woodland to scrubland to high moorland – the páramo. With no sizeable trees now blocking their vision, the two friends could see a fair distance in front of them and there, some hundred metres to the side and at the same altitude as themselves, they could see a horse grazing on the meagre grasses that sprouted through the stony terrain.
‘It’s Bella!’ cried Claudia. ‘Come on, Karin. Let’s go to her.’
With that, Claudia turned her own horse to the right and cantered over to the waiting mare. Karin endeavoured to follow, a little more clumsily than her friend. Her mount stumbled among the giant rosette plants, or frailejones – native to the páramo – until she reached the other horses.
‘What is she doing here, all alone?’ grumbled Claudia. ‘Alfonso said she was with El Mono …’
She was interrupted by a flash of grey and brown as a falcon darted between them, its wings seemingly spinning as it banked sharply once, twice and then flew towards some boulders scattered above them.
‘She’s not alone,’ said a voice.
Both girls jumped in shock. Their mounts backed off a little, trampling yet more plants below them. Karin looked round to see the falcon sitting on the arm of a man hunched motionless, partly hidden among the boulders.
‘And she is not destroying the frailejones around here either,’ said their observer. ‘You shouldn’t ride this way if you can’t be more careful with all those that share the mountain with you.’
Conscious as she was of her limitations as a novice horse-woman in this totally new environment, Karin did not take too kindly to this criticism launched at her from a stranger.
‘I suppose this must be El Mono,’ she confided to her friend in English. ‘He’s a lot of help, talking to us in this way.’
‘People do call me that, and I am trying to help – you, as well as the environment,’ replied El Mono in the same language.
Karin looked at him closer, surprised again.
‘You speak English as well as Spanish?’
‘The same as you. Is it so rare?’
He was quite combative, Karin surmised. ‘OK, I suppose it isn’t, but I didn’t expect to find it up here, nonetheless.’
‘Well, you two are here. Why so unexpected to find another?’
Karin found herself getting annoyed. This was getting nowhere – time to change the subject. ‘OK, OK. We came looking for the mare. We heard that she wasn’t well.’
El Mono stood up. He walked a few paces down towards them, launching the falcon into the air as he did so. Three horses, the mare and the two that the girls were riding, all moved as one towards the man approaching them. Karin, who was a little upslope from Claudia, looked round at her companion and raised her hands as if to indicate that she was not in control of her mount any longer. Claudia urged her own horse forward as if to draw level with Karin but found, equally, that her charge was of a mind of its own. The three horses all closed around El Mono, who fondled their heads, each in turn.
When he finished addressing the horses, El Mono looked up. He continued in English: ‘Bella was pining for my company, I think, that and a bit of fever. She is a sensitive one and needs a little more attention than the others. Alfonso understands. She needs a day or two more, however, before she’s ready to go back to the stables. Are you from there?’
‘The stables are part of the estate of my family,’ replied Claudia, in rather haughty Spanish. ‘That is, the Fernández estate. I am Claudia Fernández; who are you?’ She, like Karin, did not take too kindly to being talked to rather brusquely by this interloper.
‘You know well enough.’
‘We know only that Claudia’s mare is with “El Mono” but we know nothing of you and why you are involved with her stables,’ interposed Karin in English. ‘My name is Karin Roth and, as you can tell, I’m new here – to these horses, this place, this country. Can’t you tell us more about yourself?’
‘Not much to say. I live in these parts and help out with the stables when asked. I’ll bring Bella back down in a day or two when she is ready, that’s all.’ Clearly, this man did not want to say anything more about himself than the girls already knew.
‘Oh please don’t bring Bella down. I’d much rather come up and meet her with you here.’ Karin smiled at him. ‘This is such a lovely place and I need the practice to ride more carefully, don’t I? Will you agree to meet me here?’
Faced with such a polite request, El Mono could not refuse without being obnoxiously stubborn. He decided not to be. With as few words as possible, he agreed to meet Karin at the same time, same place, two days hence. The girls thanked him, said their goodbyes, turned their horses round and made their way back down the same path that had brought them so far.
Karin glanced back to see if they were still being watched. They were.
‘Not exactly sociable, is he?’ commented Claudia as they reached the cover of woodland. ‘Did you really want to come back here the day after tomorrow? Why not let him bring the mare down to Alfonso?’
‘If he took Bella direct to the stables, we would never see him again. And he is quite the enigma, isn’t he? I’m dying to find out more about him.’
‘You’ll be lucky to get any more than a couple of sentences out of him, in whatever language you choose!’
‘Do you mind if I come up alone, Claudia? Perhaps he will talk more if we don’t outnumber him.’
Claudia laughed. ‘If you want to see more of him alone, that doesn’t bother me! Good luck to you – he’s all yours. I’m not at all sure that I like him, myself.’
‘It’s not that I fancy him – though he is sort of attractive in an unconventional way. It’s just that he is fascinating; surely you agree. He is clearly an educated person: just listen to him. And look at him – fair hair, blue eyes – where is he from? And where is his home now? He lives like some wild man of the mountains.’
