by Joe Gannon
Epimenio seemed to study the grain in the floorboards. Connelly was unconvinced.
“Epimenio?”
“There was a place, planes came and went.”
“An airstrip?”
“Sí, don Mateo.”
“You know where it is?”
Ajax switched to English. “He and Enrique found it. Stumbled on it while hunting a jaguar.”
Ajax could sense the wheels turning in Connelly’s mind.
“You mean maybe the Contra did kill him?”
“Or the CIA.”
“What?”
Ajax switched back to Spanish. “Epimenio says he and Enrique heard the men at the airstrip talking. Enrique identified their accents as Cuban. And you know Miami Cubans are the CIA’s favorites for black-bag jobs.”
Matthew studied Epimenio for a moment. “Is that true?”
“Sí, don Mateo. Don Enrique was very upset. Angry. He made me swear to tell no one, which was strange.”
“Why?”
“He had never made me swear to keep anything from doña Gloria.”
Ajax watched Matthew take it in, slowly buying it. “Look, Connelly, do you think the Contra run their war without air supply? Do you know how long it takes to pack ammo in from Honduras?”
“I’m not arguing that, I’ve heard planes when on patrol with the army. There have been reports out of Washington about air resupply, a reporter in Miami even identified the airline, an old CIA front. Which would also explain the Cubans out here. But you’re suggesting Enrique found an airstrip and the CIA killed him for it? CIA assassins operating in Managua?”
“Those putos in Washington deny the CIA is involved at all. But let’s say a good citizen stumbles on an illegal clandestine airstrip, brings proof to Managua just before the senators arrive where they are met with proof of their lies, in whose interest would it be to prevent that?”
Matthew looked to Amelia for help. “You buying this?”
She waved her hands at them both. “He ran this down to me already. I certainly don’t believe my government is killing ‘good citizens,’ but if I was a cop I’d follow the lead if only to disprove it.”
Matthew raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean he ran this down to you already?”
“I explained it to her earlier when I asked for the letter.”
“When earlier? It’s dawn.”
“Earlier! Stay focused.”
“Fine. Good. So then why didn’t they kill Enrique here?”
“Maybe they missed him, maybe he left for Managua before they could get him.”
“So, what? A hit squad the CIA keeps on retainer killed him?”
“I don’t know, but the CIA just joined the list of suspects and we are going to find the local Contra commander and we are going to…”
“What, interrogate him?”
“Interview him. I’ll give you the questions. You ask them. I’ll watch to see if he’s telling the truth. You said you wanted to help solve this didn’t you? Well, this is how it’s done. Now you’re either in or out.”
Connelly shook his head no, but Ajax was sure he meant yes. The journalist could not resist.
“How will we explain your being with me?”
“I’m the sherpa. Pack your rucksack with unnecessary things, the Reds and soap, but your coffee and toiletries especially. I’ll carry it, make me look like your pack mule when we find them.”
“When they find us.”
“Fine, when they find us. But it’ll make me look like a servant, set up the right dynamic. I can roll my eyes and make comments behind your back. The Contras are mostly campesinos, they respond to that. Throw suspicion off me.”
Matthew turned on Amelia.
“What’re you going to do?”
“What I’m here for. Father Jerome will get his Jeep fixed. We’ll go meet the family Tony’s going to take home with him. I’ll wait two days. If you’re not back I’ll see you in Managua.”
“Why would you help us like this?” Matthew waved at Ajax. “Why help him? He hates gringos, you know.”
“I don’t care what Captain Montoya likes. I sat up with Gloria a long time last night. Her husband was a good man. Maybe it’s a girl thing, I don’t know. Or maybe I’m just the kind of gringa idiot who believes in truth and justice as the American way.”
Goddamn, Ajax thought, this chica is good! She’d said it just as they’d rehearsed it. He’d find the Contra all right, and he’d get his answers. And he’d get back in time to spend one more night with her.
