One day I called Andrés Felipe on his cell phone and said, what’s up, are you getting bored with me? Quite the contrary, darling, he said, I was just thinking to call you and ask you to go with me to a convention in Cartagena, do you like Cartagena? and I said, oh, how wonderful, I have a new bathing suit, and he said, bring it with you because we’re going to the Santa Clara, the most beautiful hotel, and so we went, what kind of convention? I asked, and he said, what do you think, darling, a convention of advisers, and I said to him, hell, it’s pretty good being an adviser, but when we got there I realized that it was much more about security, a private thing, not open to the public, they were meeting with gringos, security advisers, and I almost had a heart attack when I heard Andrés Felipe say that the head of the Secret Service was with them, because the president was going to be there on the third day, he himself had called the meeting, that’s why I had to stay in the hotel, a bit hidden, the meetings were in private places and it wasn’t good for him to be seen with a strange girl, he explained to me, but I said to him, it’s your loss, and I’d go for walks and buy crafts, although feeling anxious, hell, if the head of the Secret Service was coming, there must be a whole security setup, and what if Víctor and Piedrahita came there and saw me? No, no, I told myself, they’re in Narcotics, but I was scared all the same, I wasn’t doing anything bad but they were law enforcers and saw the bad in everything, it was best to be careful, so I spent the afternoon walking around and at night I went to the hotel to wait for Andrés Felipe, and when I asked him how it had gone he was angry, angry with the gringos who were giving them lessons and angry with the guy from the Secret Service, who said the problem was that they had to respect the rights of the people, and in a country like ours, a country at war, either you fought to win or you protected rights, and of course, Andrés Felipe, who had done courses at Princeton, felt bad, he didn’t like that way of thinking, but he had to swallow it, because the order was to follow the instructions of the gringos, but then, when the gringos left, the very same chief had said to them, well, boys, now you know what you have to do, the terrorists are among us, not only in the mountains, if only they’d stayed there to be machine-gunned, but no, now they go around in ties in the corridors and offices of the Supreme Court, in the newsrooms of the press, in the universities, in the trade unions and NGOs, and there we can’t machine-gun them, the war consists in bringing them out into the light, so we’re going to spy on them, listen to what they say on the telephone, and since this struggle is relentless and has to be won quickly, it’s important to hurry things along with witnesses and testimonies, we can’t wait for the terrorists to fall by themselves, it’s a way to save the lives of our countrymen, are you listening to me? does anyone disagree? And everyone said, no, no! dying of fear, that’s what Andrés Felipe told me, because according to him that’s what they felt when faced with the Supremo, fear, a guy so cold and authoritarian, with that icy look, devoid of scruples, like that of a snake about to bite, and they all went out to obey him. Nobody can say a word against it, he said, but later, with a few drinks in him, smoking a joint after we’d had an amazing fuck on the terrace, Andrés Felipe told me that the chief was a hard person, true, but he was also intelligent and loyal, and sometimes he made people do ugly things but the result in the end was good, what’s that phrase? oh, darling, you must know it, for sure, the end what? and I said, the end justifies the means, hell, don’t you know something as simple as that? God knows what the advice you give must be like…
Then, in his doped-up soliloquy, Andrés Felipe told me that his family had been friendly with the president for several generations, and that in spite of that there were things he didn’t agree with, although he knew they were necessary, especially when it came to contacts with the people in blue, that was what he called them, and I asked, and who are the people in blue, darling? and he rolled another joint and took a slug of whiskey and said, who do you think, precious, do I need to draw you a picture? of course every time someone is denounced we put him under surveillance, we dig up what we can about him, because I do think there are moments in history, History with a capital “H,” when you have to choose sides and take risks, you have to stand up and be counted, do you understand me? and like a submissive girl, bowing down before him, I said, of course, and I asked him how about you, what risks are you taking in this war? and he answered, well… do you think what I do is nothing? standing side by side with the chief, advising him about things I myself don’t agree with, carrying messages, exchanging information, protecting the cause, all the things I wouldn’t do, for example, if we lived in Switzerland or Costa Rica or the United States, countries that don’t put you up against the ropes, but what can we do, we live in Colombia and this brave little country we like so much forces us to do complicated things, do you understand me? And I said, yes, of course I understand, I have a friend who says the same, and why do you like this country so much? I asked, and he said, well, because it’s mine, why else do you think? I love this fucking country, or rather, if you cut one of my veins what would come out is… Colombia! no more, no less, isn’t it the same with you? and I said, no, what comes out of me is blood, but I understand you, and to stop him looking at me suspiciously I lit his joint and slid over him and started fucking him again until he looked me in the eyes and said, all romantic, or rather all mushy, oh, Juana, you’re the bright star of my soul, the light of my life, what do you call what we’re doing? and I answered, fucking, and he said, oh no, that’s vulgar, this is making love! really, don’t you feel the same or what? and I said, of course I feel the same, we both have genital corpuscles in our mucous membranes, and he said, no, come on, are you giving me a college lecture or what? and he kissed me, and said, come here, my beautiful genius, if I didn’t have those three kids I swear I’d leave my wife and I said to him, don’t leave your wife, don’t even think about it, those kids deserve everything.
At the end of the whole thing there was a cocktail party at the convention center, and after it, when the top brass had gone and the Secret Service people were already flying back to Bogotá in their private plane, Andrés Felipe took me to a party in a very luxurious apartment in Bocagrande. There I met other advisers, all in security. The party really took off around two in the morning, with the arrival of a former Miss Colombia who really spiced things up, sang vallenatos, and excited everyone with some very pretty girls who were with her. I was surprised that she’d arrived on her own, I mean without a partner, but then I saw her sit down in the lap of the guy who owned the apartment, whose face looked familiar, an old actor or a former TV presenter. Pills were passed around, the glass ashtrays were filled with coke. At one point, I saw one of the advisers pass a pill on his tongue to his girlfriend, and then the former Miss Colombia snort a line of something, a coffee-colored powder that didn’t look like coke. I was surprised. I took whatever was going, but within certain limits. After a couple of hours, I told Andrés Felipe that I wasn’t feeling well and asked him if we could go, but he didn’t want to leave and he said, go to one of the bedrooms and lie down, princess, I’ll call you. I went to the second floor, walked along a corridor, and opened a door at random, but closed it again when I saw the owner of the apartment in bed with a young black guy. At that point I recognized him and told myself, of course, he was an old actor! Farther down the corridor, in a kind of living room, I found a couch and fell asleep.