by Kim Ekemar
Back at his office the next day, he filled out a request to the police department’s laboratory. In it, he falsely referenced a case that he was presently working on. He added a blood sample he had taken from himself to those of his parents. Four days later, the result was returned to him. The statement that came with it was blunt. The match between his blood sample and the other samples submitted was negative. In other words, the possibility that they were closely related was non-existent.
Ricardo felt as if his world had fallen apart. His identity was different from the one he had been led to believe while growing up. Without telling anyone about his discovery, he decided to contact the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo organisation.
After the initial discussions, he supplied them with another blood sample that in turn was submitted to the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. A week later, Ricardo was informed that in their archives they had found a 98.9 per cent match in a 79-year-old lady by the name of Angelina Arriaga.
In March 2014, he met with a biological relative for the first time. After the initial joy of their reunion, his paternal grandmother told him what had happened during the years surrounding his birth.
“Guillermo – that is, my son and your father – as you see him in this picture here, was an impetuous young man who believed in the freedom of expression. He opposed the Videla regime and soon became one of the opposition’s leaders. Your mother Alejandra joined him and the movement, until she became pregnant with you. When she was six months pregnant, the secret police knocked down the door to their home and both were carried away. Your father was tortured and then dragged from the headquarters of the secret police to the Paraná River, where some fishermen found him floating tied with a rope and shot in the neck.”
There were tears in her eyes.
“After he had been identified, I buried him with an oath to carry on his work to the best of my ability.”
“What about my mother?”
“She remained in the prison where they kept women until some time after they had given birth. They allowed her to nurse you for half a year, then she disappeared to never be heard of again. With the years, the secret police became increasingly wary about international opinion and adopted additional precautions to improve the methods to remove any traces of those they killed. The most likely scenario is that, like so many others, your mother was flown in a small airplane to be thrown far from shore into the Atlantic.”
There had been more explanations and discussion concerning his biological parents. His grandmother Angelina also informed him that he had three surviving siblings – two cousins on his mother’s side and one on his father’s side. The first ones lived in the US and Spain, respectively, and the third one, Gabriela, had ten years earlier married a wealthy businessman who owned two hotels in Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego. His grandmother gave him Gabriela’s phone number after promising to make her aware of the joyous news that Alejandra and Guillermo’s lost child had reappeared.
When Ricardo finally picked up his courage and called her, Gabriela was exhilarated to hear his voice. He agreed to her suggestion that they should meet, and the following weekend she got on a flight to Buenos Aires. They immediately took a mutual liking to each other, and she insisted that he must come and visit her and her husband in Ushuaia in the near future. Evasive, he promised to do so as soon as his workload would permit it – he was running various police investigations that for the moment required his attention. He was fond of his newly discovered cousin, but he didn’t find the prospect of travelling to Ushuaia too exciting.
They called each other regularly over the coming months, and each time Gabriela repeated her invitation for him and his girlfriend Carolina to visit them.
Since his workload for the police really wasn’t all that demanding, Ricardo had by now begun the arduous task of planning how to criminally charge Fernando Rivas for systematically robbing babies from their mothers. He was assisted by his grandmother and her organisation in pursuing this goal. Three other cases had been puzzled together by the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and there was proof of at least five other adoptions suspected to have been orchestrated by Fernando Rivas. The grandmothers had urged Ricardo not to confront Rivas, since this could lead to unwanted, pre-emptive actions on his part. On the now increasingly rare occasions that he met with the man who had posed as his father all his life, Ricardo managed to conduct himself as usual, even smiling when required to. He repeatedly blamed excessive work on the difficulty to meet and the need to cancel dinner dates or fishing trips. Ricardo also pointed out to Rivas that his advice to him at the age of twenty had been right – he had encountered unexpected opportunities in his work as a police officer.
In January 2015, the prosecutor, who had been given the case that Ricardo had put together, charged Fernando Rivas. Rivas was taken completely by surprise, and repeatedly tried to contact Ricardo. Ricardo had anticipated this by cancelling his home phone line, changing his mobile phone number and giving strict orders to his secretary at work not to allow any calls from Rivas. It worked. Rivas stopped trying to contact him two months later, since he now understood his present situation perfectly. During this time, with the help of his grandmother, Ricardo submitted a request to the authorities to change his surname from Rivas to Arriaga.
*
Later, Ricardo understood that Fernando Rivas had pulled strings with old acquaintances from his government days and greased a lot of hands, including one that belonged to the judge in the case. On September 15, 2017, the verdict found Rivas guilty of having falsified Ricardo’s birth certificate but innocent on the charges of having kidnapped small children from their mothers. Due to his advanced age of 77, he was sentenced to house arrest for three months.
Ricardo was devastated that such impunity existed, as was his grandmother. Carolina, ever-conscious about his well-being despite their recent separation, noticed how depressed Ricardo had become after the verdict had led to Fernando Rivas’s near acquittal. She found him disinterested, growing a beard for the first time since she’d known him and being late for work. Carolina decided he needed a break from his everyday life to enable him to return to his former self.
