Killing Che

by Chuck Pfarrer

  In the slice of neon from the curtained windows, Hoyle could see a look of worry on her face.

  “Doesn’t that happen to you?” she asked. “Don’t dreams come back to you when you lie a certain way?”

  “No,” he said.

  “You must dream,” she said.

  “I do.” The things Hoyle dreamed he did not often share. He touched her face. She turned her cheek against him, rising to his caresses, but he noticed that she did not open her eyes.

  “What was the dream?”

  “It was very upsetting. They said that I had killed a child. They said I was a murderess. That I’d killed a little girl and the authorities were after me.”

  “Was there a reason?”

  “I didn’t kill anyone. I could not. But I’d lied about where I was. I lied to my family, and I lied to the police, because I had seen the little girl just before she was taken and killed. I was the last to see her alive. At the beach in Verdan, where my family’s home was. I woke just before they came for me. My mother realized that I’d lied about seeing the girl. It broke her heart, but she told the police that I hadn’t told the truth. They thought I must be involved. It seems only a story to tell now, but it frightened me very much.”

  Hoyle kissed her on the forehead. He could feel the tension in her shoulders; she was trembling as she spoke.

  “Who was the little girl?”

  “My daughter.” Maria breathed slowly. “But I don’t have a daughter. In my dream, she was my little girl. It all came back to me when I moved my body. And when I stay in the position, I can see it all very clearly.”

  “You didn’t harm the girl,” Hoyle said, in judgment and exoneration.

  “I could never.”

  “In your dream, who did it? Who murdered her?”

  Maria remained in the same position under the sheets, her legs crossed, her arm across Hoyle’s chest.

  “I left her at the beach. I left her alone, and I should not have done that. And then I lied. I lied and said that she had run away—but it was me. I left her, thoughtlessly, alone at the beach. Someone, a man, someone I didn’t know, took her and killed her.”

  Hoyle put his leg over Maria’s thigh, then pulled her arm up around his neck. “Here,” he said. “Move, so the dream won’t cling to you.”

  “Do you think that I am insane?”

  “Insane?”

  “A bad person?”

  “You’ve had a bad dream. That’s a long way from being insane.” Hoyle put his hand on her hair. “You are not insane. You’re not even crazy.”

  “No one is perfectly sane.”

  “No.”

  Outside, the city lay still, but it gave off almost imperceptible sounds.

  “I’ve told lies,” she said.

  “You’re very hard on yourself,” Hoyle said.

  “I never think that I am. It’s not right to lie.”

  “It was a dream, Maria. You did not hurt a little girl, and a lie told in a dream is not a lie.”

  Maria put her head on his chest. She heard his heart beat. How strong it was, she thought.

  “Are you all right, little one?”

  “Yes. I am now.”

  Hoyle looked at his watch on the nightstand. It was a very long time before morning. “Would you like some wine?”

  “I would.”

  “Watch your eyes,” he said.

  Hoyle turned on the lamp, got out of bed, and walked to the table. Her eyes first pinched by the light, Maria watched him. His nude body seemed like a supple, hard machine to her, a thing that was powerful and well maintained. Like a weapon. There were shadows across the room where Hoyle opened the wine and found two glasses. He walked back to the bed without the least self-consciousness. Maria looked at all of him, his broad shoulders, the muscles of his arms and chest, his cock and balls. He was a specimen, she thought, and he was at ease with himself and with her. Hoyle handed her a glass and poured out a garnet-colored zinfandel. It smelled of oak and cinnamon. The bed smelled of them.

  “Tell me about Alameda.”

  “He is vain.”

  “All men are vain. They’re either obviously vain or secretly vain,” Hoyle said.

  “Which are you, then?”

  Hoyle slipped back under the sheets and covered himself. “Secretly vain,” he said.

  “That is what I would expect you to say—something secret. Though I don’t agree with you that all men are vain. And I don’t think that you are vain.”

  “How do you know?” Hoyle smiled. “I think of myself as very handsome.”

  She had just watched him cross the room; naked, he’d moved with an unconscious, leonine grace. There were half a dozen mirrors around, but his eyes had not gone to one of them. Alameda would have stopped at each.

  “You don’t talk about yourself,” Maria said. “And you rarely talk about what you do for a living. When you do talk about yourself, you say vague things.”

  “What do you think I do?”

  “Do you want me to say, really?”

  “Yes,” Hoyle said.

  “You’ve said you are a contractor, but you have a friend at the embassy.”

  “People have friends.”

  “And people have jobs, but your friend has the useless-sounding job of ‘cultural attaché.’”

  “That does sound useless,” Hoyle admitted.

  “And although this man is your friend, you have never told me his name.”

  “His name is Smith.”

  “Oh, this is really going somewhere,” Maria said. “None of us has a real name.”

  “That is really his name.”

  “Are you sure?” Maria asked.

  Hoyle was not. He shrugged.

  “And although this man is your friend, you’ve never mentioned where he lives.”

  “In La Paz.”

  “Close to the embassy,” Maria said flatly.

  “You were telling me about Alameda.” Hoyle smiled, and Maria gave one back.

