“What made you come here?”
Mateo looked away. The story came out of him slowly, haltingly:
“I had an older brother, named Carlos, who was not quite right in the head, but all eighteen-year-olds are conscripted into the Sinaloan Army. He was no exception. He hated it and got drunk as thoroughly and frequently as he could. He was hilarious too—mucho cómico. A great comic, he was full of wisecracks and a natural mimic. He would have the entire barracks rolling around on the floor, clutching their bellies. He was especially uproarious when he ridiculed the Lady Dolorosa, her stupid stepson, even her terrified lovers. He would act out the parts, doing frightening imitations of each of them. In one routine he pretended he was summoned to her bed. He acted out all the lurid things they said and did to each other, twisting his face into different masks of horror and ecstasy while delivering the appropriate punch lines.
“He even did skits of her torturing loved ones in the Inquisitor’s dungeon and assisting the High Priest in a human sacrifice at the summit of the temple-pyramid. He ridiculed the Señorita’s sadism in the most hilarious ways imaginable.
“My brother was a clown but he was also a fool. He had no sense. His fellow soldiers loved his routines. But one was an informant and told the Señorita of my brother’s mockery of her would-be Aztec priests, and she turned him over to her Inquisitors. She summoned several of his fellow soldados into her throne room, and she made him do his routine. My brother was brillante, funny beyond all understanding, beyond all restraint, and he held nothing back. She laughed the whole time. Soon they were all laughing.
“Afterward, wiping tears of hilarity from her eyes, she said to us: ‘You think that was funny? Oh, that’s a hand I can call and raise. I’m going to give young Carlos here comedy lessons that will have him screaming into the night. I’m sending him to our Inquisitor and telling him to spend an excruciating amount of time teaching Carlos the meaning of real . . . comedy. Then I’m sending him to the Stone. Your whole regiment will attend that extravaganza. I shall be there myself. I will laugh at him just as you all laughed at me. Anyone I spot not laughing will take follow-up comedy courses on the Rack and at the Stone.’
“The Señorita feared familial retaliation after such extravaganzas, however, so after she’d killed one of her citizens, she routinely killed all that person’s family members. She left no one behind who might seek revenge on her. So she immediately killed all my blood relatives.”
Mateo stared at Richard a long time, silent.
“How did you escape capture?” Richard finally asked Mateo.
“My family raised horses, and I grew up breaking them on a rancho with an uncle in Sinaloa. We then sold them to the military. I was adopted, and the state of Sinaloa had few official records on me, so the Señorita’s secret police were slow to learn of my existence and discovered too late that Carlos was my brother. One night after they murdered everyone, my uncle gave me two horses and provisions, and I fled for Sonora. I had information to trade on the Sinaloa military, that Carlos had imparted to me—tactics, strategy, strengths, weakness—and I was motivated to fight against the Señorita and Díaz. The state of Sonora gave me citizenship and accepted me into officers’ school at age sixteen. So, sí, I understand why many people—you included—are critical of our discipline here and of our recruitment methods. I agree, at times, we are overly harsh. But Madre Méjico is not Norteamérica, where life is gentle and fair and just. This is Díaz’s and the Señorita’s Méjico, where people are branded, shackled, jailed, enslaved, even castrated, and ruled by the whip. I have experienced their Méjico on my bones and blood. We are at war with Sinaloa and Chihuahua both and must fight them with everything at our disposal.”
“You want to destroy them for what they did to your family?”
“For that—and for much, much more. Still, while we need discipline, we never want to be like them. We must not be like them.”
Richard stared at Mateo, silent.
“Come with me to our Intelligence Center,” Mateo finally said, giving Richard a forced smile, “and you will learn what else Sinaloa does to its subjects. It isn’t just to me.”
PART IV
The Señorita’s laughter rang through the
chamber like the bells of hell.
Chapter 16
Decked out in a white silk dressing gown, the Señorita Dolorosa lounged in her bed, sipping Madeira. For two centuries, that wine—vinho da roda, as the wine had been called in the Portuguese Madeira Islands, which had produced it—was highly sought after worldwide, particularly in the United States. There, the Founding Fathers had drunk it day and night. Luckily for the Señorita, Mexico’s former dictator, General Antonio López de Santa Anna, had been especially fond of Madeira. In fact, he had purchased several dozen Madeira “pipes”—the massive 112-gallon casks, in which the brandy-fortified, famously long-lived wine was shipped. Mexico’s rulers and wealthy elite had been partaking of those “pipes” ever since. Maximilian had been especially enamored of the wine.
From the Señorita’s perspective, Santa Anna’s importation of it had been especially fortuitous. In 1851, a grape blight had destroyed Portugal’s Madeira Island vineyards. Consequently, only two or three dozen of the “pipes” remained in all of North America. Several years ago, the Señorita had bought them all up—or in some cases forcibly commandeered them. She kept them safely locked away in her hacienda’s wine cellar. She had now convinced herself that she owned and was consuming the world’s last casks of the wine. That knowledge vastly increased her enjoyment of the wine, and she shared it with no one, not even Díaz, and least of all with her court ladies.
In fact, they were now circled around the Señorita, watching her enjoy her wine. Keeping the Señorita happy was always wise, since the penalties for not amusing her were . . . unendurable. The beautiful, dark-haired Rosalita had recently fallen out of favor and she was now desperate to redeem herself in the Señorita’s eyes. Dressed in a sheer black nightgown, Rosalita was smiling and waving enthusiastically at the Señorita, hoping to get her permission to speak. Finally, the Señorita called on her.
“My Lady,” Rosalita said, “I’ve heard that you lived in America for several years and that you learned to speak English in that country. Could you tell us about your experiences there?”
They knew that their Lady enjoyed reflecting on her life, particularly on her past triumphs and accomplishments:
“When I was twelve, my father did business with the governor of Sinaloa. The man was named after the Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortés, who first subjugated and sacked Méjico. The governor’s full name was thus Hernán Cortés Castenado. Like his namesake, he was obsessed with conquering a kingdom and carving out an empire. My father was an arms merchant who had supplied him with guns and ammunition during his early years. Both had prospered through their association, and my family was wealthy—one of the wealthiest in Mexico.
“As a child I noticed that Castenado was fond of me. He was always making me sit on his lap, even when it was no longer appropriate. When he became the governor of Sinaloa and was now all-powerful, he ordered my father to hand me over to him. I was only thirteen, and my father hated ‘abuso sexual’ [child molestation] with special vehemence. His own mother had been raped when she was thirteen, and my father, Fernando, had been the illegitimate issue of that assault. He knew that the governor had no intention of marrying me. He simply wanted to take me by force. When the novelty wore off, he
