The Assassin's Keeper

by John McClements

  “What is it that you want me to do?” asked Pedro, remembering her tear-stained face.

  “His name is Zaffaroni,” Astiz grunted. “Your job is to protect him, whenever and wherever he needs it.”

  Pedro recognised the name and the words he had been about to speak died in his throat. He took a moment to absorb what he had learnt. He didn’t know much about where Zaffaroni had come from, nor how he had secured his freedom with the organisation. Nevertheless, it was widely agreed that he was possessed with unusual powers; instead of seeing the dead, he created them.

  Pedro’s mind was ruffled. This could take years – was he prepared to take on such a long-term project? He nodded to himself. He could. He was loyal to the organisation. The other thought that chased around his brain was far more perplexing: how had he earned this honour? Why him?

  “How do I find him?” he asked.

  “You will be contacted. I’ve arranged for you to leave first thing in the morning. I don’t want any glitches. Have I made myself clear?” Astiz asked, giving him a hard look.

  “Yes.”

  Astiz was never anything other than clear.

  Driving home again in the car that had simply appeared from the bureaucratic ether, Pedro felt a strange surge of relief. Although the life of a sleeper agent's keeper wasn’t exactly one of rest and relaxation, he could be undercover for years. No one to answer to, no particular place to be, no more night raids, or sweating palms, or dreams shaken by remembered screams. He could use the time to recharge, to prepare for a time when he would be required to be less than human once more. He bit his lip, surprised: for the first time in years he felt excited – almost hopeful.

  He wasn’t nervous or fearful, though he knew that that time may come, eventually. He went over the plan in his mind, from start to finish. Astiz had been thorough. This was it. There was no sense in delaying what had to be done. He left the official car at the kerb, assessing all the things he would need to achieve in the coming weeks in order to fully disappear.

  ***

  The first undisturbed night’s sleep in two decades had left him feeling refreshed and ready to begin. He eyed his reflection in the mirror above the sink in his hot, meticulously clean bathroom. Eyes, so dark they were almost black, peered back at him from out of a bronzed olive face. His thick, black hair and beard, uncombed and wild, gave him a sort of rugged look that he used to his advantage in the field. Looking like a beast of a man helped put the fear of God into people, and a beast of a man he had remained for the better part of his career. It was part of his aura of authority. He wouldn’t need it where he was heading, however. There, he would need to fit in, be unobtrusive.

  Steam from the washbasin curled around him as he worked, wreathing him like a shroud. He worked methodically, carefully trimming and shaving his beard. He left a moustache, trimming it neatly. His motions were slow, careful; with every stroke he contemplated his changing face. When he had finished he looked noticeably different: much more the clean-cut man about town than the Inteligencia loyalist. It was possible that no one he knew would recognise him now. Even if he wanted to, there would be no walking away from this.

  Pedro stubbed out his cigarette in a metal ashtray on the side table. It glinted in the morning light as he sucked in his cheeks, turning his face this way and that to inspect his profile. It would suffice.

  He looked around the apartment he had called home for the past five years. It was really more a place to sleep than anything else. He felt no lasting attachment to it. It wasn’t as if he had friends or family to miss. Pedro trusted no one. To stay alive in the secret police he had learned to be vigilant, to keep people at arm’s length. He’d seen what had happened to operatives who had let people get too close. Pedro wouldn’t let that happen to him: he was a lone wolf.

  He considered himself to be of above-average intelligent; a person with a very good understanding of what motivated people – and, more importantly – what they feared. He could read body language like a book, and he was aware that if he could do it, there would be others out there who could do it to him. If the last twenty years had taught him anything it was that out of chaos came great opportunities, especially for those who were bold and ruthless.

  He would need to disappear. It was common enough for members of the Inteligencia to be called away at short notice. People would wonder, but no one would ask. He would need money, though, and lots of it. It wasn’t the kind of thing a devout follower of the cause could easily put his hands on, but he would need just enough to take him across the border. From there, it would be easy.

  ***

  The instructions Astiz had laid down had been very clear. Pedro had made his way to the appointed place, dressed in workman’s clothes. He had insinuated himself into the sometimes grumpy, sometimes garrulous crowd of labourers, gathered at the end of the street hoping to be picked up by the work crews that roamed the area, even at this late hour. Short notice work, and no guarantee of it. These were some of Argentina’s hardest and poorest men, doing anything they could to keep their wives and families fed. He lounged against the hot stucco wall, smoking, scanning the road in both directions. There was still no sign of any vehicle, only the halos of light cast by the scattered street lamps.

  Two hours passed slowly, measured in cigarette lengths. His breathing accelerated when he saw the truck swing around the corner. Around him, the eyes of the job-hungry men snapped to the back of the van in anticipation, and then slid away, sensing trouble. A slender young man in a white overcoat and black fedora stepped from the back of the truck. He was followed by two brawny men. Enforcers. The first was bald, his right hand wedged into his pocket of his black leather jacket. Pedro accepted this, grimly. They were armed, so they were expecting trouble. The other specimen was tall and heavy-set, with a dark, scraggly beard and an unwieldy jacket.

