Who else but me would have noticed such details? Who else but your father? Who else but your mother’s sleepless lover, trying to make up for lost time by lying awake and remembering her sleeping face?
I interrogated you, trying to maintain my composure. I pieced things together. It was you. Your birthdate, your physical appearance, everything fit. I declared that you were Mexican and I paid your bail. Very solemnly I began to look after you, but I asked you — as payment for my testimony — to agree to a period of study at the University of Geneva. But the Swiss are bloodhounds. They expelled you because your previous documents were found to have been forged.
Once again I intervened, driven by my heart but trying to keep a cool head. You see, I’ve never wanted to compromise my position. Isn’t that important, to be able to exercise some influence? I brought you with me to Paris and registered you as a student at the ENA and I told you to read everything, to learn all you could about Mexico, and we’d sit up for hours together late at night, and you would listen to all my stories about Mexico, our country, our history, our customs, our economic, political, and social realities, who was who, speeches, songs, folklore, everything.
With what you read about and learned from me, you returned to Mexico more Mexican than the Mexicans. That was the danger — that your imitation would be detected. I sent you to the border, to Ciudad Juárez, for five years. With the help of the authorities there, I doctored your papers, changing your birthplace from Catalonia to Chihuahua. It’s all there in the public records office of Ciudad Juárez: son of a Mexican father and a North American mother. The documents for your imaginary parents were easy to forge, too. As you know, everyone does it in Mexico. If you don’t deceive you don’t achieve.
When I became secretary of defense under Lorenzo Terán, I felt more sure of things and so I brought you in, I put you into circulation, sent you to deliver my messages, especially to the interior office. That was where you met María del Rosario Galván. What happened next was inevitable. María del Rosario is a fool for attractive young men. And if she thinks she can groom them politically, an affair is inevitable. She’s a natural Pygmalion in a skirt.
She knew the president was suffering from terminal leukemia. And as the head of national security, I knew as well. It was my obligation to know. Both of us played our respective games. She made you think that she was putting her money on you for president. Now you know the truth. President, yes, but only for a brief period after Terán’s death, just enough time to prepare Herrera’s campaign and election. In order to do that, we had to eliminate a formidable cast of characters. The “usual suspects,” as they say in the movies. Tácito de la Canal, César León, Andino Almazán, General Cícero Arruza. We had to outfox that other ex-president in Veracruz and defuse the plot he hatched involving his secret prisoner in the Ulúa Castle. We had to see to the sentimental accidents of the sniveling woman of the port, Dulce de la Garza; but calming women down is so easy, especially when they’re simpleminded and smitten like Dulce de la Garza, idiotically scheming and crassly licentious like Josefina Almazán, or intelligent — perhaps too intelligent for their own good — like Paulina Tardegarda, a woman you’ll never hear from again, I assure you. One personal, perhaps even romantic detaiclass="underline" Paulina’s only possible companions now, as she’s chained by the legs to her safe deposit box, are the sharks at the bottom of the sea.
No, she’s not short of water now, your dubious friend Paulina Tardegarda, keeper of too many secrets — which turned you into the perfect blackmail victim. Learn not to trust. Don’t even trust me, your own father, Nicolás. And don’t cry for Paulina. The sharks in the Gulf of Mexico will eat her, but her heart will survive. The advantage of a poisoned heart is that it’s immune to fire and water. If it’s any consolation, think of how her heart will survive, like a cocoon of blood at the bottom of the sea.
There are still some loose ends, my son, lest you’ve forgotten. Your protégé, Jesús Ricardo Magón, is so disillusioned that he has no anarchist or homicidal tendencies left. I had him deported under charges of drug trafficking. He’s in prison in France. As he stepped off the plane he was detained by certain members of the Surété with whom I am connected. Don’t worry. I paid for his ticket, first class. His parents, don Cástulo and doña Serafina, think he’s gone to Europe to study. He’s so young! They keep thanking me for the “scholarship” that I got for him as per your orders. And Miss Araceli now has a lifetime subscription to ¡Hola! magazine. She’s since married (or rather, I made sure she married) Hugo Patrón, who’s thrilled with the disco-bar he now runs in Cancún.
Then there’s the question of our two official rivals, María del Rosario Galván and Bernal Herrera.
Their calculations are correct. In the democratic elections to be held in July 2024, Herrera will win. Nobody could possibly challenge him successfully. And you yourself are out of the running because of your present position. There’s no way you can succeed yourself.
In the space of fourteen years, from the age of twenty to thirty-four, you acquired an impressive education, what with your natural talent and my guidance and teaching. Now, however, I have to give you a piece of advice. Don’t be so precocious. Don’t reveal your true colors by shining too brightly now. Remember how the Old Man tried to trick you a couple of times — the Pastry War, Mapy Cortés, the conga, pim-pam-pum? You had no reason to know anything about Mapy Cortés or the conga. But you should have known about the Pastry War. Be careful. Don’t overestimate your newfound education. Don’t ever give anyone a reason to scratch your gold-plated surface and discover a baser metal beneath. Don’t give people cause for jealousy. Keep quiet about your education. Keep the illicit activity in check. It’s not always justified. We’re doing everything possible to consolidate our power base. But it has to stop there. A few dead people now and then? Only when absolutely necessary. You’ve already seen what it did to Arruza’s reputation. He was so busy showing off about his criminal activity that he never stopped to think that someone else might beat him at his own game, that someone would kill the great Cícero Arruza. And Moro — he had to be killed. But you made a mistake sending “Dark Hand” Vidales — he’s vindictive and convinced that his dynastic succession will keep the vendettas alive. You thought you were compromising him with your own guilt when you sent him to Ulúa. Don’t believe it. He’s the one who could compromise you. He’s going to give us a few headaches. What we have to do now is think of how best to neutralize him. Poisonous gifts, that’s what we have to give that viper. From now on, we have to seduce him to the point of putting him to sleep. Presidential lethargy has its advantages, you know. Terán just didn’t know how to exploit it. You need to figure out how not to be perceived as a violent man — make sure whatever violence you resort to is carried out in the name of “justice.” And be careful to keep the moment of truth at bay. But don’t think for a minute that the time for violence in Mexico is over.
My son, my beloved son. Surely you can understand the depth of my feelings — the feelings of a father who lost a precious — unequaled— woman, your mother, to the tyranny and brutal prejudice of her family, the Barrosos. She was the fragile altar of my strongest passion. Let the two of us rebuild this temple ruined by the lies, pretension, greed, and arrogance of the unscrupulous ruling class epitomized by the Barroso family, whose only heir is the perverse María del Rosario Galván. Do you think I’ll allow her to scheme in peace? Why should we have scruples with people who are unscrupulous with us?