Blood Makes Noise

by Gregory Widen

  “And several million dollars.”

  It was midmorning when the military truck arrived at the gates of Perón’s villa in exile. Michael wasn’t sure what he expected, an honor guard maybe, but it was the Spanish cleaning staff that emerged and carried Evita inside—now protected in a makeshift casket from Ara’s office. They set the casket atop Perón’s dining-room table.

  Michael, Gina, Hector, and Ara were shown into the parlor, where General Perón and Isabel awaited them. Both had dressed for the occasion, and if they noticed the condition of the others, didn’t say. Perón sat on the sofa, Isabel standing at his side. “She’s here?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Hector said.

  Perón turned to Dr. Ara. “You’ve examined her?”

  “The body of Eva Perón is in excellent condition.”

  “I have prepared a place for her. Upstairs. Until our return. This a great day for my wife and me. For all of Argentina.”

  “Yes, General,” Ara purred.

  “This is Michael Suslov, General,” Hector said. “He and his friend Gina brought the Senora to us.”

  “You’re a remarkable man, Mr. Suslov.”

  “Just one with nothing else left.”

  “Well, that describes all of us, doesn’t it?”

  “Where is Lopez Rega?” Hector asked.

  “The hospital,” Isabel said.

  “There was trouble at the border.”

  “So I understand,” she added without emotion. Isabel turned to Gina. “You helped bring our beloved Senora to us?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are always welcome in my home.” Isabel rested her hand on Perón’s shoulder. “Shall we go see her?”

  They filed from the parlor into the dining room. “Michael,” Hector said, “will you do the honors, please?” Michael unbolted the coffin lid. He looked once at Hector, longer at Ara, then opened it.

  During the final weeks of Evita’s cancer death, Perón had never visited her. His first wife had also died of cancer, and the strain of another had been too much. He had waited, in the hall, silently each night as she slipped away. Even when Ara had begun his long preservation process, he had come no closer than the embalming door. And when she was paraded through the streets, when she was put on public display, he had stayed at home.

  Now that wife lay on his dining table, and it was the new one, Isabel, who approached first. She studied the face, the rosary-clenched hands. “I never met her…”

  “Isabel,” Perón said, his voice cracking, “this is Evita.” Isabel reached out and touched Evita’s hair. “I’ll comb it. Every day.” She looked up and offered the general her hand. “Come, Juan.” Perón was still in the doorway, his view blocked by the coffin lid. He walked now anciently toward Isabel, came up beside the casket, and took her hand. Husband and wife smiled to one another, then, with great reluctance, for the first time, Perón turned to the image of Evita.

  “She shall be with us always, Juan,” Isabel chanted. “She will be our inspiration, our hope and future…our power…”

  And as Perón fell deeper and deeper into the image, as he reached out and touched the surgically altered head of some nameless peasant, as he caressed the stiff body of FBI officer Ed Lofton, his eyes filled with tears of melancholy love, and he turned away.

  36.

  They stood outside the villa in singeing heat and were not missed. “And now, Michael?” Hector wore his suit coat, the ubiquitous dark-blue one, and as usual was impervious to temperature.

  “We’re wanted, Gina and I. We’ll need new passports. Argentine if you like.”

  “Done.”

  “You’ll need one too, Hector.”

  “Oh? Where are we going?”

  “Switzerland.”

  A week later Michael, Gina, and Hector stood on the cobblestones outside Kredit Spoerri Bank, new clothes, bodies banged up but clean. “I’m supposing,” Hector said, “that you have a reason for coming to this particular bank.”

  Michael pulled from his pocket Lofton’s wallet. Choked with sand, among his FBI ID, driver’s license, and passport was a Kredit Spoerri business card for one Otto Spoerri.

  “Herr Spoerri?” His secretary on the speaker box. Otto was pacing his office, glaring at his ancestors.

  “I asked not to be disturbed.”

  “You have three visitors.”

  “What visitors?”