  Pedro’s gaze shifted to the young man, who seemed puzzled for an instant. He gestured at Pedro and pointed to the back of the truck. The men of the work crews looked away, wanting no part of what they thought was an arrest. That suited Pedro. These things happened with such frequency that he would be quickly forgotten. He gave him a little grin and nodded, climbing in the back between the two thugs, who were a little more friendly now they had their cargo safely aboard. The slender fellow offered him a cigarette and they spoke of inconsequential things until Pedro fell asleep, lulled unconscious by the enforcers’ snores.

  ***

  Bruised and tired from the journey, Pedro stepped out of the vehicle and into the early morning light. He wasn’t exactly sure where he was. In the long, dark night he had lost all sense of place. As he stepped off the bumper, stretching his aching limbs, his eyes lighted on a young captain who saluted, crisply.

  Silently, they marched in step down a curved staircase, along an echoing corridor and into the briefing rooms in the bowels of the building. Pedro heard the door close behind him, unconcerned. Two men stood warming the backs of their legs against an open fire, and they greeted Pedro with the usual lack of warmth displayed by officers of the Inteligencia.

  “Juan Ramón,” said the first, with a perfunctory nod. “Assistant director at Essen. I think you know Milan Silva.”

  The chief adviser, slightly younger than his colleague, nodded; he shook Pedro’s hand.

  “Come and sit by the fire,” said Ramón; Pedro was aware that it wasn’t a request. The man spoke softly, inviting the listener to move closer, creating an atmosphere of secrecy. He indicated a chair. “Pull it up. Take off your coat.”

  Pedro perched, poised in expectation on the edge of his seat: his body bent forwards, his hands clasped, forearms resting on his knees.

  Ramón’s smug smile dropped as the men made themselves comfortable and his lips pressed into a hard, unforgiving line. He was absolutely frank with Pedro.

  “Whatever paperwork we file will be falsified to cover our tracks.”

  “I understand,” said Pedro. There was no other way for this to work. H
e would be completely on his own; he preferred it that way.

  “Jorge Zaffaroni is not a man to be taken lightly.”

  Pedro kept his features carefully impassive when he said, “Right.”

  “So you are familiar with his activities?”

  “I have heard rumours,” Pedro admitted, “but they are only rumours.”

  “Well,” said Ramón, sagely, nodding his head, “you can believe at least half of them. He is a natural-born killer.” After a slight pause, he added, “I want you to make sure he doesn’t fail.”

  Pedro eyed his superior suspiciously, wanting to ask him for more detail, but Ramón didn’t give him a chance. He retrieved a slim dossier from his jacket pocket, containing cash and the papers of his new identity, and handed them over to Pedro. He took it, and frowned, wrestling with an unexpected flicker of doubt that had flared through his mind. He pushed his hesitance back into the deepest recesses of his brain. Now was not the time for second thoughts.

  Wordlessly, Pedro looked at Ramón and made a gesture with two of the fingers of his left hand. The man fumbled in his shirt pocket for a moment and fished out a packet of cigarettes. He offered one to Pedro who lit it and inhaled the smoke with satisfaction. It calmed his fraying nerves, and some of this new contentment must have shown on his face, because Ramón and Silva Milan chuckled and lit up themselves.

  “You need to be ready in two hours, go and rest,” Ramón ordered, his own match flaring.

  Pedro left Milan and Ramón talking in low voices. He encountered another man, tall and well-dressed in a black uniform, outside the door. This new officer escorted him down the long hallway to the penultimate door on the right. He left him, mutely, to his own devices. Pedro stepped into the small bedroom, pausing for a moment before flicking on the light. The room was quiet, except for the electrical buzz of the lightbulb, which was easily silenced again. Pedro slid the deadbolt back on the door with a click and slipped into the uncomfortable bed. He stared, wide-eyed at the ceiling for a moment; something here was a little off. He had been born with a great sense of awareness that had been honed over years of having to survive in a hostile environment. That awareness had been taken to a new level, and now he lay awake, certain – without even having to search for a camera or microphone – that he was being observed.

  A long, black car was waiting to drive him to the 1arbor in the noonday gloom. Pedro could hear the engine, even this deep inside the complex. He took up his pack, his new papers tucked safely within, and headed to the courtyard. A thickset man in his forties with stringy black hair was leaning against the car, looking quite out of place in a dark jumper and scruffy jeans. Pedro met his unflinching gaze with an uneasy stare. The man’s face was shrouded in his hair as he bent to light a cigarette. A match flared in the deep shade of the clouds, lighting up his expressionless face.

  The man nodded at Pedro and pointed to the car. He pulled open the door and slid into the leather seat, pleased to find that his present transportation was infinitely more comfortable than the van of the night before. He settled in as the car set off in a screech of tyres. Pedro slept, aware that there was nothing he could do, now, until he handed over his documents at the 1arbor gates and boarded the ship.

  Chapter 2

  Drinda stared, hollow-eyed, at her own reflection. Her skin was taut and drawn with worry, paler now than she had ever been with grey-blue shadows of sleeplessness beneath her dark eyes. Her dark hair hung lank around her shoulders, unwashed for several days now. It looked lifeless, like the rest of her, slumped on the frame of her bed. The police had been through here, too, and everything had been overturned.

