Killing Che

by Chuck Pfarrer

  There was a shadow at the door, and then it opened. An officer, a captain, bent around and stared at Guevara. The man was in a dress uniform, jodhpurs and riding boots. He looked like a military buffoon. Guevara was stirred with a righteous sort of anger—the other soldiers had now and again opened the door to peer in at him, but this one did not disdain to gape. He stood in his peaked cap and his ridiculous buttons, smirked without shame, lifted a camera, and took a picture. He aimed and took three more photographs, then backed out the door and latched it shut.

  Guevara’s leg began to throb. He moved it slightly, but the effort was agonizing. When his calf scuffed across the dirt floor, pain flashed behind his eyes like a bolt of lightning. Some time passed, and he let his head drop. He sagged down against the wall and onto his side. He forced himself to ignore the squalor and death around him and imagined a map unfolded; on it, his journey was laid out, up the Ñancahuazú and then down, and the wandering course to find Joaquin. In his mind he flew over the desperate, rolling country, the jungle and steep-sided rivers. They might all be nameless places. Guevara had discovered unhappily that men barely lived here, and political consciousness did not exist. A shadow fell across the landscape, it crept over the place like a malignant vapor, and he thought, That is where I am now, in the center of the darkness.

  It was no wonder the Indians and peasants had watched the column pass through with silent, uninterested faces. Guevara had been shown how totally unsuitable was the Ñancahuazú for his operations. It was not merely the topography or the terrain, which were brutal; it was the scarcity of the peasantry on the ground. And where they were found, they were more like settlers or colonists. They aspired to nothing beyond getting in a little corn or raising a few pigs or pumpkins; their lives were short and their children’s lives shorter—they clung stubbornly to Inca beliefs made over in the guilt-embroidered vestments of Catholicism, the religion shoved on them by their conquerors. They had been kept so long without hope or truth that they did not want anything that could not be explained by a child. Theirs was a legacy of misery and filth, wretched with deprivation and exploitation. They understood nothing of politics and believed only half of what the priests told them of God. They lived as they had lived for a thousand years. In La Paz the generals and the exploiters danced around a circle of chairs. Coup and countercoup had never brought even a ray of light into the countryside.

  Guevara had started out convinced of the way he had chosen. He’d been certain that the presence of the guerrillas in the countryside would lift the eyes and consciousness of the people. It would make them see that a better life was theirs to be taken. The sacrifices of the guerrillas living among them would educate by example.

  None of this had happened. The theory of the guerrilla nucleus, the foco, had again failed. Che Guevara’s grandest and best-laid plan had recoiled, crushed by indifference. Since the first ambush, he and his group had been on the run, fighting, always winning, but never gathering strength. Sickness, betrayal, and the apathy of the peasants had eroded his force. The guerrillas had moved through the countryside, holding out truth and justice, moving, always moving, and the peasants had ignored them. Few had cooperated, and not a single person had come forward to join the vanguard. Nothing had been more fatal to him than the barren climate of their minds.

  Guevara had placed a lever under the great stone of ignorance and heaved; it had not budged. He shook his head to think that he had escaped starvation and drowning and the elements, the limitations of the human body and his own asthma. A willpower he had polished with an artist’s skill had carried his weak legs and tired lungs.

  Guevara had triumphed over nature, but not over the nature of men.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING a table was brought out into the dirt street in front of the schoolhouse. Valdéz set up a small stand and began to photograph the pages of Guevara’s diary. The last entry was Saturday, October 7, 1967, two days before. As Valdéz turned pages and clicked the shutter, a jeep came heaving down the rutted track from Jagüey. Valdéz paid it little attention until it stopped close to the schoolhouse and Hoyle climbed out.

  Hoyle’s clothing seemed darkened by soot. His shirt was torn, and there was blood on it. A thick bandage stretched across his right eye; it was yellow with dust from the road. He looked as though he had passed through fire; his hair was singed on one side of his head, and there was a dark ferocity about him.

  “Where’s Smith?”

  “Just took off for La Paz. The Green Berets, too.” Valdéz shook his head. “Shit, man, what happened to you?”

  “Where’s Guevara? Is he alive?”

  “Yeah.” Valdéz jerked his head at the schoolhouse. “He’s in there. They captured him wounded.”

