Disappeared

by Colin Falconer

  But he can't because I've murdered him.

  He started to hyperventilate. He wanted to just get out of the car and run. He heard blood dripping onto the floor. Keep calm, Reuben, keep calm.

  He got out, reached in and pulled Julio's torso into the passenger seat. Then he went around to the driver's side and manhandled his lower body and his legs over the console. Then he got in behind the wheel. Por Dios, everything was sticky with blood. What was he going to do? He couldn't leave him here, someone would find him, if not tonight, then first thing in the morning. He made a decision, turned on the ignition and drove away towards the Paseo Colón.

  ***

  He drove badly, couldn't concentrate on the road. Not that it mattered, not in Buenos Aires. Everyone drove that way. Reuben had no idea where he was going. Then he remembered how, in the days of Isabelita, bodies were often left on one of the garbage dumps on the outskirts of the city. He turned the car around and headed out towards the airport. He turned onto Avenida Riccieri, towards the highway out to Ezeiza.

  ***

  He passed an army barracks, saw the lights of the international airport in the distance. He drove down a dirt road, littered with the mouldering wrecks of cars. He stopped, turned off the ignition and the headlights. He wound down the window, was assailed by the ripe smell of garbage. He held his breath and listened.

  The only sounds he could hear was the chirrup of crickets in the trees. He put his head on the steering wheel and sat there for a long time. It took an effort of will to force himself out of the car.

  He opened the passenger door, reached in and dragged Julio's out of the car. Then he took Julio under the arms and lifted the top half of his torso into the boot, then his legs so that his body rolled in.

  He leaned against the car, panting hard.

  He thought about Carmen, about her four young children. He rubbed a hand across his face. They didn't deserve this. But then his girls didn't deserve what had happened to them either.

  He couldn't dwell on that now. There was a voice in his head telling him what to do, the same devil that had sent his feet scurrying towards Arcos Street and the Mexican embassy instead of going home to Recoleta.

  He found a car jack and a crowbar in the tool kit. He used the crowbar to lever off the registration plates and he threw them on top of Julio's body and slammed the boot shut. He spent the next half an hour fumbling in the darkness with the jack, removing all the tyres, leaving the Fiat resting on its hubs. Then he calmly walked around the car, smashing in all the windows and denting the coachwork. When he had finished he was pretty sure that the car looked like it had been rusting away there for months.

  It was a long walk back to the road. He flagged down a taxi to take him back to his hotel. He told the driver his car had broken down.

  If the desk clerk thought his appearance unusual he did not remark on it. He went up to his room and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. There were dark stains on his suit jacket, crusted blood under his fingernails. For the last eight years he had looked at a coward; now the man staring back at him was a murderer as well.

  He turned off the light and laid down on the bed, still fully clothed. There was no chance of sleep. He just couldn't stand to look at himself any more.

  Chapter 50

  THE NEXT MORNING at just after eleven o'clock Reuben boarded an Aerolineas 747 en route to Mexico City. He had claimed a stand-by seat in the economy section. His eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep, his cheeks unshaven. As the airliner took off from Ezeiza he thought he saw a garbage dump among the trees, and the glint of metal from a rusting car.

  He supposed he could claim what he had done as a sort of rough justice, but even if it was, Gabriella was still as dead as she was before, and he was no closer to finding his daughters, if they were still alive. Julio's death did not absolve himself for his own guilt. He had not even meant it to happen, he had just lost control of himself. The man he wanted to murder was ... he checked his boarding pass - was sitting in seat 23F.

  While his fellow passengers dozed or stared at the inflight movie Reuben Altman flicked through the channels on his headset, the volume turned high, trying to drown the endless cacophony of his own thoughts.

  PART THREE

  EUROPE & SOUTH AMERICA

  Summer 1994

  Chapter 51

  Rome

  HE CALLED HER his princess, mia principessa.

  They lived in an apartment on the top floor of a palazzo that had originally been built for Pope Innocent X and his family. Even as a child she drank from glasses fashioned by master craftsmen at Murano, ate from chinaware designed by Gi• Ponti. Her communion dress was commissioned to Valentino Garavani.

  As the years went past her memories of Buenos Aires became vague. She remembered the great house in Palermo with its echoing marble foyer and the aquamarine swimming pool in the back garden, remembered peeping through the balustrades at the top of the stairs as the guests arrived for dinner parties, the men dressed in braided uniforms, their wives in sumptuous gowns, glittering with diamonds. They reminded her of scenes from a fairy tale and for many years, even after they came to Italy, she thought she really was a princess.

  Her parents sent her to riding lessons at a private club just outside Rome. On her tenth birthday her papa bought her her own pony. She threw her arms around his neck and swore that he was the most wonderful father in the whole world. “Anything for you, mia principessa,” he whispered. “Anything for you!'

  Every day her father's chauffeur drove her to a private school in Trastevere in a white Mercedes. It was not until she was thirteen years old that one of the other girls asked her if it was true that her father made his living by selling guns. The claim was so outrageous that Simone demanded to know where the girl had obtained such stupid information. She replied with a casual shrug that it had come from her own father; he made his living by buying them from Angeli and trading them on.

