“It won’t help you.... The network police....”
Padovani stopped his companion’s arm, which seemed about to finish off the job with another blow. Then he made the director look into his eyes, and he spoke as calmly as he could.
“Director, I’m not going back to my country, no matter what. You can’t threaten me with anything worse than that.” He paused. “Do you understand what I said? I won’t surrender.”
After an eternal instant, the director nodded yes. Then Padovani noticed that his heart had been in a runaway gallop for a while. His arm felt prickly. He tried to concentrate on breathing more slowly until the heartbeats slowed down. The hardest part was still ahead.
“What’s your name?” he asked Leidi.
The face of the big man, which was still in the doorway, lit up with a blush. She pointed at herself with her fat hand.
“Me?”
Padovani nodded.
“What’s your name? Leidi, and what else?”
“Leidi,” she said, and she waited a moment before adding, “Leidi Zorzano.”
Padovani turned back to the director.
“Can you confirm that she’s a woman?”
Ringo threatened her with the tranquilizing gun again.
“Tell us. Do what the old man says.”
The woman shrank in her chair and said she would. As the two men disguised as jailers watched her closely, she searched in her computer for Leidi’s file and showed them a photo. It couldn’t be more different from the way she looks now, Padovani thought. He compared the smile of the gorgeous young woman in the picture with the stupefied grimace of the man who was half-collapsed in the doorway.
“Print the content of the file,” Ringo ordered. “And look for the data on her exchange, too. The man who’s in Venezuela.”
The director searched a little more in the FarmaCom database. A photograph of the fat man appeared on the screen. Padovani got closer to read his name: Philip S. Abramov. It didn’t ring a bell.
When the director had finished printing the files, Ringo ordered her to sign and stamp the pages. Then he grabbed the papers from her hands before the Indian could get a look at them and stuck them inside his uniform as if it was food he was stealing from a supermarket.
Padovani was annoyed, but there was no time to argue. He asked the director if she needed to do anything else to justify moving Leidi to the women’s block. She stood up, looked for some business cards on the desk, and put them in her pocket.
“There’s nothing to prepare. I’d already decided to move her this morning.” She looked at Leidi. “I’m very sorry... for the trouble you’ve had. Although I suppose it makes no sense to say so.”
The three exchangers silently watched the director as she crossed the room decisively. Leidi got out of the doorway. Before anyone opened it, Padovani moved and put a hand on the doorknob.
“Just a minute.” He turned to Ringo. “Put the gun away.”
His companion obeyed. He looked at the group again, and when he was done, he opened the door.
“Ladies first.”
The director seemed to hesitate. Leidi pushed her through.
VII
Everyone let them pass. It must have been true that they’d already decided to move Leidi to the women’s block. She got a few curious glances, but no one looked twice at the guards who escorted her. Finally, they got through the doors of the building and were out in the common patio. The sun blinded them for a few seconds until their eyes adjusted. Now what? the Indian asked himself.
Ringo came up to the director to make her change her direction.
“This way is better.”
He pointed to a delivery van. It didn’t seem like a bad idea. Padovani touched Leidi’s arm to show her the new route. Soon they could see the logo on the side of the van: “Northern Group. Excellent meat.” Padovani stopped cold. He saw movement in the driver’s cab. It wasn’t empty. The van driver got out without looking at them, as if they didn’t exist, and ran to open the door of the cargo compartment for them.
The blond hair on the Indian’s skin stood up. He looked at Ringo. One sight of his face and he knew that he’d been planning the rest of the escape without him.
“You go inside, with her.” Ringo pointed at the director. “I’ll go up front.”
The Indian looked around. The patio was empty. The guards at the doors didn’t seem to be paying attention unless they had eyes on the backs of their heads. He’d need to take advantage of the situation to escape, and he’d have time later to worry about Ringo’s secret plans.
He grabbed the director by the arm and made her get into the cargo compartment. Then he helped Leidi, and got in behind her. He closed it from inside and hit the wall of the driver’s cab a couple of times. The van started right up.
