And Then I Found Out the Truth

by Jennifer Sturman

  “Certainly it is okay,” he said. “I am delighted to be of assistance. We will return immediately.”

  Now that Manuel knew about the various evildoers loose on the streets of the city, he insisted on checking continuously to see if anyone was following us. And while he’d already been incredibly kind, I was starting to worry that his kindness might present a problem. He seemed to be taking the whole escort thing a bit too seriously, and I had no intention of sitting around the hotel until someone showed up to take his place. It seemed reasonable to check in there first, in case Charley or Rafe had just missed my call and tried back right away, but I was going to have to convince Manuel it would be perfectly safe to venture forth on my own after that.

  “Nobody knows I’m here,” I reminded him. “Except for people who are on my side, even if they are really angry with me.” And the guy at immigration, but I didn’t want to think about how creepy that had been.

  “True,” agreed Manuel. “And it is a very large city. You are like the aguja en un pajar — do you have this saying, the needle in the hay —”

  He froze, midsentence, in front of a coffeehouse.

  “What’s wrong —” I started to ask, turning to see what had caught his attention. Though once I did, it wasn’t hard to answer my own question.

  I’d thought Charley not picking up her phone was unexpected, but I had no idea how to describe something as unexpected as what I saw now. Even if I probably should have expected it, given everything else Dieter had done.

  Because there in the window of a café in Buenos Aires, along with a dozen other random flyers for art shows and concerts, was that very same image of Charley and me. It looked like New Yorkers weren’t the only ones Dieter had tried to recruit into my personal bodyguard army.

  I guessed he’d been too scared of Charley to mention that his brilliant cultural experiment had international dimensions. And I realized that when he’d put his vision into action, it hadn’t been completely unreasonable of him to think I might show up in Buenos Aires, not after he’d heard Rafe and Charley and me discussing the investigation and debating next steps. In a way, it had actually been impressive planning on his part — prescient even. But somehow it all felt much less yellow here.

  Because suddenly the creepiness of the guy at immigration made a lot more sense. He hadn’t been trying to determine if my passport was a fake. He’d been trying to put a name to a face, and specifically my name to my face, since he’d seen my face before.

  And now I also had a pretty good idea of what Samantha Arquero had removed from the wall in the airport. I wondered what she’d made of it — after all, she had no way of knowing Dieter’s intentions.

  Regardless, it was starting to seem like the relative anonymity I’d been counting on might not be such a safe thing to count on. I was still like an aguja en un pajar, except the pajar was wallpapered with my picture.

  Anyhow, I ended up telling Manuel about mobilizing the power of the masses, which he reacted to with a skepticism that also seemed very Latin, so after that we started talking about the differences between New Yorkers and porteños, and then he began telling me a bit about Buenos Aires history, and before I knew it we were approaching the hotel’s side entrance.

  I thanked him again. “I would have been lost without your help, Manuel.”

  “It was nothing,” he said. “But you are very welcome. And we are friends now, and my friends call me Manolo, so you must do the same.”

  “I’d like that,” I said. “Thank you, Manolo.” He’d been so nice I wanted to hug him, but I wasn’t sure how Argentineans felt about their personal space. Instead, I awkwardly stuck out my hand.

  He laughed. “Handshakes are for Americans. This is how porteños say hello and good-bye to their friends.” And he leaned down to kiss me once, on my right cheek.

  It was really more of a peck than a kiss, completely harmless and not all that different from Patience’s air kisses. So when he indicated I should do the same to him, I stood on tiptoe and pecked his right cheek.

  And then someone spoke a single word from behind us.

  “Ahem.”

  Twenty-seven

  When I saw Quinn, standing there in the same dark green sweater he’d been wearing at the museum, the urge to throw myself at him was even stronger than the brain paralysis.

  There was just one small problem: He didn’t look anywhere near as happy to see me as I was to see him. In fact, he looked sort of grim, possibly because he hadn’t received his own tutorial on Buenos Aires culture and as far as he knew, I’d just been kissing a total stranger.

