Near Evita’s end, Michael came home one night to an envelope tacked to his door, written in a shaking, chemotherapy hand:
At this moment, I think of the young man with a Latin soul and the mother who never said good-bye. Pray for her, Michael Suslov, pray for me, and protect both our souls. Included in the envelope was a small lock of blonde hair. Scrawled below it, in handwriting so degraded it was nearly unreadable, a last line: You Will Never Forget Me.
Two weeks later her casket, rounded and sleekly black, inched from her bed to the National Congress building through streets heavy with mourners. He was there.
She lay in state for two days, and the faithful waited hours, drenched in freezing rain, for a glimpse. And he was there. Among the farmers and street workers, her army of poor clutching not Bibles but her autobiography. He lied to his wife, called in sick to the station, and stood in the rain ten hours to see the corpse. Ara had done a rushed, temporary job, and it showed. She was still Evita. When the crowds thinned the doctor would take her away, roll up his sleeves, and spend the following year turning her into…his.
The line never stopped moving, but Michael slowed, brushed the rain from his face, and whispered, for her, a prayer.
A glob of sweat rolled off his nose and broke across her lip, running away like rain on polished chrome. See, look at those lips, the oligarchy had cried, as if their fullness were in itself proof of her rumored skill at fellatio, a talent reportedly shared with every producer and nickelodeon jockey she met as a young actress. Before the earthquake relief concert and the General she stole from her best friend. Before the sanctifying of that turgid, ruby mouth. Ara’s mouth now. Effigy as reality. She was in there somewhere…
Karen came home, baby-to-be and mom given a clean bill, D-day in two weeks. Karen’s back hurt, her legs kept cramping, and she knew instantly something was wrong with the house.
“What have you done, Michael?”
“Nothing that won’t be over soon.”
The hurt ran so deep it was almost lost to the eye. “This is my house too.”
“I know. Why do you say that?”
She took in the room with an eerie perception that made Michael squirm. “Is it here?” she asked.
“What?”
“Whatever you’ve done.”
He tried to let the words filter with the confidence of a technicality. “No.”
She stopped talking to him.
He fidgeted, tried to come up with something to say. But what was there except what couldn’t be said? He bounced off the walls, useless, and finally went to bed an hour after Karen.
He didn’t remember sleeping, and waking was a nauseating, fuzzy jolt. He fought for a reason, mine-shaft darkness around him, and was going to let it go when he heard a shadow. Outside, along the foundation wall. His vision flushed hot, and his hand was groping, numb stupid, for Hector’s .45 under the bed. It was heavy and giant and his fingers closed over it all wrong. He swung his feet down, smacked a heel on tile, and sat there, ghost frozen.
Karen was asleep, and he measured time by her breaths. He listened till his eyes hurt, finally stood, and shuffled agonizingly to the bedroom window. The backyard stretched out a story below, gardens and olive trees running to the alley. He waited for the backyard to make the first move.
An olive tree shifted.
Something went black in Michael’s veins. He bolted through the bedroom, barked his toe on the staircase, barreled without reason through the kitchen to the backdoor. He stood there, gun out, and tried to wait.
Somewhere along the way the sun came up.
His arm was asleep, and he couldn’t feel the gun. You could see the backyard now through the kitchen window. Fleshy blue. Silent.
When he opened the back door, his feet sunk in dew. Michael lowered the gun, turned back inside…
And saw the rose tied to the door.
“Gotta stop swimming in meat grinders, son.”
Michael jerked up. He was in the embassy lunch room—hundred square feet of linoleum, coffee pot, and Coke machine. Lofton leaned on the back of a chair.
“Didn’t get much sleep.”
“Doesn’t look like you got any sleep at all, pally. Trouble at home?”
A jolt of alarm rocked Michael’s colon then spread dully through his exhaustion, as nothing registered on Lofton’s face. “Got a kid coming. It’s hard on Karen. I’m a little nervous I guess.”
“It’s a roller coaster for sure. Just remember you’re not the first. Mommies been doin’ this forever just fine.” Lofton lingered, and Michael wondered what he was waiting for him to say.
