by James Grady
And he had a ticket.
“Man, this is fucked up,” muttered Willy.
“Save it,” ordered Jud from the window. Like Willy, Jud had grown a beard for the mission, and his hair was over his ears. In Chile in 1973, as in America, long hair was hip. Nonmilitary.
“Braxton is supposed to have come back, Jack!” said Willy. “Without him, we got zero cover.”
Machine guns chattered outside their hotel.
Braxton’s rendezvous promised to deliver credentials for the team to use. In case. For security reasons, credentials in a coup can only be issued just before the coup.
From the bed, Luis said, “These events have a clock of their own. Things happen. Develop.”
“That wasn’t the plan, man,” mumbled Willy.
Their mission had two levels.
There was a political officer on the embassy staff, the spook liaison to Track III, and there was an indigenous asset, a Chilean general. Those two men linked certain elements in the military high commands of each country. Liaisons. Back-channel communications. Just in case. Providing security cover to the American diplomat/spy was the mission’s first level. Jud didn’t think the embassy man knew who was covering him, or how: deniability, counterintelligence security. Made sense.
Second level was worst-case scenario: scorched earth. If a coup went badly, turned into a debacle, Allende rallying the country to rout America’s allies, then hiding Uncle Sam’s tracks would be crucial. Keeping the flag clean. Enforcing deniability. Covering up. Burning. Somebody had to be out there, the stay behind boys, the rear guard of the retreat. Guys who could do whatever had to be done. The Cleanup Crew.
The phone beside Luis rang. His hand was on it, but he let it ring a second time.
“Sí?” he answered.
Jud and Willy watched Luis lay on the bed, phone pressed to his ear. He hung up without saying another word.
“He can’t make it back yet,” said Luis. “He said sit tight, stay clean.”
“Oh, swell!” said Willy. “Why don’t we all crawl in the fucking shower! Hell, why not just climb in the toilet? Pull the fucking handle and wash away all our blues!”
“What about the subject?” asked Jud. The diplomat/spy.
“Braxton said nothing,” said Luis. “No change known.”
“Man,” said Willy, “we shadowed his candy ass right to the embassy gate last night! That pussy ain’t dumb enough to come out here in the world with the shit flying!
“So now what?” Willy asked Jud. “Looks like you’re the keemo sabe.”
“We wait,” said Jud.
“I do that so fuckin’ well!” snapped Willy, heading to the toilet.
Jud turned back to the window overlooking the city that he’d been watching since before dawn. They’d been waiting since Braxton got the call and left at ten P.M. the night before.
At 5:45 A.M., selected phone lines were cut by rebel Navy commandos. Rebel troops seized strategic posts throughout the country and began rolling into Santiago.
Between 6:15 and 6:20 A.M., a general loyal to the government called President Allende at home to warn him of the coup. At 7:15, in a caravan of five bulletproof Fiats, a truck, and two armored personnel carriers filled with carabinero bodyguards, Allende raced to his offices at the Moneda Palace, a two-hundred-year-old Spanish-monastery-style building catercorner across Constitution Square from the American embassy.
At 7:20, a radio station reported “unusual police movements.” By midafternoon, most stations were off the air.
Shortly after eight A.M., Allende stepped onto a balcony at the Moneda. A journalist snapped his photo. By eight-thirty, leftist paramilitary snipers were firing on soldiers close to the Moneda.
By nine o’clock, Air Force planes were bombing pro-Allende targets in the city, mostly radio stations. Gunfire filled the streets. Tanks surrounded the Moneda. Troops set up roadblocks. Helicopters chopped through the air. Chilean flags began to appear outside houses, hanging from apartment windows.
At nine-thirty Allende refused repeated offers from the military to surrender and be taken to safety. He delivered a defiant patriotic radio broadcast: “My last words …” The Army opened fire on the Moneda. Allende and his men shot back with bazookas and machine guns. The firing raged until about eleven, when the government troops withdrew. To safety.
Two jets appeared in the blue sky above the Moneda and the American embassy, silver birds gliding in formation. The jets arced away, drifted behind San Cristóbal hill.