  “They say they represent friends.”

  Otto sighed. What was the use of a secretary? “What are they wearing?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Their clothes. Open your eyes. What are they wearing?”

  If her voice had showed any sign of hurt, even annoyance, it would have improved his day. But she merely sighed back. “A woman in a print dress, two men: one in sweater and slacks, the other in a dark-blue suit.”

  Not likely the uniform of the Swiss banking police or American SEC. “Is one old and wasted looking?”

  “Why don’t I just send them away?”

  “Is one old and wasted looking, please?”

  “One’s old. They’re all wasted looking.”

  Otto stared at his ancestors. God he hated them. Was it those crazy Americans? The government ones?

  Was it the key?

  The last portrait on the right was of his father. Death did nothing to reduce his proximity. Otto met the hateful gaze sneer for sneer and turned to the speaker box. “Send them in.”

  He took a seat at his powerful desk that signified nothing. He closed the drawer with the Luger and did his best to rub the liquor from his breath. The hated secretary opened his door, ushered in the three, and excused herself. His visitors stood together on the carpet. “Can I help you?”

  “May we sit?” Dark hair, arm in a sling, a limp.

  “You may tell me what your business is.”

  The dark-haired one stepped forward and laid on his desk an open passport. It was filthy and contained the photo of the older, wasted man that had first visited him. His name, apparently, was Edward Lofton. “A passport that isn’t yours in terrible condition. What is the point?”

  “Know him?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Friends of his.”

  “You don’t look like friends.”

  “Most of his friends don’t.”

  “Were you all in a car accident?”

  “Several.”

  “You are in the director’s office of one of the most trusted banks in Zurich. Again, what is your business?”

  “We’d like to sit down.”

  Otto reached for his secretary’s speaker box and pressed the call button. “Yes, Mr. Spoerri?”

  “Please come in.”

  The door to Otto’s office opened at the same moment Michael tossed onto the desk the safety deposit key.

  “Yes, sir?” the secretary asked, entering. Otto was suddenly frozen a long moment.

  “Please bring my guests some tea.” The secretary disappeared. Otto turned to Michael. “Why don’t you and your friends sit down?”

  They did, their bodies creaking with damage like a World War II VFW meeting. Otto picked up the key and turned it in his hand. It was freakishly shaped, with strange reflections catching rare alloys. “It’s Her key, isn’t it?” Michael said.

  Otto continued to turn the key in his hand, and you could see the brush of memory on his face. “Who?”

  Michael shrugged and reached for it. Otto reflexively jerked back his hand. Michael reached further and held tight Otto’s clenched fist. “Lofton had something else. A letter from the SEC. Something about missing deposits. A lot of deposits.”

  Michael took the key from Otto’s grip and sat back. “So why don’t you loosen your tie, take a hit from the bottle in the drawer you keep glancing at, and start talking to us.”

  Otto had the three of them stay in his office till nearly closing.

  “Will this be a problem?” Gina asked.

  “Less when you’re president of the ba
nk.”

  At closing time Otto led them down to the vault. They signed in with their phony names, completed formalities, and two bank officials witnessed the placing of the bank’s partner key by Otto in one lock, then Michael’s key into the corresponding one. It slid in like it was made yesterday and turned with a smooth click. Three bank guards were needed to remove the massive box. They carried it into a private viewing room, leaving the four of them.

  Michael opened the top. There were four smaller boxes inside. Michael handed one each to himself, Gina, Hector, and Otto. “Should we open them?” Gina asked. Michael nodded. There was a clinking of metal. Then there was silence.

  “I don’t understand…” Otto’s voice trailed off.

  “Is this right?” Gina said.

  In Gina’s box was a small wooden horse. A child’s toy. In Otto’s an envelope of common earth. Hector lifted from his the torn pleat of a black funeral dress. In Michael’s was a lock of a gray hair.

  “This can’t be,” Otto gulped. “Why? Why this? What does it mean?”

