Chapter 195 - New chess game? - meters
Roland
Everyone was staring at me. The unease of not yet having control over what was happening was the feeling I disliked the most. That’s why I had to turn the situation around. I remained expressionless, looking at the five photos of the leaders of the world's most dangerous mafias. I controlled the cartel in Colombia, but they ran the mafia.
Why did they want to know how I dismantled everything? We did business with tons of drugs; we always kept our word. Colombia only supplied them with the best quality... Am I proud of it? Absolutely not. I would love to erase that part of my existence, but I couldn't do anything. Just amend the damage...
Think, Roland, think... What do they want from me? I always delivered on time, they paid correctly. Apart from that, we had no relationship, so much so that they only sent their representatives to the Santa Marta convention. Only the leader from China made an appearance.
I had them all investigated. I knew everything about them, thanks to Rata and Cebolla. Keep thinking… your job was to tie up loose ends, get them into your game, make them believe they’re in control, but have them work for you. That wasn’t a problem, that was my way of living. I looked at my friends.
“I won’t let them harm my family, they won’t mess with my sanctuary. That’s non-negotiable for me, and for you. We need to consider two scenarios: they want to screw us, or they need us. And I don’t trust them to ask us for weather advice.” I looked at Rata and Cebolla, and they both nodded.
“Let’s play with them,” Miguel commented with a smile. “New chess game?”
I looked at my friend and nodded. In chess, the king’s death ends the game, but everyone knew that with a good queen, it was impossible to reach him. Now my team would be the queen... When I think that way, countless variables unfold, I feel in my element.
“Well, since you’ll face them when the time comes.”
Rata was waiting for instructions. I looked at my team, each an expert in something, each willing to stand before the other. I looked at my daughter sleeping on my chest, kissed Victoria’s little head as she slept, and caressed her cheek. This shit was incredible. I looked at Rasca Culo, Mojón, and Cebolla, each holding one of my children, then I looked at the monitors.
“You’re the strategist, give us orders.”
“They’re interested in knowing about my death. Have you heard anything different?” I asked Rata.
“No.”
“That’s the only thing we have, and it leaves us exposed in the two previous scenarios: they screw us, or they need us. This is what we’ll do for now, and we need to take the appropriate measures.
“Rata, set up discreet security rings. If they’re interested in what happened in Colombia, they must already know my wife lives in the United States. So, scan as much as we can the people entering Blanco and control it from San Antonio.”
“In Colombia, it would be…”
“In the United States, it’s easier,” I told Rasca Culo. “Rata can infiltrate any network. It’s just about entering the necessary data into his software. At first, it will be tedious, but it will alert us if people from those countries enter. They won’t come, but they’ll send someone they trust, people we’ll receive cordially. They can’t know I’m still alive.”
“Rata, can you get into all the networks in this country?”
For Arnold, Gustavo, Aníbal, and Daniel, learning about our investigative capacity was new. They had never entered the basement. Now they were leveling up. Simón smiled.
“Understood. It’s just adding a couple of pieces of information, and it can pre-alert us about those already living here before your arrival. We’ll start eliminating suspects. That way, we’ll focus on the new ones.”
“Trips to the country will need to be low-profile, except for Mojón, who has a study cover. Only report a trip every three months in the logs, even if they travel every eight days.” Miguel nodded; that was his job.
“That’s easy to do so far,” Rata said, smiling. “What are you going to come up with, you big jerk?”
“There are kids here! Watch your language.”
Arnold said, covering Enrique’s ears. We smiled at his comment. I looked at the screens again. Nikolay Petrov, a man in his fifties, as pale as Mojón, tall, blue-eyed, blond.
He looks like Arnold, the only difference being the color of his eyes. My friend has light brown eyes, although he likes to play around with that. He has contact lenses of various colors, and for every mission, he likes to wear different ones to throw people off.
Without a doubt, my friend must have had Russian ancestry, given his build. He didn't know who his father was or had been. His mother, back in her day, was a woman who provided carnal services.
"In our security line, are the next ones still holding firm?" Rata nodded.
"Are you sure?"
The mental synchronization with my right-hand man was such that he already knew what I was going to say.
"We need to keep an eye on them from the inside. I want them to earn the trust of each of the bosses." I looked at Miguel.
"Mole knows Italian."
That was my team. We didn't need to speak. At that moment, each one took a position assigned in the room. Rata called it the SSCTC room, "Room to know how your ass is," because we scrutinized everything we wanted.
"Well, guys, we officially welcome you."
Cebolla commented. They were in front of a computer and a laptop, each one. Since they didn't know the password, they just stared.
"SSCTC in uppercase." Each one entered Rata's system.
"What do the initials stand for?"
Mojón asked. I saw him making faces at my baby. Enrique had woken up. I walked over to the bags and took out each one's bottles, something I had learned was that they almost always wanted them at the same time.
"Room to know how your ass is."
Cebolla replied, and everyone burst into laughter, waking my kids. The situation was surreal: reformed assassins taking care of innocent angels, my babies. I handed each one their respective bottle. I did the same with Victoria, taking her out of her portable incubator and feeding her.
We burped them, and they fell back asleep. When we looked at each other, we knew we were thinking the same thing. It was unimaginable that we were living such situations… anyway. We had to work on finding a way to subtly infiltrate our men into those mafias. I cracked my knuckles. All the information they entered went to the main base managed by Rata, and only Miguel and I had access.
That would remain the same. Mole was a slender man with black hair and eyes. He could pass for a man with Italian roots. We had to continue that way and find the profiles to get our people into the mafia's circle.
"Okay, you understand what we're going to do," I said. "Rata, you need to travel to Colombia and talk to them. For now, it’s not convenient to reveal my existence. We don’t know if they’ll manage to infiltrate. The advantage is that the mafias don’t know them, but they know our faces, so we must keep it that way.
"Make them believe we've distanced ourselves from everything and are enjoying being cowboys, married, and happy. That’s why we need to avoid their proximity as much as possible. It would limit me from leaving the ranch. I want Mole in Italy, keeping a low profile. His strength will be working as a bodyguard. We need to establish him as one of the best or the best in that field.
"Alessandro D’Aronzo is very family-oriented. His children are young: a four-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl. He also has three sisters under his care. Mole must find a way to earn a position." I said.
"Lobo knows three languages," Cebolla commented. "But he doesn’t know Russian, although he picks up languages easily."
"Lobo will go to Russia, not just for his language skills, but for his cold mind. We know that organization is the cruelest of all. He can torture and withstand torture." I looked at my second-in-command.
"He will be a lone mercenary who wants to learn the language. Knowing other languages will validate him. He can maintain a profile as a hitman who likes to deal with clients directly, hence learning the language. We need to create a profile for him in the mercenary world. It will be a double play.
"He must earn their trust and do jobs, pretending to kill them. Then that person must disappear from that country, change identity. If they’re good, if they’re scumbags, let’s clean up the planet a bit." The attendees nodded.
"We will continue with our only law. Zero women and children. I don’t want to carry more deaths, and neither do you, unless your life is in danger. Someone needs to analyze the way to enter Nikolay Petrov’s world. He has a ten-year-old son who will inherit his empire…"