Mapuche (46 page)

What about their family? The Grandmothers had traced them back to Chile, where other associations were fighting the dictatorship's crimes: Samuel Verón had been the student leader of a militant pro-Allende group; in 1971 he married Gabriella Hernandez, whom he'd met at the university in Santiago. After Allende's fall and the general repression that followed, they fled to Buenos Aires. Although Samuel Verón had left everything behind, Gabriella's parents were
estancieros
, the owners of hundreds of acres in the Mendoza region. Killed in a car accident not long after Videla's coup d'état, they had left their land to their sole heir, Gabriella. She hadn't had much time to enjoy it when she and her young husband were kidnapped.

Carlos, for his part, had investigated the public works projects set up by the junta in order to modernize the city center—to drive out the underprivileged population and construct new buildings for the benefit of private enterprises. De Hoz, the economics minister, had assigned Colonel Ardiles (who was made a general in 1982) to public works. This war on the poor was not new: the junta had reduced by half the salaries of the working classes, done away with free hospital care, and raised the price of cattle 700 percent in order to satisfy the interests of the powerful
Sociedad rural
(an association of large landowners), while whole neighborhoods were deprived of water and electricity. Then forgotten diseases such as summer diarrhea and rabies struck certain areas of Greater Buenos Aires, taking the country back fifty years into the past. Carlos had pursued his investigation: General Ardiles was not unknown, because he was one of the high-ranking officers targeted by the CONADEP at the end of the dictatorship. After spending five years under house arrest, Menem had finally been granted amnesty when the Full Stop law was passed. Human rights groups had repeated their attacks when Kirchner came to power, but the new legal procedures were exploited to create delays, and Ardiles benefited from statutes of limitation and certificates of ill health to escape any punishment. In addition to his army pension, the old general also received stock dividends and attendance fees from various businesses, and obviously did not regret his past. Questioned by a journalist after the dismissal of his case, Ardiles had declared that a war necessarily implied deaths, that it was a matter of “us” or “them”—meaning the Reds.

Susana would have swallowed her false teeth.

Leandro Ardiles now enjoyed activities proper to his age (eighty-four) in the gated community of Santa Barbara that had been built by Vivalia, Campallo's concrete company. Sum­moned several times to appear as a witness, notably in 2010 for the ESMA trial, Ardiles had never showed up, prevented by medical certificates signed by Professor Fillol, the owner of a private clinic in the same community of Santa Barbara: Fillol, who was one of the victims of the shootout in the delta.

Carlos finished his report with a broad smile that hardly concealed his stubbornness.

“Ardiles,” he concluded. “I'm sure he's the colonel who organized the extraction of the Verón couple and the falsification of the birth certificates.”

The Grandmothers nodded in silence. A fragrance of apricots was struggling with the sanitized air in the hospital room; Rubén was registering the news, his face pale despite the sunlight coming through the window. Ardiles, an old general: he might be the one responsible for the kidnappings and murders, his name might be one of those eaten away on the internment form. That didn't explain Eduardo Campallo's suicide. Why had Ardiles set up a secret meeting in the Andes, and who was “the man of the
estancia
”? Rubén gritted his teeth as he sat up on the bed.

“What happened to Gabriella Verón's land?”

“That's what we're looking into,” the journalist replied. “I've filed requests with the clerk of the commercial court in Mendoza, but that will take time.”

“Ardiles can take advantage of that to make himself scarce,”

“If he hasn't already done so,” the vice president agreed.

“Don't worry about that, Rubén,” his mother told him. “We're not going to let him get away. You can count on us.”

“Yes,” Susana said. “Rest now.”

“Impossible,” Rubén replied. “No, impossible.”

His voice was hoarse, almost malicious.

“What do you mean?”

“Luque and his gang are going to grill me,” he said, his eyes clouded. “If I end up in their hands, I'll never get away.”

Rubén was swimming in chemical vapors. He tore off the bandage over his IV, and then pulled the needle out of his vein.

“What are you doing?” Elena asked.

“I've got to find those guys.”

