She tried discussing the war threat with Antonio, who scoffed at her fears. The junta leaders may be a bit reckless, he said, but they are not idiots. The Malvinas would be theirs eventually, but through negotiation, not open conflict. The trend in the world was away from colonialism; the old European powers were retreating all over the world. It would be no different here. Eventually the U.N. would pressure the English to give the islands back.
Theresa remained concerned, though. If war came, Antonio might have to fight, especially if their untrustworthy neighbors attacked Argentina. Although she didn’t know a lot about what was going on at Pilcaniyeu—Antonio had only told her the work was top secret—it was obviously a military project of some kind, and so she sensed the facility would be high on the target list for Chilean or Brazilian bombers, or even American missiles, if it came to that. Her fear for her husband made her agree more and more with Professor Caciagli, and with Hector Guzmán. Something had to be done to help common sense prevail.
Guzmán jumped up the steps of the podium and held his hands up to quiet the applause. The microphone squeaked as he adjusted it. “My friends, fellow Argentines,” he began, in a surprisingly deep voice, “we come here today, in the shadow of the Pink House, to say two things to our leaders: No to war! Yes to peace!” Cheers rang out.
Theresa cheered with them. She looked around and saw that the crowd now numbered around a hundred people. More were wandering over from inside the park, and from the nearby streets. The police in front of the Pink House looked more numerous now, too.
“We are called traitors, but we are not,” Guzmán said. “Is it traitorous to want peace for your country? Is it treason to wish that the young men of Argentina never have to fire a shot in anger at the young men of another nation? I say it is not treason, but the highest form of patriotism!” The cheers were louder this time. Guzmán was an impressive speaker, naturally gifted. His looks entranced women, and some men, too, and the cameras loved him, it was said. He had what the Americans called charisma. No wonder the junta feared and hated him.
The thought made her shudder. She remembered very well what happened during the Dirty War not so long ago, when people the junta feared and hated tended to disappear. Her own second cousin vanished after helping organize a labor union at a paper mill. Rodolfo had left a wife and four children.
“Today we stand together for peace!” Guzmán shouted, holding his right hand aloft, displaying the V-sign borrowed from the Americans. “Today we stand together and call upon our leaders to renounce war, to seek peace. Peace with England, peace with Brazil, peace with Chile!”
Amidst the cheers, Theresa heard a shriek of fear, then another. She looked toward the Pink House, and there were the police, a long line of helmeted men, some carrying shields, some truncheons. They were advancing through the plaza, toward the crowd. Guzmán saw them, too. “Stand together, my friends! Are we not free Argentines? Do we not have the freedom to assemble, to speak our minds?”
“Not really,” Professor Caciagli muttered. “This isn’t America.”
“Will the police attack?” Theresa asked.
“I don’t know,” the professor said. Suddenly, the university seemed very far away to Theresa. Inside Caciagli’s classroom, it was all theory. This was reality, in the form of determined, armed men coming their way. No doubt there were more uniformed men watching it all through the windows of the Pink House, and to them the people in the park would appear very small indeed.
“We should go,” she said. “I’m frightened, Professor.”
“Stand fast!” Guzmán shouted. “Stand together for peace!” Many in the crowd echoed him, facing the police, shaking their fists.
One of the policemen raised a megaphone. “You are assembling illegally,” came the amplified voice. “You are ordered to disperse. Go back to your homes. This is your only warning.” The line of policemen halted about fifty meters from the protestors.
“We have a legal permit!” Guzmán shouted back at them. “We are peaceful! You have no right to order us around!” The crowd began to draw strength from Guzmán, and from the seeming hesitation of the police. Guzmán began a chant, quickly picked up by the crowd: “Yes to peace, no to war! Yes to peace, no to war!”
Theresa saw one of the policemen, perhaps the commander, holding a radio to his ear, listening to something, and then he shouted an order. The line began to move toward the protestors. Some on the outer fringes of the crowd lost their nerve and started running, but one young man took two steps toward the advancing line and threw something. Theresa gasped as the stone struck a policeman in the face, cracking his visor, knocking him down. The officer yelled an order, and his men charged.
“Run!” Caciagli shouted. He grabbed Theresa’s hand and pulled her along. She needed no encouragement. They made it past the podium as the first wave of policemen collided with the edge of the protestors, truncheons rising and falling, bringing screams of pain.
Caciagli was heading for the center of the plaza. Theresa could see the Pyramide de Mayo, an obelisk built over an earlier monument to the Revolution of 1810. Somehow it occurred to her that the very next day, the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo would be holding their weekly Thursday afternoon march, calling once more for a full accounting of the Dirty War atrocities. That would be tomorrow; today, protestors were running for their lives. Past the pyramid, Theresa saw something that gave her hope. “The cathedral!” she yelled, and Caciagli saw it, too: the tall edifice of the Catedral Metropolitana. If they could make it inside, the police would surely not follow, not into the shrine that held the remains of the legendary patriot Jose de San Martín, who had liberated Argentina from the Spanish.
