Angel Eyes (3 page)

Ariel snapped his fingers.''Nunn. Wait a minute. Greg Nunn? The American who died in that joint mission to Mars with the Russians? What was that, last year?"

"Eighteen months."

"Greg Nunn was your brother?"

"Yes."

It was just a whisper, but it told the discerning listener volumes. Ariel wisely decided to change the subject. "Estilo mentioned that you are retired," he said. "From what?"

What to tell him? "Family business," Tori said. Not exactly a lie, but not the truth, either.

He grunted. "Me, too. Only I'm still in it." They began to walk. ''It used to be fun when my father ran it. I could do pretty much what I wanted. I never realized how boring the meat business was until my father died and I was obliged to take it over. Responsibility seemed to drain all the fun out of the work.''

They were at the cemetery's gate, and passing through into me street. Tori had the feeling that an oppressive weight had lifted from her. In there, it had seemed as if the very air she had been breathing was humid with the spirits of the dead. She took one last look at the sad-faced stone angels, as though she could hear their wings rustling in the windswept night.

"So running the business isn't enough," Tori said, giving him an opening to perhaps talk about why, as Estilo had said, he was really in Buenos Aires.

"I don't believe I'm in the mood to go back to Estilo's," Ariel said, as if he hadn't heard her question. "It's raining, and the climate is not conducive to a party.''

Tori wondered whether by the climate he meant the weather or his state of mind. Either way, it was all right; she had no desire to wedge herself back into Estilo's ultratrendy crowd.

He took her to Cafe Tortoni, a well-known jazz bar on the Avenida de Mayo.

"Are you often up late at night?"

"Only when I'm traveling," Ariel said. He shrugged. "I don't know what it is, but all my business associates seem to be aficionados of la vida nocturna-night life."

Tori had been in love with the night life; twice. As an underage teenager she had used her beauty to hang out in Los Angeles' most dangerous night spots. Years later the clandestine late-night clubs of Tokyo, so far away from her native L.A., had held another form of danger. But by that time she was an entirely different person, wasn't she?

They drank cane brandy while a black saxophonist made noises in concert with a West Indian snare drummer and a blond, slick-fingered bassist. It didn't sound much like music, but everyone seemed content to listen to it.

When the set was through, Ariel looked at his watch. "It's after midnight. Are you tired?"

Tori shook her head.

"Good." He paid the check, then led her out of the restaurant. They picked up a taxi on the avenue, and Ariel told the driver, "La Manzana de las Luces." The driver shrugged, headed south into the downtown district.

The Square of Enlightenment, between Peru and Bolivar at the intersection of the Avenida Julio Roca, was a treasure trove of historical landmarks. But the only one Tori could remember offhand was the offices of La Prensa, Argentina's most famous newspaper.

The taxi let them off on Peru, and Ariel stopped in front of number 222. It had an Italian-designed facade typical of the mid-1880s, though Ariel informed her the building itself was more than a hundred years older than that.

"This place has belonged variously to two newspapers and the University of Buenos Aires," Ariel said. "But by far its most interesting tenant was the General Attorney of the Jesuits, for whom, apparently, it was built. King Charles the Third of Spain kicked the order out in 1767. But before then some fascinating goings-on occurred here."

"Like what?"

"Come on," Ariel said. "I'll show you."

He led her around to the side of the structure. Here the narrow alley was dimly lit. They went down a flight of ancient stone steps so worn they were concave in their centers. Tori saw that even in the gloom Ariel had no difficulty negotiating them.

A moment later she heard what she suspected was the grate of an old key in an even older lock. A stained wood-plank door creaked inward on iron hinges. A musty darkness loomed.

"Is this okay?" Tori asked.

"Do you like to take chances?"

She heard his voice as a disembodied whisper, and did not answer.

"Watch your step," Ariel said, reaching back and taking her hand. He pulled her inside, closed the door behind them.

He led her through absolute blackness. She heard the squeal of another door opening, Ariel's voice whispering, "Now duck your head."

There were more steps, and the chill mineral dampness that bred mold and lichen wafted over her. The steps were very steep and quite narrow. The rich scents of limestone and earth enveloped her, Tori thought. It's like smelling one's own grave, and for an instant she felt the hairs stirring at the base of her neck.

