Shadows Across America

by Guillermo Valcarcel

  Walter had forgotten what heat was. Hard as he tried, he was unable to imagine it, like a blind man trying to conceive of color. He could put his hand in the fire in the oven, and only when the skin had started to crisp did he feel a slight tingling. He had acquired several serious burns on his forearm that way. Since that night in Vienna, twelve years ago, he’d lost all sense of his own temperature. The gradual change had been imperceptible when he’d been in the East, but by the time he’d gotten back, it was stark. It was a strange trait for which he had become renowned, one that haunted his brain like an obsession. His life had become a struggle against the cold and fear that had settled inside of him. He was afraid of the cold; he thought it would be the end of him. He was afraid of going to sleep, of dreaming. Dreaming most of all, because he didn’t want to become trapped in the strange dream in which he lived. He slept only four hours each night; he didn’t need any more. He took refuge in his routine, hiding from the occupying armies, the situation in Europe, and himself.

  One spring morning in 1947, employing the same distant but effective practicality that had defined his anonymous existence there, he gathered the few things he wanted to keep and, not bothering saying goodbye to anyone, set out for the south. The first leg was an eighteen-mile trek by foot to meet his first contact. He had been taken in by the clandestine Odessa network.

  Michelle was wandering around the parking lot in a daze. After paying the bill, Ari ran after her worriedly. Michelle had almost stumbled into a crosswalk, and a car braked, honking angrily. She stood staring blankly at it while the driver shouted misogynist insults. Ari caught up with her and pulled her back.

  “Michelle! Michelle, I know that this is a shock, but you have to tell me how to find him. We need to talk to Henrique. He’s the only one who’ll know.”

  Michelle gave her a confused look and walked to her car. She leaned on the hood and seemed to come to. Then she answered in Spanish. “He was . . . Beto loved it . . . his car was his favorite thing in the world.” Michelle smiled to herself. “Beto and Henrique. That’s ironic. I’d never have suspected. They never met. Henrique never took the trouble to meet him. He said . . . he said that he was going to take us away with him . . .” Her voice broke, and a new sense of resolve hardened in her eyes. She turned to Ari with dry lips and spoke in English. “What about Ethan? Did he know?”

  “I told him.”

  “And he let you tell me?”

  “Ethan could barely speak.”

  “He let you tell me? Ethan knew, but he left.”

  “Michelle, I know how you feel, but—”

  Michelle broke down. “You have no idea how I feel! No idea!”

  Passersby slowed down to watch.

  “You’re telling me that my daughter, my little daughter, is part of a production line? That Henrique was making them all over the continent? That she’s just one of many? And Ethan wasn’t man enough to tell me himself? I waited for him for hours! I thought he loved her!”

  Ari didn’t know how to calm Michelle, whether it was best to get her moving or to keep talking. She wasn’t good in situations like this, and deep down she hated Ethan for not being there, even though she’d insisted that he go.

  Michelle walked around in a circle, then again, saying something to herself. She glared at Ari. “She isn’t a product; she has a light. She has a light!” She got into the car, and her face grew redder and redder. “She’s special, you understand? She’s special!”

  Now several of the customers and waiters from the restaurant had come out to the parking lot, eagerly observing the women. It was like a private soap opera, although they couldn’t understand what they were saying. Ari, who treasured her privacy, was made more uncomfortable by the onlookers than Michelle’s reaction. Michelle just ignored them all and drove off. Ari, stunned, watched her drive onto the freeway. She waited until the crowd dispersed and, summoning all the dignity she had left, went back inside to shelter from the sun.

  The journey was hard and fraught with danger. On the first night, Stobert slept in a barn. The second was spent in the open air, but things got better when he crossed the border into Austria, where he was taken in by a Franciscan monastery whose residents helped him get to Italy. They crossed the Brenner Pass and finally left the Alps behind with Stobert naively anticipating Mediterranean warmth. No one asked any questions on the journey. No one asked anything in postwar Europe. There weren’t any answers.

