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3 LOS PERROS

What's going on, Mario?' I asked him again. 'Colonel Lanza?' Now that there were only the two of us in the room, I expected that he would drop the pretense of not knowing me, but he didn't.
'Los perros han encontrado una sustancia controlada,' he answered, pretending not to know how poor my Spanish was.

He was behaving strangely, but at that stage I still believed it was in case someone overheard us talking. I assumed that it was customs agents who had found something and that the colonel had called me down to his office to save me. I asked him what we were going to do, but he continued writing his report. He wouldn't tell me anything more.

For the next ten minutes, police and customs officials entered and left the office. The colonel's telephone rang a few times. I couldn't understand what was being said, but I kept hearing 'positivo' and 'los perros'. Whenever anyone came in, I pretended not to know the colonel. But we were running out of time. I looked at my watch again. It was now five minutes after my original take-off time.

'How much money do you need?' I asked. Colonel Lanza looked like he was about to answer, but there was another knock on the door. This time the police brought in all my luggage and placed it on the desk, saying 'Positivo.' Outside, the sound of a plane's engines warming up became louder.

As his men started to open my bags, I continued trying to persuade the colonel to help me. By that point, I didn't care if his men worked out that we knew each other. There was no time left to play games. I now suspected that the colonel might be the one setting me up, but I still thought there was a chance I could get out of it, if I played it