Killing Che

by Chuck Pfarrer

  Four or five days between them and the Rosita. Another kick in the balls. There was no question of reversing his decision; it was final. But Guevara now examined the factors that had led him to it. Rules of iron. He was aware that the morale of his men was being tested, but that was the purpose of the march. It was a test. Combat was a test.

  A few did not need to be tested—Joaquin, Pombo, Moro, Begnino, men who had been with him for years. They were his stalwarts. It was not for them that he did this. It was for the others. For the Bolivians. They must learn that a mountain range would be crossed. They must learn that these privations were an introduction to what they would experience in the future.

  Guevara’s eyelids fluttered closed, and he concentrated on his breathing. Three weeks and he would be back at base. They would reach the Rosita exactly as he said. They must learn war, he thought. They must learn that it would be war always until victory. Rules of iron would make iron men.

  Guevara tried to make his mind a blank. He knew that to sleep, he must clear his mind, though he knew that this was rarely accomplished. He shifted the focus of his senses to the dark night around him; he concentrated on the insect songs and the gentle noise of the wind flowing downslope. He did what he could to separate mind from body, but the pain in his chest gnawed him. The hydrocortisone was wearing off.

  Questions without answers swirled in Guevara’s head. Voices called to him, voices without language, shouts and cries, reverberating like echoes. The voices were answered by a rattle of ideas, plans, small steps, and great leaps, revolution, and the fires of a hundred Vietnams smoldering in Uncle Sam’s long striped trousers. All that was left for him to remember were the burden of his pack and the sweat that stung his eyes. Perhaps he would be better tomorrow.

  Then sleep found Che Guevara and dropped him like a sniper’s bullet.

  23

  TWO DAYS HAD passed as though they were a dream. It was the evenings, the incredible, delicious evenings, that made time evaporate. Hoyle and Maria had spent every night together since they’d returned from the lake. This surprised them both. But they found that not only did they delight in making love, they enjoyed each other’s company, even though they often spent long periods in silence.

  Minster Alameda was still abroad—he would be until Sunday—and they intended to spend each of the coming nights together until he returned. Beyond that, they had no plans, and Hoyle himself hadn’t the vaguest idea what they would do once Alameda returned to La Paz. Neither Hoyle nor Maria thought it prudent to stay over at her flat, and Hoyle was too professional to use the safe house at Plaza España for their assignations. They spent their evenings at the Hotel Cochabamba, a decent though somewhat gloomy place off the Calle Sagamaga. Hoyle had arranged, discreetly, for them to have adjoining rooms.

  Each morning they left the hotel, and Hoyle drove Maria to within a block of her apartment; she was careful to leave for work in time to be at her desk promptly. Maria shared with Hoyle an uncanny ability to dissemble, and when Señora Truillo returned from her holiday in Sucre, she found everything in the office in its place (even the curtains were drawn correctly) and had no reason to despise Maria any more than usual. Maria was buoyant, almost beaming, and the cantankerous señora put this down to His Excellency’s coming return. Had she known that Maria was carrying on another affair, she might have been driven to distraction. Maria was happier than she had been in years, as was Hoyle, and for them both, it was a delight made sweeter because it was secret.

  Yet during these days, Hoyle was nagged by regret—not anguish over his affair but guilt that he was not in the jungle. His ribs still were knitting painfully, and there was no question that he had to recover before he could return to the Ñancahuazú. Since childhood, Hoyle had felt a desperate need to be useful, and this want had been made keen by the defeat at the river. Although he had analyzed the engagement in detail, and he knew that no one, technically, was to blame, there was something in him that felt responsible. Culpable. This was a failing that could be atoned for, even undone, by being of use.

  If Hoyle could not yet return to the mountains, then he would work in the city. On his first afternoon back from Titicaca, Hoyle summoned Charlie from Vallegrande. Hoyle knew the guerrillas had to be supported by an urban network, and he wanted Charlie to help him find it.

