“I used to know it. Please continue.”
“Amzi also did his best to save Felicia and nearly did so, but he was betrayed.”
“Betrayed? By whom?”
“Again I say we’ll come to that. And in a minute or two we will come to that, so in the meanwhile please pay attention. I want you to know the context.”
“I’m listening.”
“A second Yanqui was involved—better to say that he intruded. He was a Headquarters man, like Amzi, like you. Younger then than you are now. Quiet, smart, patient, ruthless. A gentleman. Destined for great things. So many Yanquis give that impression, they are educated to give it. He was the go-between for the Headquarters station in Buenos Aires and the people who were torturing and killing revolutionaries. His heart was in this dirty work. He liked the oppressors. He was one of them. He hated us, especially Alejandro, I think because he saw us as renegades, traitors to our class, which of course we were, and saw Alejandro as a danger to the life he had always led, which of course Alejandro was. He himself was the most dangerous foreigner in Argentina.”
Diego paused for effect. “He was the one who was told by a traitor inside the revolution exactly where Alejandro would be at any given moment. He made everything that happened, happen.”
“Who was this traitor?”
“Only the traitor and the Yanqui know.”
On the horizon, a white sail broke the horizon. Diego stopped talking and watched it. The boat turned and sailed northward before the offshore southeast wind. It was a strong wind. In a remarkably short time it became a white dot, then vanished. While Diego watched the boat I watched his face. He looked like he might weep. How unbearable his feelings must be, I thought, having been bottled up since the day Felicia married his best friend. So maybe he wasn’t faking it.
I said, “If only the traitor and the Yanqui know, how do you know?”
Testily, as if I were a patient who had inconveniently awakened on the operating table, Diego said, “Why do you constantly interrupt? Wait.”
“Go on.”
He said, “It was Alejandro’s own fault. He refused to be protected. It was the keystone of his self-image. It was the cult of the personality. He wanted the world to believe he was afraid of nothing. He would die if he had to, but he would never fear the oppressor, never yield to tyranny. He was the only free man in Argentina. If the masses followed him, they would be free, too. It was said by his admirers that he had a cyanide pill he would crush between his teeth if the enemy found him. Or if that failed, blow up himself and his attackers with the powerful bomb he carried in his backpack. This was all fantasy, but the myth was useful. His bravado was a threat to the cause. I always had him shadowed by my best guys—the ones he didn’t take notice of, the ones who did the dirty work, the ones I sometimes operate on now—in case the enemy tried to grab him. He was so hopeless when it came to even the simplest tradecraft that he never realized they were there. They were armed with Uzis with orders to shoot to kill.”
“Uzis? How could they kill his kidnappers without killing him?”
“They couldn’t. Their orders were to kill Alejandro in case he didn’t have time to kill himself. Now be still.”
Diego said, “If I may get back to the point, this Yanqui, Alejandro’s case officer, was a shrewd reader of people. He pretended to be a sympathizer, an enabler. He found Alejandro’s weak point and made a proposal. He would help the revolution. Alejandro was interested: He hadn’t been told that the revolution already had a helper, Boris. The Yanqui proposed to Alejandro, who knew that the revolution was doomed, that he, Alejandro, had a duty to save himself for future work. He knew his man. This was an idea Alejandro could not resist. It planted in Alejandro’s mind the seed of the second, new improved revolution, led by a resurrected Alejandro. That was a strange thing for a Headquarters man to do unless he was recruiting Alejandro, which of course was exactly what he was doing whether Alejandro knew it or not ….”
He interrupted himself, pointed out to sea.
“Look, whales!”
“Where?”
“Underneath that flock of gulls, south-southeast, about two hundred meters out.”
I saw them now—a whole pod of them, adults and calves. Gulls wheeled overhead.
Then the gulls attacked, all at once and as a single creature, as if poured in their hundreds from a spout. The whales swam serenely on as if they didn’t know the gulls existed.