  A few miles from the coast he met with a contact in a room at a rural inn and learned how he would make the last leg of his journey. He’d wait north of Genoa for a few days in a transition camp set up by W. Rauff until his documentation came through. After considering several different destinations used by former soldiers, including Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria, he opted for the South Atlantic: Argentina. There was a large German community in the country, and capital had flowed there since the surrender. This, in addition to Eva Perón’s tour through Europe, where she’d met the pope, seemed to create a very favorable environment for emigration.

  Four days later, he received a white passport bearing the International Red Cross stamp. He examined it thoroughly: it was genuine. The Catholic Church had started to wield its influence in decisions related to the status of political refugees, and the Red Cross was issuing hundreds of letters of transit without checking backgrounds, simply trusting the Vatican’s word. His last step was to visit the Argentine consulate, where he immediately received a visa and ID card. From then on he’d be known as Fausto Aspiazi.

  Finally, on October 3, he set out for Buenos Aires as a second-class passenger on the steamer Veneto. He wouldn’t return to Europe for thirty years.

  Armando, the head of security at Colônia Liberdade, got out of the Mercedes along with Lucas N., the head of administration, and his bodyguards. In front of them was the imposing skyscraper that housed the headquarters of Schwindt Worldwide in Geneva. Schwindt was one of the largest private security companies in the world, but it had also branched out into legal services of every kind. The intimidating architecture had the intended effect: they went to their meeting cowed and subservient. They were politely led to the twenty-second floor and placed in a thirty-by-ten-foot room with a one-piece glass-and-cast-iron table that seated twenty people. A friendly secretary offered them drinks and left them alone for a quarter of an hour. Lucas and Armando were a bundle of nerves but didn’t dare say a word in case they were being recorded. They hadn’t been informed of the purpose for the meeting, but there was no way they could have refused. Ever since the Bloodhound’s death, they’d been expecting some form of retribution, and they were the highest-ranking members of the organization after the Grandfather, who was untouchable. They didn’t know what to expect. Armando just prayed that the infamous Schwindt brothers wouldn’t be there in person. Eventually, a series of executives came in and occupied some of the empty seats. Finally, a woman about forty years of age in a smart Armani suit with a blonde ponytail came in, and those already in the room stood up. She took a prominent position and started the introductions in clear-spoken, diplomatic French. They would continue to speak in the same language for the rest of the conversation, which required a considerable effort on the part of their two guests.

  “Allow me to welcome you on behalf of Schwindt Security, a subsidiary of Schwindt Worldwide. Let me introduce you to our representatives: the distinguished lawyer Barnes, from the firm Barnes and Barnes, and the distinguished Mister Trujillo, the Geneva representative of Smit and Betancourt, a firm that has provided legal services for us over the past few years.”

  The guests nodded nervously.

  “On the other side we have representatives from our Department of International Relations and my personal assistant, Miss Barraud. I am Monique Lombard, director of Schwindt Security.”

  Armando started to stammer an introduction of his own, but the woman cut him off abruptly.

  “We will shortly be joined by the owners of our company, the Schwindt brothers. We’ll w
ait for them.”

  A heavy silence fell over those present. It lasted for another ten minutes of pure torment for the foreigners, who were still afraid to say anything, even to each other. But their discomfort was dispelled when a hand-crafted mahogany door opened at the other end of the room, and each of the Schwindt brothers came in, escorted by an assistant to the end of the table. The eldest, in dark glasses with gray hair, presided over the meeting; the two next in line wore tailored suits just like their employees; and the fourth, who looked to be in his thirties, was dressed informally in a leather jacket that must have been worth thousands of euros. He took the last free seat. Between them and the others was a gap that made the atmosphere even more ominous. None of them said a word. At some imperceptible signal, Monique Lombard got up and walked over to the president, her steps ringing out in the oppressive silence. The president whispered something in her ear. She nodded and spoke.

