Killing Che

by Chuck Pfarrer

  “Sign and date this,” he said.

  Tania managed to focus her eyes through the tears. The document contained only her name, place of residence, personal data, and the details of her initial arrest. It was not a confession, and it stated in a printed block that she had volunteered to remain at the station, “assisting the police in their inquiries.” The document did not mention her rape, torture, or the beatings, which now seemed like a lurid nightmare. It did not charge her with any crime. It listed the personal effects that had been given back to her, her purse and its contents, and surprisingly, even the folded newspaper that Robert had handed to her.

  Tania signed.

  The female warder came back and insisted that she put on her shoes. This Tania managed to do, painfully. She was given a carbon copy of the form and led through a maze of corridors to a final door, where the warder motioned for Tania to leave. On battered feet, Tania limped out into the wide, hot light of day. Tears were streaming down her face, and she felt as if she would faint. Gripping the banister, she managed to lurch down the granite stairs and out to the curb. Tania continued away from the building, expecting at any moment to be snatched back by the rough hands of her tormentors.

  Cars and buses went by. People walked past, men and women, normal men and women. It was astounding to Tania that life went on in front of the National Police building—that a living city surrounded a palace of corpses. Not one person on the street seemed to have the least comprehension of what happened behind the building’s huge black metal doors. A city of decent people surrounded a gang of torturers, the way healthy tissue might surround a deadly, growing malignancy.

  To eyes so long exposed to darkness, the daylight felt overwhelming. It staggered her like a physical burden. As she walked on a few paces, she heard a voice behind her.

  “Tania.”

  She turned to find a tall man with sandy-blond hair. Hoyle’s voice was deep and quiet. Tania did not know him, nor did she recognize Smith, standing in front of an Impala sedan parked at the corner.

  “We’re going to give you a ride,” Hoyle said to her. Hoyle took Tania by the elbow and guided her toward the car.

  Tania went along. She dared not resist; in fact, the act of resisting did not even occur to her. She simply climbed into the backseat, doing as she was told. She sat still as Hoyle climbed in next to her and Smith got in behind the wheel and the car pulled out into traffic.

  Tania swallowed. Again her mind seemed to be going away from her. An hour ago, she had been locked in a casement with a pair of decomposing bodies. Now she was riding in a car, and she had no idea to where.

  “Did they give you back everything?” Hoyle asked.

  Hoyle’s Spanish was perfect, but his accent was broad. Tania recognized it at once.

  “Americans.”

  Smith’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. He saw Tania slouched in the seat—on her arms were bruises and cuts—and her face was a perfect cipher. Her clothing was wrinkled, and she seemed lost in it, like a child wearing her mother’s dress.

  Hoyle’s voice was even. “Here’s the way it’s going to go down. We know you’re going to transfer two people to the guerrillas. In the Ñancahuazú. After you guide these people in, we’ll vector you to an extract point. Then we’ll get you out of Bolivia. Under Western papers. To Vienna. KGB will take you from there. Do you understand?”

  Tania said nothing. She looked out the window at the city streaming by.

  “Do you hear me?”

  “I don’t work for you,” Tania said.

  “There’s been an agreement,” Hoyle said. “We’re going to help get you out of the country.”

  Tania clutched at the newspaper. “Is that what I am now? An arrangement?”

  Smith said without enthusiasm, “If you want to live, you’ll do as we say.”

  SMITH DROVE THROUGH the city to Avenidia Baptista, around the Plaza Tomás Catari, and into the Cematario General. Looming above the cemetery, the city lay in a jumble of houses built on impossibly steep hillsides. Above, the sun was high, and the air was blue as deep ocean water. The graveyard was a maze of walls instead of headstones, each containing as many as a hundred reliquary chambers. Over a space of about thirty acres, the walls were organized along paths and courtyards so that the place resembled a city in miniature.