  “No. I was going to tell you what I thought you did for a living.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You are absolutely unclear when you want to be, and you are very, very good at turning a question and making people talk about themselves and not ask about you. I think that you are a spy.”

  “Do you think the United States has need of spies in Bolivia?”

  “There is a war here.”

  “Not a war.”

  “Then almost one. You are a contractor, whatever that is, and you have been to Vietnam, and you were shot. And I think you have something to do with the war in Ñancahuazú. With the things that are going on there.”

  Her green eyes took him in sturdily. Hoyle was again struck by her, and he felt a shiver, a physical pop someplace behind his heart. Hoyle looked into her eyes, and it took every bit of his nerve to do so. She seemed to him so bright and perfect; it was almost as though he were afraid to touch her. Her face was not simply pretty, it had in it character, it communicated intelligence and wisdom; there was magic to this woman, and tragedy.

  “You’re a spy,” she said to him.

  “A contractor—for the government. And I work in the southeast.”

  “The guerrillas are in the southeast.”

  A moment passed. Long enough for Maria to shift her weight and hold him closer. Then he said, “We have secrets.”

  “We do,” she said. “Why did you tell me your real name, Paul Hoyle, if you are a spy?”

  “Please don’t say ‘spy.’”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t like the word ‘whore,’ either.”

  “Maria, don’t say that.”

  “I am a mistress.”

  “You’re not a whore, and I won’t stand to hear it said about you. Even if you say it yourself. Don’t think it. And please don’t say it to me, because it is an ugly word.”

  Maria put down her wineglass and again put her head on his chest. She did not feel chastised. She had pushed him by saying somethi
ng she had known would provoke him. She had hoped in a small way that it would. Not to fish for a rebuttal from him—she did not require her existence to be propped up. Maria was an exceptional thing: a beautiful woman who remained true to herself, true and blunt.

  She kissed his neck, and for a moment Hoyle was glad that Maria could not see his face. He felt as though he were standing on a cliff edge a thousand feet above dark water. He did not like the word “whore,” and he did not like the word “spy.” The words might be closer together than he liked to think.

  “Is Alameda corrupt?” Hoyle asked.

  “This is Bolivia,” Maria said. There was no judgment in her voice.

  “Does he take money?”

  “From where?”

  “People. Political parties. The ministry’s funds?”

  “There’s money from Presidente Barrientos, envelopes that come weekly. And he takes money from the PCB.”

  Money from the presidente was not a surprise; money from the Communist Party of Bolivia was.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. He’s met with Selizar Galán, maybe a dozen times. They meet at my apartment.”

  These get-togethers were not a complete surprise to Hoyle—Alameda was known to be an extremely venial man—but confirmation that a sitting minister was in contact with the head of the Communist Party: This was important.

  “He sells press credentials and passports,” Maria said.

  “To whom?”

  “Everyone, anyone. They’re not peddled on the street. He’s too clever for that. And what he sells is too valuable. The credentials are a ministry function. The passports are not.”

  “Where does he get the documents?”

  “The minister of the interior.”

  Hoyle thought of a fat man with a pencil mustache, a colonel, one of Presidente Barrientos’s coup partners from the air force. His name was Gallegos, and he was one of the few cabinet members who did not wear his military uniform daily to work. Clutching, materialist, and rapacious, he was the picture of a man who would take advantage of his situation.

  “Is there a list?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of people he’s sold passports to.”

  “Yes.”

  Maria knew by instinct where this was headed. Hoyle delayed; much was in the balance. He did not want to sully what they had with the business of the Ñancahuazú. He did not wish to put her in harm’s way, but there were things that he had to do.

  Hoyle drew a long, even breath and said, “It would help me if I got some blank press credentials.”

  He waited like a man who had tossed a stone down a well. Maria did not move but remained lying on his chest. A long moment passed, long enough for Hoyle to wish he could draw back his words.

  “You have been to the office. Your friend seems to be on good terms with the minister…it wouldn’t be a problem for you to apply.”

  “Do you know where the credential cards are kept?”

  “In Señora Truillo’s files.”

  “Could you get to them?”

  Maria remembered Hoyle’s friend dropping off the briefcase. “It seems to me that you’ve paid the minister—”

  “We have,” Hoyle said.

  “Then he could give you credentials, all that you wanted.”

  Hoyle’s voice was even. “We don’t want to apply.”

  Maria drew the line that connected the dots. Hoyle and his friends wanted the accreditation of journalists, and they did not want Alameda to know. Maria knew that the Communists did not pay Alameda for nothing—any press credentials issued to a gringo, especially a gringo contractor, would be promptly reported to the Party. They would then be worthless as cover.

  When Maria answered, her voice was without resentment or surprise. “Why should I do this for you?”

  “You should not do it if it is dangerous.”

  “That isn’t what I asked,” she said.

  “I’m working against people who are trying to start a war.”

  “Maybe they have their reasons,” Maria said.

  “I think they do. In Bolivia, the rich have too much, and the poor have nothing at all,” Hoyle said, his words an honest mirror of his thoughts. “I despise poverty. And I despise greed. But of all things, most of all, I hate tyranny.”