  Of course, from his angle he probably couldn’t tell it was only an air kiss, and a pathetic part of me was thrilled he cared enough to be jealous, assuming that was what was going on. After all, Quinn could be angry for some other reason entirely.

  Either way, Manolo came to my rescue yet again. At least, he tried.

  “I am Manolo,” he said with his broad smile. “And you must be Quinn. Delia has told me a great deal about you. I feel we are friends already.”

  And with that he planted a big kiss on Quinn’s right cheek. Then he gave me the least subtle wink I’d ever seen and disappeared into the hotel.

  “That’s how porteños say hello and good-bye,” I told Quinn. And because he still hadn’t said anything, I kept going. “People from Buenos Aires call themselves porteños. Because it’s a port. On the Río de la Plata. Which isn’t actually a river but an estuary, like the lower half of the Hudson. But they call it a river anyway. Manolo was telling me about it.”

  “I bet he was,” said Quinn, and there was a dangerous edge to his voice.

  And maybe it was the edge that did it. He still looked every bit as grim, but I threw myself at him anyway.

  “I can’t believe Charley let you come here by yourself,” he said eventually.

  “She didn’t exactly let me,” I confessed. “It was Carolina’s idea.”

  Quinn knew exactly how Charley felt about Carolina and her ideas. “Charley’s going to kill you,” he said. “And I’m glad to see you and everything, but I don’t think anyone would blame her if she did.”

  “I’m hoping she’ll be over it before I get back. Besides, it’s not like you had permission, either.”

  “I left Fiona a note.”

  “Well, I sent Charley a text.”

  “You ran away by text?”

  “I didn’t run away. I went on a mission. It’s different. And I don’t see how a text is worse than a note.”

  “It’s not, but nobody’s out to get me,” he said.

  “If you think about it, it’s almost safer here. The people who are out to get me all think I’m in New York. Everyone does, apart from Charley and Rafe and Carolina. What about you? Who knows where you are?”

  “Only you. And that guy who just kissed us.”

  After we’d explained a few more things to each other, we went inside to check with Manolo, but nobody had left any messages. And now that I’d found Quinn, I didn’t have to worry about Manolo thinking he needed to keep an eye on me.

  He did, however, suggest Quinn and I get some lunch before we made our next move, which seemed like a good idea. Even though we had a lot to do, my last meal was a hazy memory from a distant continent, and once I started thinking about food it was nearly impossible to think about anything else.

  Manolo got another map from the concierge and traced a route for us to a tiny restaurant on a street called Posadas. There were just twelve tables inside, and as far as we could tell we were the only nonnatives in the place, which we decided meant it was authentically Argentinean. And since everyone was eating empanadas, that’s what we ordered as well.

  I’d had empanadas a couple of times before, from a street vendor near Charley’s apartment, and they’d been okay — sort of like the South American version of Indian samosas or Italian calzones. The ones here, however, were closer to an art form — pockets of flaky pastry crust filled with spiced meat or co
rn or cheese and completely delicious. I inhaled mine and helped Quinn finish his when he ordered seconds.

  So the empanadas were a totally welcome experience, and in the process of being seated and ordering and everything I also made another important discovery: Quinn spoke Spanish, not just from taking it at school but from when he’d gone to surfing camp in Baja. And while I knew I should focus on the practical benefits of having a Spanish speaker around, as I watched him talk to the waiter, rolling his r’s like it was a perfectly natural thing to do, I was mostly just amazed by how it made him seem even more godlike. I wouldn’t have thought such a thing was possible if I didn’t have the evidence right in front of me.

  Anyhow, as we ate I caught him up on everything I’d learned since Saturday afternoon. This pretty much came down to La Morena being Samantha Arquero and that she was in Buenos Aires at that very moment, along with everyone else.