14
Lieutenant Gladys Darío softly tapped her cowboy boots like a metronome on the dark tiled floor. Left right left right left right left. They’d done marching drill at the academy and she’d always enjoyed it. Left right left right left right left.
Somehow the pleasing monotony of it helped clear her mind, focused it as she took inventory of what she was prepared to defend, and what to surrender. For that had to be why she was here.
Comandante Malhora sat in a leather swivel chair the color of blood. He held a stout cigar in the chubby fingers of one hand as he flipped through the file on his desk with the other. The file sat in a small pool of bright light, like a suspect being interrogated in an old movie. At one edge of that pool of light sat the visitor, staring at a worn book with a marbled cover in his lap. Neither had looked at her since she came into the room. Escorted in, she corrected. The Conquistadores—now crowding the narrow straight-backed chair she’d been led to at the outer reaches of the light—had come into the Disco Vaquero as if on a whim. Uniformed and armed. They had strolled around the room, crisscrossed the dance floor like they didn’t know what Ladies Nite meant. They had come upon her as if by accident, all smiles and Compañera!
Then they’d invited her to a chat with the Boss. They’d even tried to wedge her between them in the Land Cruiser, but she’d made a deft move and hopped in the back. Damned if I’ll ride the bitch seat between you two.
She’d never been to Casa Cincuenta before, but she knew this windowless, underground box was not the Comandante’s office, but a room with another purpose.
But what purpose?
Through the gloom, she peered at the title in the visitor’s lap, Antigone.
“I’m trying to read it in the original Greek.” The visitor seemed almost apologetic about it. “Do you know the story, Lieutenant?”
“Yes…”
“Poor girl. Caught between the rock and the hard place the Greeks did so well. Her brothers led opposing sides in a civil war in Thebes. The one who lost was declared an enemy of the state and denied proper burial rites, so that his soul would have to wander forever. Antigone had to choose between her duty to the state, her king, and her duty to her brother.”
The visitor looked down at his book, which, Gladys was pretty sure, was not in any kind of Greek at all.
“I’m sure she chose duty to her king,” Malhora said. He had finally deigned to look up. “Aren’t you, Lieutenant?”
“Actually, Comandante”—the visitor adopted an air of fascination, as if he’d just discovered a new star—“she snuck outside the city walls one night and sprinkled some dirt on her brother’s body, just a handful of dust to complete the rites so his soul could rest in peace.”
“Then she was a traitor.”
“And she paid with her life.”
“Good. But we’re not here to discuss the Greeks, are we, Lieutenant?”
Why she was there was still obscure, like the corners of the room itself.
“No, Comandante.”
“Compañero.”
“Compañero.”
“Why do the Contra leaders all live in Miami, do you suppose?”
Malhora had seemed to ask no one in particular, so Gladys stayed silent. He took a long drag on his cigar and let the smoke drift gently into the space between them. It took an interminable time to encircle her face.
“Do you think the weather reminds them of home, Lieutenant?”
&nb
sp; “I don’t know.”
“I know Miami. We used to smuggle guns through there.”
He addressed the last part to the visitor, who nodded without committing to an answer.
“It did remind me of home, of Managua,” Malhora said. “Just the weather, though. And just enough to remind me how much I missed home. I suppose exile is a lonely thing. Even for traitors.”
The Comandante was silent for a while. The others, the small room, maybe the entire city had gone silent. It was not lost on Gladys that of the words spoken so far, traitor had come up twice, illuminating, if not the room, at least the corners of the conversation.
“Have you been to Miami, Lieutenant?”
“When I was a child, with my family.”
“But not since the Triumph?”
“No.”
“But your family all live there?”
“Yes.”
“They don’t ever come home? Don’t ever get lonely for the patria?”
“My sister has visited.”
Malhora went casually back to the file. “Yes, three times since 1979, but not for two years now. She brought you gifts, this sister…” He looked back at the file. “Teresa? Presents?” Malhora gestured to Gladys’s outfit. “Clothes?”
“Yes, Comandante.” He didn’t correct her that time. Gladys understood now the direction of the interrogation, if not the final destination: Bring the rich girl in, the bourgeois, sweat her, scare her, crack her.