“The whales are being eaten alive,” Diego said. “Maybe the whales can’t feel the beaks. The blubber must block the pain.”
We watched the whales a little longer, as they became a sort of living, breathing Galapagos covered with squawking gulls. Over the years, according to Diego, hundreds of dead whales had been found along the coast. Gulls were the chief suspects, or so scientists believed. Protectors of the whale were alarmed, Diego told me, but this had probably been going on for millennia. Seagulls didn’t suddenly decide, all at once, Let’s eat the whales, so maybe, since there were still plenty of whales to eat after centuries of feasting on blubber, there was less to worry about than whale lovers feared.
Diego’s mind worked in its own way. I listened patiently—with interest and amusement, even, and waited for him to get back to the point he was evading. Moonshine Manor again: As long as they’re talking, let them talk until they say something useful. Sooner or later, in theory, Diego would get back to Alejandro’s Mephistophelean Yanqui case officer.
In time, the whales swam out of our field of vision along with the hovering gulls. We walked on in silence for a while. There were few gulls left on the beach and presumably the ones in flight were glutted with blubber and blood, so it was quieter than usual. Diego spread his towel, the one he had wrapped around his neck, and sat on it.
As if there had been no interruption, Diego said, “This Yanqui’s idea was to persuade Alejandro that there was no hope whatsoever for the revolution. Now that he had learned his lessons from its failure he should drown it like a litter of kittens, and having profited from its mistakes, start a new revolution that would succeed and justify the sacrifices of the one that had failed. He would save many lives, because there would no longer be any reason to kill our comrades, who no longer had a leader. A soul.”
Did I follow? I said I thought so, but please continue.
“Alejandro was immediately seduced by this argument,” Diego said. “It was an offer of immortality. Of course he knew exactly what would happen to those he betrayed. We had a source, one of the good people, one of us, a woman Alejandro had slept with for a while when we were all students. Now she was married to an army officer who, thanks to her political influence, had discovered that he had a conscience. He was the aide de camp of the general who was in charge of the torture. On inspection tours with the general this husband saw what was happening to the disappeared. He saw people he knew, people he had had dinner with, his wife’s friends. They recognized him. This shook him up. He would come home and tell her everything. He thought the junta, which saw itself as the Fourth Reich in everything but name, was staining the honor of the army, of Argentina itself, in a way from which neither could ever recover. He would cry on her bosom, but he went on with his career. The wife would tell us everything this bastard told her. So the point is, Alejandro knew perfectly well what would happen to everybody else if he did as the Yanqui advised. Including Felicia.”
“But?”
“Be patient. The Yanqui insisted on meeting Alejandro’s wife. Felicia was hiding at the time like a good freedom fighter in Villa Cartóna, a shantytown, a villa miseria. She had become an operative—she had done enough and more than enough on her own to be wanted by the torturers. Even in rags in a room where rats ran over your feet, she was breathtaking. If the world was coming to an end, no man who saw her could be interested in anything but her. The Yanqui saw how invaluable Felicia was to his purposes. How Alejandro must love her! He wanted to give Alejandro an incentive to do what he wanted to do anyway. Rescui
ng this amazing woman was just what the doctor ordered. That could be arranged. It would make it possible to do anything he wanted to do, commit any outrage, and only enhance his mystique. But first Felicia had to be kidnapped. The Yanqui told the torturers where she was. That night they took her.”
A pause. “The officer with the conscience saw Felicia in prison because the general particularly wanted to get a look at this beautiful wife of the famous scarlet pimpernel, Alejandro. She was spread out on a table, naked ….”
At this point Diego leapt to his feet and walked away and into the surf, where he stood, knee deep in the heaving water, gazing out to sea—assuming he could see anything besides the pictures in his mind.
When he came back—eyes averted, face ravaged—he started to speak even before he sat down.
