Frederic Forsyth - The Cobra

"Father, I hesitate to ask at the outset but I must. May we regard everything said in this room as coming under the seal of the confessional?"

Fr. Ruiz inclined his head and gestured his guest to a Castilian chair, seated and backed in rawhide. He resumed his place behind his desk.

"How can I help you, my son?"

"I have been asked by my President, no less, to try to destroy the cocaine industry that is causing grievous damage to my country."

There was no further need to explain why he was in Colombia. The word "cocaine" explained it all.

"That has been tried many times before," said Fr. Ruiz. "Many times. But the appetite in your country is enormous. If there were not such a grievous appetite for the white powder, there would be no production."

"True," admitted the American, "a demand will always produce a supply. But the reverse is also true. A supply will always create a demand. Eventually. If the supply dies, the appetite will wither away."

"It did not work with Prohibition."

Devereaux was accustomed to the feint. Prohibition had been a disaster. It had simply created a huge underworld, which, after repeal, had moved into every other possible criminal activity. Over the years, the cost to the U.S. could be measured in trillions.

"We believe the comparison fails, Father. There are a thousand sources of a glass of wine or a dram of whisky."

He meant, But cocaine comes only from here. There was no need to say it.

"My son, we in the Society of Jesus try to be a force for good. But we have found by terrible experience that involvement in politics or matters of state is usually disastrous."

Devereaux had spent his life in the trade of espionage. He had long ago come to the view that the greatest intelligence-gathering agency in the world was the Roman Catholic Church. Through its omnipresence, it saw everything; through the confessional, it heard everything. And the idea that over a millennium and a half it had never supported or opposed emperors and princes was simply amusing.

"But where you see evil, you seek to fight it," he said.

The provincial was far too wily to fall for that one.

"What do you seek of the Society, my son?"

"In Colombia, you are everywhere, Father. Your pastoral work takes your young priests into every corner of every town and city…"

"And you wish them to become informers? For you? Far away in Washington. They, too, practice the seal of the confessional. What is told to them in that small place can never be revealed."

"And if a ship is sailing with a cargo of poison to destroy many young lives and leave a trail of misery in its wake, that knowledge, too, is sacred?"

"We both know the confessional is sacrosanct."

"But a ship cannot confess, Father. I give you my word no seaman will ever die. Interception and confiscation is absolutely the limit I have in mind."

He knew that he, too, would now have to confess to the sin of lying. But to another priest faraway. Not here. Not now.

"What you ask could be extremely risky; the men behind this trade, foul as it is, are utterly vicious and very violent."

For an answer, the American produced an item from his pocket. It was a small and very compact cell phone.

"Father, we were both raised long before these were invented. Now all the young have them, and most who are no longer young. To send a short message, there is no need to speak…"

"I know about texting, my son."

"Then you will know about encryption. These are encrypted far beyond the powers of the cartel ever to intercept. All I ask is the name of the ship with the poison onboard, heading for my homeland to destroy its young people. For profit. For money."

The Father Provincial permitted himself a thin smile.

"You are a good advocate, my son."

The Cobra had one last card to play.

"In the city of Cartagena is a statue to Saint Peter Claver of the Society of Jesus."

"Of course. We revere him."

"Hundreds of years ago, he fought against the evil of slavery. And the slave traders martyred him. Father, I beseech you. This trade in drugs is as evil as that in slaves. Both merchandise human misery. That which enslaves need not always be a man; it can be a narcotic. The slavers took the bodies of young people and abused them. Narcotics take the soul."

The Father Provincial stared for several minutes out of the window across the square of Simon Bolivar, a man who set people free.

"I wish to pray, my son. Can you return in two hours?"

Devereaux took a light lunch under the awning of a cafe in a street running off the square. When he returned, the leader of all Colombia's Jesuits had made his decision.

"I cannot order what you ask. But I can explain to my parish priests what you ask. So long as the seal of confession is never broken, they may decide for themselves. You may distribute your little machines." OF ALL his colleagues in the cartel, the one Alfredo Suarez had to work with most closely was Jose-Maria Largo, in charge of merchandising. It was a question of keeping track of every cargo, down to the last kilogram. Suarez could dispatch them, consignment by consignment, but it was vital to know how much arrived at the point of handover to the purchasing mafia and how much was intercepted by the forces of law and order.

Fortunately, every major intercept was immediately blazoned across the media by the FLO. They wanted the credit, kudos from their governments, always angling for larger budgets. Largo's rules were simple and ironclad. Big customers were allowed to pay fifty percent of the price of the cargo (and that was the cartel's price) on placement of an order. The balance would be owed after handover, which marked change of ownership. Smaller players had to provide one hundred percent as a single nonnegotiable deposit.

If the national gangs and mafias could charge astronomical fees at street level, that was their business. If they were careless or penetrated by police informants and lost their purchase, that, too, was their business. But confiscation of the cargo after delivery did not absolve them of the need to settle up.

It was when a foreign gang still owed the fifty percent balance, had lost their purchase to the police and refused to pay up, that enforcement was necessary. The Don was adamant about the value of terrible examples being set. And the cartel was truly paranoid about two things: theft of assets and informant betrayal. Neither was forgivable or forgettable, no matter what the cost of retribution. It had to be inflicted. That was the law of the Don… and it worked.

Only by conferring with his colleague Largo could Suarez know to the last kilo how much of what he shipped was intercepted before the point of handover.

Only this would show him what shipment methods had the highest chances of getting through and which the least.

Toward the end of 2010, he calculated that interception was running much as ever; between ten and fifteen percent. Given the telephone-number profits, this was quite acceptable. But he always lusted to bring the interception level down to single figures. If cocaine was intercepted while still in the possession of the cartel, the loss was wholly theirs. The Don did not like that.

Suarez's predecessor, now dismembered and decomposing under a new apartment block, had thrown his entire judgment, after the turn of the century a decade earlier, behind submarines. This ingenious idea involved the construction up hidden rivers of submersible hulls that, powered by a diesel engine, could take a crew of four, a cargo of up to ten tons, along with food and fuel, and then sink to periscope depth.

Even the best of them never went deep. They did not need to. All that showed above the water was a Perspex blister dome, with the captain's head peering out so that he could steer, and a tube to suck in fresh air for the engine and crew.