Roared back. Diving. Dropping lower. Lower. When the planes were over the Mapocho railroad station, they fired rockets. The missiles slammed into the north side of the Moneda. The jets made six more attack runs in the next twenty-one minutes: bombs, rockets, strafing. When they flew away, the Moneda was in flames.
Jud, Willy, and Luis watched from the hotel window.
At 1:33, the coup troops stormed the Moneda.
Gunfire crackled through the city all afternoon. At four P.M., when Braxton was finally able to call Jud and the others at the hotel, the Moneda still burned. Smoke filled the sky from a dozen other locations in the city.
“Here,” said Luis, getting off the bed. He handed Willy and Jud cheap crucifix necklaces. When Willy frowned, Luis said, “Communists do not wear crosses.”
“Good thing I ain’t a Jew,” said Willy. He laughed: unwinding, gearing up.
Twenty minutes later, Willy found a radio station that worked. Martial music, carefully selected patriotic Chilean songs, even Sousa marches. A military junta announced that the forces of good had triumphed; that there would be a period of free movement allowed in the city until six P.M., then an inviolable curfew.
At five-thirty, Jud heard a shout from a floor below. Pounding. A crash and screams as first one door, then another were kicked in.
“Yo, keemo sabe?” called Willy, poised halfway between the toilet tank and the room door.
“We go!” yelled Jud.
Running, out the door, sports jackets over no weapons, racing to the end of the hall, to the window Jud had scouted and unlocked for E&E. Sunset turned the glass red. Somebody screamed one floor down. Somebody shot a gun. Jud and his men scrambled up the fire escape, two floors to the roof; hunched figures running in the fading light, scurrying from rooftop to rooftop, as silently as they could. From rooftops in the distance came the wink and crack of sniper fire. Helicopters whumped through the darkness overhead. Jud peered over the edge of the fire escape at the end of the block: an alley. Smoke filled the air, shouts echoed in the city canyons, but this alley was empty.
“Now!” he ordered.
Down, on the ground, amidst garbage cans. Rats.
“Slow and steady,” he whispered, leading his men toward the exit. “Easy, nonthreatening. Smile.”
“What the hell is that?” mumbled Willy.
Orange flickering colored the night at the end of the alley.
“Fan out,” said Jud. Individuals were less threatening than a group; harder targets to hit.
They stepped into the street of the Santiago coup.
Down the block, a bonfire raged, surrounded by dozens of soldiers with over-the-ears helmets, green uniforms, scarlet neckerchiefs, and black boots, assault rifles slung at the ready. The troopers roared their approval above the flames, their eyes hypnotized by the inferno’s glow as other soldiers ran out of a smashed-windowed store carrying more fuel for the blaze.
Books. Hundreds of books.
“They haven’t see us yet,” whispered Jud.
Down the block the other direction he saw vehicle lights, flashlights, dozens of shadow men; heard shouting. In the alley behind them was the sound of boots clanging down the fire escape.
“Put on your party face,” ordered Jud, nodding to the bonfire. “Viva Chile, we’re joining them before they find us.”
“No,” whispered Luis.
“It’s the best odds!” insisted Jud.
“I have no papers and my accent is Cuban
,” he said. Smiled. “Vaya con Dios.”
And Luis quickly walked away, sliding along the walls of shuttered stores and cafés, eyes front, not looking at the soldiers so as not to send a mental signal. Just a half a block to the corner, a dozen locked doors to pass.
“Don’t move,” Jud whispered to Willy. “Say nothing.”
Just seven more doors.
“Alto!” yelled a voice by the bonfire.
Luis ran, fast and hard, not looking back. To the corner, at the corner.
A machine gun chattered.
Like a string-cut puppet, Luis dropped. Dead. Gone.
“Alto!” screamed a dozen voices. Soldiers raced toward Jud. “Manos arriba!” They grabbed him, knocked him and Willy facedown to the cement, kicked them. Rifle barrels jammed in their necks, hands slapped their empty pockets, scooped them up.