"These tunnels date back to the eighteenth century." Tori wondered why he was still whispering. After all, down in the bowels of the earth who could overhear their conversation?

"These tunnels are something of a tourist attraction nowadays," Ariel continued, his lips brushing her ear. "The tourists are told that these tunnels were built to aid in the defense of the city during wartime. But the truth is the Jesuits built them in order to smuggle in contraband. The king had decreed that Buenos Aires, like the other Spanish colonies, could trade only with Spain. But at the behest of the clever Jesuits, ships of other nationalities moored in the port, pretending to work on repairs while the priests off-loaded their cargo into these secret tunnels."

Ariel snapped on a flashlight, and Tori could see the arched ceilings, the branching corridors. Along the sides of the tunnels were modern lights within protective metal grills above the equally modern concrete walkway.

He led her around a turning, into a small chamber, down another steep flight of stone steps. Here the tunnels seemed older, cruder, or perhaps merely in a state of disrepair. The air was closer, mustier, and there were no modern lights, no concrete walkway. Loose stones ground beneath their feet.

Ariel stopped them abruptly. He squeezed her hand as he played the beam of the flash over a heap of pale bones. With a start, Tori saw that she was staring at a grisly jumble of human skeletons.

"Here is all that's left of the disappeared," Ariel whispered. "At least some of them, poor bastards. Dumped here to rot beneath the city."

"What-"

Ariel's hand went over her mouth as he snapped off the flashlight's beam.

Sounds-faint, indistinct-wafted toward them from some unknown direction. Ariel stood very still; he seemed scarcely to be breathing.

The sounds came swiftly closer. Tori strained to hear what they were. As they neared, the sounds resolved themselves into male voices, then words, and Tori thought. My God, they're speaking Japanese.

"Perhaps Rega could have been of some further use," one voice said.

"his use was at an end," the other said. "Given half a reason, he would have betrayed us." A laugh. "Besides, it felt good to put the gun against the back of his neck, pull the trigger, and boom! Like snuffing out a candle in a church. In that instant, you know something significant has happened: the law has been transgressed."

"I am a Shintoist," the first voice said. "God and the devil mean nothing to me, like the blink of an eye seen in a mirror. All illusion."

"I am Catholic," me second voice said, "so I understand the meaning of punishment-and of sin."

"I don't understand. How can you be a Catholic and a sinner?"

That laugh again.' 'I cannot be redeemed if I haven't sinned, so these days I do my best to ignore the law. Also, as you must suspect, there is a measure of personal pleasure for me in violation."

"Let's get on with it," the first voice said.

It was impossible to say just how close the voices were. Perhaps they were around an unseen corner, perhaps much nearer than that-tunnel acoustics being treacherously unpredictable.

Tori suspected that Ariel was thinking the same thing. She thought he wanted to get out of there but was afraid of being seen or heard.

Suddenly a light snapped on, and Tori and Ariel were caught in its piercing beam. Tori could make out the blossom of two black figures, faceless, on me move.

"Hey, look!"

"Who the fuck --"

The glint, dark and evil, of machine pistols.

"Madre de Dios!" Ariel breathed. He grabbed her hand, pulled her out of the circle of light. They began to stumble their way back down the tunnel.

The light flashed wildly, illuminating the tunnel in rhythmic bursts, casting their distorted shadows against me rough stone walls. They heard swift footfalls behind them.

"They're coming after us!" Tori said.

Ariel said nothing, pulling her after him down the twisting tunnel. They gained a flight of steps, raced down them. But they could hear the heavy footfalls, the panting breaths that told them their pursuers were gaining on them. Tori wondered what in God's name he had led her into.

"Faster!" Ariel's voice barked from out of the darkness. "If they catch us, they'll kill us!"

We'll never outrun them. Tori thought as they rushed past an open archway. Impulsively, she reached out, grabbed Ariel, brought him up short.

"What-"

''In here!'' she whispered in his ear, and ducking down, they entered the pitch-blackness beyond the portal.