“What? But . . . ”

Rubén threw off the tubes that tied him to the bed as his mother looked on imploringly. She knew him only too well.

“This is crazy,” she said soberly.

“I agree,” Susana added. “You'll never make it past the end of the corridor with your blood pressure the way it is.”

“I'm feeling better,” Rubén lied.

He could see clearly, that was about all. Carlos glanced at his friend's haggard face and understood that it was pointless to insist. He'd had the same look on his face when they told him about the disappearance of Jana, the witness whose body was still being sought. Rubén took the clothes his mother had put in the metallic cabinet.

“You can't leave in that condition,” Elena whispered. “You're going to kill yourself.”

His eyes were glowing with rage.

“I'm already dead.”

 

*

 

Jana.

Rubén thought about her constantly.

With the eyes of love, he saw again the room in the delta, her frightened face when they had separated. Three days had passed since the shootout, and she had disappeared. She too had become a ghost. Rubén opened the door of his office in a state of confusion close to dizziness.

Carlos had dropped him off at Peru Street after he had picked up a set of keys at his mother's house. They had left the hospital without anyone noticing, but the news would soon circulate among the staff and get back to Luque.

Rubén walked around the apartment a bit, feeling alien to himself: the faces on the walls, the couch where she had slept the first night—without her everything seemed lifeless. Useless. Sordid. He leaned on the bar, feeling as if he might faint. The effects of the IV were fading, and the pain in his lungs was increasing, dull, piercing. He took two painkillers from the hospital and put his head under cold water in the sink. A long time. His legs felt cottony but he mustn't stay here—it was the first place Luque's cowboys would look for him. He raised his head, walked into the bedroom at the end of the hall—a few things, weapons, he would take the minimum with him.

Rubén groaned as he slipped aside the chest of drawers on the rug. He lifted the floorboards and remained stunned for a moment: the cache of weapons had been emptied. The grenade, the tear-gas bombs, the handcuffs, the revolver, the ammo, even the sniper rifle and the cash had disappeared. There remained only a set of brass knuckles and the Glock 19, along with its silencer and three cartridge clips.

Rubén's heart was beating faster: Jana. She alone knew where he hid his arsenal. The keys to the office were in her bag, on Oswaldo's boat: they hadn't killed her. She'd escaped. She'd returned to Buenos Aires. Tears of joy welled up, but the mad hope that gripped him quickly dissipated: why hadn't she called the Grandmothers, or tried to find out what had happened to him? Instead of contacting his mother, she had preferred to make off with the weapons in the cache: why, unless it was to make use of them herself? Rubén shuddered beneath his icy armor.

Jana was his sister, his little sister in rage . . . And that was precisely what scared him.

Concentrated in the Panama Canal Zone, the United States's military schools had instructed thousands of soldiers who were to train the security forces of future dictatorships: social control over the population, interrogation methods, tortures. By a domino effect, one country after another fell under the yoke of military regimes: Paraguay (1954), Brazil (1964), Bolivia (1971), Chile and Uruguay (1973), and finally Argentina, in 1976. Contrary to his predecessor Jimmy Carter, the Republican president Ronald Reagan did not disapprove of the policy conducted by the Argentine junta: the former actor invited General Viola to Washington; Viola had replaced Videla at the head of the dictatorship, lifted the embargo that blocked loans to financiers and military men, and ceased to support the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who opposed the establishment of “anticommunist” military training bases in their country.

Colonel Ardiles had been promoted to the rank of general by this same Viola, before the disastrous episode in the Falklands. Subsequently, Leandro Ardiles's political and financial supporters had allowed him to slip through the cracks, but the Campallo case put everything in question again—his comfortable retirement in the gated community of Santa Barbara, his independence, and even his freedom. The situation was getting out of control. They had had to flee, his wounded arm still hurt him, and the statue of the commander was beginning to crack under the soldier's veneer.