  “The owner reminds you that you have been invited to a meeting of the highest level, attended by the leaders of the business group, when ordinarily your community wouldn’t deserve the attention of a regional director. This is in deference to our longstanding relations with your leader, Fausto Aspiazi, and so we must ask why he has not attended in person.”

  “As, uh . . . we said in our messages, we are grateful for the opportunity to explain what happened in person,” Lucas said, his words echoing around the pristine walls as though he was talking on a mountainside. “We are determined to cooperate fully, but our mentor’s advanced age and frailty—”

  Monique went back to her seat before he’d finished, stomping her high heels on the floor to drown him out.

  The uncomfortable silence fell back over the room until the three eldest brothers stood up and left through the same door they’d come in by. The fourth stayed in his seat. The snub undermined the morale of Armando and Lucas, who shrank back into themselves.

  Finally, the brother who was left, whom they’d heard described as the Jackal, spoke. “Now we’re on equal terms.”

  Misiones, 1951

  Since the beginning of the war, Buenos Aires had been swarming with spies, and although life was much easier for the fugitives who had flooded in, they weren’t entirely home free. Anxiety was a constant. Stobert, now known as Fausto Aspiazi, tried to use his educational credentials to find work at a German school but was unsuccessful. Life in the city shredded his nerves, and he decided to leave. A large number of families were moving south, to Bariloche, while others headed for the Sierras of Córdoba, where the landscape was reminiscent of the Alps. But he decided to go to the jungle, near the border with Paraguay and Brazil, which had several small German communities. He wouldn’t be missed. He’d never fully integrated, and although he was welcome at meetings, he had always been withdrawn and distant. However, he was also possessed of a strange magnetism; it had had an effect on several women, and he seemed to find it easy to get under people’s skin, and this aroused suspicion. Well aware of this, he decided that it was best to isolate himself and avoid social interaction as much as possible. He yearned for solitude and warmth and continued to suffer from his inexplicable affliction. He was caught on an obsessive treadmill from which he couldn’t get off, as though only movement could keep his fears at bay.

  When he got off the bus in Misiones, the temperature was sweltering, and the air was humid. The man who met him was amused by his attire: “You’re wearing a coat in the jungle?”

  After allowing the contempt of the three absent Schwindts to sink in, the director, Monique Lombard, addressed the foreigners.

  “We have discovered serious irregularities in the agreed-upon service contract with your institution in Brazil. These were the direct cause for the death of Stefan Schwindt, the director of operations at said location.” She picked up an iPad and started to read from it. “Stefan was apparently asked to undertake a tracking job without the knowledge of the firm, which has specialists who could well have done the job in his stead. This job then took him back to Brazil with the aforementioned consequences and, given the nature of the information gathered, on absolutely illegal terms.”

  Armando leaned forward, visibly furious to discover that they’d been led into an ambush. “These were contract extensions anticipated, agreed to, and charged for by Mr. Stefan Schwindt, who was acting in the name of the company,” Lucas said, trying to achieve mutual understanding. “We don’t know how he communicated with the company internally, but as was explained in the memorandum—”

  “Which was wholly inadequate,” Monique interrupted.

  Her lawyers backed her up.

  “We may take legal measures to close down your facilities.”

  “And cease all commercial activity.”

  “We don’t understand,” Lucas said. “We offered our apologies and expressed our willingness to negotiate the necessary compensation on your terms. We are the first to lament the loss of such a close collaborator, but it was an obvious risk that he fully accepted of his own free will. Your firm has supported our colony for decades; you can’t—”

  “That was a significant time ago. This tragic incident is just the last straw of a situation that has long been in decline. Right now, we can see only one acceptable way out.”

  The Jackal, who hadn’t been listening to a word, now chipped in. “We want the old man.”

  The two foreigners stared at each other in disbelief.

