Disappeared

by Colin Falconer

  “You haven't got the guts to use that.”

  “You want to find out?”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to find my daughters.”

  “You should have worried about them twenty years ago. It’s too late now.”

  “You know something. You lied to me.”

  “I don't know a fucking thing. They disappeared. That's it.” He grinned. “So, now what are you going to do?”

  This was not going the way he had planned. He's right, Reuben thought, what am I going to do? Put the knife in his back? He hesitated.

  It would have been all over except Domingo tried to take the knife away.

  He twisted around and grabbed Reuben's wrist. Reuben twisted free and heard Domingo gasp in pain. He froze, thinking he had stabbed him. Domingo lashed out, punching Reuben hard in the right shoulder. Reuben's hand went numb and he heard the knife clatter onto the bridge. Domingo crowded him back against the rail and hit him double-handed on his ears. Reuben screamed and fell.

  Domingo kicked the knife away before clutching at his own hand. Blood dripped steadily from the tips of his fingers. The knife had sliced open his palm. “You stupid little shit. Look what you did.”

  Reuben was too stunned to move. There was shocking pain in his ears and his right shoulder.

  Domingo took a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around his bleeding hand.

  “Where did you get such a stupid little knife?”

  Reuben sat up, holding his shoulder with his left hand. His ears were ringing. “From my hotel ... room. The fruit bowl.”

  “I'm bleeding like a pig here.”

  He grabbed Reuben by the hair. “I ought to kill you right now. I wanted to do it last time. I promised myself I would, if I saw you again. I should cut your fucking throat with the fruit knife. That would be justice, wouldn’t it?”

  “Do it then.”

  Reuben felt his hot, whiskey breath on his face. Then Domingo pushed him away. “No, that's too good for you.”

  “You don't have the guts either!'

  “Don't talk to me about guts. I wasn't the one who ran out on his wife and kids!'

  Domingo turned his back to him, tightening the makeshift bandage around his hand. Reuben saw the glint of the knife blade. He reached for it.

  When Domingo turned around again Reuben was back on his feet, the knife in his left hand. “What the hell are you doing now?”

  “You know something.”

  “Even if I did. What good will it do now?”

  “I'm dying, Domingo. I have a tumour on the liver. The doctors can't do anything for me. So I don't care what happens to me anymore, I just want to know what happened to my daughters. If you know something, for God's sake, tell me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I've suffered for twenty years. That's long enough.”

  “You haven't suffered like Gabriella suffered.” Domingo returned his attentions to his injured hand. “Stick it in my back if you like. That's the kind of thing I'd expect from you. Fuck you. I don't know anything.”

  Reuben slipped down the cement wall onto his haunches. He put his head on his knees and wept.

  Domingo stepped over him and walked away.

  Chapter 78

  DOMINGO STOPPED AND turned around. “What if I did know something?”

  “For God's sake. Please.”

  He stood there for a long time, silhouetted by the light from the stairwell.. When he spoke again his voice was so soft Reuben could hardly hear him. “His name was Barrington. Stephen Barrington. You remember him? He lived in the apartment next door to you. Somehow he saved one of your girls. I don't know which one. I let him take her, God forgive me. I had no choice. I couldn't even feed the kids I had. He gave her a far better life than I ever could.”

  “One of my girls is still alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew. All this time.”

  Domingo shrugged his shoulders.

  “You bastard.”

  “You didn’t deserve to know. Anyway, what difference does it make? I don't know what happened to him, or to your daughter.”

  “What happened to my other little girl?”

  “I don't know. You know how it was in those days.”

  “I have to find her.”

  “What fucking difference does it make now?” He swore again and clutched at his hand. “Fuck you. Look what you've done. I can't work like this.”

  Reuben fumbled in his wallet. “Here. Take something. For medical expenses. For your family.”

  “Fuck you and your money. I'd rather choke on dog vomit than take anything from you.”

  “Please, Domingo. Forgive me. For everything.”

  “Never. Not if I live to be a hundred years old.”

  And he was gone.

  ***

  Reuben stood in the middle of his hotel bathroom and stripped off his clothes. God alone knew what the concierge and the other guests in the lobby had thought when he staggered in from the street, blood and dirt all over his suit.

  He showered, slipped on a dressing gown and rang room service. He ordered a bottle of Malbec with his dinner. He needed to get drunk.

  His shoulder was stiff and aching. He still had the ringing in his ears. Now he thought about it, he was lucky Domingo hadn’t killed him.

  Barrington. The name stirred vague memories. He had met the man and his wife a few times in the elevator and the lobby. He remembered he was British, the representative of some English company in Buenos Aires. That was all he remembered. Couldn’t even remember what he looked like.

  He rang down to the concierge and asked for a copy of the telephone directory to be sent up to his room. When it arrived he put it down by the window and went through the private listings for Barrington. There were none.

  He drank the bottle of Malbec and tried desperately tried to think of the name of the company Barrington worked for. He was in publishing or advertising or something. After his solitary dinner he went back into the bathroom and vomited. He stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He was losing weight and there was a faint yellowish tinge to his skin.