“The Yanqui thought that Alejandro could now be blackmailed. It didn’t work, of course. It didn’t work because Alejandro didn’t care what happened to Felicia. So when the Yanqui suggested that there was a way to rescue his beloved wife, he cut him off and stalked away, as if this heathen had no right to speak her sacred name.”
“Your watchers heard and saw this?”
“How else would I know it happened?”
“You don’t think Alejandro did know he was being shadowed and didn’t want witnesses present?”
“No.”
“For the sake of argument, suppose he did—”
“I suppose nothing for argument. Neither should you. Reality and only reality matters.”
“OK. What would your men have done if Alejandro, in a state of ignorance, had listened and agreed?”
“They would have killed him.”
“On your orders?”
“On what they had heard with their own ears. They knew what his betrayal meant.”
“Why didn’t they kill the American?”
“Why should they do that? Headquarters would just replace him with someone we didn’t know. Also, we already had enough powerful enemies.”
“So then Amzi appeared out of nowhere?”
“Yes. It was him, not the Yanqui, who appeared at the next meeting with Alejandro. However, who but the Yanqui could have told Amzi where to look?”
“Why?”
“Orders, presumably. I have no firsthand knowledge of that. I can only tell you what I was told.”
“By whom?”
“By Boris. He knew a lot about the Yanquis. He said Headquarters had been appalled by what the Yanqui had done. Kidnapping! They—don’t laugh—didn’t do things like that. They took the Yanqui off the case. Headquarters wanted to get Felicia back, to get her out of the country. The torturers wanted something in return.”
“How did Boris know all this?”
“He didn’t say, but everything else he ever told me was the truth. These questions are taking us off the subject.”
I went back into priestly mode—a neutral listener, not a judge.
Diego said, “Amzi made Alejandro an offer. All he had to do was give him, Amzi, the true names and whereabouts and photographs when possible, of every fighter of the revolution, and Amzi would cover Alejandro’s ass by giving him back his wife in such a way that everyone would believe that whatever he had had to do, he had done for love. Treachery would be seen as romance. His betrayal of everyone who trusted him and everything he said he believed in would be one more proof of his moral nobility.”
At this point Diego closed his eyes and took a very deep breath.
Eyes still shut, he said, “Alejandro pretended to refuse. He walked away. Amzi stalked him. Whenever Alejandro ventured out of one of his safe houses, there was Amzi, waiting for him. He was very, very good at his work. He knew from the first moment my people were there.”
“But your people did nothing?”
“Amzi’s people had guns on them. The Yanquis had night-vision glasses so they could see our people but our people couldn’t see them, just feel their presence. Please listen. I am almost finished.”
He was annoyed, tired of reminding me how to behave. I shut up.
“Amzi sweetened the offer,” Diego said. “He knew that Alejandro’s problem was not a moral problem. He was beyond morality. It was a question of where he could hide, where he could continue what he called his mission. Obviously he couldn’t stay in Argentina or ever come back without being tortured, shot, or hanged or all three. Amzi offered him sanctuary. Headquarters would get Felicia back because she would be of no further use to the torturers after they knew, thanks to Alejandro, what they had been trying to make her tell them. So he would have saved her life, a dividend. Headquarters, in the person of Amzi, would smuggle the two of them secretly out of the country, provide them with fully documented new identities and an annuity. Then he would forget they existed. But rescue them if necessary, even if this did not become necessary for fifty years.
“Alejandro dragged it out. He was a tactician if he was nothing else. But then, as you already know, he accepted. And then the moment came. The torturers appeared, a dozen thugs along with a representative of the general commanding, none other than the conscience-stricken husband of our friend the good woman. Felicia was with them, dressed up by her captors in the latest fashion, her hair done, her makeup perfect courtesy of the torturers’ makeup artist. Felicia was drugged and only half-conscious. She was barely able to walk or talk or hold up her head.
“Amzi showed them the thick envelope he carried and said, ‘We’ll take her now.’”
