They sat there. Watched the horse pass again through the windshield.
“Evita Perón is a secret Casa Rosada cannot seem to keep and so will never be safe on Argentine soil. For the same reason, if she is removed through Argentine hands, she will never be safe abroad either.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Michael hated the way it sounded. Worried.
“I would like you to use the resources of your embassy to move her out of Argentina.”
“You want me to get her out of the country?”
“You and the engines of the US State Department. It is imperative no Argentines be involved.”
“You’re insane.”
“Perhaps. But I have something to trade. Files. Years of secret material gathered on governments all over South America.”
“If I asked Norris it would take weeks to get an answer, and even then it would probably be no, however much WH Division might want those files.”
“Then don’t ask.”
“You expect me to do this alone?”
“The protection of the Senora cannot wait.”
“This is it, right? The big withdrawal from the favor bank?”
“I’m asking you as a friend. But also as someone who knows you. Knows what you want. You’ll be thirty years old next year, Michael. With a new child and a life you hate here. You want out of Buenos Aires. You need to get out of Buenos Aires. Do this quietly and you’ll finally have that ticket. There are so few chances in life to grab the future, Michael. This is one.”
Michael could hear the dash clock counting.
“Let me think about it.”
It was stupid, it was dangerous—and it was probably doable if he put his mind to it.
Michael sat in the living room of their house, listened to the first rain in a month, and stared out at wet darkness beyond the patio door. Karen was on the sofa, writing a letter to her mother.
If he did it and Norris found out, he’d be canned. Hector’s intel sharing had given him some credits with the SB branch, but to be collared shipping boxed first ladies without authority—well, that was a little beyond the pale, even with Hector’s promised files. He’d grown to hate this job, but he wasn’t ready to give up on it yet; there’d be retirements, other postings. It could get better. He was a foreign relations college major in an antiforeign recession economy back home. What the hell else would he do?
Karen looked up from her letter and saw the faraway look.
“What are you thinking?”
The snap answer was already halfway up his throat. This time he choked it down.
“Hector wants me to…to deliver something for him through our channels, without telling Bud. It’s a pink slip if I get caught, but it’s also probably our way out of here if I don’t.”
“Are you going to do it?”
Michael stood suddenly, kissed his wife, and softly told her he loved her. She took his hand and held it to her belly.
“We’re going to be okay, Michael.”
That night was Michael’s turn on Ara watch. He tucked his wife in bed, turned off the lights, and reluctantly drove down to the apartment building on Avenida Cabello. Dr. Ara was so connected in the diplomatic community, had found himself at the center of so many goings-on, that WH refused to believe that he wasn’t somehow on someone’s spook payroll. Norris just laughed at their naïveté about how things worked down here. As usual, he wouldn’t make Lofton or his other buddies pull shifts, so it fell on Michael to do one all-nighter a month in the safe house across the street and report the same thing to Washington in the morning: nothing.
Michael couldn’t care less if Wintergreen or Yuri Kraganov himself knew about this safe house. It was only for Ara, and Ara was a waste of time. Michael had wondered why Norris didn’t take a stronger stand on the obvious waste of station resources but had come to suspect, by the odd empty bottle of wine left behind, that his station chief was doing some private entertaining up here. Probably Lofton and Miller too. Hell, maybe even Esther. Maybe the whole fucking embassy Marine Corps detachment.
Like with the Russian OP, the apartment was a small studio with one window, a mattress, and a single armchair aimed out to Ara’s apartment across the street. The lights were off, and Michael kept his off too, spending the first two hours staring at his reflection or the odd pedestrian haunting the avenue. He had a thermos of coffee, Roquefort pizza picked up on the way, some station homework, and his thoughts.
What I am doing here? Why doesn’t the station at least buy a comfortable chair? Because the only thing in here anybody else uses is the bed. My wife is in bed. So is my unborn child. My mother and sister are in graves, one kind or another, not far away. And I’m here, waiting on the Spanish dwarf.
