He was on the verge of leaving only a few days after he arrived. Albert, the creator of the Black Chamber, had done a remarkable job on a meager budget. Nevertheless, it was so very different from Crypto City, as the immense complex of NSA buildings in Fort Meade was known. The computers were over five years old; their memory and speed were out of place in this new century. The communication systems were extremely limited, as were the systems for monitoring conversations and deciphering codes. There was not even any software for machine translations from Quechua and Aymara into Spanish, in a country where the majority spoke one of those two languages. Was it that indigenous people never conspired? Perhaps one could plot only in Spanish? And there was just one old Cray supercomputer ... He had come from a high-tech world and wasn't prepared to use low-tech systems. The only reason he stayed was that the vice president had promised a budget sufficient to upgrade the Black Chamber's hardware and software.
The monitor goes black for a few seconds, then comes back on. Power surges have been occurring frequently these days. To hell with GlobaLux. Blockades are now being announced, as if that will produce electricity. To hell with this country.
He approaches the window. He had finally started to feel comfortable after four months of work. He had to admit that he liked the power, the instant access to the vice president, who came to Rio Fugitivo often. Ramírez-Graham did all he could not to go to La Paz, since he reacted poorly to the altitude. Several new computers had been installed, and he had hired capable young people. Veterans like Turing had been relocated. He could understand why Albert had surrounded himself with linguists and not computer science experts: sophisticated equipment wasn't needed to decipher the majority of codes that were intercepted by the Black Chamber. "Technological advances over the past few years have made the NSA's message-deciphering systems obsolete," an expert had pronounced. "In order to become useful again, the agency has to resort to the three Vs: bribery, blackmail, and burglary." There was no such problem at the Black Chamber, since the majority of those who ciphered messages here did not use all of the technological advances at their disposal. However, trained as he was to be prepared for the unexpected, Ramírez-Graham had decided to continue with the vice president's plans for modernization. It had been the right decision. In this instance, Kandinsky and the Resistance were the unexpected.
There is a knock at the door. It is Baez, one of his most trusted employees. He appears shaken.
"I don't know how this could have happened, boss. Our security systems are the best in the country, but a virus has gotten through. It's devouring our files."
Ramírez-Graham pounds the table forcefully. No need to ask who's responsible. Sons of bitches. Will this be the end of him?
Chapter 5
JUDGE CARDONA GAZES OUT at the plaza from the balcony of his room at the Palace Hotel. He is seated on a metal chair with a crumpled Time magazine in his hand, swatting at the flies that buzz around the remains of his lunch: potatoes, a piece of lettuce, a slice of tomato swimming in its own juice. The city's dusty air penetrates his nostrils, making him sneeze. The midday sun shines on him from the waist down; his bearded face is protected by the shade, his lips pursed, his gaze flitting here and there. He has loosened his belt and taken off his shoes. He has drunk two bottles of Pacena beer but isn't ready for the third—at least not yet. From behind him, through the open door leading into the room, comes the sound of the television. The Palace Hotel is located in the Enclave, on a corner of the plaza. The architecture is neoclassical, dating from the late nineteenth century. It had been the home of one of Rio Fugitivo's most traditional families. There is a large patio with fig trees and treillage, a fountain adorned with swans in the center, around which Cardona can picture men in hats and corseted ladies coquettishly laughing and exchanging glances as the afternoon passes languidly by. The open-air concert at the city bandstand in the plaza had been visible from the balconies; people strolled, unlike now, when hustle and bustle reigns, unlike thirty years ago, when violence ruled.
Such a long time has passed. He shouldn't have come back. But time's sudden fury has done the trick, yes. A hinge that creaks from a space that could materialize in the blink of an eye. Like an injured god who opens and closes his eyes, not knowing why, until realization suddenly dawns.