  Charlie met Hoyle at the Plaza España and filled him in on Famous Lawyer and Famous Traveler. The deployment of a hunter-killer group did not surprise Hoyle; he knew that Washington was turning up the volume. The arrival of the Lawyers showed how deadly serious the game had become. About the contents of the rucksack, there was no word. That would be the next shoe to drop.

  Charlie said also that since the Lawyers had joined in Vallegrande, Santavanes had taken to sulking. It was not a surprise the next day when Santavanes arrived in La Paz. He said he’d rather be away from the casita for a while, and anyway, Smith was getting on his nerves.

  Hoyle had Santavanes go to the embassy and draw funds; this money was given to Charlie. He was to spread a couple thousand dollars around to Communist Party members and see what could be learned about the guerrillas’ urban network. Santavanes expected little from this effort and suggested they kidnap a few relatives instead. After some consideration, Hoyle declined. Kidnapping relatives was always effective in the short run, but it quickly spiraled out of control; for the time being, he thought it best to see what Charlie came up with.

  At the end of each day, Hoyle met Maria at the hotel. They ate and drank and made love. They talked and made love again. In the morning, Hoyle drove her to her apartment and then went to Plaza España to work. In this manner, four days passed. Then Charlie telephoned and said he had urgent news.

  CHARLIE ARRIVED AT the Plaza España carrying a brown envelope and three bottles of Pepsi, the drinks being his traditional beverage of celebration; besides being inscrutable, Charlie was also a teetotaler. He left the envelope on the table and went through his ritual of opening the bottles and pouring out three glasses without ice. Hoyle waited patiently for him to do this because he liked Charlie, and Santavanes was silent because he was thirsty and it was too early in the day for beer.

  Charlie lifted his glass and smiled a Cheshire smile. “I made a big score,” he said, nearly capturing the idiom.

  Hoyle watched as Charlie used a pocketknife to open the envelope. Half a dozen eight-by-ten photographs spilled out on the table. Charlie angled the desk light at them. “These men joined the guerrillas. Some of them must have been on the riverbank.”

  Hoyle looked down at a series of blowups of the national ID cards of several dark-complected men. Unblinking, unreadable faces stared up from the blotter. These were Guevara’s Bolivian combatants. There were other pieces of paper, mimeographed copies of Bolivian National Police subject cards.

  “Eleven Bolivians total,” Charlie said. “They were members of Oscar Zamora’s pro-Chinese splinter group in Oruro.”

  Hoyle was certain the ambush had been staged by more than a dozen men, probably as many as forty. These might be some of the fighters who had hit them at the river, though they were not all of them.

  “How reliable is your source?” Hoyle asked.

  Charlie looked at him over his glass. “I paid cash. The general secretary of the Bolivian Party sold these names to the National Police six days ago. I have a cousin—”

  “In the police?”

  Charlie smiled crookedly. The question answered itself.

  “Why would the Bolivian Communist Party burn their own guys?” Santavanes asked.

  “They’ve been expelled.” Charlie’s dark eyes held Hoyle’s steadily. “There’s a power struggle in the Bolivian Party. The pro-Moscow faction wants to go mainstream. They elected members to Parliament.” Charlie’s finger tapped a photograph on the table. “These men want a war right now. They broke with the Central Committee and headed into the mountains.”

  “Okay,” Santavanes said. “So let’s say these are the guys. Some of the g
uys. Where did the others come from?”

  “That’s what Langley is going to tell us,” Hoyle said.

  “You think there’s a Cuban team in here?” Charlie asked.

  “Yeah,” Hoyle said, “I do.”

  “If there are Cubans in the field, there are Cubans in the city,” Santavanes said.

  Hoyle looked at Charlie. “Do you have any objection to running back on your source?”

  Charlie’s eyes flicked to Santavanes. “I don’t want people dead.”

  “Not dead,” Hoyle said, “followed. I want to see who they know. Who they’re dealing with.”

  Charlie nodded. “We can do that.”