With a penlight clipped to his shirt pocket, he browsed the station files he’d brought to keep himself awake. Most of them had the opposite effect: endless stakeout reports from his contract agents in the Buenos Aires police, wiretap transcripts, expense accounts.
One of the folders Michael didn’t recognize. Apparently filed among his by mistake, it was a source interview, dated February 1953. The source’s code name was WOLLSY, the transcript a dialogue between him and his interviewer:
INTERVIEWER: She never told you?
WOLLSY: No.
INTERVIEWER: Have the others looked?
WOLLSY: What do you think?
INTERVIEWER: Have you?
WOLLSY: I wouldn’t know where to begin.
INTERVIEWER: Well, if not you, who?
WOLLSY: You presume too much.
The transcript continued in that vein—elliptical questions and vague answers—for two pages. One part caught Michael’s attention:
INTERVIEWER: That’s all she said?
WOLLSY: At the end, yes.
INTERVIEWER: That one word.
WOLLSY: She was at God’s gate.
INTERVIEWER: Only that one word.
WOLLSY: Yes.
During his years in Argentina, Michael knew of only one person that used the old-fashioned Spanish expression “God’s gate”—Juan Duarte, Evita’s brother. Michael knew Duarte had had contacts with the embassy before Michael’s time and during his sister’s heyday. A gambling playboy forever in debt, he’d have sold them his grandfather’s watch if they’d wanted it. He had little else of interest, though; most of the Perón administration rightfully kept him at arm’s length. Michael assumed the station had lost interest in him years ago, but this transcript was dated just a few months before his suicide. Evita had been dead since 1952, and the world had turned several times since by the time of this interview in ’53. Who would have still cared about Juan Duarte?
Michael flipped back through the file, looking for the word Juan Duarte was referring to. It wasn’t there. On the bottom of the last page was an endorsement of the case officer doing the interview. His name was Ray Tynnes, the working pseudonym for Ed Lofton.
Michael looked up. A taxi was dropping off Ara and a woman he didn’t recognize. A moment later Ara could be seen in his living room, lighting a few candles and settling the woman on a couch. Michael knew next would come the dusty bottle of wine, the one Ara specifically told his maid not to wipe off. He was not disappointed. It was followed, as always, by Stravinsky on the hi-fi, Italian cantuccis from the kitchen…
And the hatbox.
The one with the embalmed peasant’s head. And it must work with the ladies, because he does it every time.
Ara opens the hatbox and Michael’s blood freezes because it’s not the peasant’s head inside.
It’s Evita’s.
Only it can’t be, because Hector has her. Yet it’s an exact copy, grafted onto someone else’s skull. It’s too real. It’s Her.
And as Ara lets the woman hold it, as the candles catch Evita’s features and bathe them in amber, Michael feels the room around him shift and speak to him of a future, and that future is only chaos and destruction.
September 10, 1956
10.
/>
It was a pretty night and Karen and Michael strolled Recoleta Plaza, hand in hand, past minstrels and the colonial church lit up with floodlights. It was breezy and the coral trees squeaked with birds. They walked along the old cemetery wall, resting place of presidents and magnates. It’s easier to get into heaven than Recoleta Cemetery, the saying went. The city’s fanciest restaurants lay in a row across the grass. Michael and Karen lingered on a park bench, watched lovers and children pass, and waited for the restaurants to open, which in Buenos Aires never happened before ten.
Recoleta Plaza. A hundred years ago they dumped the heads of slaughtered cattle here. Then came the cholera scare in the southern barrios, and the money fled north to safety among the rot of their fortunes. Michael thought of the millions of bones beneath his feet, couldn’t help thinking of his sister Maria…
“It’s a beautiful night,” Karen said.
“Yes.”
“There are times when I almost like this city.”
“Almost.”
She smiled, rested her head on his shoulder, and held up their intertwined hands for inspection. And for a moment it was like it once was. Easy and right, and he prayed for it not to end.