  “It’s her life,” Hector said, “that most private part of her she kept to herself.”

  “Her childhood,” Michael joined in, “a toy, dirt from her town. A lock of her dead father’s hair.”

  Hector nodded. “A bastard clinging to some tiny piece of her family history.”

  “Her most valuable possession.”

  Otto had gone fish-belly white. “But the money…”

  “Here,” Gina said. They peered in. Stacked beneath the small boxes of her life were gold bars and diamonds. “My God…” Gina breathed. “Is it a lot?”

  “Millions,” Michael said.

  Hector glanced at the fortune, but his interest seemed more on the fragment of black funeral wear in his hand. “So we have her riches. All the money she set aside during the years of feeding the poor. You brought us here, Michael. What are we to do with it?”

  There was a sudden rattle of steel outside, startling them. “The bank is closing,” Otto said. “Even the bank president will be forced to leave this area shortly. We must decide now.”

  Michael’s eyes never left Gina as he spoke. “Mr. Spoerri here may take what he requires to cover his bank debt; Dr. Ara will receive some for his continued cooperation; Gina and I will need a little to fade away. The rest will return with Hector to the people of Argentina.” Michael turned to Hector. “That’s it.”

  “I’ll get cases to transfer it,” Otto said, and he was out in a rush, headed upstairs, and Hector nodded quietly to Michael. “This money will do much good.”

  “This money will keep you alive.”

  Hector smiled. “So you are becoming a student of Argentina after all.” His expression became more somber. “What will you do now?”

  Michael placed a modest number of gold bars into one of the smaller boxes. “Keep a promise.”

  “To the Senora?”

  “The Senora and myself.” Michael shut the box. He collected Evita’s childhood belongings into another and handed it to Gina. “We’re leaving now, Hector. Gina, me, and Evita. Don’t follow us, don’t call us. Know only that whatever peace is left to me I’ll divide equally between the three of us.”

  Hector nodded. “So you’re taking her.”

  “I made two promises, Hector. That I would watch over her soul and that I’d never take Alejandro from her. Whatever I might have been, whatever I might become, here, today, I am a man who keeps his promises.”

  Hector nodded thoughtfully. “Well, I suppose she spent one lifetime in your care. Why not another?”

  “It may be more than one lifetime, Hector.”

  “In Argentina, Michael, the dead always have one more lifetime.”

  Hector took Gina’s hand. “You’re the best possible thing that could have happened to Michael.”

  “And you’re the worst, Hector.”

  “I shall miss you, Gina. You are a rare creature.”

  Michael hoisted his box, and together Gina and he started for the door. “You always understood, didn’t you, Michael?” Hector said. “About the box.”

  Michael paused. “She built that box for the money because that was Her way. But she had the key made to protect Her childhood. And she swallowed it to save Her soul.”

  “Go with God, Michael.”

  “And you, Hector.”

  Michael and Gina had a rented van. They loaded the gold into the back, next to Evita, climbed behind the wheel, and sat there as Switzerland went by.

  “Is it just the three of us now again?” Gina said.

  Michael was silent a moment. “It will be a responsibility for the rest of your life. In return you get no name, no future, nothing except me.”

  She hugged him then, held his wounded body close—close enough to feel his blood pound—and Gina thought: blood makes noise. If you’re lucky in this life, blood makes noise…

  EPILOGUE

  June 21, 1973

  On the shortest day of the Argentine calendar, the body Dr. Pedro Ara authenticated as Eva Perón was returned to her country. Her husband, Juan Perón, had been already dead a year and never did gaze again on his wife’s remains after that day in Madrid. His third wife, Isabel, now in control of the government, with a limping Lopez Rega, welcomed the casket to a private residence in Olivos, there to be cleaned and prepared for the nation. But Isabel’s turn in the revolving door of military coups came shortly after, and it wasn’t till October 22, 1976, that the authenticated remains of Eva Perón made their final journey along streets lined with half a million well-wishers to the Duarte family crypt in Recoleta Cemetery.