“Yeah. You’re right. I guess.”
The chair creaked as Lofton rocked it. “Makes a guy think about his future, having a child. What would best serve that future, for you, for Karen, for your baby.” It sat weirdly a beat before he released the chair and backed away. “Gotta go back and look busy. Do the same if I were you. Bud’s got the green folder out again.”
He left, and Michael’s mind went back where it’d been all morning.
The rose.
He’d checked twice to make sure it was real, crumpling it before Karen got up. A chance in a million it wasn’t what it had to be. One night. One fucking night and it had started. A bunch of old women—and, Jesus Christ, what Wisner would give for ears like that. What Dulles himself would.
The shadow in the yard hadn’t looked old.
It was all too much now. He didn’t know where to move the box till Tuesday, but it wasn’t staying in the garage next door. And he was getting Karen out of there. Today.
Rushing through a budget report so he could duck out early; Karen wary on the phone: “I can barely move, Michael. Why on earth do you want to go somewhere now?” He’d tried to make it sound relaxed, and it came out flushed and edgy. Karen’s breath broke and shortened, and he knew she was crying. “Damn you, Michael, I’m your wife. It’s my life too. Why won’t you talk to me?” He promised he would. He’d tell her everything. But later. Right now, please, she had to pack a case for the weekend. “I’ve been sick all day, Michael…” A resigned sigh. “Just make it someplace quiet, huh?”
“Promise. I love you.”
“Sure.”
On the way out Norris hit him with the green folder, a blurry extra hour tracing money transfers through British-owned BA banks. Pumped with Miller’s coup, Norris actually smiled. Actually said please. Michael fought the need to punch him. A roomful of flatfoots was one thing. A roomful of smug flatfoots was one cross too many.
It was dark when Michael got home. He dropped the car at the curb, looked for Karen’s bags in the hall—didn’t see them—and bounded up the stairs.
She was in bed.
“What are you doing?” He fairly squeaked with it.
One eye opened with difficulty. “Oh. Hi.”
“How come you’re not packed?”
You could see the shape of her belly under the blanket, a small mountain drifting up and down. “I’ve been feeling like crap for an hour and half, Michael. If you want to leave that badly, you’re going to have to do it alone or carry me over your shoulder.”
“You’re not just screwing with me, are you?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
He let his shoulders loosen and rubbed his eyes. He was being stupid about this. He sat down beside her. “It’s okay. It’s not that big a deal. Really. Can I get you something?”
“Some water maybe. Thank you.”
She was asleep again when he came back. He set the water on a nightstand, watched her face, easy and soft with a strand of hair over one eye. She was peaceful, and it snuck up on him. The ache of how he could have let so much drift to sea so far.
He’d fix it. He’d ship the Pampa Princess out, and with Hector’s promised juice, Karen and Michael Suslov would soon follow. Away from this shit. Away from Buenos Aires.
He made himself something in the kitchen and didn’t eat it, settled on coffee, and roamed the liv
ing room. Tried to focus but just ended up pacing. Raw and exhausted from last night, he finally turned off most of the lights and sat in his armchair, .45 in his lap, and faced a window that looked out on the neighbor’s alley garage. A knee drummed as he waited for shadows.
An eternity passed before he checked his watch. Eleven o’clock. Jesus Christ, it was only eleven o’clock.
He blinked. Looked at his watch again and felt his guts freeze. 4:26 a.m. A five-hour blink…
He sat straight up in the chair, rubbed his eyes, and they were still blurry. He rubbed them again, took in the room.
And knew he wasn’t alone.
Something screwy calm in him. Not like last night. Maybe the certainty. Maybe he’d just run out of adrenaline.