  Hoyle opened the back door and helped Tania from the car. Sunlight was brightly reflected from the parking lot, making her eyes hurt. Smith and Hoyle walked with her down one of the white dirt paths around a corner to a covered place like a gallery. Here the reliquary walls were three or four tiers high, and behind each door of glass or wrought iron was displayed some souvenir of memoriam, faded plastic flowers or pictures of the dead.

  Under the shade of the gallery, it was cool, and the soil was almost moist underfoot. Hoyle led Tania past the wall, deeper into the cemetery, and finally, into a plaza of sorts, a small open space surrounded on four sides by reliquaries.

  Here, standing in a thin strip of shade, was the man Tania knew as Robert. With him was a large man with a thick neck: Sergev. Tania was elated to see Robert, but her face betrayed nothing, neither recognition nor relief. The haste of her release, and her unexpected delivery by a pair of American agents, all imparted a sense of unreality and confusion. Tania dared not say a word, still fearing some sort of trap.

  “Everything will be all right,” Diminov said to Tania.

  Smith stepped in front of Tania. “The two men who are being guided to the guerrillas—where are they?”

  “What concern is that of yours?” Diminov said.

  “Where are they?” Smith asked again.

  “At a safe house, awaiting transfer,” Diminov said. “Come, Tania.”

  Hoyle held Tania back. “I want Guevara’s codes and frequencies.”

  The request stunned her. But causing more consternation and fear was Diminov’s bland reply: “I have them.”

  Tania watched, dumbfounded, as Diminov reached into his coat, pulled out a white envelope, and held it out. Tania’s mouth opened; words strangled in her throat. Tania felt as though she were being pulled down a rabbit hole into a mortal and false-hearted wonderland. The revelation exploded in her head: Robert, the Soviets—they were selling Guevara out. The question Robert had put to her in the plaza, when he’d asked if Tania thought it possible to drug Guevara, this question uncoiled in her mind in a grand, staggering burst of darkness and grief. Tania comprehended suddenly and horribly what the arrangement was: Guevara was to be betrayed to the Americans. She herself was to betray Che and receive her own freedom. Tania was to be made into Judas. She staggered backward and felt Hoyle’s hand steadying her arm.

  “Where are her travel documents?” Diminov asked.

  “She gets the passport after she makes the rendezvous,” Hoyle answered.

  “That wasn’t the arrangement.”

  Behind Diminov, Santavanes stepped from the shadow of the gallery. He carried an FN rifle.

  “It is now,” Smith said. “This is the deal. After she guides in the two new players, she makes sure Guevara goes to the junction of the Ñancahuazú and Iripiti rivers.”

  “And then what?” Diminov’s tone was arch, but Hoyle and Smith knew he held no cards.

  Smith felt not the slightest twinge of sympathy. In an equation that must always add up to zero, Tania, like Guevara, was a negative number, an enemy, and simply that.

  “After the guerrilla column has been liquidated, a Special Forces team will extract her.” Smith’s voice was bland, as though he were describing a trip to the store.

  Tania rolled her head from side to side. The word “no” fell from her lips like a pebble dropped down a well. She saw Robert standing by a wall filled with dead, but the light seemed to swallow them and smear out his shape, as it had done to her jailers just hours before.

  None of this could be real. The world had fallen off its axis and capsized into insanity.

  She heard Diminov say, “She’s in no con
dition to be placed back in the field.”

  Smith was pitiless. “She guides the messengers, and we get the codes, or I shove her in the trunk and drive back to the Palace of Justice. Your call.”

  A thin wind blew over them.

  “What is going on?” Tania finally sputtered. “How can this be?”

  Diminov put up his hand. “You will have your orders,” he said.

  “Orders to do what?” Tania asked.

  Diminov ignored the question as if it had been spoken by a child. He handed Sergev the envelope. Sergev stepped forward and stuck it against the glass of one of the small crypts. He backed off warily.

  Smith moved forward, tore open the envelope, and read. Several sheets of foolscap listed recognition and response signals, radio frequencies, and the map locations of half a dozen of the guerrillas’ storage caves.