Malhora took his time rolling the ash off his cigar. “Well, you might have gone to Miami with them, so the revolution is lucky to have you, compañera.” He looked at the file again. “Graduated the American Nicaraguan School, very fancy. Prestigious. Joined the Sandinista Youth in 1979. July the 20th.” He looked up at her. “The day after the Triumph, very good!” He went back to his file. “A degree in political science from the UCA. Joined the Frente in 1985. Volunteered for the policía. First in your class at the academy in Havana.”
“Yes.”
“And then an assignment in homicide, with Ajax Montoya.”
“I went where assigned, Comandante.”
“Compañero.”
“Compañero.”
“Where is Captain Montoya?”
“I don’t know.”
Malhora closed Gladys’s file. She steadied herself for an onslaught, sure Ajax’s location was what Malhora most wanted. She was glad she didn’t know, not really. But instead, Malhora only nodded, then drew three photographs from under her file and spread them out for her to see—morgue shots of the Hunchback, the Gypsy, and the Stolen Car King.
“It is true Captain Montoya was the last person to see these three men alive?”
Puta.
There it is, she thought. The last person to see these three men alive could only break one way.
It was all part of the investigation, Gladys almost blurted. But another voice cut her off: Shut up, idiota. This is not a conversation. It’s an ambush. Her feet went still. The room was so small. So full of these men. They filled it with their bodies, their cigar smoke, with their authority. The Conquistadores pressed so close their hips touched her shoulders.
“No,” she said, and in more ways than one.
“‘No’?”
“The last person to see these men alive was their killer—or killers.” She rocked side to side so her shoulders bumped the Conquistadores. “You’re crowding me.” They shuffled a half step away—it was all the space she needed.
“So you’re saying…” Malhora began.
“No, you’re saying. And it’s absurd, outrageous to imply Ajax has anything to do with these murders other than investigate them.” She stood up so fast Malhora almost flinched. “I would like our conversation to be finished now.”
Malhora gestured to the visitor: “And I think you’d better consider the fate of our friend’s little Greek girl, compañera.”
“Lieutenant. She dies. But the King’s son was in love with her, so he kills himself, which causes his mother, the King’s wife, to go mad and kill herself. The people turn their backs on him, as do the gods. And because the King wouldn’t bend, he broke.”
She brushed past whichever Conquistador was between her and the door, but at a total loss what she’d do if that door was locked. It wasn’t.
The four men sat in silence a moment, some stunned, at least one awed.
“Well,” the visitor finally said. “She seems more learned than we thought.”
15
1.
If the world run by men was based on the size of their dicks, Ajax thought, then Ronald Reagan had an enormous hard-on for Nicaragua. A vast, colossal, gargantuan boner he wanted to ram into every orifice of the young revolution’s body.
The man did not walk softly, and the Contra were his big stick.
And Ajax Montoya, comandante guerrillero, héroe de la revolución y capitán de la policía Sandinista was looking right at one of Reagan’s biggest sticks.
Krill.
He and Connelly had hiked fourteen hours, breaking brush the whole way, avoiding any roads or even well-worn paths, winding their way up unnamed streams or along tracks so slim they often lost the way. And all through a selva so dense, so choked with life it lost all beauty and became almost satanic in its impenetrability. They’d camped on a hilltop not as densely woven with trees as others, made a fire, and waited. Ajax had heard, no, sensed, the Contra in the night, but they’d waited until a few minutes ago to show themselves.
A patrol of twenty-two men in jungle fatigues had materialized out of the trees, encircling the two intruders. Then they’d just stood there, heavily armed but not pointing any weapons at Ajax and Matthew. Ajax inventoried their hardware—mostly M16s, a few Belgian FALs, one M60 machine gun, and two 40mm grenade launchers. One radio man. Their equipment was well-worn, but not worn out. Each man had a machete strapped to his back.
Then Krill had appeared—two of his men stepping aside like a gate swinging open to let him in, and the circle grew tighter until they were only a machete stroke away.