  On that same day, 150 miles away in the small, dusty pampa town where Evita was born, two strangers laid flowers on a pair of graves in the church cemetery. No one was sure whom the graves belonged to. They had been told only that they were distant Duarte relatives from Europe, mother and son, who had asked to be buried here.

  The two strangers held hands a moment beside the plots. They said something quietly to themselves that no one heard, then turned and walked to their car. When they were gone the children ran to the graves, snatched the flowers, and the little girls among them adorned their hair with them and ran home, singing as they went songs of Baby Jesus, Mother Mary, and Santa Evita.

  Author’s Note

  Of all the strange things presented in this novel, perhaps the strangest of all is how much of it actually happened. Though this is a work of fiction, it may surprise the reader to know the degree to which the story adheres to known facts.

  The imperious Dr. Pedro Ara was a real person, who was known indeed for carrying with him to parties a hatbox containing the perfectly preserved head of a Spanish peasant. A consultant in the embalming of Lenin, he spent the better part of a year preserving Evita—forming, some thought, a bizzare, paternal relationship with her corpse. He’s also known to have created a “spare” head of the Senora for his own, if unclear, use. If you read Spanish, a description of his embalming “method” can be found in the somewhat creepy and obsessive memoir, El caso de Eva Perón.

  The early 1950s—when the real-life Colonel J. C. King ran the Western Hemisphere Division as a personal fife—were, as described, a time of internal tension within the CIA in Latin America. Michael’s embassy experiences are based on actual stories related by retired intelligence officers from that period.

  The restlessness of Evita’s remains after her removal from the CGT in 1955 was also largely as depicted, from the flowers that always followed where she went, to being sheltered by the very real and odd Moori Koenig, who, when ordered to find a hiding place for Evita, instead became infatuated with her corpse, keeping it in his home while slowly losing his mind.

  The tragedy of an embassy employee who, after inheriting the body from Koenig, accidentally shot his pregnant wife during a home invasion, is also based on true events.

  In life Evita’s remains did end up hidden as described under a nun’s name in a Milan cemetery, and Montonero terrorists did
in fact murder an ex-president seeking her location. The fear of that information possibly being revealed by both the president’s murder and an attack on a records center spurred the abrupt and secret operation to move her to Spain.

  Everyone’s favorite demon uncle, Argentine military intelligence officer Hector Cabanillas, was a historical person, as was Perón’s third wife, Isabel, and her bizarre astrology-casting Rasputin, Lopez Rega—all of whom existed, doing more or less here what they did in life, including casting nightly spells and presenting Evita’s body during dinner at Perón’s residence in Spain.

  And finally, of course, there is the mysterious and wonderful character of Evita herself. The dusty pampa bastard who climbed her way to the top of a society determined to throw her away, who gave dignity to so many while stealing from them at the same time; a fearsome dervish who stormed for justice yet made a still-unexplained trip at the height of her fame to a certain Swiss bank. A woman who was, as in this tale, a whore to some, a saint to others, and, at least to one person, a promise finally kept.

  —Gregory Widen

  Acknowledgments

  Ah, so many. To Richard Green, who first turned me on to the story of Evita’s body’s restless journey; to Rima Greer, who believed in the novel longer than even the author; and to Bernadette Baker-Baughman and Victoria Sanders for their support and creative advice and, most important, for finding a way to sell a novel like this. To my sister Kathleen, who helped with much of the early research. To Alan Turkus, Alison Dasho, and the rest of the editorial staff at Thomas & Mercer for their enthusiasm and careful editing to help make the lamer parts of this book less so. Any that remain are my doing alone. Thanks are also due to the numberless friends who took time out of their much more interesting lives to read this manuscript and offer suggestions, an incomplete list that would have to include Michael, Viggo, Adara, Don, Gerard, Brett, and a certain CIA station chief friend living not so quietly abroad.

  About the Author