After getting as comfortable as he could on the floor, Padovani took out the pistol.
“Don’t think about yelling.”
The director lowered her head. The Indian looked around the compartment. Not one trace of dead cows. Leidi had circles of sweat under her armpits and breathed with her mouth open as her chest heaved. None of them seemed like “excellent meat” but they might be going to the slaughterhouse anyway.
The van stopped. A muffled conversation could be heard. The van started again. Traffic noise. They must have left the center. Padovani noticed that his hand hurt because he was holding the gun so tightly. The director raised her eyes.
“We’re almost there. Don’t worry.”
He congratulated himself deep down because he had sounded convincing, even though he himself was nervous. His heart began to jump out of his chest. He breathed deep and tried to relax. They stayed quiet for the rest of the trip until the van stopped again. They heard the doors of the driver’s compartment open and shut.
Padovani was intent on the sounds and the director caught him by surprise. She leaped on him. But she only wanted to say something.
“I understand what you’re trying to do, but it’s a mistake.... Ringo isn’t who you think he is. His enemy is FarmaCom, and what happens to you doesn’t matter to him. Go back to the center and we’ll talk. There won’t be any reprisals.”
The woman slipped a card into the pocket of his uniform. Padovani had no time to react. He looked at Leidi. She’d seen everything, including the card. The door of the compartment opened and Ringo’s smiling face looked in. He was dressed in a suit now, not a jailer’s uniform. He threw a pile of clothing inside.
“We’ll go on foot now, old man. Put this on.”
If anything was clear, the Indian thought, it was that Ringo didn’t need his help to escape from the nursery. So he needed something else from him, and Padovani began to suspect what it might be.
He took the card from his pocket and touched it. A nanoscopic tracker could have been hidden in the fine cardboard. These days they could be anywhere. If that were true, the director’s words and suggestion could only be a trap, a ruse to make him doubt his companion. He did what he thought most prudent: he paused a second to read the telephone number, then ripped up the card and threw away the pieces.
“I’ll do anything before going back to my country.”
He hopped that Ringo and the woman would each interpret the message differently.
VIII
The van driver gave Ringo a mobile phone and some instructions. Padovani couldn’t hear the words clearly but the driver seemed to want to communicate the urgency of something. Ringo seemed to take it as a joke, as if he wasn’t in a hurry.
He took the papers the director had signed out of the jacket and showed them to the driver, who wanted to read them, but Ringo wouldn’t let them go. He just let the other man look at them briefly, then put them back into his jacket.
After a little more discussion, the driver got back into the vehicle. The Northern Group van sped away with the director as the only cargo. Padovani thought it best not to ask where they were taking her. He glanced at both sides of the street. They were in
a subdivision of two-story homes surrounded by yards. He didn’t see a soul.
The clothing Ringo had given him were his size. He put the tranquilizer gun in the back of his waistband.
“Inside the jacket you have some cash,” Ringo told him. “You need more? I can get it.”
The Indian found a wad of hundred-euro bills in an interior pocket. He thought about the yellow Parcheesi pieces. Ringo had everything planned, and it wasn’t going to be easy to give him the slip. He weighed the wad, pretended to count it, and then said it would be enough. He’d need a lot less to find Terry. But it was nice to have extra for other expenses.
Leidi also seemed comfortable in her new clothes, a suit made to measure including a double-breasted jacket with which she could have easily gotten a role in a B-movie about the Mafia. Padovani held out his hand and tried to repeat the same goodbye that the black Vladimiro had given him.
“Good luck.”
Leidi didn’t bother to return the gesture. Ringo was the one that spoke.
“What’s up?”
Padovani didn’t want to find out if the bulge that Ringo’s jacket hid was more dangerous than the guard’s tranquilizer gun. But you can’t always get what you want. He took a quick look behind him. The end of the street was very far away.
“Nothing. We can separate here. I hope you have a lot of luck.”