“American!” said Jud. “It’s okay! I’m an American!”
“Silencio!” The officer hit Jud with his pistol.
A cattle truck crammed with dazed people appeared. The soldiers threw Jud and Willy in the back. The truck lurched away, followed closely by a jeep with a mounted and manned machine gun.
The truck took them to the gigantic National Stadium, the outdoor arena where thousands of Chileans reveled in soccer.
That night the stands filled with truckloads of prisoners arrested in sweeps by the military and police. During the coup, seven thousand people would be detained in the Stadium. Soldiers filled the playing field and controlled the entrances to the stands. Training and locker rooms were converted into interrogation centers. Rest-room privileges for prisoners were rare, beatings common, water treatments. After many interrogations, gunfire echoed from the Stadium’s obscure corners. Everyone was guilty: they were there.
The guards quickly discovered Jud and Willy claimed to speak only English.
The rattle of unseen gunfire in the Stadium ripped through Jud like an electric shock. Each volley was worse than the one before.
“Keep smiling,” he hissed. “Show them we know we’re okay.”
Arc lamps cast ghostly light on the crowded stands, the soldiers pacing the playing field. The two Americans rehearsed their answers. Dozed fitfully on the hard wooden benches. Their lullabies were strangers sobbing around them. The firing squad volleys became nails driven through their nerves: searing at first, then merely one dull blow after another.
Jud’s first interrogation came at eleven the next morning.
They marched him down long cement corridors hung with posters of soccer stars and ads for beer. The halls reeked of urine and human shit. They marched through a dozen dark puddles.
To a windowless room that smelled of athletic liniment, a table with an officer sitting behind it, two guards, an empty wooden stool. The sergeant of the guards escorting Jud hit him, sat him on the stool.
“You are American,” said the officer.
A Captain, thought Jud. Regular Army.
“Yes,” said Jud, “I’m a—”
The officer nodded. The sergeant cuffed Jud’s head.
“Answer questions, no mas. Why in Chile?”
“I’m a graduate student,” said Jud.
“Student? What? Where?”
“Geology,” said Jud. A safe academic discipline. “George Washington University. In Washington, D.C.”
“Why in Chile?”
“Vacation. Chile is beautiful.”
“Documentos. Donde estan your documentos?”
“We gave them to the bellhop. He said he’d put them in the hotel for us. To keep them safe.”
“You gave documentos to a bellhop? Are you loco?”
“I’m an America,” repeated Jud.
“A man with you when you were arrested. He attacked soldiers. Who was he?”
“He was not with us,” said Jud. “We saw him running away in the street, but we did not know him.”
“So you say. What did you see in the street?”
“He didn’t obey.”
The officer blinked.
“Do you know what has happened?”
“No.”
“The President is dead. Do you know anything about that?”
“No. But you are in charge, so everything is okay, yes?”
The officer sent him away. In the stands, Jud found they’d taken Willy.
An hour later, they came for Jud again.
Same office. Different officer. A colonel. In a policeman’s uniform. He smelled of garlic.
“Your name?” asked the colonel.
Jud gave his work name.
“Date of arrival in Chile?”
Jud told him a week before. Told him his true age. Repeated the lies about being a student.
“Have you ever read or brought Marxist literature into Chile?”
“No.”
“Have you ever read or bought literature dealing with Che Guevara?”
“No.”
“What do you know about Marxists?”
“What they taught me in the military.”
“You were a soldier? An American soldier?” After Jud nodded yes, the cop said, “Prove it.”
“My government has those papers,” said Jud. “I can tell you what to ask for.”
“What did they teach you about the communists?”
“That they are the enemy,” said Jud. “They killed some of my friends. In Vietnam.”
A gunshot echoed down the corridor outside.
“The war is everywhere,” said the officer.
“Yes,” answered Jud.
They took him down the corridor. There was blood on the walls. Kept him waiting. When they brought him back into the room, the officer asked, “What have you seen here?”
“Soldiers doing their job,” said Jud.