  Hoyle looked over at the table heaped with Guevara’s belongings. Valdéz’s radio was set up next to it. Wires for the antenna had been thrown over the roof of a nearby house.

  “Do you have communications?”

  “There’s nobody at the casita. They sent a C-130 for Famous Lawyer. All the Americans are pulling out.” Valdéz seemed to twitch with enthusiasm. “They’re gonna waste the prisoners. Smith said he wanted all of us out of here before that happened.”

  “Get on the shortwave. I want to notify Langley and Ambassador Hielman.”

  Valdéz looked at Hoyle in disbelief. “What for?”

  “I want Guevara out of here alive.”

  “You’re wasting your time.”

  “Notify the action officers by name. Tell them I want an immediate response.”

  “Nobody’s going to stick their neck out.”

  “Guevara’s alive. That makes him a prisoner of war.”

  “This isn’t that kind of war, Mr. Hoyle.”

  Hoyle walked across the small dirt square and toward the schoolhouse. A pair of Rangers stood outside the door, their weapons held at port arms. Hoyle heard a spotter plane pass overhead, and its buzzing made him grind his teeth. Valdéz called from across the sun-beaten little square, “Don’t get in front of something you can’t stop.”

  Hoyle entered the small room and was struck at once by the smell of blood. He saw first the two bodies heaped in the corner, their arms and legs intertwined, lying flat and still as broken statuary. Guevara was lying in the corner farthest from the door. His hands were bound tightly, and his ankles were tied in awkward soldier’s knots.

  Hoyle asked the Rangers to take the bodies outside, and as the soldiers came down into the room, Guevara pushed himself up by an elbow. Hoyle was surprised by the depth of his voice and its calm.

  “If you’re going to dump them out on the street, I’d prefer for you to leave them here.”

  The bodies would have indeed been piled behind the schoolhouse. Hoyle nodded his assent, and the Rangers walked from the room, closing the door behind them. The coppery smell of blood came again strongly, and also the stink of piss and sweat.

  Hoyle sat on a table against the wall. Guevara saw the soot on Hoyle’s clothing and the bandage drooping across his eye. He wondered if this person had slept in a burning house.

  “What happened to the man who was captured with me?”

  “Three of your men have been captured,” Hoyle said.

  “Are they alive?”

  Hoyle nodded. “I don’t know for how much longer.”

  Guevara heard the accent and understood why Hoyle had been obeyed by the soldiers. “You are not Bolivian.”

  “No.”

  “I wondered when the CIA would show its face.”

  Guevara looked at Hoyle closely. After a few moments, he recognized the slope of his shoulders and his sandy hair. He looked at the boots and Hoyle’s olive-drab trousers.

  “You’re the man from the riverbank. The one with the black rifle. The day Rolando was killed.”

  Hoyle did not answer. It seemed like a thousand years ago. He felt the strength evaporate from his chest and legs; a silence lengthened between them, and then a Ranger opened the door and looked in curiously. When
the door closed again, Guevara put his head back against the stucco wall.

  “They tell me this is the local schoolhouse. Look at it. Look at this place. It isn’t fit for pigs.”

  “In Cuba it would be a prison,” Hoyle said.

  Guevara grunted and bent his knees. “I suppose I should have expected them to send someone like you. A true believer.”

  There was almost nothing Hoyle believed in now, and surely he did not believe in himself.

  “Do you see those boys there? In Cuba they had everything they could have ever wanted. Yet they came here and were shot down like dogs.” Guevara’s voice seemed empty. “We came here to give hope.”

  “Perhaps that’s what you did.”

  Guevara looked at Hoyle as though something bitter had gotten into his mouth. “There is no hope for this place.”

  “I’m trying to have you taken to Panama. In CIA custody—for debriefing.”

  “Panama? Are you going to put me in a cage, like a monkey, to show the world?”

  “Bolivian command authority has made the decision to execute you.”

  Guevara shook his head. “They won’t kill me. Not yet. Not without a show trial.”

  “They don’t want a trial. They only want you gone. They want you to disappear.”

  Guevara remembered the frequent broadcasts about the trial of Sandoval and D’Esperey; though both had confessed all they knew about the guerrilla column, the spectacle had been an embarrassment for La Paz. He thought for a moment, and it occurred to him that even if he were set free this instant, there was really no place he could go.