“What’s the hurry?” Ringo smiled. “Do you have something to do?”
The Indian sized up the two men in front of him again. Really, Leidi was a woman —if the file that the had seen in the director’s office wasn’t a lie— but in any case she was still pretty fat. But Ringo was armed. Padovani decided to return the smile and answer with a question.
“Are you tell....”
Ringo had the gun out before the last syllable left his mouth, came up to him and took the guard’s gun. Then he went back to Leidi and gave it to her. Both of them aimed at him.
“I suggest we go see this friend of yours that you told me about.”
Padovani clenched his fists. He had known a lot of members of armed organizations of Marxist inspiration or aesthetics who came from all parts of the globe to train in his country in the old revolutionary times. The friend Ringo referred to was a contact from that time who was now calling himself Terry. Before signing the contract with FarmaCom, he’d sent him a message to see if, when the moment came, he could help him disappear in his new body without leaving a trace that Europol could follow. He didn’t know how deep Terry was still involved with Sink-Tooth, but he had to take that risk.
The answer took a month to come: “If you manage to escape from the nursery, look for me.” It came accompanied by the instructions to find him. Terry wouldn’t have given them to just anyone. That must be the only reason Ringo needed him. To get to Terry.
“Don’t worry about that,” Ringo continued. “We know who your friend is, his relationship with revolutionary groups.... We’re on the same side. We only want to pass on some information.”
“What about?”
Ringo and Leidi looked at each other for a second. If they exchanged some sort of gesture, Padovani didn’t see it.
“Let’s just say your friend will be delighted to meet Leidi. You’ll find out when we see him.”
Padovani nodded. That might or might not be true, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to let himself be used twice.
“Okay.”
He explained to Ringo that, to meet Terry, first they had to go to a big park named something like “El Respiro.”
“That would be ‘El Retiro,’ old man.”
The Indian noticed that Ringo knew the city. They were pretty far away to get there on foot, but he didn’t say anything. He just walked ahead of them obediently, stopping at every corner to ask new directions from Ringo. They went at a slow pace. If the driver had wanted Ringo to hurry, it didn’t seem to matter. Leidi panted from the effort to move her client’s lumbering body. Padovani felt irregular heartbeats in his chest again, but since they weren’t moving fast, he didn’t feel tired.
When they finally saw the park fence, Ringo asked where they should enter, and he stopped to think. He pointed out an underground passage that went under the street and came out in the park. Ringo ordered him to go walk slowly, warning him with a gesture about what was under his jacket.
They entered the underground passage. It smelled of urine. Padovani hesitated. It could be the last chance to run. He imagined running down the tunnel toward the light and getting an easy shot in the back. It’s difficult to speculate when your life is on the line. He decided to wait a little longer. They left the tunnel.
Padovani stayed a few steps ahead of the others, and right away he noticed a group at a bench. Three were sitting down and the rest were standing around it. They were black, probably illegal sub-Saharans, and they wore sunglasses even though they were under the shade of an enormous willow. One of the seated men made a gesture, rubbing his fingers with his thumb. Padovani interpreted that as an offer of drugs. He nodded slightly, hoping that Ringo wouldn’t notice.
The black man got up from the bench and walked slowly toward him. Padovani turned and studied the situation. Leidi was gasping for air with her mouth open, leaning on the wall of the passage. She was out of combat. The Indian felt a twinge in his chest. His pulse was speeding up.
“I’m going to talk with the black guy,” he whispered to Ringo. “He’ll take us to Terry. Watch out, just in case.”
Ringo nodded. He seemed to be paying full attention to the drug dealer who was approaching and to his companions who were watching from the bench. Padovani smiled at the black man and offered him his hand. When the other man took it, Padovani jerked it hard.
“You son of a bitch!” he shouted. “You sold me shit!”