  Smith nodded, and Hoyle let go of Tania’s arm. She walked several lurching steps toward Diminov. As Tania reached the fat man, her knees gave way, and she collapsed into his arms. Hoyle fought off a twinge of conscience. He had helped engineer her release, but he knew that she had not been delivered from harm. She had been placed in mortal danger; worse for her, she was to betray a man she loved.

  Above them, the sky put down light that made the afternoon painfully stark; the colors were so fervent and the shadows so black that it seemed like the choice between life and death, good and evil. A gust of melancholy swept over Hoyle. It was not sympathy. He felt suddenly done in, fed up with the Game. The quicker all was lost, the quicker he could leave this place and become something other than a trafficker in the broken and the dead.

  Smith and Hoyle turned and walked back for the car, leaving Tania and Diminov in a wilderness of graves.

  36

  JUST AFTER NINE P.M., Hoyle glided through the lobby of the

  Hotel Cochabamba to the desk of the concierge, who handed him a room key and summoned a bellman with a knowing dip of the head. Hoyle’s overnight bag was whisked from him by a smiling porter who said slyly, “Welcome back, Señor,” and guided Hoyle to the elevator.

  The rooms had been made ready, his and Maria’s adjoining, numbers 405 and 406, with balconies facing out over the Calle Sagamaga. Hoyle’s reservations had been made in advance, and neither he nor Maria had to undergo the ritual of checking in at the desk. All was taken care of, Hoyle’s bills settled generously in cash and more than adequate gratuities set aside for the manager, the concierge, and the bell captain. This ensured that Hoyle and Maria moved almost invisibly into and out of their rooms, neat and inconspicuous.

  As the elevator door opened on the fourth floor, the bellman handed Hoyle his valise and accepted a small wad of Bolivianos. “The wine is in your room, sir,” the bellman said. He handed over Hoyle’s room key, smiled, and disappeared back into the elevator.

  At the end of the hallway, Hoyle threaded the key into the lock and pushed open the door. He had no idea if Maria would be inside, or if she would even be able to join him. Their communication was by means of notes left at the post office box, and Hoyle had last been able to write her only that he had made accommodations for the weekend. He entered quietly and found the room undisturbed; noise from the street gave it a certain humming silence. He switched on the light to find bed and furniture just so and the fan slowly turning above. A bucket of champagne, a towel, and two glasses were placed on a tray on the table. The air held the faintest hint of perfume. The door to the adjoining room was opened a crack, and Hoyle tossed his valise on the bed and went to the door.

  The room beyond was dark, and Maria was sitting by the window with her hands folded. Through the curtains, neon reflected up from the street upon her and gave an emerald cast to her shadow. She stood as Hoyle entered, and as she turned toward him, there was an expression of expectation and relief on her face. They embraced for a long moment and then kissed.

  “Hello, friend,” Hoyle said.

  “I’ve missed you,” she answered.

  Hoyle kissed her neck and her throat and placed his hands on either side of her cheeks and kissed her again deeply. As they embraced, Maria felt the hard corners of a pistol tucked into a holster under Hoyle’s left arm. Her hand pulled away from it. Hoyle at once sensed her uneasiness and understood the reason. There are people for whom guns are not objects or tools: They represent finite and dangerous things, like the edge of a cliff, or the open sea beyond a ship’s railing.

  “Let me get rid of this,” he said.

  Hoyle took off his jacket and threaded his arms through the shoulder holster. As he took off the weapon, Maria said nothing; she had not known until this moment that he normally carried a gun. He closed the pistol in a drawer of the nightstand, and Maria seemed a bit more calm. No more was said about it. The reasons that Hoyle might carry a gun, Maria had guessed weeks ago.

  “I’m so glad you could come,” Hoyle said.

  “I almost couldn’t.”

  He kissed her again. Drinking in her perfume, he closed his eyes. “Can you spend the night?”

  “Yes. Tonight only,” she answered. “We have one night.”

  They held each other, and in this moment having one night together was sufficient; the reasons for parting could be sorted out later.