They sat there past opening time, just being with each other, and when they rose Michael picked a restaurant off the row at random, for they were all excellent. Karen and he took a quiet table in the back and only after ordering a glass of wine noticed that the other corner was filled with former FBI South: Norris, Miller, Lofton, a handful of generals, and the usual assortment of strained wives.
Michael and Karen, slumped with disappointment, smiled politely. Tried to leave it at that. The flatfoot contingent was already happily adrift on Chilean red. Lofton started waving for the Suslovs to come over. Michael waved back, tried to laugh it off, but they were all gesturing now, even the generals.
“It’s not that big a deal,” Karen said.
“We’ll just say hi.”
They walked over. The generals stood up for Karen. Norris scrounged for chairs. “C’mon, have a seat. Pedro here was just telling us about the parties during his academy days.”
“Well, not too much,” Pedro guffawed.
Brittle smiles from brittle wives, drunk husbands insisting on pawing Michael’s child.
“We’ve got a table over there. We just thought we’d have a quiet—”
“Don’t be crazy, Mike, c’mon, sit down. Karen, don’t let your husband be a drip every night.”
“Really, we…”
Then a look behind Norris’s grin: Don’t fucking embarrass me here.
“We’ll take a rain check, okay?”
A catch in Norris’s voice. “Sure, Mike. Stop by for dessert.” Another death look, and back to Pedro’s hilarious story. Suslovs dismissed.
The meal was okay, but the night was on the wrong foot. They tried to enjoy it, stuck their forks in each other’s meals, looked out at the plaza, breezy and lit up prettily with strung lights.
The flatfoot table was in full swing. Lofton slumped in his chair, head rolling against the wall, Norris on his feet, telling in a voice just under a shout about a club girl in Tijuana and the skill she showed with just a groin and Ping-Pong ball. Pedro the general up now, to better the story—a girl in Lima—his English slipping under several vodkas.
“Let’s get out of here.”
She touched his hand. “It’s okay, Michael.”
“We’ll do better down the street.”
“Promise?”
“On a stack of flatfoots.”
She laughed, and it cooled Michael off. He waved the waiter over, asked for the check. The waiter shrugged in the direction of the other table. “The gentlemen there took care of it.” A curdled wave from Norris.
He could just walk out—he wanted to—but then all of BA would be hot with the buzz by morning.
They walked over. “Thanks, Bud.”
“Ajo good?”
“Yeah, Bud. Great.”
“Karen? Yours?”
“Really good, Bud.”
Norris was hammered, maybe the most hammered Michael had ever seen him. Something dangerous smoldered in his eyes.
“You’ve met Generals Hoyos and Perez.” Michael shook their hands. The table fell into an awkward pause.
“Well, we’ll see ya, Bud, huh? Thanks again.” Michael turned for the door, waiting for it.
“Say hi to Hector, Mike.” Aimed between his shoulders. A look from Karen: Let it go.
“Doesn’t stink, does it, Mike? Your shit?” Michael turned to the table. Latin faces trying to smile neutrally and just looking imbecilic.
“You got something to say, Bud?”
Lofton and Miller looked nervous, eyes alive between him and Norris, the station chief clearly not caring now: “I mean, your shit stinks to me, but goddamn they lap it up with breakfast on E Street, huh?”
“Big talk from Hoover’s gin bottle. You need that with Flavia?”
“Fuck you, Suslov.”
Miller was all over Norris now. “Why don’t you just shut the fuck up, Bud, huh?”
“OSS’s own little pussy spy. Casa Rosada’s butt buddy. Everybody loves Mikey, don’t they?”
Michael felt the air ready to burn. Norris hissed at him, “Say something, you little shit.”
It could happen. He could smear the turkey-neck’s face against the wall and it’d feel good. Somehow he held his voice steady instead.
“Y’know, Bud, after all these years, I think you were right after all. We don’t work for the same company.”