  “Don’t the Bolivians have that? Isn’t there tyranny here?”

  “I won’t defend what the Bolivians have. There are greedy men everywhere.”

  “Then it’s Communist tyrants you hate most,” Maria said.

  Hoyle propped himself on an elbow and looked at her. “I’m surprised you say that so casually.”

  “I’m not casual, Paul Hoyle. In Cuba the Communists killed my family. They took my home.”

  “Then help me.”

  She put her arm around him, and as she leaned forward, her hair fell across her forehead. She was not cold or distant, but she did not commit, either. She kissed him and then pulled back to look at him in the lamplight.

  “I will think about it,” she said.

  37

  TANIA WOKE AS the sun was setting. She only vaguely remembered how she had come to this place, a comfortable bed in a large bedroom. Shreds of memories flickered in her mind, her arrest, a dozen different tortures and her own hoarse screams echoing, the incredible brightness of daylight and the two nameless Americans who had driven her to the cemetery and made demands before her release.

  Tania turned her head slowly toward the window. Urban sounds came through the half-opened sash, the whirr of traffic and above that, the diffuse white noise of a city. The room about her came gradually into focus—twilight slanting; horizontal-striped wallpaper; furniture like you’d find in a family home: bedstead, night tables, and a dresser.

  The room kept about it a sense of dread. As her senses coalesced, she was surprised to see a large man with ordinary features seated in a chair beside the window. Light through the curtain placed a gentle bar of light across his broad shoulders. The expression on his face was so bland as to put her at ease.

  Tania did not know his name, but she recognized him as the same man who had accompanied Diminov to the cemetery. He looked at her for a moment, making sure her eyes remained open.

  “Are you awake?” he asked her in Russian.

  Sergev’s voice was gruff but indicated a certain concern for her wellbeing. A professional interest, but authentic.

  “Yes,” she answered, also in Russian. “I’m awake now.”

  With a polite nod, Sergev left the room. Tania remained in the bed, not quite capable of movement. She heard a rustling outside the door. She lay completely still, her hands by her sides, and slowly became aware that she’d been dressed in a clean cotton nightgown. There was a bandage on her elbow and another on her knee, where the skin had been scraped off.

  The man Tania knew as Robert entered, followed by the woman who had posed as her aunt. Since Tania had seen her last in Buenos Aires, the woman seemed to have aged a dozen years. Robert Diminov stood at the end of the bed. The aunt took Tania’s hand in her own.

  “How are you?” the woman asked, gravely solicitous.

  “What day is it?”

  “Monday.”

  In Tania’s head, a slow arithmetic set itself in motion. She worked backward from the day of her arrest and then the surreal circumstances of her release. She guessed that she had slept in this bed for perhaps twenty-four hours. She still did not remember coming here.

  “Where am I?”

  “La Paz. A safe house,” Diminov said.

  The aunt checked Tania’s pulse and listened to her heart with a stethoscope. She pronounced that Tania had come through her ordeal remarkably. Tania’s thoughts darkened; if bones had been left unbroken and organs unruptured, it was more a compliment to her torturers than to Tania’s constitutional strength. She had been beaten by experts.

  The aunt put the stethoscope back into a drawer, and the man Tania knew as Robert pulled a chair close to the bed. His express
ion was manufactured but attempted to show great concern.

  “Major Vünke,” Diminov began. His use of her KGB rank brought to mind the charade in Buenos Aires when they had presented her with a personnel file and the decoration of the Order of the Red Star. Tania was too tired to say anything, so she just listened.

  “You have made the greatest sacrifices that the revolution can ask. I want you to know that I have communicated directly with the center, and they are aware of the harrowing conditions under which you have served. Although you are exhausted, it is urgent that we establish what the enemy learned during the course of your questioning. The conduct of further operations depends on this information, as does the safety of other agents.”

  “What do you want?” Tania asked flatly.

  Diminov and the aunt exchanged glances. The aunt, obviously, was the moderator of this discussion.

  “Tell me what the police know,” Diminov said.

  “I told them you were a drug dealer, a Yugoslav I did not know very well, but that you paid me to smuggle one-kilo packages of cocaine out of the country. I said I had been doing this for you over the last three months.”

  “What did they ask you about the newspaper or the letter?”

  “Nothing. The newspaper fell from my hand during the arrest.”

  “What did they ask you of Che Guevara or the operation in the Ñancahuazú?”

  “They didn’t ask about him.”

  “Did they know about the operation in Ñancahuazú?”

  “They asked me about it vaguely. I said I knew nothing, that I guessed it was where they made the cocaine.”

  “Did they ask you about Sandoval or D’Esperey?”

  “They did not.” Tania paused, and her eyes assumed a distant gaze. “After the second or third night, the questioning pretty much stopped. What do the Americans have to do with my release?”

  The aunt stiffened slightly; she would pick her words carefully and craft the answer. What Tania would be told would be true and not true, right and not right; Diminov and the aunt were tasked to solicit Tania’s cooperation, her continued assistance, until the assignment was complete.

  “The center approached the Americans. They were asked to intervene on your behalf,” the aunt said blandly.

  “Why?”