  Then it was Quinn’s turn to update me. And for his sake, I’d been hoping he’d learned something about his father’s activities that would prove we were wrong to suspect him. But judging by the way he pushed aside the remaining empanada and the shutdown look that came over his face as he began to speak, Hunter hadn’t been up to anything good.

  “My flight got in around noon yesterday, and as soon as I landed I went straight to my dad’s hotel,” Quinn said. “I called his room from the lobby, and he answered, so I knew he was there, but I didn’t want to confront him — I was worried he’d only deny everything and try to send me home. Instead I hung up without saying anything and figured I’d wait for him to leave and then follow wherever he went. Not that he went anywhere at first. It was a serious drag — I was across the street, just watching, for the whole afternoon. Finally, though, right when it was getting dark, he came out and started walking. He didn’t even notice I was right behind him.”

  “Where did he go?” I asked.

  “The European Commission’s delegation to Argentina.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The European Commission is the executive branch of the European Union, and its headquarters are in a building not far from the hotel. I looked it up online — it represents the interests of all of the major European countries and most of the minor ones, too.”

  I tried to process this. “What’s your father doing with the European Union?”

  “It’s not just the European Union. This morning, I followed him to the Russian Embassy, and after that he was picked up by a car with diplomatic plates for the Japanese Embassy. I lost him then — I couldn’t find a cab fast enough. But that was okay. I’d already seen everything I needed to see.”

  “The European Union, Russia, and Japan?”

  “He probably hit up a bunch of other countries, too, before I even got here.”

  “Is he hoping the different governments will invest in his hedge fund?” I couldn’t help it — I was still looking for a way to clear Hunter’s name, and that was the only legitimate reason I could think of for Quinn’s father to be acting like the United Nations social chair.

  “I wish,” said Quinn. “His fund’s closed — that means he’s not taking new investors, he’s only managing the money he already has. Besides, if that were the case, he’d have no reason to hide it from people in his office or Fiona. No, I think the real answer is a lot simpler.”

  “How simple?”

  “We’ve been talking all along about how EAROFO must be paying off the different international organizations that are supposed to enforce the antidrilling treaties. And I think that’s where Hunter comes in. He’s the guy in the middle. He’s somehow greasing the palms of the regulators and watchdogs, and in exchange EAROFO is giving him privileged information.”

  “Oh,” I said, letting that sink in. It did make sense. In fact, it explained a lot.

  But I also hated the way Quinn sounded, like he’d been drained of anything positive or hopeful. “There could be another explanation,” I said, not that one was exactly springing to mind.

  “Another explanation for why Hunter knows all of the EAROFO people, has that spreadsheet on his computer, and is arranging secret meetings with government agencies in foreign countries?” He motioned for the check and then turned back to me. His eyes were even grayer now than they’d been at the museum. “Do you know what the worst part is?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “I came down here still hoping Hunter was a good guy. I mean, he gets on my case about certain things, but only because he cares. And with my mom the way she was, the way she is, he had an extra space to fill, but he always managed to fill it. I know that at some point everybody has to realize parents are human and flawed and everything, and it’s not like I ever thought he was perfect, but I just couldn’t make myself believe he was as flawed as this. I actually thought I’d find out there really was another explanation, an explanation that would make it all right. But it’s not all right. It will never be right.”

  And I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

  Twenty-eight

  The break for empanadas and debriefing had been very necessary, but it was well past two o’clock when we left the restaurant, and we’d have to rush.

  There was a pay phone on a nearby corner, and while it wasn’t exactly private, it was fine for making a quick call to check in with Manolo, especially since it turned out he had nothing new to report. His shift would be ending soon, too, but he’d arranged for a friend on the hotel switchboard to take messages on my behalf should anybody call once he’d gone off duty. So we were covered on that front.

  Still, I couldn’t help feeling even more unsettled than ever as I thanked him and said good-bye — at this point, it had been almost three hours with no response from Charley or Rafe. It was frustrating that I was no closer to seeing T.K., but I was also beginning to worry something had gone seriously wrong, and I didn’t know what that something could be, much less what I should do about it except stick to my current plan.