It started as just a sense but now it was a creak. From the kitchen. Behind the wings of his easy chair. Hidden, he picked the blunderbuss from his lap. Rammed his thoughts with where to go, which way to leap…
When the lights went out. The fuse box in the kitchen. It had to be the fucking fuse—
Another creak. Hard sole on kitchen tile. He flooded with possibilities, till it all gridlocked and he was jumping out of the chair—blind in his own house—and suddenly his nose sang, his breath exploded, and he was falling backward, the carpet coming up sooner than he expected. His lungs refused to suck, and he realized he’d been hit—body-blocked—and there was shuffling, but you couldn’t see…
Something, maybe a leg, and he slammed his fist, breaking a knuckle against bone. The leg shouted—“Sasiko!”—a male voice that kicked Michael furiously aside. He rolled, got his gun off the carpet and tried to stand, tried to scream, but nothing came. He rocked to his feet, tumbled after the voice retreating into the kitchen.
He hit the tile and banged into the range. Pain shot through his side. He gasped, spun—
And the room lit up.
A flash, and Michael knew he was being shot at. He wasn’t hit—maybe—and threw himself through the opposite doorway, where he locked down and grasped his gun so tight he thought the grip would crumble.
A battery night-light. In the living room. You could see it through both kitchen doorways. He waited. Waited till moving darkness swallowed the pin of light. Then he fired.
He couldn’t tell what he’d hit through the pounding whine. The grainy stench of sulfur. Michael wiped his nose, fumbled for a circuit breaker…
And felt his universe cave in.
The round had caught the body midchest and passed through the kitchen wall. The plaster was smeared with blood down to where his target sat against it, swaying punch-drunk. It gurgled and looked up at him and it was Karen.
Black numbness started up his legs. She tried to say something, but he wouldn’t have heard. His body, his mind, were swallowed one by one in a cold forever that lowered him gently to the floor, across from his wife, and whispered that it would be all right, all right if he just went to sleep…
14.
It was a half hour before anyone came. A neighbor heard the shots but didn’t know which house they came from. The first BA police car turned on a street crazy with barking dogs and went door to door, till one cop, running his flashlight through yards, saw the jimmied back door.
The district capitán knew they were Yankees and called the embassy. The embassy duty officer called the ambassador, who called Norris, who called Lofton, who wasn’t home, so he came up himself.
Norris had to navigate broken furniture to get in. Michael and Karen were still in the kitchen. The cops had taken the gun, but no one had moved either of them. Michael was on the floor, rocking back and forth, keening softly.
Norris kept the cops back, ran interference when the capitán tried to question Michael. Insisted firmly that everyone in this room was part of the American embassy and therefore had diplomatic immunity. The US mission would handle it. The officer blustered but backed down, ordering his men, after crime scene photos were taken, to wrap Karen, which Norris gave permission for. They used a pink sheet. As she was lifted, Michael clawed wildly at them, howling as they carried her out, Norris holding him back.
“Get a hold of yourself, Mike.”
“Don’t!” Michael begged. “Don’t give her to Ara!”
“Ara? Christ, Mike, nobody’s giving her to him. She’s going to the police hospital.”
Lofton came later, and they took turns staying up with him. Lofton was jumpy and had trouble staying still. He’d wander back and forth, wiping his hands on his trousers, mumbling, “Jesus, Mike…”
Norris called in a cleaning lady. She came with dawn and scrubbed Karen’s blood from the floor and wall. They pumped up Michael with Seconal and put him to bed. The capitán had left a cruiser out front, just to remind them whose beat this was. Norris added a marine guard from the embassy. He washed his face and met Lofton on the landing as they got ready to leave. It was Saturday morning, dead with it.
“Mike going to be okay?” Lofton asked. He looked hammered.
“He’ll sleep some. That’s enough. I’ll leave Casey on the door.”
“How far up the chain of command are we going with this?”
Norris shook his head. “I don’t want any more of Dulles’s SB clowns down here than I have to. Somebody busted in on the kid. Before I end up with the frat-boy hordes crawling all over me, I want to know exactly what this does or doesn’t have to do with the station.”
“The guy killed his pregnant wife, Bud. Point-fucking-blank. This isn’t going away.”
That first day Michael slept. He’d jerk awake, feel the flat dullness of the Seconal, and for a moment forget. But the world always came back on ground glass, and he would let himself fade away from it, away into sleep…
The second day Norris came back, gave him more pills, told to sleep more. Told him not to talk to anyone.
