already be considering it. I had lunch today with Herman Winkler.”
“Oh? How is Herman?”
“Good. Sends his best. I had a sense from him that apublic split on Mexico between the president and vice president might not be too far off.”
“That would make things interesting.”
“Too interesting. Feel like dessert?”
“What are you offering?”
“Honey-orange chocolate from downstairs.”
“You devil.”
“Two small pieces. Not big enough to contain any calories.”
“You always say broken cookies don’t have calories.”
“They don’t. Come on, share my vice.”
“Only if you promise it isn’t your only vice tonight.”
She winked, ran her hand provocatively along his thigh, and followed him into their new home.
16
That Same Evening
The Watergate—East Building—South Wing
“The trade alliance party in seven-ten, please.”
“Go right on up.”
The clerk behind the desk in the Watergate’s east apartment building pushed a buzzer, unlocking the glass door leading from the lobby to the elevators. Laura Flores checked her appearance in one of the lobby’s mirrored columns, and liked what she saw. Twenty-eight, five-five, and trim, she’d chosen to wear this evening a black silk pants suit recently purchased at Rizick Brothers, a favorite of workers at the city’s myriad foreign embassies. It had stretched Laura’s budget, but she’d lately been invited to a number of evening parties that called for a fancier wardrobe than she was used to wearing.
But few would notice her suit. It was her hair that always attracted attention, thick and shiny and blue-black, healthy hair in which she took pride.
She thanked the clerk and stepped into a waiting elevator, pushed the button for the seventh floor, and drew a deep breath.
It had been a cyclonic week at the offices of The Mexico Initiative, located in a commercial building on M Street, NW. News of Morin Garza’s murder in the Watergate parking garage had brought normal activity to a halt, spawning a series of phone calls, feverish meetings, and intense speculations.
Laura, whose title was research director, had spent that afternoon meeting with the Initiative’s president, Ramon Kelly.
Kelly’s father, a young, childless widower, had traveled to Mexico in the late fifties, following the death of his American wife, to take a job with a multinational oil consortium under contract to develop Mexico’s burgeoning petroleum industry in the state of Chiapas. While there he met and married Consuelo Martinez. They had one child, Ramon, who lived with his parents in that southern Mexican state until going to the United States at the age of eighteen to attend the University of Chicago on a scholarship. In those eighteen years in Mexico, he’d seen enough poverty and despair to last a lifetime, the vivid, lingering visions of it determining his life’s work. He earned a master’s in social work and launched a professional career involving a number of nonprofit organizations dedicated to bettering the lot of Mexico’s impoverished campesinos, its peasant farmers, and other indigenous groups.
Chiapas, home to more than eight hundred thousand Indians of Mayan descent, was the worst of all, Kelly well knew. Rebellious since the nineteenth century, Chiapas had never shaken the yoke of its landowners despite the advances of the 1994 revolution by what was called the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, twothousand strong, with the revolutionary Emiliano Zapata as its symbolic idol. They’d timed their march into San Cristobal and three other towns to coincide with NAFTA going into effect on January 1, their goal to embarrass the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional, the PRI, that had governed Mexico with an iron hand for more than seventy years. Many died in the effort. The PRI’s leadership promised numerous reforms in Chiapas, none of which had taken place.
For Ramon Kelly, the situation in Chiapas was indicative of the cruelty of
“Oh? How is Herman?”
“Good. Sends his best. I had a sense from him that apublic split on Mexico between the president and vice president might not be too far off.”
“That would make things interesting.”
“Too interesting. Feel like dessert?”
“What are you offering?”
“Honey-orange chocolate from downstairs.”
“You devil.”
“Two small pieces. Not big enough to contain any calories.”
“You always say broken cookies don’t have calories.”
“They don’t. Come on, share my vice.”
“Only if you promise it isn’t your only vice tonight.”
She winked, ran her hand provocatively along his thigh, and followed him into their new home.
16
That Same Evening
The Watergate—East Building—South Wing
“The trade alliance party in seven-ten, please.”
“Go right on up.”
The clerk behind the desk in the Watergate’s east apartment building pushed a buzzer, unlocking the glass door leading from the lobby to the elevators. Laura Flores checked her appearance in one of the lobby’s mirrored columns, and liked what she saw. Twenty-eight, five-five, and trim, she’d chosen to wear this evening a black silk pants suit recently purchased at Rizick Brothers, a favorite of workers at the city’s myriad foreign embassies. It had stretched Laura’s budget, but she’d lately been invited to a number of evening parties that called for a fancier wardrobe than she was used to wearing.
But few would notice her suit. It was her hair that always attracted attention, thick and shiny and blue-black, healthy hair in which she took pride.
She thanked the clerk and stepped into a waiting elevator, pushed the button for the seventh floor, and drew a deep breath.
It had been a cyclonic week at the offices of The Mexico Initiative, located in a commercial building on M Street, NW. News of Morin Garza’s murder in the Watergate parking garage had brought normal activity to a halt, spawning a series of phone calls, feverish meetings, and intense speculations.
Laura, whose title was research director, had spent that afternoon meeting with the Initiative’s president, Ramon Kelly.
Kelly’s father, a young, childless widower, had traveled to Mexico in the late fifties, following the death of his American wife, to take a job with a multinational oil consortium under contract to develop Mexico’s burgeoning petroleum industry in the state of Chiapas. While there he met and married Consuelo Martinez. They had one child, Ramon, who lived with his parents in that southern Mexican state until going to the United States at the age of eighteen to attend the University of Chicago on a scholarship. In those eighteen years in Mexico, he’d seen enough poverty and despair to last a lifetime, the vivid, lingering visions of it determining his life’s work. He earned a master’s in social work and launched a professional career involving a number of nonprofit organizations dedicated to bettering the lot of Mexico’s impoverished campesinos, its peasant farmers, and other indigenous groups.
Chiapas, home to more than eight hundred thousand Indians of Mayan descent, was the worst of all, Kelly well knew. Rebellious since the nineteenth century, Chiapas had never shaken the yoke of its landowners despite the advances of the 1994 revolution by what was called the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, twothousand strong, with the revolutionary Emiliano Zapata as its symbolic idol. They’d timed their march into San Cristobal and three other towns to coincide with NAFTA going into effect on January 1, their goal to embarrass the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional, the PRI, that had governed Mexico with an iron hand for more than seventy years. Many died in the effort. The PRI’s leadership promised numerous reforms in Chiapas, none of which had taken place.
For Ramon Kelly, the situation in Chiapas was indicative of the cruelty of
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