  Hoyle swept the photos back into the envelope. “Then we start tomorrow,” he said.

  Neither Charlie nor Santavanes knew that Hoyle’s evening was already planned.

  HOYLE CAME INTO the hotel room, and Maria turned in surprise as he entered.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  They kissed, and Hoyle then noticed that a tray had been set on the table. There were olives and slices of cold ham and Bolivian cheese. Pukacapas were wrapped in paper fresh from the market, there were also oranges and red apples and a bottle of wine.

  “I thought you might be hungry.”

  He was, and they ate and washed the food down with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and then a very unimpressive bottle of claret. Beyond the balcony, the sun slouched down in the sky, and a cathedral’s bell tolled for vespers. Although it would have been pleasant to sit outside, neither thought to do so. They talked and became mildly intoxicated, first Maria, then Hoyle, who went next door to his room and called down for another bottle of champagne. When it came, Maria insisted on prying off the cork, saying she loved the noise and the smell of the wine when it was first opened.

  “My father used to open champagne bottles with a sword,” she said.

  “A daring man.”

  “He was,” she said. “He hardly ever missed.”

  “Much neater than trying to open a bottle with a revolver.”

  “Now you’re making fun of me.”

  “No,” he said. Again he kissed her. The cork came off with a pop, and Maria refilled their glasses; they were the straight-up tumblers she had taken from the bathroom.

  “What did your father do?” Hoyle asked.

  Maria was tipsy enough to speak her thoughts directly as they came to her. “The sins of my father?”

  “We are all sinners.”

  “You should have been a priest, Paul Hoyle.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, and kissed her again. This time he could taste the wine on her lips. “What did he do?”

  “He was a colonel.”

  “An officer in the Cuban army?”

  “He worked for General Batista.” At the dictator’s name, Maria hesitated, but again the wine loosened her tongue. “He was a police colonel.”

  She said nothing else, and Hoyle asked nothing. He knew very well what sorts of things happened to police colonels after revolutions. Hoyle knew also that Maria’s parents were dead, and he was fairly certain they had not died of old age.

  He changed the subject as blithely as he could. “I think you would like to go out tonight,” he said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Dancing?”

  “We can’t be seen dancing together.”

  “You must have seen me dance before.”

  “Never.”

  “I dance like a bear in a cheap Russian circus. It’s astounding.”

  This made Maria smile. She embraced him, and they sat back on the sofa, her head resting on his shoulder.

  “I want to stay here tonight, with you,” she said.

  “You don’t want to dance?”

  “I don’t want to share you.”

  A few moments passed, and Hoyle drank wine from the bathroom glass. He watched Maria delicately sip at hers. The champagne had begun to go flat.

  “What will we do after Sunday?”

  It was the awful moment when parting was mentioned, and Hoyle’s jaw stiffened to meet it.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Do you want to see me?”

  “Very much.”

  A quiet between them lengthened and became deeper. The night crept through from the balcony, and the room darkened around them. They sat together, holding each other, content in silence. Both felt they had something precious and fragile to conceal and keep safe.

  This evening was the point at which physical attraction passed into some greater thing. And it was the moment when Hoyle’s feelings would place them most in peril. Hoyle and Maria were like shipwreck victims set adrift on a vast, indifferent sea. They could hope to survive this thing, and indeed they might, but from now on small mistakes, even plain bad luck, could overturn them and cast them into the deep.

  24

  BEYOND THE OPEN doors of the casita, rain fell on the dirt runway in a constant snarl. It streamed from the roof tiles and off the tents behind the casita and threatened to overwhelm the neat drainage ditches dug by the Green Berets. The rain was biblical, epic, and sitting next to the chattering Teletype, Smith could not help but think that a rain like this could sink the world. It amazed him that radio signals could pass through air filled with so much falling water, yet the Teletype nattered on, and Smith sipped coffee and watched as the message was revealed inch by inch from the KY-17 cable printer.