Cardona's skin is covered in wine-colored spots. They dot his cheeks, partially hidden by his new beard. He can remember the exact date when the first spot appeared, on his right cheek: he was nineteen years old, in his second year of university, and had spent all night preparing for an oral exam. How odd, a lawyer who stuttered in public, whose blood raced when he had to speak in front of a class or a courtroom. Then the second spot appeared. And the third. A body as spotted as a lizard in the desert or a toad in toxic water. The spots are of all shapes and sizes, like scattered maps of islands and countries and continents. They don't hurt. They are just there, as a reminder: he touches them, strokes them, toys with them. Doctors have recommended every kind of cream and ointment, that he stay out of the sun, avoid spicy foods. Nothing has worked. He has come to accept them—they are part of him, they are who he is. He has also come to understand how distracting they are to those who speak to him: court clerks, fellow lawyers, clients, enemies. On his forehead, his nose, his neck, like a worn-out metaphor. He can live with those who stare at him on the street, especially children, who know nothing of tact, of hiding what they think and feel. If the intense sun of Rio Fugitivo were to burn these marks right off him, make them disappear, and he were to see himself in a mirror and not recognize himself, perhaps he would fall dead to the floor, or he might continue to live, but as a ghost, the uninhabited inhabitant of a body.
He looks at his pocket watch. It's almost time. The cover of the magazine has something about genomes and an inset about the ongoing challenges of democracy in Latin America. He lets it fall to the floor. An article about attempts by a judge in Argentina to extradite Montenegro had interested him. Judge Garzón had set a precedent with his petition for Pinochet's extradition. Now countless lawyers want to be as heroic. But there are different ways of exacting justice, and following legal procedures is the most useless of them all. That a confused believer in the law as he once was has come to accept that truth lends credence to the fact that one day a child with a pig's tail will be born in this dark land.
He gets up and walks into the room. The bed is still unmade, white sheets and a blue bedspread piled on one side; he has only recently woken up from a dream in which he was a child running behind Mirtha, his cousin, on her bicycle. Mirtha appears in so many dreams, like a restless being who will not accept eternal peace. She has many disguises: behind the face of a bald university professor, wearing the glasses of a paralyzed neighbor, or with the puzzled freshness of adolescence. They are dreams that at times become nightmares—such a thin line separates calm from panic. Like an earthquake that shakes us until we fall unconscious, crevasses that open out of nowhere to swallow us up, and we have no idea where the epicenter is. But he knows—just his luck.
He shaves, nicking the skin above his upper lip. That face is his face, the years continue to ravage it, and it's already starting to leave this place. He's so old. No. He looks so old. And yet wouldn't it be perfect to see one's face not in a mirror but on a wall, a ceiling: an image that reverberates throughout the world and comes back to you before leaving. Kleenex on the cut. Aftershave lotion that stings the skin. He uses mint mouthwash, determined to get rid of his viscous, alcohol-smelling breath. Hairspray. Cologne that smells like lemons. He puts on his black suit, the one made for him by the same tailor who makes Montenegro's suits—their only remaining commonality. Promiscuous tailor, given to politicians of all stripes. He puts on a white shirt and a blue tie. He needs to project a feeling of authority, a moral presence.