“The officer said, ‘And the information? ‘
“Amzi said, ‘First, the woman.’ The officer said, ‘No. First, him. ‘
“The thugs grabbed Alejandro and manacled him hand and foot. Even if he had had a cyanide capsule in his tooth or a bomb in his knapsack they would have done him no good. Before they gagged him Alejandro screamed at Amzi: ‘Cabrón! Hijo de puta!’
“All this happened in the dark, so my men heard it rather than saw it. Their fingers were on the triggers of the Uzis. Somebody in the dark behind them—Amzi’s men, who else?—blackjacked them. When they revived, everybody was gone. Also the Uzis. Amzi had saved them. Otherwise they would be in a cage or dead. They knew this. So did I.”
I said, “So whatever happened next happened in the dark?”
“Everything happened in the dark.”
“You say your people were unconscious. So how do you know that the famous deal that Amzi supposedly made—Felicia’s life in exchange for the rescue of Alejandro and the revolution—actually happened?”
Diego let silence gather. How stupid could I be? Had I not been listening? Were the facts not self-evident?
He said, “I know because there were witnesses—Alejandro and the good woman’s husband. Also, Alejandro was alive, Felicia was in the hands of her murderers.”
“So the good woman, as you call her …”
“As she was.”
“… was your source.”
“Yes, of course,” Diego said. “But Amzi insisted they release Alejandro into his custody. They agreed. They could not do otherwise without bringing the imperial wrath of Washington down upon themselves. And after all, the torturers had what they wanted: the names of everyone they needed to torture and kill, the key to the final solution of the Alejandroista Question. They didn’t need Alejandro. If he had no followers, if they were all soon going to be dead, what harm could he do? They would keep the woman. The gringos would understand that they must have a guarantee, a hostage. When at the last second they seized her at the airport, Amzi made no effort to protect her.”
Diego looked at his watch.
He said, “Time is short. To answer your question, the name of the Yanqui agent who sent Felicia to her death is Thomas Terhune.”
I was not surprised. The picture puzzle was coming together.
I said, “One more question. Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want to talk to Terhune, and I want you to bring him to me.”
Talk to him?
I said, “Wh
at makes you think I can do that? Or that he’d be stupid enough to do it?”
“Wait. Don’t jump to conclusions. What is done is done. Doing more harm can’t change that. Soon I will be old. I want to die in peace, and I realize that the only way I can have peace before I die is to reconcile with this man.”
“Diego …”
“No. Let me speak. You know a Jesuit called Yuri, a Russian.”
“I do. How do you know him?”
“How do you think? Boris introduced us.”
“One atheist providing spiritual guidance to another?”
“An intelligent priest was what I needed at the time. This priest had confessed Alejandro, so he would know what he could not tell me and offer informed spiritual advice. Father Yuri made me see what I must do. I know what you must be thinking. But ask yourself this: Who introduced you to Father Yuri?”
Diego’s move was crude. So what else was new? The home truth about the clandestine life is that it clothes itself in subtlety but lives by the raw truths of human nature. Diego wanted something. In order to get it he would tell me everything. He would do this because his spy, Luz, had told him that I, too, wanted something and what that something was. He knew I would pretend to believe his lies in order to get it, just as he pretended to believe mine.
Diego said, “Think about it. Ask yourself why should I do this Yanqui harm after all these years, what I can possibly have to gain in comparison to what I stand to lose—Luz, above all? You of all people know what it is to lose her, what it means, how incurable the pain. Besides, there are incentives. There is much I can tell him.”
I said, “The revolution is old news.”
“I know that if anyone does. However, terrorism is not old news. The drug trade is not old news. Washington throws away billions trying to penetrate its secrets. I know those secrets by heart—methods, names, connections, rivalries that can be exploited and how to exploit them. I know the politicians who are being paid in money and girls and protection to make all this possible. I know where the bodies are buried. Above all, I know where the money is hidden.”
The Mulberry Bush Page 27