But they wouldn’t make it that far. A flying squadron of policemen, anticipating the crowd’s rush toward the safety of the cathedral, outflanked the protestors from the eastern part of the plaza. Pedestrians and bystanders, even those who’d ignored the assembly, ran from the police in panic or fell to their clubs. Caciagli and Theresa tried to double back toward the obelisk, but they were fighting against the tide of fleeing civilians. Screams and shouts filled the air. Cars and trucks on the nearby streets blared their horns. The peaceful afternoon of the plaza had descended into chaos.
A policeman appeared to their right. Caciagli held up an arm to ward off the blow, but the officer’s club smashed him to the ground. Theresa screamed in terror as the policeman turned to her, club held high. “No!” someone shouted. “Do not harm the women!” The policeman hesitated, then grabbed Theresa’s arm, twisting it painfully behind her, snarling, “You come with me, you leftist puta.”
***
“Do you know why you are here?”
Theresa tried to summon words out from under the crushing fear. She had no idea how much time had gone by since her capture in the plaza. She remembered the pain of her arm pinned behind her back, the terror of the hood pulled down over her head, the hard floor of the van as she was thrown inside. There was moaning and wailing from other prisoners during the short ride, then they were manhandled out of the vehicle and taken inside whatever this building was. She was thrown down roughly into a stiff wooden chair, her wrists and arms tied behind its back. She waited for what seemed like hours, crying until tears would come no more.
“I asked you a question, Jewish bitch!” The man’s voice dripped with hatred.
“I—I don’t know,” she managed. “I am not Jewish. I am Catholic.”
“Tell me what you know about Guzmán.”
“I don’t know anything about him.”
“Do not lie to me.” The voice came from behind her, and then a hand reached down and grabbed her hair through the bag, pulling her head back. She gagged in pain. “You were seen in the plaza with him. You have been seen elsewhere with him.”
“No…no…I’ve never met him. I just saw him today.”
The hand shoved her head forward, pressing her face against the inside of the bag, sticky and wet from her tears and the mucous from her nos
e. She sobbed again. Antonio, my love, I’m sorry. She thought of her children, convinced she would never see them again.
“I am First Sergeant Hector Julio Simon,” the voice said, now in front of her again. “Some call me the Turk. Do you know who I am, whore?”
Her frazzled brain managed to call up one reference, something she’d heard whispered somewhere. El Turco Julian. Julian the Turk. Something about being renowned for torture…Oh, God! She began to whisper a prayer, her brain calling on its native Italian as it began to shut down all external stimuli. “Ave, o Maria, pienna de grazia, il Signore e con te…”
“That will do you no good,” the Turk said. “I have had many Jew whores here. I know how to deal with you.” She kept mumbling the rosary prayer, but stopped when she felt something grab the front of her blouse. Hands. Unbuttoning her blouse, pulling it apart. With horror she remembered she was wearing the new brassiere Antonio had ordered for her, the red one that fastened in front.
The Turk’s fingers expertly flicked the clasp, and she felt the cups peeling away from her breasts. Simon’s breathing became louder, heavier. “Does Guzmán suck your nipples?” Now he was behind her again, whispering in her ear, telling her things he would do to her, horrible things. She felt cold, calloused hands on her breasts, the ones no man but her beloved Antonio had ever touched before. So proud he was of them, that she had nursed two bambinos and still they were full and firm. And now, being fondled by this thug…She felt the urge to vomit, and used what was left of her strength to fight it back.
“You will tell me what I want to know about Guzmán,” the Turk breathed into her ear, “or you will not leave this place alive.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Estancia Valhalla, Argentina
March 1982
The telephone in the Baumann study rang for the twelfth time in the past two hours. “Oberst Baumann,” Willy answered.
“I have something else about the protestors,” Heinz Nagel said. He had been giving regular reports to Willy since the police attack on the rally. “Several of them are in custody of the federal police. There are three women among the prisoners.”
Willy felt a chill. This was bad. He had no doubt that Galtieri or one of his henchmen had ordered the rally to be dispersed. Why now? Guzmán had been making public speeches for weeks. Why this one? Perhaps it was because of his audacity to appear within sight of the Pink House that finally pushed the junta over the edge. Willy had no love of the peaceniks, but he deplored senseless violence against them even more. Films of the riot would be on the television news in Europe and America within hours, if they weren’t already. The government of Argentina may have struck a body blow against the infant antiwar movement, but it was about to suffer a massive defeat in the court of world opinion.
“Who is conducting the interrogations?” Willy asked, fearing the answer.
“The Turk,” Heinz said. “He has them in Club Atletico. Seven men, three women.”
“God help them,” Willy said. The Bund was quite familiar with Sergeant Simon’s work, especially because of the torture-master’s high regard for Nazis. Simon was openly anti-Semitic, had a swastika tattooed on his chest, and frequently played old recordings of Hitler’s speeches while he tormented his victims. Even Günther Nagel could not stomach the man’s excesses, but Simon had too much protection within the junta for the Bund to move against him. Perhaps it was time for that to end.
“Do you have the names of the prisoners?” Willy asked.
