Shadows Across America

by Guillermo Valcarcel

Ari left the office, and before she could sit down, she heard Michelle’s hysterical voice in the corridor. Her surprise at seeing her was tempered by the resentful expression of Ángeles, who, hair now back in place, offered her a coffee. Before Michelle could answer, Calvo’s office door opened again to reveal Calvo looking confused and thoughtful. They rushed toward him, fearing the worst.

  “What’s wrong? Where is he?”

  He raised his eyebrows as though he hadn’t been expecting them. Apparently his brief meeting had made him forget about everything else. Behind him, Wilmer, his assistant, mimed an apology. Calvo pulled himself together and addressed them.

  “They say that he’s alive and relatively unharmed. They’re willing to set him free, today. They wanted five thousand dollars, but we negotiated it down to three.”

  They couldn’t understand why he seemed so upset. “But that’s good, isn’t it?”

  His face was grave and worry stricken. “The condition is that I have to pick him up myself. Alone. Wilmer is the contact. He deals with them, but they won’t accept him this time. I have to go right now; they’re waiting for me.”

  The women went silent. Behind him, Wilmer seemed just as upset. The Mara didn’t play games like this. This wasn’t their kind of deal. There might well turn out to be no one to pick up, but if Calvo didn’t go, they’d come looking for him.

  “But it might be true,” Michelle said. “What if it’s true?”

  “Even if he were alive, even if they did let him go, the Mara don’t let someone live without claiming another in exchange. Let’s hope that he is alive. At least then you’ll get him back. There’s your justice for you. It’s eaten me alive.”

  Calvo left without saying goodbye. He was stunned, distraught, a dead man walking.

  Michelle and Ari had been waiting for an hour. They were together but very much alone. They didn’t say a word: each was lost in her own world. Ari was inscrutable, like a sphinx. Michelle glanced at her surreptitiously but couldn’t guess at what she was thinking. For her part she was trying to find a way to escape her despair, to avoid the darkness that was eating her up inside. She’d lost everything, and she was the only one to blame. Her decisions had ruined her life and those of the people around her, just like her mother had always warned her. She had always known that she was selfish and reckless. The only explanation for all this was that she was being punished for her evil ways. But she couldn’t understand why other innocent people had to pay for her sins, why her affronts to the Lord led to the suffering of others. She wanted to pray to God to put her in their place, as she had several times before, but her prayers had never been answered: she wasn’t a good Christian. She didn’t deserve it. She knew why God was hurting others instead of her: to show her what a cowardly, despicable person she was. It had always been that way. What would happen when they left the building with just another failure under their belt? Ari already hated her. She’d go back home to grieve. What about her? What should her punishment be? One path, from which there was no return, became apparent to her. She was already lost, the consequences . . .

  She was jolted out of these dark thoughts by the sound of her phone. She felt ashamed, as though someone could read her innermost thoughts. It was Andrés.

  “Michelle! Michelle, get over here.” He was jubilant. “Ethan is in the hospital. He’s fine—he’s been sedated, but he’s fine!”

  Upon hearing this unexpected news, hope suddenly flooded back into her. She was surprised by her next question. “What about the detective? Do you know where Adrian Calvo is?”

  “Here, celebrating. He’s brought a bottle of champagne.”

  Calvo had bought lottery tickets and was rubbing them on Ethan’s back. Ethan himself was still feeling dopey. Calvo brandished them in his sleepy face.

  “They’re tickets for tomorrow’s draw. Don’t be stingy; share a little. I’ve never met anyone like you, and you can’t let opportunities like these go to waste.”

  In Ethan’s blurred vision, he saw the shapes of two women coming toward him. If his eyes weren’t deceiving him, Michelle and Ari were standing there, together. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, trying to work out what was real and what was a drug-induced hallucination. But nothing changed. Michelle and Ari were looking down at him bashfully, afraid to disturb him. They were right there, next to the bed.

  “Oh . . . then I must be dead . . .”