Krill.
Krill was as famous among the counterrevolutionaries as Ajax had been among the revolutionaries. A sergeant in the Ogre’s National Guard and an original founder of the Contra who actually did the fighting, Krill had been at the top of the Sandinista kill list even when Ajax was working State Security. Krill’s exploits in battle were famous, his treatment of prisoners infamous—especially women. The government liked to portray the Contra as ignorant dupes or psychotic hillbillies—gap-toothed and cross-eyed. But Krill was recruiting-poster handsome—early thirties, with high cheekbones, small eyes, and closely trimmed beard and mustache. He was short, in the Nicaraguan way, but a bantam-cock from a poor barrio whose penchant for violence and prowess with a gun had lifted him out of generations of poverty and made him a leader of men.
So, like Reagan, Krill had a titanic woody.
But, Ajax reminded himself as Krill pawed through his wallet, it wasn’t the size of your dick that mattered. It was the heft of your balls. Unfortunately for Ajax, and maybe Matthew, too, Krill seemed to have big ones. He had the aura of authority Ajax recognized. One that comes from commanding men who obey without question.
“Martin Garcia,” Krill said. “You of the Garcia family?”
Ajax laughed and snapped his fingers in appreciation of the joke. He noticed that Matthew did, too, and wondered if he found it as easy to fake a laugh as Ajax did. In Spanish “the CIA” was pronounced “La See-ah,” and in rhyming slang is known as “la familia Garcia.”
Krill, however, was not laughing at his own joke. He went through Matthew’s wallet, too.
“And Matthew Connelly. North American journalist. We know you, Connelly. You’re the gringo who loves them fucking piricuacos so much.”
“No, Comandante, forgive me, I do not love the piris.”
Piricuaco was the Contras’ favored term for Sandinistas, it meant rabid dog, for which there was only one solution. Ajax was
glad Connelly knew the right lingo to use.
“A journalist writes the stories his editors tell him to.” Connelly shrugged his shoulders like a laborer ordered to dig a hole in a swamp. “My bosses tell me to write about the army, I write about the army. I am like a soldier following orders. We have that in common.”
“No, gringo, we don’t. I am the only one who gives the orders here.”
Krill’s men smiled and murmured their agreement. Ajax smiled, too; even Krill didn’t like gringos!
“True, Comandante,” Connelly bowed his head, as he, too, seemed to feel these soldiers’ disdain. “But I am here now because I told my bosses I had to write about you as well. That’s why I arranged this letter and came all the way here looking for you.”
Connelly handed over Amelia’s letter from the Contra leadership. Krill read it.
“You and your mule.” Krill nodded to one of his men, a bearish man with one eye almost closed by scar tissue. One-eye quickly stripped Ajax of the heavy pack he’d been toting since Epimenio had led them into the bush. “I know nothing of this letter. No one told me you were coming.”
“Son of a bitch, Krill look at this!” One-eye keened like a kid in a candy store and dumped Ajax’s pack on the ground.
The rest of Krill’s patrol stared gape-mouthed at the cartons of Marlboros, bars of soap, and packets of instant coffee piled like a Christmas miracle. Greedy hands reached out. Ajax kept his eyes on Krill, whose gaze never wavered from Amelia’s letter. But one short, sharp hiss from their leader froze his men’s hands just short of the pile of goodies. Krill finished reading the letter with silent, slow-moving lips. Then he deigned to look down at the goodies, then back at Matthew.
“This is all for me?”
“Of course, Comandante. A good guest always brings gifts to his host.”
Krill signaled One-eye again, who quickly broke open one pack and handed the Reds around. Soon all were smoking.
“You are not my guest yet, gringo. I think you might be spies.” One-eye handed Krill a lit butt. Krill inhaled deeply. “We will see.”
Krill turned and walked off. His men hoisted their gear and fell in behind him. Ajax thought first contact had gone well. Then One-eye ordered two men to tie “the spies’ hands” and bring them along.