Leandro Ardiles hated having his fate in the hands of someone else—in this case, those of Parise, the head of Santa Barbara's security police. Even if his name and that of the cardinal seemed not to be on the copy of the internment form the Grandmothers had gotten their hands on, the general's usually temperate character had changed since he knew that he was being tracked. Too many bodies in their wake, not to mention that damned form. Had the original burned in the fire at Ossario's house? He couldn't be sure. Cardinal von Wernisch had guaranteed the monks' silence; the hiding place was secure but, as Ardiles knew, temporary. A military chaplain who urged the armed forces to “bathe in the blood of Jordan” at the height of the repression, then promoted to bishop in 1979, then to cardinal at the turn of the century, von Wernisch thought he would live out his life amid masses celebrated in Latin and papal siestas, when he received a call from Brother Josef, one of his former disciples. The cardinal had immediately sounded the alarm, setting in motion a lethal mechanism.

The two old men were talking in the shaded garden when the young monk who served von Wernisch as a secretary presented himself at the lunch table.

“It's him again, Your Eminence,” he said, bending down toward the cardinal's emaciated head. “Franco Díaz, on the telephone. He says it's urgent.”

Ardiles met the shining eyes of von Wernisch, then those of Parise at the end of the table. Díaz had come to the monastery the day before and then suddenly vanished. A strange business. Von Wernisch had known Díaz in the past, a pious and patriotic man, a SIDE agent: his appearance here was in no way accidental.

“I'll go with you,” the general said, getting up.

“Me too,” Parise said.

Díaz's voice was tense and the speaker in the vestibule was of poor quality. He was calling from a cell phone and claimed to have the “original document.” Díaz did not explain why he had run away the preceding day; in a few brief words he stated that he wished to deliver the document “immediately” and “to the cardinal in person.” The cardinal, urged on by Ardiles, proposed that his interlocutor come to the monastery, but Díaz, who was ill, seemed to be at bay. He suggested a meeting at the Escondida lagoon late that same day, as if the document he spoke of were burning his hands. Taken by surprise, and after a brief consultation with his associates, von Wernisch gave Díaz Parise's secure number to keep in contact, accepting de facto the proposed rendezvous.

“What do you think of that?” the general asked when he had hung up.

“Díaz is a patriot,” the cardinal replied. “We can trust him.”

His long, bony face bore the weight of years, but his blue eyes retained the lively fire of a theologian eager for a fight: if the former SIDE agent was telling the truth, they had a chance to erase their debts.

 

The sun was shining on the crests of the mountain range. Sitting at a respectable distance from the barbecue that was smoking up the end of the garden, Gianni Del Piro was moping, blind to the beauty of the Andes. Although the pilot had sweet talked his wife when he returned to this godforsaken hole, he could say goodbye to the hotheaded Linda, who by now must have left Punta del Este, slamming doors and cursing. All this would be paid for in cash—a bonus for the flight, for sure—but losing a mistress who gave him blow jobs
on the rocks
was an incalculable loss. In the meantime, forced to go into exile in this monastery with the general and his bodyguards, the pilot was stuck with these two louts.

El Toro, “on vacation,” had put on his favorite outfit, a pair of overalls. Planted with his legs spread in front of the barbecue, he spoke to his acolyte.

“You should taste this!”

“Wait at least until it's cooked!” El Picador retorted.

“Bah!”

El Toro noisily slurped down two big mussels one after the other, spilling sauce all over his undershirt. Since he'd been drinking red wine for some time now, that didn't make much difference. In charge of the cooking, El Picador was impassively watching his friend guzzle. Thirty-five years of experience. El Toro was hungry, you just had to accept him being that way. Virile, even obsessive, with his Sodom and Gomor­rah frenzies. That wasn't El Picador‘s thing. His vice was more scientific, more elegant. After years of experience, he could almost feel the pain in other people's bodies, evaluate it expertly. He sharpened his weapons himself. Calderón had felt pain as soon as he had inserted the first
banderilla
. El Picador had set Calderón in stone, a pain like burning lava slowly spread, a pain that was, so to speak, eternal, and that the addition of the
picana
made absolutely unbearable. Nonetheless, that pile of shit hadn't said anything.