He tangled his leg between the drug dealer’s and pushed him until he fell with him. They rolled around on the sand together, holding each other. The other man was stronger. Padovani couldn’t last much longer and covered his face to avoid being hit. He felt himself being picked up and punched in the stomach. Ringo took out his gun and began to shout, “Let me go!” while he pointed the gun at one of them, then another. Padovani took the opportunity to shout himself.
“Police!”
The black men let him go and everyone, including him, began to run toward the bench. The Indian jumped over it to hide in the trees as fast as he could. The drug dealers were ahead of him. He tried to follow them because he thought they were headed toward an exit. They had to be used to running from the police. But they were faster, and he lost them. He paused in a clearing next to the park fence. He looked back and didn’t see Ringo, but he seemed to hear Leidi’s booming voice.
He took off his jacket, and protecting his hands with the cloth, he climbed the bars of the fence. His chest was going to explode. With great effort he rolled the jacket over the lance points on top of the fence so he wouldn’t stab himself as he went over. He hung from the other side and jumped to the street.
He remained squatting, hidden behind the low wall at the base of the fence, trying to catch his breath and let his head clear. The palpitations in his chest seemed more and more irregular.
He began to walk toward the Puerta de Alcalá in shirt sleeves. It was still hard to breathe but he couldn’t wait any longer. No one was following him. He thought about grabbing a taxi parked near Cibeles, and he realized that he had forgotten the money inside the jacket hanging on the fence.
“Shit.”
He paused a moment to think. He didn’t need that much money. He could get by without the wad of bills. It really wouldn’t be hard to steal a tourist’s wallet —one of those “antiquated analog travelers who still used airplanes,” according to the contemptuous terminology of the FarmaCom advertisements— in the Puerta del Sol. But he didn’t want to try his luck and get stopped by the police.
He looked again at the stretch of street behind him. He didn’t see Ringo or Leidi anywhere. They were probably searching for
him inside the park. If he was careful, he could go back without being seen and get his jacket. He decided to try it, at least, with all his senses alert and his reflexes ready to run. He’d never been faster than a bullet, but he had gotten old with a biography like his, and that had to mean something.
He turned around and hid behind a building so he could see the place where he had escaped from Retiro without being seen. He stuck close to the wall and put his head out around the corner. A woman who was going past walking her dog was startled to see him. But that didn’t bother Padovani: what did was seeing Ringo inside the park right under his jacket. He hid again fast.
He hasn’t seen me, he thought. He leaned his head out again, the minimum possible to be able to scrutinize the enemy. Ringo was talking on the same mobile phone the Northern Group driver had given him. He was gesturing a lot and sometimes pointed at the jacket, which was still rolled up on the lance points. Even from far away Padovani could see his anger. On the other hand, it was impossible to guess how Leidi felt, waiting at his side, because she did nothing besides wipe the sweat from her face. But then she fell face down on the ground.
“Fuck.”
A sudden faint. Padovani watched Ringo’s reaction, which was lightning fast. The little wall at the fence didn’t let him see well, but Ringo appeared to be trying to reanimate Leidi on the ground. Maybe mouth to mouth resuscitation, maybe heart massage, or both. Whatever it was, after a minute, Leidi stood up again with his help. Then the big man began to hit Ringo.
The Indian shuddered. He felt the same confusion that he saw on Ringo’s face. Leidi had grabbed him by the neck and was trying to throw him on the ground. What the hell was happening? A horrible idea struck Padovani: the fat body didn’t contain Leidi anymore. How? When had she taken the vacating pill? Who’d given it to her? He reviewed the last few hours, terrified. He was sure he hadn’t eaten or drunk anything.
Ringo escaped Leidi’s arms —or whoever’s they were— and began to run away. The big man must have immediately understood that he couldn’t catch him because he didn’t even try. Padovani saw him holding himself up on the fence. With every breath, his body trembled. When he finally recovered his breath, he felt through his clothing until he found the tranquilizing gun. Holding it, he followed Ringo. The jacket with the money was in the same place. The Indian waited a little longer in case one of the two returned. No one appeared.
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