He turns off the television. He is tempted to watch The Exclusive on his Samsung. Or Lana Nova? There are more breaking stories on the Web than there are on the TV news. The Exclusive is his favo
rite because of its sobriety in an overhyped media. Lana Nova lacks depth; she is the ideal journalist for the MTV generation—so diaphanous that she literally does not exist. But in truth he cannot deny the power of her sexuality, which at times leads him to search for her on the Internet when sleep eludes him. He knows she will be there any time of the day or night, with her broad smile and belligerent breasts, reporting on some Palestinian suicide bomber in a Jerusalem shopping center. Lana's presence is incongruous with the news but at the same time makes the daily excess of tragedies tolerable. He wants to watch Lana, decides to watch The Exclusive, which is announcing new confrontations in Chapare. Campesinos from the federation of coca growers, urged by their leader, have decided to resist the government's attempts, backed by the Americans, to eradicate coca. The Aymara leader of the coca growers is beginning to acquire national stature, espousing an anti-imperialist discourse that is managing to reorganize the left, after decades of wandering in the desert, and give it a reason for being. Would he be a candidate in the next presidential election? If he is, Cardona muses, he won't get very far; he lacks support in the cities. Hackers belonging to a group self-appointed the Resistance are interfering with government sites. The country continues in its cyclical, drowning convulsions. Montenegro, as so often before, is teetering on the edge. Diverse sectors are calling for his resignation. He has achieved the impossible: people who were once so diametrically opposed that they would spit at one another if they crossed paths on the street have come together to reject him. Cardona tells everyone that there are only seven months until the election and that he prefers to spend his time amassing files so that on the first day that Montenegro returns to civilian life, a trial for the bloody acts of his dictatorship will await him. A new trial, one that will not fail as the first one did, one that will benefit from the errors and naivete of the first, because the Argentine judge's attempt at extradition won't be successful. A new trial is being prepared in silence, Cardona tells people, even though the opposite is true. He has to go about it carefully, because one wrong step will prevent him from carrying out his plan. Death is always circling, and conspiracies lurk where you least expect them. A single misstep or negligent act could end it all without its ever beginning. No one is the savior of one's country, but it needs him, Mirtha needs him, politics is personal, politics is local. He exists and is memory in the face of so much forgetting. Someone has to remember, even someone fallible, despicable in his own right, capable of deals worthy of regret, and oh yes there are those, conscience, memory, disgust, such disgust. He turns off The Exclusive.
He was fifteen years old and Mirtha was twenty. She lived three blocks away and would sometimes come to visit him, wearing cork platform shoes, bell-bottom jeans, and a yellow headband that contrasted with her long black braids. She was always in a good mood and knew that Cardona, who would do his homework in his room, was shy, and she would jokingly say Hurry and grow up, I'll wait for you. He could remember those very words from the time he was ten years old, when she, in the space of a few months, had ceased being a little tomboy who called herself Mirtho and become a flirty teen who did not need makeup or provocative clothing to be noticed. One day Cardona realized that he had grown up and was taking Mirtha's playful words seriously. And he fell in love.
His sister noticed his delirium. She told him he was wasting his time: Mirtha was his cousin, his flesh and blood. The argument did not dissuade him. His sister tried another tack: Mirtha was a hippie, a commie, she had late-night parties at her house, where they sang and played the guitar, and those who attended were probably like Mirtha, ex-university students who hated President Montenegro and were plotting against him. It was no use. The fever of love consumed him. He would watch her coming and going from the second-floor window that looked out onto the street, his face hidden behind the semitransparent white curtains. He dreamed that Mirtha would tell him that he had finally grown up enough. But apart from fleeting white-toothed smiles, she had nothing more for him.
One Sunday she disappeared. His sister told him that the rumors were true; Mirtha belonged to a Marxist-Leninist party and had gone into hiding. There were a few painful months when he did not hear anything about her. Then one morning his aunt and uncle, Mirtha's parents, rang the bell and chokingly asked Cardona's parents for help. They had received a call from the morgue and had been asked to come identify a body. They did not think they had the strength; perhaps Cardona's parents would accompany them. His parents did not have the heart, nor did his sister. Cardona said he would go. And he did. He entered the morgue—crying family members at the entrance, the walls cracked, the lighting dim. A doctor led him to a large cement table on which several bodies were piled and pulled back the sheet. Cardona saw her bruised face, her slashed breasts, her headband, and closed his eyes.
He believes that love died for him at that very instant. And he wonders why he took so long to seek justice, to atone in some way for that senseless death. Because he had been seventeen years old and knew that however left or commie she might have been, she did not deserve to die like that. Later he heard that the group Mirtha had belonged to was conspiring with young military men to overthrow Montenegro. Idealists. Admirable.