  Ari hugged him, and he felt something sink into his soul. She touched his scars in concern, as though she were worried that they’d open again. Michelle stood aside to give them some space while Calvo had characteristically appeared out of nowhere with several bottles of wine and was giving out glasses.

  “You only have a few cracked ribs. You’re tough, my friend. I’ve spoken to your travel insurers. Things were getting ugly. But with my office’s statement and the accounts of a couple of police officers who specialize in tourists, we worked out our differences. The witness described an assault, a carjacking, and a brutal beating. They rescued you in partnership with my team. The case file has been issued. But there was one condition: you have to go home tomorrow so they can keep you under observation. They don’t want any more mishaps.”

  Ethan sat up in alarm, disoriented. “I can’t go home! They can’t—I can’t stop now.”

  Ari reacted indignantly. He had nearly been killed, and now he was talking about going on as though it were all a big adventure. They got into a heated argument in English. Calvo tried to calm the girl before they came to blows. A nurse asked visitors to leave the room, and Michelle left without even having been able to say hello. It was an hour before anyone was allowed back in. This time, Ari went alone. She stood there with her arms crossed while Ethan, struggling to come to terms with the situation, apologized.

  “Ari, I’m sorry. This is all a lot to take in. I . . . I can’t . . . I can’t stop now. I . . . why? Why . . . I’ve just realized how strange it is that you’re here. I’m so happy to see you, but I don’t understand. How . . . why are you here?”

  Ari tried to compose herself before answering. “Because you were going to get yourself killed, you idiot. Because Michelle called me. Because Suarez was worried.” She started to stammer. “Because I had to. I . . .” She sighed and gulped, and her voice started to break. She decided to change the subject, telling him what Suarez had relayed to her. She told him about the Beast, his employers, and where he was headed in Brazil. The news renewed Ethan’s hope. “Suarez has made progress. He’s found a place called Liberdade—he thinks it might be where they orchestrated everything from. He’s on his own. I need to meet him there. There’s no time to waste, and you have several weeks of recovery time ahead of you. Months maybe. I can’t wait. This is a case, Ethan. It’s not about your ego. It’s bigger than you.”

  Ethan felt his throat constricting and couldn’t get his thoughts straight. He put his face in his hands and asked Ari to forgive him for everything. He kept apologizing. Under the effects of the tranquilizers, he started to repeat himself, again and again, as though it were a mantra.

  When she saw him looking so vulnerable, Ari was moved to hug him. But it didn’t come easily. She bent down and pulled his hands away. “Hey!”

  Ethan blinked and sighed, as though he’d just woken up. He pulled himself together. “No . . . I’m not in any condition to help.”

  Ari coughed. “There’s something else. I saw something in the information that Suarez gave me that affects both Michelle and Michi. Something very important. I don’t know what to do about it.”

  They spoke for hours, and although there was no physical contact, they reconnected, rediscovering an intimacy that they hadn’t shared in months. Neither of them mentioned it for fear of ruining the magic. Ari left at the end of visiting hours. Michelle had been waiting outside all that time with stoical patience. Again, she left without seeing Ethan.

  The next morning Michelle came back, left her name, and waited, but the nurses never delivered an invitation from him to c
ome in. She was left waiting, stuck in the hallway. She spent several hours in a plastic chair until Ethan was put onto a gurney and wheeled into an ambulance. She saw him pass by, flanked by the paramedics, but he never looked at her. Then she got up and walked outside to follow him to the airport along with Andrés and Ari. She never got close enough to say a word.

  Yarlín tried to stay awake, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to. The drugs were always too strong. She wanted to scream and cry: she missed her mother, but she contained herself. The darkness sucked her into nowhere. Or always to the same place. She was moving again, this time down a long corridor. It looked strange, like on a spaceship. A hospital, she thought, trying to remember every detail so she could tell her parents about it later when she was allowed to go home. In front of her was a wall with posters of Disney princesses. She liked them. She was in a large room decorated in pinks and purples with a row of shiny beds on each side and a play area with a cushioned floor that had every toy she ever could have dreamed of, including a Cinderella’s castle big enough for her to fit into. It even had a little table and two chairs inside. She’d been here before, but she couldn’t remember if it had been real or in a dream. All this distracted her from her sadness until the voice of another little girl made her jump.