  “Why would you want to help me?”

  “Maybe we both wanted the same things to happen here,” Hoyle said.

  “You don’t strike me as the progressive type.”

  “I’m not.” Hoyle leaned forward from the table. His hands gripped the edge of it, and he turned his face so that his good eye took in the man propped in the corner. “You were sacrificed,” he said. “Your friends in Havana pulled the plug on you—Fidel, the DGI, the Russians, too. It was over before you ever got here. And you never knew.”

  “No…I don’t believe that.”

  “Your communications. We monitored them.”

  Guevara shrugged.

  “You told Fidel, ‘Do not fail to open a second front.’”

  “I won’t discuss operational matters with you.”

  “He burned you, and then he handed over your entire operation to the Russians.”

  “That is not true,” Guevara said. “We came to a place that was beyond help. I should have seen that. Before we were beyond help ourselves.” He paused, looking at the bodies. “I never should have been captured.”

  “You shouldn’t be murdered, either.”

  Guevara smiled sourly. “A moralist. On a battlefield. You must be a very lonely man.”

  HOYLE AND VALDÉZ stood next to the radio. Captain Cespedes sat against the wall, smoking a cigarette, quite satisfied that the ravine was surrounded and the bodies of four more bandits were being brought up by mule. Hoyle pressed one of the earphones against his head and listened to the interminable, empty static. Valdéz had sent the messages Hoyle had requested, but there was no answer. The static rolled on, a white empty hiss. It was slowly over this noise that Hoyle perceived the distant thump of rotor blades.

  A helicopter landed on the flat place above the village, and two officers came directly toward the schoolhouse, a major walking a bit behind a colonel. The colonel wore a green tunic with gold shoulder braid, and there was a large silver-winged creature on the front of his cap.

  The colonel pointed at Captain Cespedes. “You. What’s your name?”

  The captain tossed away his smoke and came to his feet. “Cespedes, sir. Machego Número Dos.”

  “Why haven’t my orders been carried out?”

  “I asked the captain to delay the execution,” Hoyle said. “We’re still photographing their papers, Colonel. Including Comandante Guevara’s battle journal.”

  “That can be done when the criminals have been executed.” The colonel started into the schoolhouse.

  Hoyle reached out a hand in front of him. “Look, we’re all just taking orders here, right? I’m trying to contact Washington. They might want him alive.”

  The colonel looked at Hoyle, and his expression was taut. “And then what? This isn’t just some compañero. Some bandit. If Guevara were to be imprisoned in Bolivia, he would be a magnet for more mercenaries from Cuba.”

  “He won’t be in Bolivian custody. I want to fly him to Panama for debriefing.”

  “It’s too late,” the colonel said. “Presidente Barrientos has announced our victory. He has informed the nation that Che Guevara was killed in action at the Yuro ravine.”

  IN THE DIRTY little square of La Higuera, Captain Cespedes held out five straws. The shortest was drawn by Sergeant Merán, who waved it in the air and said rather mildly, “I’ll shoot the son of a bitch.”

  The second shortest straw was drawn by a corporal whose brother had been killed in the ravine. He seemed bitterly joyous as he unslung his rifle, peeled back the action, and checked that a bullet was lodged in the chamber. Hoyle looked across the street; three guerrillas had been brought up alive from the ravine and had been forced to sit in the sun against a low wall made of dust-colored brick. They had been questioned but would not even give their names, and Hoyle and Valdéz watched as Rangers came and prodded them toward an ambulance parked a slight way off.

  The corporal who’d drawn the second shortest straw walked past, and his eyes were like droplets of metal. Somewhere a rooster crowed, and Hoyle watched as the prisoners were pushed down to their knees. The corporal walked toward them, carrying his rifle in one hand. As he came close, the other soldiers stood back. The wind blew like it does before a storm.

  “Get to a land line. Try Zeebus at the embassy,” Hoyle said.

  “I did. There’s nothing. They’ve all gone dark.”

  Hoyle could not avert his eyes from the men kneeling next to the ambulance. The corporal aimed, and three shots rolled out over the hills, long recurring thuds that echoed off the hillsides.

