Open Pit

by Marguerite Pigeon

  Then he stops. “You need to talk to Rita,” he says. “I know she’s trying something.”

  “She isn’t.” Cristóbal is as forceful as he can be with just these two words, stepping over Pepe’s last statement.

  The abruptness startles his cousin. “Delmi told me,” says Pepe, each word very precise.

  “Delmi lies.”

  “I waited because I wanted to be reasonable, but if you can’t handle her, I will.”

  Cristóbal knows he’s putting a lot on the line, but he refuses to distrust his wife.

  “I’m asking you to talk to her,” Pepe says, nearly pleading. “To tell her to —”

  “I won’t,” says Cristóbal. “And you stay away from her.” Though his words are a direct threat, he tries to make them sound conciliatory.

  Pepe rolls his mask back over his face then comes close and reaches out his hand. At first, Cristóbal thinks his cousin wants to help him up or to shake on it, but Pepe just wants his phone back. When Cristóbal passes it, Pepe pulls the object roughly away, turns and walks off, back towards where the others are.

  Cristóbal resists following right away and stays defiantly seated, tearing at some nearby leaves and letting the pieces sprinkle over the lichen, listening for that calling torogoz, before getting up and making his way to the campsite, which is just a space like a corridor between two high rock faces over which Cristóbal has placed a layer of cut boughs. There, he sits with Rita and rests his back against the cool, damp rock.

  5:15 PM. Police Headquarters, San Salvador

  The year after he launched his mine Mitch hired an efficiency consultant to assess his entire operation. Unlike a lot of people in his industry, he wasn’t afraid of an outsider’s perspective. The consultant provided excellent feedback, including the strong suggestion that Mitch delegate more, which he did, hiring more staff, cutting back on his time in Peru, where he co-owned another site. He focused all his energy on the project he cared about most: Mil Sueños. He stopped fooling around, remarried, had his twins. He aimed for balance, let his wife talk him into the Ashtanga classes.

  All that was before. So what’s different about El Pico, he wonders, as he hurries, quite late, through the main entrance. Why has it made him feel like a kid from the outskirts of Squamish again? He was on edge even before this kidnapping screwed everything up. Mitch knows it has something to do with the relentless criticism he’s faced over Mil Sueños. All the talk has put him on the defensive. Not that he believes any of it. Mitch knows his opponents would hum a different tune if they had to run his business for a year — a month, even. If they were suddenly responsible for this much money, this many investors, they’d get how complicated it is.

  Still, they’ve taken something from him. A trust or a faith. Mitch can feel it. He remembers those high school French tests he was forced to do against his will. Seeing his guards escort that forensic team and all their equipment past his gates was a lot like that. Mitch’s hands were tied. But it awakened in him a new insight: in tough times, balance is a luxury. This is not a test. He cannot fail. Mitch is happy to go along with Carlos’s plan, but he also has to cap his losses, like Sobero said. Thursday is plenty of time for those assholes to dig around their sandbox for old bones. Then they’re gone. No one can say Mitch didn’t give them a chance.

  Mitch is held up at the front entrance for ten minutes, where he’s gently frisked, and a tough-looking female officer with a double chin calls to verify that he is expected. He has no problem with the screening. Mitch is actually pleased at the level of professionalism on display in this modern, rather nice-looking cop shop.

  Finally he’s led up an elevator and down a hall to a door with a small reinforced Plexiglas window. The guard puts her pass card to a panel, the light flashes green and the door clicks open. Inside, Sobero is sitting on one of several folding chairs, looking very much at home. It takes Mitch a moment to pinpoint what else looks different about him. Then he realizes: Sobero has removed the suit jacket he nearly always wears at Mil Sueños, and his shirtsleeves are rolled up to reveal nearly hairless forearms. Despite a sign posted high on the wall behind him that says smoking is prohibited, Sobero exhales from a cigarette stuck into the corner of his mouth.

  As the door opens further Mitch sees that another man is standing with his back to them. He’s facing the kind of one-way mirror Mitch has only ever seen on TV. In the adjacent room is Marta Ramos. Mitch has expected her to be handcuffed, but she’s seated on a chair with her elbows on a desk, palms apart. Across from her is a man in a casual shirt with his legs stretched out to the side and crossed at the ankles. Neither of them appears to be talking.