They took him outside the Stadium, put him in the back of a car. A driver and a guard sat up front. A few minutes later, they brought Willy. An officer climbed in back with them. As the car drove away, gunfire rattled inside the Stadium.
They dropped the Americans at their hotel. Drove away.
Braxton was in his room.
“This is a big ungood,” Willy told the mission boss.
Braxton smelled them. “You got an hour to get clean. Your rooms are trashed. Grab what you can carry light, meet back here. We got a job.”
He handed them yellow police identification cards that the pictures from their burned passports had been glued to.
“Where were you?” said Jud as Braxton picked up the phone. “We lost Luis because you didn’t come through.”
“He knew the risks,” said Braxton. “That’s the life. Things got crazy out there, out of hand, off the clock.”
“You were in charge,” said Jud. “Responsible.”
“I still am, cowboy,” Braxton said as he dialed a number. “And you got fifty-eight minutes to get saddled up so we can ride.”
Jud found Willy taking his pistol from the toilet tank. “No more time in this zone with just my dick in my hand.”
An hour after they’d arrived, Jud and Willy stood with Braxton at the curb outside the hotel. Willy and Jud had shoulder bags, wore suits but no ties. Braxton’s suit and tie were perfect. He carried a briefcase. Three uniformed soldiers standing sentry at the doors paid them no mind. A tank rumbled down the street.
A gray sedan pulled up beside them. Three Chilean men in civilian clothes climbed out. A passenger stayed in the backseat. One of the mean handed Braxton a piece of paper and the car keys. As the Chileans walked away, Braxton tossed the keys to Willy, climbed in the front seat. Jud sat in back, next to the passenger.
The passenger was a man Jud’s age. Black curly hair, pasty skin, and a dark stubble. He wore somebody else’s civilian suit over a tan shirt. He smelled of sweat and smoke. His eyes were red and his hands trembled.
“You are Americans, yes?” he said, his voice eager yet shaky. “We are allies, yes? That is a good thing. My name is Rivero, Lt. Javier Rivero. Perdón, I have been promoted: captain. Yo
u can call me—”
“That’s fine, son,” said Braxton from the front seat. “Estamos todos amigos aqui.”
“English, sí, yo hablo … I speak English. I studied with your military. In Georgia.”
“Get me on that midnight train,” said Willy.
“Roll,” ordered Braxton. Willy steered the car onto the empty street. “We’re going to an apartment in a neighborhood called Providencia. Then after dark, the four of us are going to take a plane ride to Paraguay. Corporate jet, a favor from some friends.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Javier. “It is important I go.”
“One step at a time, amigo,” said Braxton. “First we get to a cool-out place, stay low and rest. No big deal, right? Do you know how to get to Providencia?”
“Of course!” Rivero answered. “This is my home! This is my city! This is my country!”
He gave Willy eager and complex directions.
“Anything you need,” said Rivero, “just ask. I will help. I will do what must be done. I can. I can.”
“Fine by me, Tonto,” said Willy, making enough sense out of Rivero’s frantic directions to navigate the car.
“Quien es tonto?” asked Rivero. “In Spanish, tonto means fool.”
“Different language,” said Braxton. “Different meaning.”
Rivero slumped back beside Jud.
“I’m a soldier,” he told Jud. “A good soldier. Not fool.”
Rivero pulled cigarettes from his pocket. When he tried to shake one out of the pack, his hands wouldn’t stop trembling and the white death sticks fell all over his lap. Jud put one between Rivero’s dry lips. The cigarette bobbed and weaved in front of Jud’s lighter flame as the car rolled over Santiago’s smooth streets, but finally caught, smoked. Rivero nodded his thanks.
Willy switched on the car radio. The stations were on again, still only martial or patriotic music. No Beatles, no jazz. Announcements, but no news. Willy drove with his yellow card between his fingers, his hand high on the steering wheel. They were still stopped at police roadblocks—two men in a car with long hair and beards, two men who didn’t fit with them—but the magic yellow cards parted all the guns.