It smelled musty, and Tori could hear the scrabbling of tiny nails against loose rock. Ariel used his hands like a blind man, feeling the wall, following its contours.

Light flared behind them and they both froze, then it faded, and they continued on their way in the darkness, into another, smaller chamber, then a third, even smaller one.

For the first time Tori failed to scent a flow of air, and she was suddenly afraid that they had worked themselves into a dead end. On the other hand, coming in here had thrown their pursuers off their trail. She began to relax somewhat.

Light returned again to the outer corridor, and now she could hear voices talking in Japanese. The light increased so that the edges of it spilled into the chamber they were in.

Tori looked around; she had been right. There was only one exit out of this tiny room, and in order to use it, they would have to get past the Japanese who were hunting them.

In the dim, inconstant light, she could make out a mounded shape against me far wall. Breaking free of Ariel, she went over to inspect it more closely-and was confronted by a veritable cairn of human skeletons.

The disappeared. More than she could count. In a brief glare of light tiny red eyes peered out at her from the labyrinth of bones.

The light increased, but the voices had ceased, a clear indication that the Japanese thought they were nearing their quarry.

Tori made up her mind; she turned back to Ariel, said, "Quick!" and taking him by the hand, drew him down to the cairn of bones and skulls. They burrowed their way through the skeletons. Tori heard a brief high-pitched squeal, and the red eyes were gone. The smell of putrefaction and earth was overpowering; it was as if they climbed into a grave that was now closing round them.

When she reached the far wall, she curled up in a ball. Ariel did the same. All around them the forest of the dead rose up in an angular chaos of arms, legs, spines. Buried beneath the bones, the two of them watched the arched portal through which their pursuers would emerge. Tori could feel the heat from Ariel's body curled against hers. They were like doomed lovers, breathing in the dark, breathing in the dead, waiting for death to claim them.

A beam of light entered the chamber, played across the cairn of skeletons. It penetrated the latticework structure, deeper and deeper, darkness and light, revealing layer upon layer of bones, as a spotlight pierces deep water.

Tori saw a bar of light touch her skin, the flesh white among the white bones, a glare in her eyes, dazzling her, and she closed them, praying that she and Ariel had buried themselves deep enough so the Japanese could not distinguish the living from the dead. At that moment she felt a kinship with these poor, murdered people. If their spirits were still here, she prayed they would reach out to protect her.

She breathed tidally, shut her mind down, diminished her wa, her inner energy which, if these Japanese had been trained as she had, they might be able to sense even though she was hidden from their sight.

Beside her, Ariel did not move. He might have been dead. He knew what to do, too.

"Bah! There's nothing here," one of the Japanese said.

"The dead are here," the other Japanese said.

"Mute witnesses. Let's go."

But they did not move. "Those two saw us," the first Japanese said. ' 'I want them.''

"Fine. I want them, too. But they're not here."

Still, they did not leave. The light continued to play over the cairn. Abruptly it increased in brightness, and when the first Japanese spoke again, he was heartstoppingly close to where she and Ariel lay.

''Are you certain? What do I hear? Is it breathing? Is it you-or me? Are we the only ones in this room?"

Tori felt a trickle of sweat make its way down the indentation of her spine. She recognized this man as the philosophical one, the maniac who said he enjoyed living outside the law. He was more dangerous than the other one; his imagination was by far the keener.

She heard a metallic click, sharp, clear, echoing in the confined space, and she thought of the machine pistols they had been holding.

"All I have to do to find out," the first Japanese said, "is to spray this pile of bones."

Tori's heart threatened to burst through her rib cage.

A loud scrape as of a shoe sole. Then the second Japanese said, "Are you crazy? This is a death site."

"What do I care?" the first Japanese said harshly.

"These dead haven't been property buried. Their spirits aren't at rest. To disturb them is a sin even you don't want to commit.'' There was a pause. "Why don't you admit we've lost them. It's a maze down here; they could be anywhere. We don't have the time to shoot up all the dark places in these tunnels. And we don't want to be heard. Come on. If we stay any longer we'll be in danger of missing our pickup. I don't know about you, but I want to get out of this hellhole.''