  Why are you doing this, Reuben?

  For her - was it Simone, the strong one, the one who cried, or Daniela the quieter, weaker one? He supposed it must be Simone.

  Or was he doing it for himself, because he needed absolution before he died?

  ***

  He sat bolt upright in bed. “It was a publishing company,” he said aloud and fumbled for the bedside lamp. He looked at his watch. Almost three in the morning.

  He stumbled out of bed, found the telephone directory on the table next to the window. He checked the names of all the publishing companies with offices in Buenos Aires. University Publishing. Why did that sound right? He copied down the address and the telephone number.

  He could not sleep. He sat there by the window all night, anxious to get started.

  ***

  The office was on Paraguay and Junin. There was a display window with medical and scientific text books and manuals and a glass door that led to a carpeted reception area. Beyond the reception was a strip-lit office with cheap partitions. A young Argentine in a suit and tie saw him and came out.

  He told him he was looking for an old friend; Stephen Barrington, he had once worked for the company. The man asked him to wait. A few minutes later another man came out of the back office. He was older and dressed in a grey suit and dark blue rugby club tie. He spoke Spanish with a pronounced Home Counties accent.

  When Reuben told him his business he appeared wary. “Barrington, you say? A friend of yours?”

  “That's right. I believe he used to work for you.”

  He looked amused. “Yes, he is still with the company. He's our managing director.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “He’s not here. He’s in England. That’s where he lives?”

  “May I have his address.”

  “Wha
t’s this about?”

  “I’d like to get in contact with him again, that’s all. I haven’t seen him for a long time. We lost touch. I’ve been living in Mexico.”

  “The best thing is to get in contact with our head office.” He brought out a white printed business card; it had the Buenos Aires details on one side, the contact address and phone number for the English office on the other. “You can write to him there, or call, whatever you like. If you're an old friend I'm sure he'll be delighted to hear from you.”

  “Thank you,” Reuben said. “Thank you so much. You don’t know what this means to me.”

  The man raised his eyebrows and went back into the office.

  Reuben tucked the card in his wallet and went back to his hotel. He packed, paid his bill and caught a taxi to the airport.

  ***

  He slept through the entire flight, dreaming of his daughter, a girl with dark eyes, like Gabriella. She was standing on the bridge at Avellanada. It was misty, and the yellow glow of a lamp threw an aura of light behind her head. She held her arms open, beckoning to him. He fell into her embrace, she stroked his hair and they wept.

  Chapter 79

  Rome

  It was winter. Manger scenes, what the Romans called presepi, appeared in the churches and piazzas. The Befana, the Christmas market, had opened in the Piazza Navona, and the square was alive with balloons, and crowded with street stalls selling toys and Christmas decorations.

  Turturro sat in front of his television in his vest and shorts, watching the Premio Roma from the Ippodromo delle Capannelle. Down in the street Romans wound scarves around their faces and shivered inside their quilted jackets, but his apartment was cloyingly hot. A white saucer, full of cigarette ash, lay on the carpet by his feet.

  He swore as the race finished. Not even a place. One afternoon off a week and all I do is lose more money. He tore up his gambling slip and dropped the pieces onto the floor. He wrinkled his nostrils at the stale stink of his own sweat.

  People had been afraid of him once. He deserved better than this. He put his hand down his shorts and massaged his erection. It had been a long time since he had been able to afford a woman. He remembered those days at the barracks at Ezeiza and smiled.

  He had done whatever he had wanted then.

  He thought about Angeli, all the money he had and he was scraping by on nothing. Well, things were going to change. He knew all about Angeli’s dirty little secrets and if he wanted him to keep quiet it was time he rewarded him properly for his loyalty.

  ***

  The light that filtered through the high windows was softened by white, net curtains. Salvatore sometimes wondered if Heaven itself was backlit with the same intense, milky light that illuminated the Under Secretary of State's office. He also speculated on whether Saint Peter also had three telephones on his desk.

  He fidgeted in a devilishly uncomfortable Renaissance chair as his Eminence read the single-spaced typewritten report in his hands.

  It had been prepared for the Secretariat by a concerned official in a bank called the Credito Cattolica Privata, a small and largely inconsequential institution except that its majority shareholder was the Institute for Religious Works.

  Better known as the Vatican Bank.

  The IOR, far from being an institute for religious works, was a major player on the world money markets; it owned 2% of all the shares on the Italian stock exchange and had funded, among other projects, Washington's Watergate complex. It held real estate and stock portfolios valued in billions of dollars. It was also, thanks to a deal done in 1929 between Mussolini and Pope Pius X, immune to Italian banking laws.

  The report Salvatore now held in his hands described how the IOR had recently channelled tens of millions of dollars to a Swiss holding company called Belgrano AG, which was then wired to a branch of the Banco Cattolica de Argentina Overseas (Ltd) in Nassau, whose main shareholders were César Rivera and Archbishop Stanislaw Tomascewski.

  These funds, apparently, were profits derived from the sale of cocaine and armaments; the costs incurred in this trade had been underwritten with loans from the IOR.