“Yes,” Heinz said, and began reading them off. One of the women’s names flagged something in Willy’s memory. He asked Heinz to repeat it. “Theresa Gasparini,” he said. “I thought it sounded familiar. Do we know her?”
Willy tried to think. “No,” he said slowly, “not her. Her husband, perhaps?” He was sure now that he had seen the Gasparini name on some sort of list, very recently, a military list…He reached for a file at the bottom of a stack on the credenza behind him. The Pilcaniyeu file. “I might have something here, Heinz,” he said. “Hold on.” Willy placed the phone on the desk and quickly riffled through the file. Yes, there it was, in a report by the installation’s commandant, Oberst Reinke, mentioning the promotion of his second in command, one Major Antonio Gasparini. Willy gasped. Could it be? He quickly pulled out a nearby file drawer, the one with the service jackets of the Pilcaniyeu security officers, and found Gasparini’s. Yes, he was married, two children, wife’s name is—
Willy grabbed the phone. “Heinz, are you there?”
“Yes, Willy. You found something?”
“Gasparini, the prisoner, is the wife of Reinke’s second.”
There was a moment of silence at the other end, and then, “Scheiss!” It hadn’t taken long for Heinz to make the same leap that Willy had. The wife of an important officer at the nation’s most vital military installation, in the hands of that sadistic bastard! The security implications were almost beyond comprehension.
“Get over there immediately and get her out of there,” Willy said, trying to remain calm, even as his anger built to a rage. “Shoot that verfluchtes Arschloch Simon if you have to.”
“I’m on my way.”
***
It was half-past ten when the Chief of Station returned to the embassy. David Travis was waiting for him outside his office. “How was the party?” the agent asked.
“Rather lively,” the MI6 man said as he unlocked his office door. Travis followed him inside. The chief tossed his coat on a chair. “All the talk was of the demonstration today in the plaza.” The dinner party at the Bolivian Embassy was still going on, but the chief had left early, anticipating Travis. “You have something for me?”
Travis handed him a file. “Some rough notes of reports from our BIS contacts. I’ll have a more detailed report for you in the morning. You might want to look at the third page.”
The station chief thumbed through the papers. “Holy Jesus Christ,” he said a moment later. He looked up at Travis. “Is this confirmed?”
“It will be within twenty-four hours,” the field operative said. “It’s not every day that Julian the Turk has a prisoner snatched from him at gunpoint, wouldn’t you say?”
“And the man who rescued the lady…” He looked down at the paper again. “It was Heinz Nagel?”
“Our contact is certain. The de facto security chief of the Siegfried Bund handled this personally. I wish he’d shot the bastard.”
The MI6 man nodded. “Indeed. But she was the only prisoner rescued, you say? Why only her?”
Travis handed the man another file. “I was curious, too, so I played a hunch and did a little checking in our records. It appears her husband is an important officer in their Army.”
The chief flipped through the two-page dossier. “How important?” he asked, already knowing the answer from what he’d read.
“Second in command of the Pilcaniyeu security force,” Travis said. “My guess is that he will be given emergency leave to come home and be with his wife. Probably here for several days.”
“Can you contact him?” The chief knew an opportunity when he saw one.
So did Travis. “Yes, I think so,” he said, “but it would be nice to know why.”
The chief closed the files and leaned back in his chair, contemplating the man across the desk. He made a decision. “What I’m about to tell you is Most Secret,” he said.
“I assumed it would be.”
***
Major Antonio Gasparini did not wear his uniform on the day he went to the market for Theresa. He had not worn his uniform since the day he’d arrived home, the day after his wife’s arrest. Now, three days later, he was wondering if he’d ever put on the uniform again.
Hatred burned within Gasparini like a cold flame. Hatred of the man who had defiled his wife. Hatred of the men above him who had given the beast his orders. And even some hatred of himself, for those same men gave Gasparini his own orders, and the work he was doing at Pilcaniyeu would, if successfu
l, bring even greater glory and power to those same men.
Not for the first time, Gasparini considered going to the Pink House and using his sidearm. He would die, of course, but he would take as many of the bastardos as he could. It was tempting, but he knew it would not happen. For one thing, security at the Pink House was undoubtedly high these days, and the Gendarmaria might very well be on the lookout for Antonio Gasparini. For another, more important thing, he could not bear to leave Theresa and the children. It would be hard enough to leave them in a few days, when his emergency leave expired.
Blessed be the Virgin, Theresa seemed to be recovering from her ordeal. Physically, her arms were a bit sore, but that was all. Psychologically, Antonio knew it would take longer for her wounds to heal. Perhaps he might arrange for her to see a counselor. She had told him about her time in the room, and Gasparini’s anger had been tempered only slightly when she had assured him she’d not been sexually assaulted, beyond the Turk’s fondling of her breasts, which was bad enough; one of them was still bruised around the nipple. He could only imagine the terror she had felt, the humiliation. His first three nights at home, she merely clung to him in bed and sobbed, but the crying had settled down and sleep was coming more easily now. This morning they made love, very gently, and this time her weeping was of gratitude when the “little death” claimed her and she held him like she’d never done before.
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