  “I’d like some wine.”

  Hoyle opened the bottle, making an apology that he did not have a sword handy to crack off the cork. At this, Maria smiled. Hoyle poured two glasses and pulled another chair up to where Maria had sat, just back from the balcony. Hoyle did not turn the light on, and they sat in the glow of neon filtered through the curtains. The champagne was good and smelled as it always did to Hoyle—like a woman. He drank his glass in two or three long drafts.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Hoyle said, “I think I am.”

  The business at the cemetery still troubled him. The pathetic state in which they’d found Tania, the tortures that Hoyle was certain she had endured, and the messy, deadly business that was ahead of her, all these things heaved up in his mind. Maria could not know what state of affairs distracted Hoyle, but she was his lover and was extremely prescient; she was certain he was troubled but did not think it best to ask him directly what it was that made him uneasy. She could hardly ask him, “So, how was your week?” She was certain that her lover was some kind of agent, and after all, what do you ask a spy if you don’t expect to be lied to?

  “You seem distracted,” she said.

  “I’m happy to be here—with you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He touched her face and kissed her lightly. “Yes, I’m sure of that.” A moment passed as they sat bathed in the green light.

  There rose in her some vague sense of guilt; this reflection danced with another, a sense of dishonesty, of immorality. It occurred to her that she was cheating against cheating. She had become a rare and wanton thing: a mistress who had taken a lover.

  “Am I wrong to want to see you?” she asked.

  “No,” Hoyle said. “It isn’t wrong. It feels right in my heart.”

  “And right in mine.”

  “You’re beautiful,” he said. Entirely true, and a perfect evasion, talk of Maria’s singular beauty was better by far than talk of right and wrong.

  “Do you want me?” she asked.

  “Very much.”

  “I’m sorry, too, that we have to keep things hidden,” she said.

  “Maybe it’s best that some things are just for us.”

  They kissed, a kiss that lengthened as it grew sensuous. Hoyle’s arms moved around her shoulders and pulled her toward him. Maria put down her wineglass and turned herself to accept Hoyle’s embrace. He ran his hands through her hair and pulled her close. Neither of them had thoughts anymore of the world. Or their troubles. Every care melted away, every duty, every plan, and they gave themselves and took for themselves; their world became their two rented rooms, a self-contained place without judgment or guilt.

  HOURS LATER, THEY were still tangled toget
her on the bed. Neither could sleep, so they held each other, listening to the sounds of the street below, quiet sounds now, for it was after midnight and curfew had put silence on La Paz.

  Unlike Hoyle, who had only sketchy beliefs, Maria was still a Catholic. She closed her eyes as she held Hoyle and silently prayed the Act of Contrition in English. She had been told by the nuns at school that saying this prayer, even silently, would absolve her of all sin; she would be forgiven completely but would be diminished in grace for having sinned. Grace could be regained by many things, by good works, by taking communion, or by the blessing of a priest, or better, a bishop. Grace and forgiveness were more wholly attained by confession, but as a stopgap, the Act of Contrition would do. As a little girl, Maria had been told that grace was the spark that animated her body and gave it life. Humanity. Without grace, a human being was merely an animal.

  Life had batted her about. Maria had seen much and lost nearly all that she’d seen or had. Saying the act was a small thing that she clung to, as she did her nightly prayers. The concepts of grace and forgiveness beckoned from a simple place far away from what had become an increasingly complex life.

  The truth was, Maria no longer attended mass and felt very far from a state of grace. As she listened to Hoyle breathe, she prayed for forgiveness, not only for what she had done but for what she had dreamed.

  “Are you awake?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve had a nightmare,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Of what?”

  Maria closed her eyes. “I can just remember it. If I lie still. With my body in the same position. The dream will come to me.”

  “Because of the way you’re positioned?”

  Maria held herself still next to him. Her eyes were closed in concentration. “Yes. If I hold myself in the same way. With my arms and legs just as they were, the dream comes back.”