  Though Mitch has craved this sight and more than once imagined himself in the position of inquisitor, judge and executioner in fantasies of revenge against members of that Committee, of Greenpeace, MiningWatch, Rights Action and many other organizations that have enjoyed kicking him in the balls, the stark contours of the interrogation room make him queasy.

  “Sit, Señor Wall,” says Antonio de la Riva Hernández, without turning.

  Sobero lifts his eyebrows and Mitch moves to take the chair beside him.

  “Manuel says you want to watch.”

  “I — yes. Well, no. It’s not really about watching, per se. Manuel said this meeting could be fruitful. I just want this whole situation resolved.”

  “Resolved,” Hernández repeats. In the semi-transparent glass, Mitch can see the reflection of the man he knows from the news.

  “Okay,” says the captain, slapping one thigh in a startling manner then turning suddenly to face Mitch. His hair is dyed a depthless black. “We resolve this ‘situation.’ For you.” Hernández is not ugly, as he seemed on TV. His big nose suits his face. But his large round eyes are cold, moving down slowly to inspect Mitch from head to toe.

  Mitch smiles nervously, looking towards his Chief of Security. But Sobero keeps staring straight ahead. “I appreciate that,” Mitch says. “That’s fantastic, thank you.”

  Hernández waves his hand as if to swat away Mitch’s gratitude. Then he throws a different kind of look at Sobero — one that makes Mitch feel distinctly left out — then exits the room, appearing a moment later through the door visible through the one-way glass. The other man steps out.

  Hernández takes a seat and he and Marta Ramos occupy the space in silence for several minutes. Marta, whom Mitch has never met in person, is chubby and mannish. Mitch thinks she looks tired, totally unthreatening.

  “It is obvious that you are responsible for the abduction,” Hernández says, finally. His voice is being pumped into the room where Mitch sits, but arrives thinner and distant, without the gravelly wheeze it carries in person. Mitch has the sudden realization that he isn’t going to understand the proceedings. His comprehension of Spanish is decent, but not when native speakers are conversing quickly and, in this case, as if from the bottom of a well. “Shit,” he says, and turns to Sobero, who sighs loudly, then translates. Mitch wishes he had decided better than to be here. He could be in Los Pampanos overseeing that forensic team in person.

  Hernández raises the back of his hand towards himself like the truth of what he’s just said is so self-evident it bores him. He examines invisible dirt under his close-cut fingernails. Marta tries not to be unnerved, putting aside thoughts of what this hand might have been responsible for during the war, what necks it wrung, and death orders it signed. It’s only a show.

  “You are famous.”

  Marta shakes her head.

  “Yes. You are. People are sympathetic to you. You lived in what you call ‘exile.’ This makes you heroic.”

  Marta pictures the morning she landed in Toronto in 1987, when the threats had become intolerable. Trembling at Arrivals in her thin blouse, clutching a piece of paper where she’d scribbled the name of the contact person with Partners for Justice, Neela Hill. Marta was widowed, her children terrorized. Very heroic.

  “I think that, for you, we don’t need to wa
ste time. We’ll come right to the point. If you tell me where the foreigners are, you will be free to continue struggling for justice.” Hernández obviously finds the word funny. “You will be immune to prosecution. Your brave little Committee for the Environment will be finished, naturally. But you will start again, I’m sure.”

  “I’m not saying anything until my lawyer arrives.”

  “She arrived several hours ago, Señora Ramos. We’ve decided she can wait a few more. I felt we should talk first.”

  The hair on the back of Marta’s neck stands up: after everything, in El Salvador, this is the reality.

  “Señora Ramos? Are you listening? We have direct evidence from the office you keep in Los Pampanos. Emails that show you planned the kidnapping.”

  Marta says nothing. She remembers her unfulfilled wish for an alarm system.

  “Let me describe this in greater detail, and you correct me. You have no means to stop the mine’s expansion at El Pico. According to your emails, you plotted with two members of your committee to hire these four kidnappers. You got one of them, Rita Santos, to offer the bus driver money. You knew he wouldn’t ask questions. A sad story, the poverty of our country.