“Ricardo, why don’t you take a couple of weeks off? Go to Chile, you know, and take that cruise around Cape Horn that your cousin spoke so highly of?” she confronted him one day as he sat slumped in front of his television set with a bored look and a bottle of beer. “The cruise ends in Ushuaia, which will allow you to finally spend time with Gabriela, as you so often have promised her.”
They discussed it on and off for a couple of days, she animatedly and he disinterestedly, until he finally gave in. Carolina checked the availability with a travel agency, who told her that – since the season for cruises was just about to begin – there would be no problem to get him a cabin on board Stella Australis during the first week in October. She arranged payment for the cruise and in return got an itinerary that she enthusiastically did her best to share with Ricardo.
CHAPTER 2
Stella Australis
After spending two days of sightseeing in Santiago de Chile, Ricardo arrived in Punta Arenas by air. Contrary to the sunny capital, Punta Arenas was suffering from a leaden sky and a promise of rain and perhaps snow. A persistent breeze made his bones shudder even though he had come dressed for the climate. Ricardo began to wish he hadn’t agreed to Carolina’s suggestion to take a vacation in this remote place.
Since the ship wasn’t going to sail until six o’clock in the evening, he used the first part of the afternoon to aimlessly wander through the town. Occasionally, he stepped inside some souvenir shop or a café to chase the cold away. At three o’clock, he returned to the building on the dock where he had left his luggage. Like all other passengers, Ricardo was asked to fill out the necessary paperwork since the ship was going to travel from one country to another. He was also advised that he should hand over his passport to the hostess, who would meet the passengers when they embarked.
As instructed, he labelled his two bags with the cabin number he had been allotted and then went through the rather lax local migration point of exit. The barn-like building was not much of a shelter from the cold, until the passengers eventually were allowed to walk the last distance and enter the ship. Once they were on board, the passengers – close to a hundred or so, in Ricardo’s estimate – patiently queued to meet the hostess to receive the keys to their cabins.
The hostess, smartly dressed in a uniform, was a good-looking woman in her early thirties with a ready smile that showed off her dimples. She professionally – although somewhat glibly, Ricardo noted – addressed each of the arriving guests with a prepared personal comment, besides demanding their passports with the promise that these would be returned once they had cleared immigration in Ushuaia.
“Welcome, Mister Carbonara, I understand that you’re visiting us from Mendoza with your family. You’re in three consecutive cabins on the Yamana deck with numbers two fifteen, two seventeen and two nineteen.”
“Thanks, miss, we are certainly looking forward to this cruise, especially since one of my sons has a keen interest in birdwatching.”
“It’s a pleasure to have you on board, Missis Tayran and Mister Murad. I’m sure you will find the weather on this cruise quite different from what you are used to with living next to the Mediterranean Sea. You will be in cabin four twenty-six on the Cape Horn deck.”
“Yes, yes, you know, who wants to suffer the heat all year round. It’s probably only tourists from cold and wet places like Punta Arenas, the UK and Scandinavia who appreciate the Mediterranean weather so much that charter flights were invented for them.”
“I’m so happy to see you back with us again, Mister Mohraki, preferring to vacation with us again – and this time in your granddaughter’s company. But, from the cane and the limp I gather you must have hurt yourself since your last cruise with us …?”
“I was in a traffic accident and injured my knee, but I assure you – although it’s taking longer than I expected, I’m improving every day. I really enjoyed my previous trip with you, and now I have Leila to look after me.”
Mohraki looked appreciatively at his teenage granddaughter who, lugging a large backpack, showed a perfunctory smile while continuing to chew gum.
“You have the superior accommodation that you requested on the Cape Horn deck, which is cabin four twenty-one.”
“Thank you, you’re very kind.”
“Mister and Missis Bright, I hope you’re as excited about this cruise as we are! You have –”
“Oh, we’ve planned for this trip for months, dear”, Mr Bright replied. “You could almost say that, for us, it’s like starting a new life.”
“I’m so sorry, Missis Bright, please put out that cigarette. Smoking on board is only allowed in the exterior areas.”
“Lo siento, no era mi intención desobedecer sus reglas.”
“I’m impressed, you really speak excellent Spanish! Rest assured that we will do our best to live up to your expectations. You have cabin three twenty-six on the deck above us.”
“Thanks, and perhaps we’ll see you at the bar later today?”
“There’s a briefing at four o’clock that you mustn’t miss.”
“We’ll be there, count on it.”
“Muchas gracias por sus atenciones”, Mrs Bright chimed in.
The man in front of Ricardo was carrying a large designer camera bag from which a tripod was sticking out. Over his shoulder hung a Canon camera fitted with an impressive telescopic lens. “Welcome, Mister Crenshaw, I notice that you’re a keen photographer. I can assure you that you’ll get lots of opportunities to take stunning pictures.”
“Yes, yes”, Crenshaw mumbled, stroking his unkempt hair, “I’m sure there will be.”
“Here’s the key to superior cabin number four twenty-two. That’s opposite to Mister Mohraki, so just follow his lead to take you there.”
Crenshaw muttered something inaudible and left.