  After a week of sleepless nights Simone dismissed this conversation from her mind. From that time on it became a habit with her never to listen too closely to what people said. Her papa loved her and doted on her. He was her hero. She was determined to be happy.

  ***

  César Angeli sat at one of the tables on the cobblestones of the Piazza Campo de Fiori, watching the fruit and flower sellers pack away their stalls after the morning market. It was a warm summer day, the sky a clear washed blue. It was summer and the piazza was crowded with tourists. Another month and Rome would be too hot, they would head to the beach house on the coast.

  He summoned a white-jacketed waiter and ordered two digestive for himself and his guest.

  His lunch companion wore a simple black clerical suit with a silver pectoral cross. He was a tall, powerfully built man in his sixties, with the blunt fingers of a peasant. The first and second digits of his left hand were stained with tobacco. The city was full of religious and he blended in perfectly. No one would have thought he was an Archbishop and one of the most powerful men in the Vatican.

  “My associates will not be happy with this latest hike in your fees,” Angeli said.

  The Archbishop took a black Egyptian cigarette from an engraved silver case. “Two per cent.” He waved a hand airily. “Nothing.”

  “Two per cent of a hundred lire is nothing. Two per cent of a hundred billion lire is quite a lot of a money.”

  “Tell them to think of it as a donation to the Church. Peter's Pence will not pay for everything.” He spoke Italian with a heavy East European accent.

  “I will pass on your sentiments.”

  As they sipped their digestivi the archbishop stared at the cowled figure of Giordano Bruno, his likeness now dominating the piazza where he had died in agony. The Inquisition had burned him alive on that very spot for heresy.

  “They knew how to deal with subversives in those days,” Angeli said.

  “Before the Church got soft. No wonder young people lose their way. Now we even have priests
in league with the comunistas.”

  “Well, at least we showed them how it should be done in Argentine. And we'll do it again, if we have to. Salut!'

  Angeli called for the bill.

  ***

  One of the waiters stood by the cash register, staring at him.

  He does not recognise me, the man thought, but I know him. I'd know him anywhere. It had been seventeen years since they had last served together but you didn't forget someone like that. He was heavier and maybe a little fuller in the face, but it had to be him.

  He remembered those bastards, all of them. Okay, he had done some things he wasn't proud of, but not as bad as most. He was just taking orders, doing what he was told. They were the ones responsible.

  He remembered how this bastard had thrown him against a wall, for no reason, nearly choked him. He could still remember what his breath smelled like.

  One of the other waiters returned with the man's American Express card. Turturro called him over. “I know him.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I knew him in Argentine.”

  The waiter shrugged, processed the card. As he put back it on the tray Turturro glanced at it. Rivera. So that was the name he was using now. When he served with him, it was Colonel César Angeli.

  He checked the list of bookings, found the name “Rivera.” There was a telephone number beside it, and Turturro scribbled it down. He looked up. Angeli and his guest got up to leave. Turturro took off his white jacket and walked out of the restaurant after them. His colleague stared after him open-mouthed as he scurried away across the Campo de Fiori leaving him alone with a restaurant full of customers.

  ***

  Turturro followed at a discreet distance, hoped they were not going to jump in a taxi on the Corso Vittorio Emanuelle. His luck held. He saw them cross the busy street and walk side by side, still deep in conversation, up the Corso del Rinascimento. They went into an expensive security apartment on the other side of the Piazza Navona, in the Via del Pace.

  He took careful note of the address, checked the name on the brass plate beside the front door. Rivera. Afterwards he decided to celebrate with a grappa in the Bevitoria Navona. He had served his last day as a waiter.

  Chapter 52

  JUST BEFORE TURTURRO left the Command Action group at the end of 1977 he was ordered to shred certain documents. Most were records of interrogation, giving the identity of the prisoner, the date and time of the interview, the name of the interrogator - which was always a code word - and the result of the interview. This was invariably logged as either NORMAL or DEAD.

  Among these documents were the personnel files of every member of the Command Action Group, including those of his superior officers. Turturro did not shred these papers as he had been ordered to do. Instead, he folded them as neatly as he could, hid them in his shoes, and smuggled them out of the barracks.

  For many years, until the end of military rule in 1983, they had lain concealed in a metal box buried in his garden. When Alfonsín had announced he was to set up the National Commission on the Disappeared, Turturro congratulated himself on his foresight. He imagined that the documents would now be worth a great deal of money, if properly utilised.

  But the Commission had turned out to be toothless, a sap for the masses. After three years no convictions had been recorded, and the Commission was ordered to wind up its investigations in 1986. Only two of the junta's leaders, General Jorge Videla and Admiral Emilio Massera, had been imprisoned. Alfonsín proclaimed the Law of Due Obedience, which turned out to be a blanket pardon for everyone else.

  Then, two years ago, Turturro had been involved in a bar room brawl in La Boca. A man had died. Old friends in the army and police ensured his arrest warrant was delayed until after he had boarded a flight to Montevideo. From there Turturro flew to Italy where he still had distant relatives. One of them owned a restaurant in Rome. He gave his long-lost cousin a job as a waiter, on the minimum wage. What a sweetheart.