That was okay with Michael.
He got up that night on corpse legs, went downstairs to a house destroyed by someone and piled back haphazardly by cops. The son of a bitch had done it while his wife bled to death. While he…while he sat there…
He could see the embassy guard in front, a cruiser’s shadow in the alley.
Shadows…
They were plenty in the kitchen. But none of Karen. They had wrapped and scrubbed and taken it all away.
He went back upstairs, curled himself on the chilled bathroom tile, begged for death, and got still more sleep…
Tuesday he rose before dawn and his head was fire. Seconal crowded the edge of his vision and he took more to crowd it further. A guard was still on the door, but the cruiser was gone from the alley. He knew—if he could make himself walk—what he was going to do today.
Barely morning and only Wintergreen on the station front desk. Seeing Michael rattled him. “Go home, Spook. Get some rest, huh?” He talked slowly, as if to a mental patient. “I’m sorry about Karen, man. I liked her…Christ, Spook, what am I suppose to say?”
The TSD photo equipment boxes being sent to Milan substation today had already been brought out into the alcove for the courier.
“Get a coffee,” Michael said.
“What?”
“Get a coffee.” Just a pair of Seconal eyes, and Wintergreen got up.
“Sure.” He disappeared.
Michael brought Evita’s box out of the elevator and set it beside the TSD crates. He then went back to his desk and rifled a file cabinet for the station’s single .38 pistol. A cable was sitting on his in-box.
TOP SECRET SELF-RESTRICTED HANDLING EYES ONLY…
FROM: PETER NORTH AC/WH/5/
TO: FRANK SNIFF BUENOS AIRES STATION
SUBJECT: RYBAT BI LETTER
MESSAGE:
I HEARD. JESUS CHRIST, WONDER BOY, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?
Michael sat alone at Wintergreen’s desk, station .38 in his lap, and waited till the Hapag-Lloyd couriers arrived, wet from a rainstorm blowing outside.
“Got a pen?” Michael handed him one. The courier ticked off his manifest of transfer orders, i
ncluding Billy Patterson’s fake, compared them to the boxes’ attached paperwork, and signed off.
Both the TSD crates and Evita’s box were locked inside metal containers and taped shut with US diplomatic seals for their trip on an H&L cargo ship to Europe.
Finished, the courier turned back to Michael, still at the desk with his blown-out eyes, and sighed for the both of them. “Shitty day, huh?”
“You have no idea.”
After they left with Evita, Michael wrote two notes. The first he telegrammed to an order of nuns in Milan, Italy. The second he tacked to Norris’s door: I’m burying my wife. I’ll be back…when I’m back.
He hadn’t eaten in three days and stopped for a roll on the corner to settle his stomach. It didn’t. Barbara DeVries was passing when he came out. “I’m sorry, Mike.” He kept walking, was opening his car door, when she leaned in close. “Honestly, I never thought you’d have the guts.”
He drove a block, stopped, and vomited in the gutter.
It was in Palermo Park, near the pond, that Hector met him. “A tragedy, Michael.”
“Yes. It is, Hector.”
Michael took out the .38 and leveled it at the intelligence chief’s bad eye. “General Olivar. His throat wasn’t cut by a jealous husband, was it?”
“No, Michael.”
“Peronists?”
“Almost certainly.”
“And Olivar was watching your Senora. Before Moori Koenig.”
“Yes. I should have told you. I’m sorry.”
“You can’t imagine the comfort that apology is to me right now.”
Hector shook his head with something that could pass for sadness. “I cared a great deal for Carmelina, Michael. This sickens my heart.”
It had all been flat and compartmentalized in his mind that day till the sound of her nickname. The one just for the three of them, and it was molten copper on his soul. His eyes filled with tears and he shoved them aside with his open palm. “You fucking bastard.”
Hector’s gaze never went to the gun, his voice a calm that made the .38 feel stupid. “We used each other, Michael. And that is the way of the world with us. But I had affection for you, and none less for Carmelina. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
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