Fuck them.
Fuck it all.
He’d do it.
11.
How?
Regular, legit postal service or straight air courier was out of the question. Somebody, somewhere, was going to want to peek inside a six-foot box. For sensitive transfers, the station used a trusted in-house courier company—Hapag-Lloyd—which would crate, seal, and label the item in question as a US diplomatic shipment, which made it immune to customs or foreign government inspection. This was the obvious choice but for a rather significant problem: getting something into this pipeline required a notification filed with WH Support under a station chief’s signature.
Bud Norris.
Michael had some juice with the SB Branch, but not over-Norris’s-head juice. How then?
Billy Patterson.
His spook camp playmate and EYES-ONLY tormentor. Billy worked on the comm desk that was the link between Norris and the WH staff offices in Barton Hall. He was flaky, unpredictable…
And maybe just weird enough to do it.
An ocean of white noise, drifting clicks, a faraway ring.
“Yes?”
“Peter North.” Billy Patterson’s working pseudonym.
“Who’s calling?”
“Frank Sniff.”
“One moment.”
Adrift in hiss. Finally, “Well, if it isn’t that cheap half-breed who never calls, never writes…”
“That’s because I don’t like you.”
A kissing smack from the DC end. Patterson: “So what do I owe the pleasure of…Where the hell are you, anyway? Sounds like a goddamn whorehouse.”
“I’m on a pay phone.”
“Norris getting cheap in his senility?”
“I want you to get on one.”
“Oooh…What’s it called again?…Damn, I used to know…”
“Peter—”
“Wait, it’s on the tip of my tongue—oh yeah, TRADECRAFT.”
“Just do it, huh?”
“Okay, okay. Give me the number…”
Michael hung up and waited by the phone as busboys bashed back and forth into the kitchen. He wished he’d gone further out of town, convinced someone from the station was going to walk in, as five, then ten minutes, clicked by.
Ring.
“CIA calling Senor Misterioso.” Patterson.
“Where are you?”
“Ptomaine Tavern.”
“
Pizza gotten any better?”
“Two hundred stomach pumps can’t be wrong.” Michael could hear Billy shift the phone from one hand to the other. “I assume this isn’t a social ring, since we aren’t social.”
“I need a favor.”
“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
Michael reflexively glanced over his shoulder. “I want to ship something secure courier under diplomatic protection.”
“Wrong department.”
“I want to do it without Norris’s signature.”
“Cute. Hang on a sec”—quarters dropping—“How big is this item in question?”
“Six feet.”
“What is it?”
“It’s just six feet, okay?”
There was a hanging moment on the line as Patterson’s voice changed. “Haven’t gone Sov on me, Frankie, have you?”
“What? Shit, no. Just something I don’t want the station to have a piece of.”
“What do you want from moi?”
“I can’t send it without a station chief cable through WH.”
“ ’Tis true.”
“I want you to fake an incoming cable from Norris authorizing.”
Silence.
“You in?”
More silence.
“You miserable little poison dwarf. Four years of ‘Eyes-Only’ bullshit. Don’t you play button-down now.”
Chuckles from the cheerful sociopath. “Okay. What the hell. I kinda like tweaking flatfoots—hang on.” More quarters. “You’re costing me a fucking fortune, Sniff.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“Whoa. Down boy. Not that simple. Big brother has a lotta machines up here, and one of them counts incoming cables. I fake one that wasn’t sent, it’s gonna pop up orphan. Can’t you just send a phony yourself?”
“I don’t know Norris’s sign-on, and let’s just say our cable clerk is on the wrong side of this discussion.”
“Jeez. Paranoia in Patagonia. Okay, here’s what you do. Give her some cable traffic over your file name—only mangle it—use the wrong interfaces or something, so it transmits garbage. Then tell me when it’s coming, I’ll catch it, chuck it, and replace it with your authorization. That’ll keep the incoming count straight. Comprende?”
Blood Makes Noise Page 8