  “Hi, Yarlín.”

  She scurried for cover in the castle, hiding behind the table.

  “Don’t be afraid. You were in my dreams too; that’s how I know you.”

  Somehow, Yarlín felt as though she wasn’t alone anymore. Someone was there who understood her. It was the first time she’d felt that way since they’d locked her up. “Are you sick too?”

  “We’re not sick. Don’t believe them. They’re keeping us for some reason. They say they’re good, but their boss is bad. Do you know the Grandfather? He’s bad. He’s not here, but I’ve seen him. He’s very old, older than anyone else in the world, but I don’t think he knows that.”

  Yarlín didn’t understand what the other girl was saying, but she didn’t care very much. She was much more curious about her new companion and poked her head up above the plastic battlements. The girl was older than she was.

  “When I dream of him, it’s like he has one eye, but I know he doesn’t. Have you dreamed of an old man with one eye?”

  Yarlín, deeply intrigued, shook her head. “I’m very happy to see you. I hated being alone.”

  The image grew blurry.

  Outside, a maid as chubby and rosy as a Rubens model was doing her daily round, wobbling along the corridor. Looking through the window, she was shocked to see the little girl lying awake in the storybook bed. She came back along the corridor and went inside, speaking in a bright, friendly voice. “Good evening, my darling. What are you doing up so late? Didn’t they give you your medicine? Did you have a nightmare?”

  The girl, who was older than Yarlín, turned to her with disconcerting confidence.

  “No, it wasn’t a nightmare. There’s another girl. There’s definitely another girl. I’ve seen her.”

  Her caretaker gulped. “How can there be another girl? You’re alone—you know that you can’t see anyone. You have a contagious disease.”

  The girl gave a firm, aggressive response. “There’s another girl. Her name is Yarlín, and she was stolen from her parents in a country called Colombia. Just like I was stolen from my mommy. She’s been brought here. I saw her in the game room.”

  “H-how can you have seen her? You never left the room. You must be confused—”

  “We spoke in her dream. Her name is Yarlín, and she was stolen.”

  Her expression took on an almost adult air. The nanny went pale and took a step backward. “D-don’t worry, Michi—it was just a nightmare, honey. I’m going to get some help, and we’ll see what we can do to fix this. I’m going right now, Michi. You just wait here.”

  10

  Ratlines

  The Vatican is of course the largest organization involved in the illegal movement of emigrants . . . The justification for its participation includes a desire to ensure the spread across Europe and Latin America of people who, regardless of their other political beliefs, are anti-Communist and pro-Catholic . . . Large groups of German Nazis still come to Italy to obtain false documents and visas and then leave immediately from Genoa or Barcelona, heading for Latin America.

  Memorandum by Vincent La Vista, the US military attaché in Rome, sent to Herbert J. Cummings, dated May 15, 1947. The document was sealed as top secret but was declassified in 1984.

  Genoa, 1947

  The war had finished two years earlier, but many party leaders were still on the run. For Walter Stobert, however, the flight had begun twelve years before in a city to which he’d never returned: Vienna. After the fall of Berlin, he’d gotten lucky. When he’d been captured by American soldiers together with members of the Volkssturm, the initial chaos and his fortuitous lack of a tattoo had seen him taken for an ordinary militiaman and freed before winter. The Allies barely documented their investigations, and the lack of food at the teeming detention camps made them more generous and permissive than they would have liked.

  Once he was free, he’d wanted to return to Austria but believed that the risk of living under the Soviet occupation was too great. He’d tried his luck in a village south of Munich, where he’d spent some time working as a baker. Although there had been bombing, the battle lines had never pushed this far south, and the communities of those who remained faithful to the fallen regime were much stronger, better organized, and harder to detect than elsewhere. Throughout 1946, he’d heard rumors about Die Spinne, a local network helping former Nazis to flee, and the Nuremberg Trials had convinced him, like many others, that leaving Europe altogether was the only way he could be safe.