  But Turturro knew it was just a temporary setback. He still had his files, and now, finally, he would be able to cash them in.

  When he got back to his apartment in the suburbs later that evening, he was stumbling from the effects of too much grappa and immediately fell asleep on the sofa. But the next morning when he woke up the first thing he did was fumble in his shirt pocket for the piece of paper with Angeli's telephone number on it. He unfolded it and laid it out on the coffee table.

  The cat was mewing around his legs for food but he kicked it away. His head still ached the grappa but he had never felt so good.

  ***

  Simone answered the phone on the second ring. “Pronto.”

  “May I speak with Signor Rivera?”

  “Who is calling please?”

  “Just tell him it's an old friend.”

  Angeli threw down his napkin and that morning's edition of La Repubblica and stalked into the hallway. He did not like being disturbed during breakfast. “Qui parla César Rivera.”

  “Colonel Angeli?”

  He stiffened. No one called him by that name any more. “Who is this?”

  “Maybe you don't remember me. I worked for you in the old days. We made a lot of those subversivos disappear together.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I was hoping we could sit down and talk about old times.”

  His wife and daughter were watching him from the breakfast table. He turned his back on them and lowered his voice. “To what purpose?”

  “It's good for old friends to stay in touch, don't you think, colonel?”

  “I have no interest in the past.”

  “Others may not share your view. There's a café opposite the church of Sant' Agnese di Agone. I'll see you there at ten o'clock.”

  “How will I know who you are?”

  “Don't worry. I'll recognise you.” The caller hung up.

  Chapter 53

  FRANCESCA LOOKED UP. “Is anything wrong?”

  He shook his head and came back to the table.

  “Someone from the old days?”

  He had often wondered how much his wife knew, or had guessed. He had never told her about his role in the Command Action Group in the seventies. He imagined she did not want to know, and that was how it should be. She came from a military family herself and she knew certain questions should never be asked.

  She had been a beauty when he had married her, a prize. He was a junior officer without money or influence and her family was scandalised when she chose him over a dozen more eligible suitors. He still did not know why. Perhaps she recognised his ambition. If so, he was sure he had not disappointed her.

  Look at this place. It had cost him two million dollars. The murals on the ceiling dated from the eighteenth century and the Renaissance brickwork in the hallway had been worked around an ancient Roman Ionic column. The living room looked over the Piazza Navona.

  Francesca had decorated much of it herself, in baroque style; there were antique vases and alabaster putti on pedestals in the entry, gilt chandeliers, brocade chairs. Nineteenth century European paintings hung in gilt frames on the walls next to wrought iron sconces.

  This was his palace, something his grandfather could never have dreamed of when he left the Genovese slums. You didn't get a place like this by being weak.

  He stared moodily at his newspaper, read the same sentence three times and still could make no sense of it. The last time someone had shown up from the past was almost six years ago, in a restaurant in Piazza di Spagna. A man had stood in front of his table and started shouting at him. Deranged, the proprietor had said after they had shunted him out of the door. But the man was still outside when he left, screaming insults.

  Angeli had his driver teach him some manners.

  They should have got rid of all of those dirty bastards. Unfortunately a few had been kept alive for expediency, either as bait to trap other comunistas, or because they were foreign nationals. He would have thought they would have been gratefu
l.

  He fidgeted, tapping an uncertain rhythm on the polished marble with his shoe.

  He worried what Simone would think if she knew. She had been just a child when they left Buenos Aires. The left wing press had made martyrs out of those crazy old women in the plaza, had painted the junta as monsters. Western journalists made him sick. Who did he think financed this dirty war, as they called it? The Russians?

  It was easy to be outraged about fucking civil liberties when you didn't have to worry about bombs going off every day right on your doorstep, when your own friends and family were not being kidnapped and murdered the minute they stepped out their front door. So they gave them a taste of their own medicine.

  He was a tough man, sure, but he was not made of stone. Sure it still troubled him sometimes, especially late at night. A car would backfire in the street and he remembered a woman's naked and tortured body jerking on the end of a rope, blood and brain matter spattered on the wall. Sometimes every soldier had to do things he wasn't proud of.

  He caught Simone watching him and smiled to reassure her. He wanted to protect her, from men, from politics, from life. He loved her so much. Everyone has a weakness, that was what he used to tell his junior officers in the Command Action Group. You will always find some way to break them if you look hard enough.

  Remember, everyone has a weakness.

  He supposed that Simone was his.

  “Are you all right, caro?”

  “Yes, I'm okay. Just tired.”

  “Your coffee's cold. Shall I ask Sylvia to make some more?”

  “No, it's all right. I have to go out anyway.”

  He kissed her on the forehead and went to his bedroom to change. He wanted his daughter to be proud of him, as every father does. It was a cruel and bitter world and he wanted to shield her from it. So he was determined that she should never know too much about the past. Unless you lived through those times, you could never understand. He dressed, brushed his hair, washed his hands. He liked washing his hands. Francesca said he did it too much, but how could a man ever be too clean?