  When Don Cardinal Comacho finished reading, he took off his spectacles and placed them carefully on his desk. He rubbed his eyes with the forefinger and thumb of his right hand.

  “It seems those entrusted with the Church’s finances have learned nothing from the scandals of the eighties.” Salvatore knew he was referring to the Banco Ambrosiano scandal, when the Vatican lost over a hundred million dollars investing its money in a crooked bank.

  “The Holy Father must be informed,” Salvatore said.

  Comacho pursed his lips and shrugged.

  “Your Eminence?”

  “I do not know if he is aware of the situation or not. But the stewardship of the IOR is a papal appointment.”

  “But what does Tomascewski want with all this money?”

  “One of his predecessors had a saying: “You cannot run the Church on Hail Mary's.” He thinks what he does is for the best.”

  “With money from drugs, from weapons? It is tainted with blood.”

  “You are naïve, Paolo. It is what makes you a good person. What are you doing in Rome?”

  “What are we to do?”

  Don Enrique Cardinal Comacho considered. He had been appointed to the College of Cardinals by Gianpaolo in 1986, as Prefect of the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes. He had risen to his present rank of Under Secretary of State despite the fact that the Curia suspected him of being a liberal; a terrible stain on his character which was confirmed for them when he made Salvatore his private secretary.

  But he was above else a conciliator and a consummate politician. He only fought those battles he knew he could win.

  “We shall do nothing,” he said. “Because, Paolo, there is nothing we can do.”

  ***

  Angeli took the steps two at a time, leaving the bedlam of the Corso Vittorio Emanuelle behind as he entered the echoing vault of San' Andrea della Valle. The day's last sunlight was filtered through high windows in dusty yellow shafts. He sat down in one of the pews and folded his hands neatly in his lap.

  Cold in here, cold as the grave. Christ stared back at him, his face twisted in agony upon his cross. He knew about agony. How many times had he pinned men to an iron table in similar fashion?

  He had never liked this particular church, it was too gloomy and dark, but he was always drawn to it when the black dog was on his back. He closed his eyes. Puccini had set the first act of Tosca here. This was where the escaped prisoner, Angelotti had come to hide, when the police chief had come in pursuit. He closed his eyes, heard Puccini's soaring arias, heard Cavaradossi's screams from the torture chamber.

  His eyes snapped open. Sweat erupted like cold grease on his forehead. Opera was opera. Life was life.

  He wished only to put away his memories. He was nearly sixty years old and the vista of his own life no longer had limitless horizons. Some things a man did in his younger years grew more troubling as he advanced in years.

  But he had no regrets. He had done his duty in the best interests of his country, had protected the Church and served his God faithfully. Sometimes a man was called on to do those things that a priest could not do. Men like himself. He had protected his country at its time of darkest danger, knew in his heart he was a hero.

  As he was about to leave he passed a statue of the Virgin and child and found himself thinking of the Altman woman again. He pushed away the memory away and hurried out through the heavy door, back into the bright, safe world of light, and traffic, and noise.

  Chapter 80

  A CHILL FINE MORNING. The white Mercedes was parked on the cobbles outside Laura Biagiotti on the Via Borgognona. Angeli sat in the back seat, wrapped against the cold in a David Cenci overcoat, reading L”Osservatore Romano. The rest of that morning's newspapers were folded on the seat beside him. The car's engine was running, the heater on. His driver, Marco, was buffing
the coachwork with a soft cloth.

  Angeli saw Turturro appear through the crowd, wearing a brown leather jacket, his pants too tight for his fat gut. He had the look of a cheap gangster which, Angeli supposed, was exactly what he was. He opened the back door and slid into the seat beside him.

  Angeli recoiled at the smell of sweat and tobacco that accompanied him. There was a web of broken veins on his nose, and a slight but definite tremor in his hands.

  This was the fourth time he had agreed to meet with Turturro. Each time he told him: this is the last time. But Turturro always came back, demanding an even more outrageous sum of money to keep silent.

  He was drunk, he could smell it on his breath.

  “So. How is life treating you, colonel?”

  Angeli did not look up from his newspaper. “I'm not going to discuss anything about my life with shit like you. What do you want?”

  “I need another loan.”

  Angeli put down the newspaper. “How much this time?” He wondered again if Turturro really did have sense enough to have an envelope tucked away somewhere or if it was all an elaborate charade. Was all this really worth it, anyway? There was a time when he didn't give a damn what polite society thought of him. Since he had been in Rome he had grown accustomed to the cocktail parties and the opening nights at the opera and invitations to embassy dinners. Everyone knew he was an arms dealer; that had never been any obstacle between him and polite society. But to be revealed as a torturer and assassin, while no longer indictable, would make him a social pariah, even among those who privately sympathised with him.

  And there was still his daughter to consider.

  “I need one hundred million lire.”

  Angeli laughed and went back to his papers.

  Turturro looked offended. “I have gambling debts.”

  “That is no problem of mine.”

  “I could make it your problem.” A muscle in his cheek jerked. “You've been getting away cheap. You've given me small change so far. Now I want proper payment. Give me what I want and I'll give you the files and we'll have an end to it.”