On the nightstand is the file Cardona has put together over the past few weeks about Ruth Sáenz. He saw her at a history conference at the state university in La Paz. He had gone to hear her speak, wanting to meet her. She had worked at the Black Chamber during Montenegro's dictatorship, somewhere around 1975, and her husband still worked there. Turing. Ah, that name: shuffled off to a dishonorable retirement, now in charge of the Black Chamber's archives because it isn't in their interests to fire him, but at one time the right-hand man of Albert, the legendary cryptanalyst who was in charge of the Black Chamber's operations during the most difficult years of the dictatorship.
Cardona suspected that in 1976, either Albert or Turing had deciphered the code that the group of conspirators to which Mirtha belonged had established for their top-secret communications. Young army officials, allied with a group of civilians, were planning to overthrow Montenegro. Over a period of two days, all of the conspirators, one by one, were killed.
The years had not been able to erase Cardona's trip to the morgue to identify Mirtha's body, found in a garbage dump under a bridge. Signs of torture on her back, her breasts, her face. Mirtha, who had taken him by the hand to the matinee to watch cartoons. Mirtha, who never wore makeup and tamed her unruly black hair in two long pigtails, who organized parties where guitars were played and songs were sung until the wee hours. Mirtha, who admired Allende, read Che's diary and Martha Harnecker, and sang songs that spoke of a new dawn for the people.
Cardona does not remember a thing about Ruth's speech, which was too technical, plagued with the arcane language of cryptology. He approached her afterward to introduce himself. She was a mature woman with a dull face, no makeup, short, unpainted nails, and a shy gaze, wearing a black, asexual dress like a kindergarten teacher's, fake pearl earrings her only adornment. She greeted him as if she knew him, surprising in her effusiveness.
"I can't understand what a judge is doing among historians," she said as the few attendees were leaving the room, which was adorned with oil portraits of wrinkled patricians.
"The law and history go hand in hand," he said. "Now more than ever before."
"So why did honest judges at one time agree to work for dictators?"
"So why did honest historians do the very same thing?"
"The historians were young and inexperienced, and quickly corrected their mistake."
"The husbands of historians did not."
"And the young people really weren't so young and had enough experience to say no."
The lights in the room were gradually being turned off. It was time to leave. They continued talking in the semidarkness, set phrases that hid the communication that was taking place in silence. When saying goodbye, Cardona gave her his card. He was not at all surprised to receive her call the n
ext morning from the airport. Her voice betrayed her nervousness. He pictured her constantly looking left and right, hesitant, uncomfortable, gripping a napkin in her long-fingered, restless, evasive hands. She wished to speak with him, but not in La Paz. Would he consider visiting her in Rio Fugitivo? Cardona hesitated. He told her he would think about it. She was about to hang up when he agreed to see her there in a couple of weeks. It was an opportunity he could not afford to miss.
He opens the file. He knows what he will ask her, has it all organized. The trick is to appear natural, as if everything were happening spontaneously. He has even prepared a few alternatives in case there is some sort of roadblock, as tends to happen—a witness decides not to testify and holds his tongue just when everything is ready. There won't be any obstacles. She seems very open to talking; he simply has to act the part of a friend who listens and consoles.
What could be leading her to take this step, to jump into the abyss, to surrender to the precipice? He shouldn't ask himself that. Despite everything, she is the enemy; he is not interested in understanding her. What he wants is to record her confession, the phrases that will incriminate Turing. By putting dictators on trial, lawyers have concentrated on bringing the visible heads of power to justice—the military who gave the orders, the paramilitary and soldiers who pulled the trigger. They have ignored the whole infrastructure that sustains and allows a dictatorship to exist, the bureaucrats whose hands are not stained with blood but who, by participating in the government, in some sense facilitated the crimes. They have overlooked those who, hiding behind their offices at the Black Chamber, deciphered the codes or interfered with the secret radio signals that led to some subversive source, politicians in hiding who came to their deaths, idealistic university students who disappeared without knowing how they had been found. Cardona isn't really interested in discovering the names of those who had tortured Mirtha, mere pawns in a great war. He is more concerned with beheading those who, by means of their silent work, allowed the torture and death to occur. His goal is to get to Turing and Albert, and through them to Montenegro.
Turing's Delirium Page 4
