little heavier as they entered the next tunnel. Despite the deprivation gripping the country, this was still a place where gasoline was cheaper than clean water. As they exited the tunnel, Luis started to look around nervously. Their late-model luxury SUV stuck out amidst the many Eighties- and Nineties-era cars filling the road, and Brodie noticed that almost every motorist who passed them looked at their car. The embassy should own a beater.
Brodie looked up at the warrens of brick and concrete-block hovels cramming the hillsides on either side of the highway along narrow, winding switchback roads. The tin roofs of the tightly packed slums canted at every angle, shimmering in the bright sun. It seemed as though there was an effort to make almost every inch of the hills habitable as the forests gave way to these great concrete mountains.
Luis said, “You can see the barrios from almost everywhere in the city. They say you see them so much you don’t see them anymore.”
Brodie informed him, “In America, the rich live in the hills and the poor live in the cities.”
“Yes? Why is that?”
“Because shit flows downhill.”
Luis seemed to be contemplating that.
They took an exit onto Autopista Francisco Fajardo, a wide elevated highway that ran through downtown and into the affluent suburbs in the east. The barrios gave way to an unremarkable but prosperous-looking skyline of residential tower blocks and shimmering glass office buildings that appeared to be headquarters for various banks and telecom companies. Faded billboards advertised food and consumer products that the average Venezuelan could probably no longer afford or that were no longer available.
Coming up on their right in the distance was a huge, fantastical, cone-shaped building of white concrete, built on a flattened hilltop surrounded by slums. It resembled, thought Brodie, a squashed ziggurat, with a spiral ramp running around the building from the base to the top. “What the hell is that?”
Luis glanced at the building. “It is the Helicoide.”
“That explains it.”
Luis continued, “It was built maybe in the 1960s. A drive-in shopping mall. But it is another idea that did not work as planned… so it was taken over by the Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional—SEBIN, the secret police, who have turned it into a headquarters and prison.”
“How’s business?”
“Business is good,” Luis assured him. “Many people go in, but few come out.”
Taylor, who had apparently researched this, added, “It’s also where the interrogations are conducted, which often involve torture and sometimes end in summary execution.” She added, in a rare display of dark humor, “One-stop shopping.”
Brodie added, “Express checkout.”
Luis said, “I know many people who have gone in there. Those who come out are not the same.”
Well, maybe they shouldn’t joke about it.
Brodie looked at the strange building as they drove past it: some 1960s architect’s idea of modernity now turned medieval. SEBIN. The guys you don’t want showing up at your door at midnight. Every police state and wannabe police state had something like it. He glanced at the building again. Don’t want to see the inside.
The elevated highway followed a river, a natural divider between the east- and westbound lanes. The water looked filthy, and trash was scattered across its sloping concrete banks.
“The Guaire,” said Luis. “Caracas’ toilet. Chávez promised to clean it up. He said, ‘I invite all of you to bathe in the Guaire.’ ” Luis laughed. “My mother used to say he was the master of bullshit, and every day you see and smell the river of shit that runs through your city.”
Brodie could both see and smell what Luis’ mother was talking about, and he changed the car’s A/C settings so it wasn’t pulling in air from outside.
They passed a large billboard for the state oil company—PDVSA—that was newer and more vibrant than the rest. It featured a photo montage of President Maduro in a red beret, his fist raised in the air, amid rippling Venezuelan flags and pictures of muscular men in hard hats turning the wheel of an oil valve. Along the top of the billboard was a slogan that Brodie could decipher without knowing much Spanish: SOLIDARITY: THE WEAPON OF THE REVOLUTION AGAINST CAPITALISM. Oil was Venezuela’s lifeblood, and when the price of oil was high, it funded massive social spending as well as the corrupt system of patronage that ensured loyalty to the regime. When the price was low, as it had been for years, people were not so loyal.
On their left, they passed two massive skyscrapers of concrete and glimmering blue glass.