  “Then these men, Cristóbal Santos Molina, Pepe Molina Domingo — cousins. One with military training. Quite advanced. But you know this! They took the hostages to a safe house. You have so many contacts in Morazán. And from there?” Hernández shrugs. “Maybe into the mountains.” He emphasizes his last word as if it’s the most important he’s pronounced so far. “You’ve been communicating. We’ll know soon how. We are searching your house. And you’ve published these letters in the newspapers, signed ‘Enrique.’ Your alter ego, maybe?” Here he smiles at Marta like a parent who’s caught a child in a lie.

  “Perhaps now you have found them other places to hide. You even convinced the daughter of one of the hostages to stay with you, this. . . ,” he consults a piece of paper in front of him, “Aida Byrd. Good for the media.”

  Marta could laugh at the entire scenario he has described, except it sounds plausible, even to her.

  Ten minutes later, the door opens and Hernández bursts back in. “What do you think, Señor Wall?”

  “Great. Great.” Mitch has been enjoying himself after all. Watching Marta shrink in her skin has been enormously satisfying. “You really grilled her. She’s obviously guilty.”

  “You think so.” Hernández sits down on the other side of Sobero so that Mitch has to lean forward and twist in his seat to see him well.

  Sobero shakes his head and Hernández nods. It seems to be the equivalent of a verbal exchange.

  “Am I missing something?” says Mitch, chuckling.

  Hernández hits Sobero gently in the arm and Mitch’s Chief of Security extracts a cigarette from his pack, handing it to him. Both men light up. “Everyone is very concerned about terrorism these days,” says Hernández. “Washington? Oh, they are serious.”

  “As they should be,” says Mitch. He doesn’t see the connection.

  “Absolutely. And Manuel, he does his best so that your mine will never be touched by these kinds of criminals.”

  “You think Marta Ramos is a terrorist?”

  Sobero shoots Mitch a look that says he should listen before speaking. These men don’t talk straight. Mitch values straight talkers.

  “The Americans are not satisfied with their war in Iraq — our war. We are part of it, you know?”

  Mitch is vaguely aware of this. He still doesn’t see the relevance.

  “But they are also concerned about terrorism right here, in our hemisphere. They’ve started a program. Of course, we support it. We support everything they do, and, in turn, they help us.” Hernández gestures at the walls, thanking his American patrons for the surroundings. “It’s a beneficial relationship. As we speak, they are flying small remote-controlled planes — drones. You’ve heard of these, at least?”

  Mitch hasn’t.

  “Oh. Well. These go over our territory and all the way up to Mexico. Systematically. Imagine the resources!” Hernández sounds genuinely awed. “They say that el famoso Al-Qaeda might be smuggling operatives into the U.S. on the illegal migrant routes that start right here in El Salvador with the help of our very own gangs, who make such a healthy profit from that business. It is ironic, no? Our problems serving the subversives of another part of the world, and our soldiers in Iraq fighting the same subversives. It’s globalization!” Hernández slaps his hands together to punctuate his observation.

  Sobero nods.

  Mitch shifts in his seat. “I still don’t think I —”

  “Today I called in a favour among the people who run this program. They owed me for some files I was able to provide them on one of our leading gang assassins who freelances in Los Angeles. A small thing, really. They shared with me the fact that they are currently analyzing some unusual photos their drones have taken of a small group of people travelling at night on an uncommon route — infrared, of course, only the best — through northern Morazán. What if I told you that the hostages will be among them? And that the Americans are prepared, as a favour to me, to resurvey this area, starting today, and to send us updated shots, at which point we will be in a position to act? We have excellent capacity.” Hernández looks at Mitch eagerly, waiting for a reaction.

  But Mitch is too freaked out to deliver the expected awe. Hernández, he’s just realized, is a gearhead. Geology is full of guys like him. People who love their polymer-capped chipping chisels as much as the minerals in the rocks they’re bashing with them. Hernández wants to use all the fancy equipment the Americans have bought for his unit. An image of Catharine Keil’s face floats across Mitch’s mind, the horror she displayed during their meeting at his suggestion that she let Hernández handle the kidnapping. Then Carlos’s words from last night: “. . . Maybe there are problems. Casualties.” Mitch’s stomach turns. “And her?” he says, nodding towards the one-way mirror, behind which Marta is still sitting, her arms crossed now, staring down at the desk.