  HOYLE OPENED THE door and stepped down into the room. Merán entered behind him. The door closed, and Guevara’s eyes fell on Merán, who wore the obvious expression of an executioner.

  Hoyle felt a sick sort of blankness; the thing that propelled him had evaporated. He felt without a purpose, and as Guevara turned against his fetters, he looked into Hoyle’s face.

  “Ah. The suspense is ended,” Guevara said.

  “I did what I could,” Hoyle said.

  “I wonder if you would do me the courtesy of helping me to stand.”

  Hoyle crossed to the corner of the room and helped Guevara to his feet. Leaning against the wall, he balanced on his wounded leg, finally placing his foot down on the ground so he could stand.

  “Vanity is one of my many faults.”

  Hoyle took a step back toward Merán and was ashamed for it. Guevara heard sounds from outside the door: the crackle of radios, the noise of marching soldiers, then jeering again.

  “There is a letter rolled into the frame of my pack. I assume you’ve found it.”

  “We found it,” Hoyle said.

  “I would appreciate it if you would see that it reaches my family.”

  “I’ll do that,” Hoyle said. The emotion in his voice did not have a name. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. On another day, it might have been you standing against the wall.”

  By a great exertion, Hoyle moved toward the door; he felt as though the world would cave in. He had never in his life embraced the emotion of pity, but it pulled at him now, and a measure of futility made it bitter. Merán lifted his rifle and switched it from safe to automatic. Hoyle plainly heard the small click. Guevara gazed steadily at the man who would take his life.

  The distance between Merán and Guevara was almost a dozen feet. Merán seemed unwilling to get
closer; even bound and wounded, Guevara seemed to have in him the strength and wiles of a tiger.

  Guevara’s brown eyes shone brightly and his voice was even: “Go on, do your duty.”

  Merán fired in the middle of the last word, and Guevara’s knees buckled as he fell back against the wall. As he toppled, he turned his face toward Hoyle. He lifted his wrist to his mouth, and his teeth bore down on his flesh as he tried not to cry out. His breath came from him in short, hard gasps, and his eyes blinked narrowly. His face became a mask of indomitable resolve.

  Hoyle did not look away. Guevara gulped a breath and held it as Merán stepped forward and aimed a second time.

  Guevara lifted his head from the dirt floor and looked Merán straight in the eyes. His teeth clenched together, and he said, “Today…you are shooting a man.”

  Merán fired again; the bullet struck Guevara in the heart, killing him instantly.

  HOYLE LOOKED OUT into the sky. His eyes saw cloud and cobalt, but his mind did not register. He looked out of the moving helicopter, and the sky was a domain of pure and perfect silence, though the engine roared, and above him the rotors beat the air. At his feet, Che Guevara’s body lay wrapped in a muddy poncho. The corpse was trussed up with rope and bound like a parcel: a dreadful gift for the republic.

  Valdéz sat behind the pilots, his rifle held between his knees. Hoyle was seated in the open door, looking back and down. He had never been so tired in his life; his arms and legs seemed like ropes of clay, and it was only with great effort that he kept himself from pitching forward into a coma-like sleep. Hoyle lifted his face into the wind, and the sun blinked through the clouds. The light dazzled him, and for a split second, it was as though he had been consumed by fire, gulped into a smear of orange. He felt as if he’d been struck by some invisible force, a blow that had short-circuited his senses. Thought, emotion, memory—all were pried away from the coil of his body. The light was so abrupt and concentrated that he dissolved before it. Hoyle felt that he had been made into a vapor; he had become a ghost, no longer flesh, just a cloud of particles hurled over the land. The sensation lasted only a few seconds, then his mind clamped itself back under the dome of his skull, and his heart thumped in his chest. Compounding his bewilderment, he seemed to have returned to his body the second before the sun ray struck him. Hoyle blinked in wonder and fear; Valdéz shifted in his seat, moving his rifle from hand to hand, exactly as he had done the moment earlier. Hoyle told himself it was only déjà vu, a trick of memory, but this excuse gave no comfort. The time he had been cast from his body seemed like ten thousand years of banishment. Hoyle was left with the dread feeling that he was condemned to ride in this helicopter forever, sitting for eternity across from Valdéz, with blood on his hands and a corpse at his feet.