The Dragon Griaule

‘He’s thinking it over,’ she said to the men outside.

‘This is intolerable,’ Jefe said without emotion, as if the intolerable were merely a fact of his existence. ‘Ask them what they wish to discuss.’

Yara did as instructed and the big man said, ‘We’re having difficulty with Ortega. We could use force, and we will should it become necessary, but that will complicate our future dealings with him. The shipment is due in tomorrow and I didn’t want to move without consulting you.’

Jefe made a hissing nose and pointed at the door leading to the stairs. ‘Wait for me there.’

‘Both of us?’ Yara asked.

‘Just him.’ He glanced over his shoulder at Snow. ‘You don’t mind, do you? Private business.’

The stairwell was unheated and, after hovering for ten or fifteen minutes, unable to hear what was going on in the dining room, feeling the bite of the chill, Snow ascended the stairs. His spirits had been lifted by his banishment – it stood to reason that since Jefe did not want him to hear private matters discussed, this could be interpreted as a sign that Snow’s survival was guaranteed. For a while, anyway. If Jefe wasn’t merely being cautious. If his actions were governed by a logical scheme approximating reason, which of course they were not. By the time Snow had climbed four flights of stairs, his natural pessimism had been restored. Preoccupied with worry, he pushed through the door at the top of the stairway and went several paces onward before he understood that he had penetrated to the heart of Jefe’s complex and perhaps to the essence of his dragon-soul.

He stood in the depths of an enormous, well-lit shaft, one wide enough to encompass three or four good-sized barns, a structure whose terminus, he realized, had to be the white, windowless building surmounting the hill. The top of the shaft, five or six hundred feet above, was the blue of a deep autumn sky and spread across the walls were photomurals of the four framed prints in the dining room: cloudy, pristine Himalayas pierced by diamond rays of sun; tiers of parchment-colored, painterly clouds edged with peach and golden-white, complexities of dust and light that called to mind an elaborate music; a Turner-esque chaos of smoky stuff drenched in red and gold, yielding a brassy radiance redolent of a war in heaven; pale billows of cloud shading to indigo, some of them resembling figures and faces that were nearly recognizable, like the ghosts of Great Identities dissolving into dusk. Hundreds, maybe thousands of fine-linked silver chains strung ten feet apart were suspended from the ceiling, stretched taut, running the length of the shaft and vanishing into curved tracks on the concrete floor. Snow made to slide one of the chains along its track, but it wouldn’t budge. He thought there must be some controlling mechanism and, as he searched for it, he spotted a discoloration on the floor out among the chains. On closer inspection it appeared to be a dried-up pool of blood. Feeling like a child alone in a forest of skinny silver trees that offered neither shade nor protection, he hurried back down the stairs and sat on the bottom step, trying to equate the grandeur and strangeness of the shaft with the vicious killer in the next room, imagining that if a dragon-become-a-man had the slightest refinement it would have something to do with the sky . . . and yet it was difficult to believe a minimal creature such as Jefe deriving pleasure from anything apart from the exercise of power. Worn down by stress, he gave up analyzing the situation and rested his head on his forearms, his mind drumming with a single dread thought.

A half-hour later, more or less, Yara invited him back into the dining room. Flanked by his two friends, the big man stood partway out the tunnel door – he had a thick, glossy head of hair and a mustache trimmed to a straight line above an arrogant mouth. Belly flab overlapped his belt. His image on the TV had been too grainy to identify, but Snow knew him now: Enrique Bazan. He’d run into him once or twice at the school. Hoping that Bazan would not remember those meetings, Snow took a seat next to Yara and gave no sign of recognition, but Bazan said in a demanding tone, ‘What’s this prick doing here?’

‘Mister Snow is a guest.’ Standing between the table and Bazan, Jefe glanced back and forth between the two men, his face sharp with interest. ‘Do you know each other?’

With bad grace, Bazan said, ‘He’s my son’s teacher.’

Jefe’s eyes swerved to Snow. ‘Small world, eh?’

‘I used to be your son’s teacher,’ said Snow. ‘I resigned from the school some time ago.’

‘Is that so?’ Bazan’s voice surged in volume. ‘Then why does Luisa talk about you all the time? Tell me that!’

Yara said, ‘Don’t you have business elsewhere, Enrique?’

‘Indeed,’ said Jefe. ‘I suggest we leave this for another day.’

Bazan’s face grew flushed. ‘Fuck that! I want to ask him some questions.’