  “What about her?”

  “You’ll keep questioning her, right?”

  Sobero, who hasn’t said a word since Mitch arrived, suddenly chimes in. “It’s always useful to shake the confidence of individuals like Señora Ramos.”

  “But the documents.” Mitch cannot — will not — believe that Carlos’s sources lied, that Marta and her Committee are innocent. How could Carlos have been fooled?

  Sobero and Hernández both smile. “Someone must have been bored,” says Hernández, shrugging as he did earlier in the room with Marta.

  Seeing Mitch’s dejection, Sobero claps him on the shoulder, displaying a familiarity completely at odds with his usual manner. “You never know. If Antonio gets the coordinates and locates the delegation, they might still be convinced to use the name of Marta Ramos — whether they’ve heard it before or not.”

  “If they all make it out,” says Hernández, pausing a moment before adding, “You’d be amazed what’s possible once we have control of a situation, Señor Wall.”

  Mitch tries to write this off as joking exaggeration, looking between the two former military men for a humourous edge, but he doesn’t find one.

  TUESDAY

  APRIL 12

  11:20 AM. 27 KM south of the Salvadoran-Honduran border

  This last stretch before they’re close enough to cross is rough going. Straight up to about 2,400 feet and through some of the only dense pine forest left in the country. These stands haven’t been cut in nearly a generation. They were owned by the patriarch of one of El Salvador’s richest families until he died in Miami, where he was living off the money he stole from the public coffers. His nine children have been fighting in court for the right to clear-cut the area ever since. Pepe has followed the case in the press, and he takes his time describing these ins and outs to Cristóbal in a clipped monotone as they set up camp together, digging a fire pit and latrine, then recovering the supplies — matches, bottles
of water to fill the canteens, cigarettes, cans of food — that they buried here two months back. “These trees are thriving on lawsuits,” Pepe says, in summary, and horks loudly.

  Cristóbal shakes his head in an exaggerated manner and smiles at the inexplicable behaviour of rich people. He’s happy to listen. They haven’t spoken much since their disagreement about Rita except to confirm that they will continue to travel in this general area for the time being in a back-and-forth pattern, taking a slightly more northerly route every night. Suits him. Cristóbal loves the freshness of the air up here, the pine scent on the breeze, so different from the sweet, damp heat at the lower altitudes. Plus, when this is over, he and Rita can go north quickly. When Pepe finishes his story, Cristóbal tips his head towards Tina and the other hostages. He doesn’t normally venture his opinions, but he wants to keep up the exchange with his cousin. “The antibiotics are working,” he says.

  “We should have started them sooner,” Pepe barks back. “Tonight, walk more slowly with her. Don’t push. If she collapses, we’ll have a bigger problem than going slow.” He’s lit a cigarette from one of the fresh packs, but now he throws it, barely smoked, onto the ground and heads in the other direction.

  Cristóbal pulls the last cans from the plastic bag they were buried in, rolls the bag small and tucks it into his pack. He thinks Pepe overreacted during that last phone conversation. He should not have committed himself to taking the life of a hostage over some small problem of a time limit. They have plenty of supplies. They’re prepared to keep up their evasive tactics. There’s no real deadline on their end, no rush. But Pepe sent that message out to the press and now it’s too late. If Tina can’t walk, she’ll be the one to go. It’s a shame. She’s very nice.

  Cristóbal takes a few steps forward and grinds Pepe’s butt out, then picks up the stub and puts it in his pocket. He goes about the rest of his daily duties then switches off with Rita and Delmi while the hostages finish their long morning sleep. When it comes time, he tells Pepe that he’s free to go rest, but Pepe shakes his head and ignores him. Cristóbal tries to think of the right thing to say. He sees how Pepe is struggling with himself, which makes Cristóbal feel love for him and deep regret that the mine hasn’t been more compliant. He’s never been convinced that Pepe will find what he’s looking for at El Pico, even if a team of people is allowed to dig for weeks. But he wants Pepe to succeed and hopes that if he does, his cousin will find inner peace.