  Tormented by nightmares, he was always grateful to see the dawn so he could work next to the oven and warm a body that only seemed to be getting colder and colder. Eventually, in early 1947, a successful call had been made, and he’d been visited by a customer he’d never seen before.

  Dressed in an olive-green fedora and a trench coat with an empty sleeve sewed to one side, the man had stretched out his good arm and said just one word. “Odessa.”

  After Ethan passed through security, Andrés, Michelle, and Ari sat in the airport cafeteria for a while as though the delay would ease the pain of separation. They watched the planes taking off and landing and wondered which was his. Andrés asked Ari, very respectfully, whether her place shouldn’t be with her boyfriend so she could take care of him at such a difficult time. Ari took a deep breath and counted to ten before answering that they’d both decided that she would be more useful looking for Michi. She didn’t bother to mention that they weren’t a couple anymore, thanks to Andrés’s lovely sister. Instead, she abruptly said goodbye and walked off with Michelle. Andrés knew nothing of her contact with Suarez, and she preferred to keep it that way. The poor evangelist begged them to keep him informed.

  On their way back, Ari didn’t say a word, and Michelle didn’t need to ask to know that something was worrying her. Finally, she asked if they could go to a Denny’s along the way. After ordering, they were swallowed by a silent, expectant bubble.

  “What’s next? What do we do now?” Michelle finally asked. “Tell me what I can do.”

  Ari drank some water and spoke in English, worried that her Spanish wasn’t up to it. “I spoke to Ethan. He wanted to talk to you himself, but that was stupid: he was leaving. I don’t know where to begin . . . have you heard from Michi’s father? I mean, are you still in touch?”

  Michelle hesitated for several long seconds before answering. “Yes, a little. What’s wrong?”

  Ari uncertainly scratched her chin. “I suppose you know something about the other detective helping you. Not Calvo.”

  Michelle nodded anxiously.

  “He’s now in Brazil. Michi’s father is Brazilian, isn’t he?”

  Michelle reared up like a frightened cat. “What are you getting at? That i
t was him?” She smiled bitterly. “That’s impossible. You don’t know—”

  “Listen to me. Michi isn’t the only girl to have disappeared. This was the work of a network. We have records of other kidnappings, and the victims are always girls. I knew Michi’s father’s name through Ethan. Suarez didn’t, so he couldn’t tie the two together.” She handed Michelle some papers. “The files were pretty disorganized; some of them only had a photo of the girl while others had family information. His name is Henrique Teixera, right?”

  Michelle nodded quickly.

  “He’s listed as the father on at least four birth certificates. They’re official documents, not private letters or forgeries. He’s the father of at least four of these girls in different countries in Latin America.”

  Michelle’s mouth opened wide. She looked around her as though she didn’t know where she was and began to hyperventilate.

  Walter Stobert’s life was austere and methodical. He woke up very early in the morning to work at the oven, and by midmorning, when he’d made his batches, he always joined the team of volunteers clearing rubble from houses and roads. They collected scrap iron and tried to restore a vestige of normality to the area. Silently, he worked side by side with widows, old people, and cripples, exhausted and guilty. They wouldn’t allow themselves to cry or show any sign of weakness, just as they’d been taught. They were trying to dispel the harrowing memories as soon as they could. The locals admired his strength and the tireless energy that appeared to course through him, and nobody asked any questions. Nobody ever asked any questions.

  A large, matronly woman from Berlin with a determined mien and a limp appreciated the way he gave his all and served him generous portions of broth during their brief moments of respite. She sat next to him, and they both wolfed down the soup and stale bread he brought with him without saying a word. When she gave him his bowl and came back to collect it, their only moment of physical contact, she shivered at the cold touch of a stranger who never seemed to get warm, not even when he was dripping with sweat.