‘Maybe he’s just a recluse that prefers the company of animals to people. Did you see how that bird flew to him – and the horses? Fascinating in its way but, if he wants the life of a hermit, then we should let him be.’ Claudia finished the conversation by encouraging her mount to go down a little faster. She was eager to return to the comforts of civilisation – to a warm and cosy house and a hearty meal and welcome. She had had enough of the discomforts of the high moorlands and nature in the raw.
3
The Corporate Executive
Morten Fields, the new manager of Triple F in Colombia, was not a happy man. He was sitting in his recently refurbished Bogotá office and fuming. His thoughts went back over the last few weeks – how he had been so successful in his post in the United States; how he had flown to corporate headquarters in Geneva, expecting a promotion to join the senior management team in Switzerland; only to be told he was going instead to Colombia – a dead-end job in an impossible country but dressed up as if it was some great honour. He, they told him, was the ‘only man in the corporation that could sort the business out’ there. What a joke! He could see right through the smug, smiling faces of the Board. They were out to get him. No doubt about it. This was a ploy to move him out of their sight, out of their hierarchy, a sideways move so sideways that it was more akin to walking the plank on a pirate ship. Most people in the corporation couldn’t even spell Colombia, let alone know where it was and what was going on there. They knew only of the company’s banana plantations, taken over decades ago, their boringly regular income stream, and the country’s turbulent history of internal political conflict.
And why was Triple F venturing not only into dangerous territory but also into difficult business? Rather than stick to its core activities of farming, fishing and forestry in a country that had all three in abundance, Triple F was now chasing El Dorado – the hunt for gold that had cost uncounted European lives in the past and was sure to go on doing this in the foreseeable future if the Board did not rethink its doomed strategy. Why the change of direction? With property in the USA and Europe in a slump; financial crises that spread like a disease from one country to another; with central banks printing more and more money, gold was the inevitable last resort of the nervous. Add to this the fact that the Asians were buying up gold to flaunt their new-found wealth like never before and the result was that the price of gold had gone up through the stratosphere.
But Fields guessed that the official line of the Board – to make profits out of mining – was really only a cover for the true reason why Triple F had started on this folly. At root was the desire not to let the Transnational Mining Group run rings around Triple F wherever the two corporations bumped into one another. Getting involved in the Colombian mines was just a way of retaliating against its historic rival; it had nothing to do with sound business sense. The fact that Triple F’s mining start-up in Colombia had experienced difficulties and lost labour and capital steadily since its inception was never going to make the Board reverse its decision. Better to use the black hole of this ill-considered venture to swallow up people and projects that they had tired of, or had no further use for, or were embarrassments that simply did not fit their chosen vision. Well, Fields was damned if he would go quietly. If they thought they had given him a posting that would gulp him down and silently swallow him, then they were all mightily mistaken. Fields would fight mercilessly, as he had done all his life. He would cripple all his competitors, inside the business and out; turn round the balance sheet from red to black; and force all those smarmy, self-satisfied board members to take note of this dynamo that would one day heave them overboard.
Fields rose from his desk and paced the floor. One day he was going to be the master of the entire corporate vessel and it would be the board members themselves that would have to walk the plank. Yessiree!
Fields’s personal assistant, Patricia, knocked discreetly and came in. ‘The officers you wanted to see have arrived now. Shall I direct them in?’
‘Do they both speak English?’
‘Yes, certainly.’
‘Then I’ll not need you to translate for me. Send them in.’
Fields wanted to get to the bottom of the incident in Cauca where Triple F had lost three of its men and a couple of vehicles in what looked like a deliberate attack on their facilities. This was to be his first test: could he stop the corporation from bleeding resources in its most remote locations? He had ordered that all activity on and around the location of the attack should cease immediately and that the area be secured. He had then flown the two operatives who knew most about what had happened directly to see him. That very fact alone would send an important message around the business: the new chief of Triple F Colombia would not accept failure at any level.
Miguel Cortés, head of security in the Cauca region, and Alejandro González, chief of the Popayán office, came in. Ever since they had received their summons to head office, the two had been nervously checking and double-checking all the details of what had happened. Now was the time they had to face their new and formidable boss. Fields’s expression gave nothing away as he shook hands with his guests. Instead of making any comment, he straight away invited them to air their views on the incident.
Cortés was first to speak. ‘We sent in an armed security team before the attack and immediately after it. We combed the area thoroughly and particularly swept the road for any explosives the day before the Toyota was blown up. We found nothing. Either it was a sophisticated, non-metallic form of device that was undetected, or it was planted the night after our sweep. I grilled the men in charge of the operation, and threatened dire consequences if they were covering anything up, but what I’ve just said is the result. There were no cock-ups. Our men did a good job.’
Fields sniffed and said nothing. Cortés was bound to cover his back, he thought. He would be the first to be axed if there had been any security lapses. He looked at González and waited to hear what he had to say.