“Please feel welcome on board, Mister Arriaga. It certainly inspires a feeling of safety when one is aware that a law enforcement officer will be with us. Your cabin is number three fourteen on the deck above us, which is called Tierra del Fuego.”
Ricardo wondered how she had learnt that he was a policeman and why she had announced this as loudly as the rest of the news about the other passengers. Was it a not-too-subtle way of getting the people on board to get to know one another? Ricardo wondered, as he left her to find his cabin.
*
Stella Australis left Punta Arenas against a black horizon that continued to threaten rain. The city soon disappeared in the foggy weather as the ship sailed southwards, crossing the Strait of Magellan towards the Whiteside Canal. The passengers received a briefing about the coming days’ activities and the security measures they should obey when leaving the ship by rubber dinghies – called Zodiacs, having adopted the name of their manufacturer – for excursions ashore.
Inquisitive by nature, Ricardo took the opportunity to inspect the ship after the briefing was over. It had four and a half decks accessible to the passengers, and one further below where some of the crew had their cabins next to the engine room. The uppermost deck, Darwin, was dedicated to a gym and the largest of the lounges, the Darwin Lounge, which came with a viewing balcony overlooking the ship’s bow. This was also where the six Zodiacs were stored when not in use. Below, on the Cabo de Hornos deck, was the bridge from where the ship was piloted. On the same deck, at the opposite end of the bridge, was the mid-sized Sky Lounge. In between, the premium cabins with the best views could be found.
The deck below this deck was called Tierra del Fuego, which, besides the passenger cabins, merely enjoyed the small Yamana Lounge with a balcony located underneath the bridge. The Magallanes deck that followed further below had more cabins. At the centre of this deck was the reception area and a small souvenir shop.
As dark fell, dinner that evening was served in the Patagonia dining room beneath the Magallanes deck. When Ricardo entered the dining room, he happened to observe how the Lebanese, whose name he later learnt to be Antanias Murad, in a discreet gesture placed a wad of dollar bills into the hand of one of the waiters. How curious, Ricardo thought, why would you pay a waiter on the first day on a cruise where everything, including food and drink, has already been paid for?
Ricardo found himself seated with Brent Crenshaw at a table for two. To his left, the American couple, Charlie and Evelyn Bright, had been assigned a table that they shared with the Frenchman Mohraki and his granddaughter. At the table to his right, an Italian couple kept laughing a lot together with some people from Mexico. Beyond them, Antanias Murad and his companion Tayran were trying to get a conversation going with a family of five Argentinians. Ferah wore a dress with a provocative cleavage that Ricardo felt was close to obscene, especially on a cruise ship with several children present. There were additional tables with four, six or eight passengers seated. The dining room was being served by four waiters who began with offers of various kinds of wine and a choice of appetisers and main courses.
The American at the nearby table, who immediately had introduced himself as “Charlie, the fastest salesman in the Midwest”, soon proved to be a tiresome dinner companion with his non-stop small talk laced with self-aggrandisement. His wife Evelyn, a mousy woman whose hair tinted red had grown grey roots for weeks, was his opposite. When repeatedly asked by her husband to confirm that what he had just said was the unfailing truth, she did so speaking in monosyllables.
“So, your husband is a successful businessman”, Ricardo heard the Frenchman Mohraki ask Evelyn in surprisingly good English while the waiter, who had introduced himself as Patricio, placed steaming plates of fish and vegetables in front of him and Brent. “May I ask what kind of work you yourself do?”
Evelyn hesitated a little before she spoke up, Ricardo noticed, perhaps to see if her husband would answer for her.
“I’ve worked as an inte
rpreter for the UN for many years”, she offered, “although at present I’m unemployed.”
“That sounds impressive”, Mohraki told her. “What languages do you translate into English?”
“Foremost Arabic”, was her reluctant reply. “Also Russian, French, Spanish, Romanian and some Slavic languages, although I need to brush up on the latter.”
From this moment on, Ricardo couldn’t hear more of the conversation, since Crenshaw broke the silence at their own table.
“The fish is delicious”, he claimed. “I’m Brent Crenshaw, by the way.”
“Cold ocean waters make both the fish and the crustaceans tastier”, Ricardo countered. “At least that’s what my experience has taught me. And my name is Ricardo Arriaga.”
Ricardo studied his table companion with his usual perceptive eye for detail. Not very keen on talking. Thin face, eyes that dart back and forth; something seems to be bothering him. His appearance is scruffy, and he’s in urgent need of a haircut. The sweater he’s wearing isn’t particularly clean. His outward appearance doesn’t check with his very posh upper-class accent. Ricardo’s observation was accurate. Crenshaw was far from talkative, and his mind seemed to be elsewhere. They exchanged occasional polite phrases about the food and everyday matters, until the dinner was over.
Back in his cabin, Ricardo prepared himself for the night. Before closing the curtains and getting into bed, he turned off the lights and looked outside. The dark was absolute. There were no lights to be seen on the shores. In his mind’s eye, Ricardo imagined how the ship travelled as a lonely speck in the fiords surrounded by invisible, shifting glaciers.
CHAPTER 3