  Exhausted, Drinda let out a great sigh, staring at her scattered possessions, and wondered how the hell it had come to this.

  ***

  She had met Lee on a crisp winter evening in 1982. It had been the kind of night with potential – she and the girls had been out for someone’s birthday in Ashton, Idaho, the small town of small towns. The seed potato capital of the world. Population: one thousand. It was one of the few places on earth where poultry outnumbered humans. She had been intending to get pleasantly merry with her girlfriends and have a night to remember – and maybe a hangover to regret. Hooking up had been the furthest thing from her mind.

  The atmosphere in the local dance club had been electric – you could almost taste it in the air, over the jug of beer and hot bodies. She’d felt his eyes on her for a while as she danced with the birthday girl, enjoying the music and showing off her assets. She’d turned to see a dark looking man leaning against the bar: dark hair, dark eyes, dark suede jacket. He was the epitome of cool, and for a small town like Ashton, that was saying something. At six feet tall he had towered over her, her very own tall dark stranger.

  Drinda had shaken out her shoulder-length shiny black hair, adjusted her tight black leather pants and made sure her low-cut white blouse showed her to her best advantage before sauntering over to the bar. Lee had bought her a drink and complemented her ass, which made her laugh. By the time they stumbled back to her apartment she was already halfway in love with him – and he with her, or so he said.

  He’d had a bad first marriage, he told her, when they’d gone for breakfast the next morning, and had decided that marriage was not an institution he should participate in further. Otherwise, he’d said, he would have asked her to marry him on the spot. Charmed and a little dazed by the fairytale nature of the night and morning, Drinda had allowed herself to be carried along by Lee’s natural self-possession and exuberance. It was a great feeling, having someone who cared about her, having someone there she could rely on.

  Before long they had moved in together in an okay part of town just off Willow Creek. You had to go up a steep hill to get to it, through a driveway and to the left was the old church. Further along to the right was the recently refurbished block of townhouses that they called home. Drinda and Lee occupied the third floor.

  Their friends had helped them to move in on a sunny spring day in return for pizza and beer. They’d waved them off and then tumbled into bed – the only piece of furniture they’d put together – where they’d stayed until the following afternoon. They’d shared so many happy times in this apartment. It was spacious and nicely furnished, with a separate dining room to the side of the kitchen where they’d entertained their friends.

  ***

  She couldn’t quite pinpoint the moment when things had begun to change between them. It was present in the little things, the tiny moments on which their relationship turned. They had lived together for nearly two years when she 1ealized that they’d stopped eating together. One of them would cook and they’d intend to sit down at the dining table together, but somehow it just never seemed to happen. There would be a late shift at the salon where she worked, or Lee would be out later than he expected.

  She talked to him about it, and he was as surprised as she had been. They decided to work on it, and for three weeks they were the happy, affectionate couple they had been when they first moved in. Then something had slipped again and Drinda had found herself eating alone four nights out of seven. The dining room seemed so cold and lonely without Lee, so she ate her dinners on her lap in front of the TV. These days they barely used the dining room. Friends rarely came over. Lee saw his friends almost every night, but only Drinda went out with her girls – most of them settled now and beginning to raise families – on Saturday nights.

  The next change was in Lee’s 1ealized. He became grumpy and aloof, spending most of his time out of the house or drinking with his buddies. He became utterly unreliable. She never knew when he would be home, or what state he would be in when he did turn up. Drinda had taken to cancelling plans made with friends, telling them one or the other of them was sick rather than admit that her partner had simply failed to come home. She only tried to talk to him about it once. There had been a look of such venom on his face that she hadn’t brought it up again.

  She found herself pulling away from him.
Signs of affection that had once been ready and quick to call to mind became harder to find. Instead of curling up together on the couch she would fold herself up at one end while he dozed at the other. Farewells that used to be kisses became awkward waves or nods of the head. She 1ealized, one morning, that they hadn’t been intimate with one another for two whole months without noticing.

  Some days he was the same old Lee who had danced the night away and made her laugh. He would surprise her with flowers when she was sure he had no time for her at all. It made her feel so guilty, thinking the worst of him. A hundred times she had decided to leave, only to convince herself that this was just a phase. Arguments became their only means of communication.

  ***

  It was so quiet in the flat without him. She had even muted the TV today, she had a headache leftover from work and it was pounding inside her skull like a steel drum. It had taken three attempts to get the budget alarm system to let her in the apartment. It didn’t seem to matter how many times you put in the right code, 8989, it just didn’t seem to recognise it. As usual, just at the point when she had been ready to call an electrician it had accepted the code. Drinda occasionally wondered whether it had a mind of its own. It always seemed to know when she was about to give up. Lee had promised to get it fixed, but Lee was no longer in the habit of keeping his promises.

  He’d promised to stop gambling, too, and look how well that had gone.

  She’d showered, washing the day’s work out of her hair and sank gratefully onto the couch. The phone had rung and she flinched at the overloud tone in the sullen silence of the empty apartment. Lee was supposed to be home soon and she hoped the call was from him.

  Recognising her mother’s number she sighed.