“Don’t use a cellphone. And no one should mention you by name if they use a cellphone. Be sure of the loyalty of everyone in your inner circle. Everyone. The bounty on your head will be significant—fifteen million was the number I heard.”

She snorted. “Loyalty? You are funny. No one would be so foolish as to betray me. Money is useless when you are dead.”

Weaver had met La Bruja several times over the course of his time in the country. The security services of the US and UK had kept tabs on the swirling vortex of smaller cartels that had sprung up after the demolition of the global organisations that had dominated the narcotics industry at the start of the millennium. They had watched as she had consolidated her power, wiping out those collectives who were at her level and swallowing up their soldiers and resources. She had grown quickly, moving on to larger targets and wiping them out, too. She was impressive and ruthless. The West had been looking for a proxy, and La Bruja had been shortlisted.

Weaver had been sent to vet the elusive woman at the cartel’s head and had been impressed. Indeed, he had been so impressed with the scale of La Bruja’s ambition that he had reported that she might be open to the more audacious ploy that had been on the drawing board ever since the assassination of El Patrón in Mexico. His death in the Sierra Madre had left La Frontera vulnerable to a hostile takeover, and there existed an opportunity to merge both production and distribution of cocaine into one body. The kind of influence that an enterprise of that magnitude could wield in South America had been the West’s wet dream for years, and the spooks at Langley and Vauxhall Cross had leapt at the chance.

Official US policy was that the war on drugs had to be won, but an influential clique within the CIA was happy to let the flow continue if that meant it could use the cartel to wield its influence. Lincoln, Navarro and their cronies were wary of going into overt opposition to the DEA and State Department, so the Firm had been tasked with heading up the operation. Weaver had returned to Antioquia and had made her the offer. The Western security services would help her to build a Pan-American cartel, more powerful than any that had gone before, in return for her assistance in buying influence in local and national government.

And she had said yes.

Weaver looked out of the open door. The heat rose from the baked ground in heady waves, and, high above, a hawk called out as it drifted on the thermals.

“I expect you would like an update on the matter you mentioned the last time we met?” she said.

“I would.”