  SECRET

  CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

  Intelligence Information Cable

  COUNTRY: CUBA/BOLIVIA PRIORITY: ROUTINE

  DISTR: IAWD

  Subject

  1. INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE. ERNESTO /CHE/ GUEVARA IN BOLIVIA.

  2. GUEVARA LEADS BOLIVIAN COMMUNIST INSURGENT GROUP NUMBERING AT LEAST 50 EFFECTIVES.

  The printer’s bell chimed three times, rather like a nickel slot machine spilling out a stingy jackpot. The machine clanked on, details, specifics, and bureaucratese, but the truth had been set free by the subject line. The fact of Guevara’s presence filled the room as though he had walked through the door and stood dripping.

  The Teletype chimed again, and a second message rolled from the printer. Smith tore the message from the machine, careful to make the edge as straight as possible against the row of metal teeth built into the machine, like those of a tiny aluminum shark. He held the paper, already becoming damp, its edges curling against themselves. The message was succinct and assigned to Che Guevara a new CIA handle, a cryptoglyph. This was to be used from now on in place of the target’s name; Ernesto “Che” Guevara was now SL/APOSTLE. The first letters, Sierra Lima, denoted his Argentinean birth, and the code name was obviously the hobbyhorse of some wit back at Langley.

  Guevara was now tagged, and Smith was on the clock.

  On the tiled roof, a crow skittered and jumped about, driven from the sky by the pouring rain. Smith could hear the scratch of its claws against the tiles, a grating, annoying sound quite separate from the clicking of the code machine and the buzz of the downpour. This was one of the occasions when senses and circumstances assembled in a mind and created a mark on memory; for the rest of his life, Smith would remember this instant whenever he heard the rattle of a crow or the sound of rain beating against the roof. Sounds that would otherwise be meaningless or even pleasant would now be associated with the instant he had learned the name of his enemy.

  The rain continued to fall in a protracted hiss, and it occurred to Smith to take for himself the code name PILATE, since he had been tasked to kill an apostle.

  IN THE CIRCLE of light from a kerosene lamp, Smith bent over a small field desk. A rack of radios and code machines formed a barrier between him and the door, and in the yellow pool of light, Smith worked slowly at his codebooks, encrypting a cable to Langley. He was careful to get the details and the phrases just right; he was looking out not only for his operation but for his career. Above, on the wall, one of the Lawyers had put up a calendar—airbrushed, leggy gir
ls posing with parts for hot-rod cars. Neither much interested Smith, though he did look up and check the date as he scribbled. There was much to say, but for the sake of brevity and ease of coding, he kept his text to a minimum.

  It was important to get down on paper what the mission had become, for Smith had been tasked in small bits, and gradually, his job had expanded. He acknowledged the last message, concurring with Langley’s assessment that Guevara was leading the guerrillas and then stating plainly that Guevara and the Cubans were now his target. Smith reiterated to Langley that the objective of Bush Mechanic was the termination of the insurgents, and he was careful to use the plural. Smith had seen operations “blow back” in the halls of Langley when things went badly, and he had seen them do likewise when they went too well. Smith could not know what excesses might be committed by the Bolivian army, or what parts of his own operations might eventually leak. This message was an insurance policy. Its confirmation would be his receipt—his proof of payment. Smith was many things, but he was no fool.

  He stated that Famous Lawyer had already conducted an aerial survey of the Ñancahuazú and had identified the likely locations for guerrilla base camps. Starting next week, these areas would be systematically searched. Recon teams would be inserted at key trail junctures and river crossings. Smith said that his plan was to first track and pinpoint the enemy. The guerrilla column would then be engaged and annihilated piece by piece. Smith had enough experience in jungle warfare to know what a Green Beret A Team could do. He did not doubt for one instant that Holland and his men would destroy the insurgents. Finally, Smith added that an encampment had been readied for the arrival of Famous Traveler, and that the training of the Bolivian army would remain separate from his efforts. Ambassador Hielman had been reluctantly forced to play ball.