  Monique went on. “It’s the only viable solution. This event has just accelerated matters. The . . . shall we call them eccentricities of your leader could be overlooked when he had ties to dictatorships during the Cold War and might even be of interest to one or two New Age hippies, but such people disappeared twenty years ago. For some time, large companies in the network have expressed their discomfort with characters like him, and the fear that a scandal might come to light and damage the reputation of large commercial brands far outweighs the value of the services he purports to offer, which are, of course, deeply out of date. Now is the time to turn the page and choose someone more suitable. Someone more in tune with the times, not a remnant of ideologies from the past century. That person may well be sitting in this room with us right now.”

  “He’s very old, isn’t he?” said one of the lawyers. “They say that he’s over ninety—he can’t have long left. We just want to see him while he’s still alive. We’re only anticipating the inevitable.”

  “This is a sham! That’s why you wanted him to come here! But he’s smarter than you. You want to buy us off with his job? You simply don’t understand. You can’t do that; you don’t understand his power. He can do terrifying things. He . . . has access to worlds you can’t imagine. You’ve never seen . . . I’ve seen what he can do.”

  “We’re not interested in your superstitions. For some time several of our clients have been interested in his more . . . esoteric activities. One or two internationally renowned families are willing to pay unseemly sums to have him. That’s how it is: the network doesn’t want him anymore, but there are others that do.”

  “He has faithful followers willing to die for him. You don’t know how far they’re willing to go.”

  “It’s the same in every cult. We know how to handle them.”

  “What if we reject your offer?” Lucas asked.

  The Jackal ran his tongue over his teeth and spoke for the third and last time. “It wasn’t an offer.”

  The four-year experience in Misiones resulted in an epiphany that would change his life. He alternated manual labor with the occasional German class for the children of immigrants, and although the nightmares remained the same, he found some relief in the area where he was living. The jungle temperature appeared if not to reduce the cold in his body to at least slow down its progress, giving him temporary respite. The changes this brought with it—his beard grew longer, and his features matured—allowed him to devote more time to studying himself, a pastime facilitated by the long hours he spent awake at night in the remote cabin in which he live
d. He was the only one to keep his stove on all year round. He came to entertain the notion that perhaps his loss of temperature wasn’t a symptom of imminent death, as he’d assumed thus far, but of abnormal longevity.

  His teaching revealed skills within him that he’d not been aware of previously. Due to a lack of stimuli, they’d never manifested themselves before. The incredible ease with which his pupils learned German and the passion even the most dull-witted among them displayed during his lessons made him famous. Soon he had more pupils than he could handle. Before the year was out, it was his only occupation, and he dedicated himself to it obsessively. With nothing else in his life, plus his short sleep cycle, he was able to spend ten or twelve hours a day on his work to meet the needs of his clients. It wasn’t just German; his miraculous gift applied to every subject. He seemed to cast a spell on his students. Grateful families gave him gifts, and he rejected offers from far-off schools, much to the delight of the local residents, who knew that even for all the hours he worked, his income couldn’t compare to what he’d receive at a school in the city. But Stobert didn’t care about money or success. Surprised by his genius, he experimented and learned. He found that he didn’t need to use a teaching plan; he just had to read a page to fix it into the mind of a pupil, so long as he was looking them in the eye. He came to call the extraordinary process fixing.

  For two years his sway over his pupils grew to an extent that even he found unsettling. He learned that if he spent enough time and effort, their will could be bent to his whims like soft reeds, simply because of the murky charisma that had become apparent in Buenos Aires but that he had never been able to take advantage of before. These remote villages provided the perfect environment in which to exercise it in the form of classes. With each new class he taught, he expanded on the spell of his leadership, eventually taking on a kind of messianic air. But he had yet to learn the consequences of his game. The more he developed, the more powerful his nightmares and sense of imminent horror grew. He woke up in the night vomiting, aware of a tangible presence glaring at him through the void with burning eyes. He knew that he was powerless against it. Meanwhile, some of the parents became wary while others decided to confront him outright: they didn’t like the way in which their children blindly accepted his opinions or the way they adored him in spite of the cold touch, “like a dry fish,” which had frightened them at first.