  First, though, we had an important errand to attend to. Quinn had come prepared, and he pulled a knit cap and sunglasses from his backpack and put them on as we left the restaurant. This mostly made him look like a celebrity trying to keep a low profile — just the other day I’d spotted Robert Pattinson on West Broadway in an almost identical getup — but being mistaken for a celebrity in incognito mode was better than being recognized for who he really was should we accidentally cross Hunter’s path.

  I, however, had come a lot less prepared — Carolina’s idea of packing involved stuffing anything pink or purple into my suitcase — and now I needed a disguise of my own. Quinn had spoken to the maître d’ at the restaurant, and based on his directions we headed along Posadas and cut through a small park.

  It was a gorgeous day, sunny with a slight breeze, and while in New York the leaves were already starting to turn, here it was spring — the flower beds were bright with color and wild parrots squawked in the branches of the rubber trees. We turned onto the Avenida Junín, passing the Basílica Nuestra Señora del Pilar, an elegant baroque church painted a gleaming white, and then the gates to the Cementerio de la Recoleta, an enormous cemetery where everybody who was anybody in Buenos Aires went to be buried, including the real Evita.

  Judging by the buses parked on the street and the people with cameras swarming around, the Basílica and the cemetery were major tourist attractions, and if we’d had time we probably would’ve stopped to check them out. But we weren’t there for the sights — our destination was the collection of sidewalk stands catering to the tourists. And across from the cemetery gates we found exactly what we were looking for: a guy selling hats.

  Sadly, his selection was geared toward people’s souvenir needs, and specifically the needs of people who for whatever reason wanted to dress like gauchos. Gauchos were the Argentinean version of cowboys, and apparently they favored hats made of wool felt, with wide brims and attractive chinstraps for when their wearers were galloping across the pampas.

  I doubte
d Charley would approve of the fashion statement I’d be making, but the price was right, and coming here had been more efficient than trying to find a shopping mall. And at least I could find a hat that fit my tiny head, since a lot of the stock was in children’s sizes. We chose one with a brim that came down far enough to hide most of my face while still allowing me to see, and after adding a cheap pair of mirrored sunglasses my disguise was complete. Of course, I was also pretty sure I looked like a total idiot no matter what Quinn said, but it seemed like a small sacrifice given the circumstances.

  That done, we hailed a passing cab. We had an appointment of sorts, one I’d set up with the final phone call I’d made at the locutorio. “El Obelisco, por favor,” Quinn told the driver with fluent ease.

  The Alvear made sense as a base of operations for Hunter since so many of the embassies were close by, but I’d wanted a more action-packed setting for what was going to happen next, and the monument had been the first thing to come to mind when I’d been making arrangements. To be honest, it was the only thing that came to mind — I wasn’t exactly well versed in local landmarks.

  The driver gunned his engine and plunged into traffic with an utter disregard for the other cars on the road, traffic signals, and stray pedestrians. He was also as busy on his cell phone as the driver I’d had earlier, so if we were passing anything interesting, we had to figure it out for ourselves.

  Quinn could read in a moving vehicle without getting carsick, and he studied our map as the driver alternated between flooring it and slamming on the brakes. “That’s the Palacio de Justicia, which I think is the Supreme Court,” he said, when a pillared building flashed by, “and that’s a really famous synagogue,” he added, gesturing to a blur of carved Byzantine facade. Then, as we zipped by a stately Renaissance structure topped with a triangular pediment, he said, “That’s the Teatro Colón. It’s like the Lincoln Center of Buenos Aires.”

  So the trip was moderately educational, and learning what everything was distracted us from the fact that the driver seemed to have a death wish. A couple of blocks beyond the Teatro Colón he screeched to a stop at the edge of the Plaza de la República, the mammoth oval where the twelve lanes of Avenida 9 de Julio met the six lanes of Avenida Corrientes. In the middle, El Obelisco rose from a grassy island the size of a football field.