War Baby

by Colin Falconer

  Chapter 23

  Seventh Regiment Armoury

  When Webb finished there was silence around the table. At the back of the hall one of the British guests had apparently ingested a restricted substance in the gentleman’s washroom during the interval and had become boisterous. He was being coaxed towards the exits by friends.

  Cochrane and Crosby refilled their glasses. The Bushmills had almost gone. Cochrane picked up the bottle, reread the poem on the back and smiled. There was no eye contact around the table for a long while. Then Crosby said: ‘It really wasn’t Sean’s fault. The guy wasn’t planning on getting zapped.’

  ‘The point is he should have got her out long before the end,’ Webb said. ‘He was so wrapped up in himself he never gave a thought about what might happen to her or the kid. Death or injury was an everyday reality in a war zone. We all knew that.’

  Cochrane shook his head. ‘I think you’re being a bit tough on him. It was bad luck, that’s all.’

  ‘It was bad luck for Odile, that’s for sure. Seven years’ bad luck. But Ryan didn’t let himself get too fazed by it. He was out of hospital in three months and back in Angola in six.’

  Crosby shook his head. ‘You’re doing him an injustice. He loved her, in his own way. Besides, she was partly to blame. He wanted to get her out of Saigon. She wouldn’t go.’

  Doyle leaned forward. ‘I didn’t know him as well as you fellows. But I did know him in the biblical sense. And it seems to me ...’

  ‘Yeah, when was that?’ Cochrane asked her.

  ‘The Gulf War. Dhahran. Must be something about hot desert nights. And if you ask me, as a woman, I’d have to say he never loved anyone except himself.’

  Crosby looked at Cochrane. ‘Help me out here, Lee. They’re beating up on my friend.’

  El Salvador, October 1982

  ‘When one’s nation is at war, reporting becomes an extension of the war effort.’

  Max Hastings

  ‘I wouldn’t tell the people anything until the war was over - and then I’d tell them who won.’

  military censor at a meeting in Washington

  They were almost a tourist attraction, in their own way, these bodies of the disappeared. They turned up everywhere, at bus stations, on vacant lots, in the ravines behind San Benito and Escalon. One of the most popular repositories was the lava field at El Playon. The previous year the panorama of rotting flesh had featured regularly on the evening news across the United States.

  Their job lately, it seemed to him, was just to drive around each morning photographing the new bodies that had appeared at the roadsides or on the garbage tips or dumped between the graves in the cemeteries where they were picked over by wandering dogs. One day, for a change of pace, Webb and his photographer, Mike Daniels, hired a VW Golf at the Avis desk in the Camino Real and drove up to Puerto del Diablo.

  The route took them past the Casa Presidencial and up a winding road narrowed by landslides and deep gullies that had eaten away the roadbed. When they reached the top, Daniels stopped the car and they sat for a few moments looking back towards San Salvador, the city framed by the walls of the gorge. The morning was grey, the lowering sky as suffocating as a blanket. As they got out of the Golf, Daniels shuddered.

  ‘This place gives me the creeps,’ he said.

  Webb had been told about the executions that took place here at night. The bodies were then rolled over the lip of the cliff into the Puerto del Diablo. They started to climb down. The way down was not easy, the stones slick with moss and damp, the air thin. Giant ferns blocked out the sky, and the buzz of the cicadas was deafening.

  The first bodies began to appear; maggoty mounds of flesh and bone and hair. The vultures had already been busy. Daniels started to take photographs, his face sickly grey. You could never get hardened to this, Webb thought, no matter how many times you saw it. The only difference was that professional held on to their breakfast.

  A little further on they found more bodies. These had been there a long time. They stared over a landscape of stripped spines, blood-caked scraps of clothes, heads rotted to skulls beneath a tonsure of hair.

  ‘Look at this,’ Daniels said.

  He handed Webb an identity card. A schoolboy in a badly knotted tie grinned back at them from the photograph. Webb wondered which mouldering pile of bones was his. He stooped to pick up a shoelace, held it between his fingers, overcome with revulsion. Difficult to breathe down here.

  They worked in silence. He had thought before he came to El Salvador that he was inured to death and killing, but he was wrong. It was even harder to accept that his adopted country condoned and supported this.

  Daniels focused on an empty ribcage, a woman’s shoe.

  How long before they ran out of politically suspect victims? Webb wondered. The Puerto del Diablo and El Playon were already choked with the remains of priests, teachers, journalists, students, writers and doctors. So many had been murdered that all possibilities for rational democracy had been eradicated. But the United States - a supposedly democratic country - continued to support President d’Aubuisson and his death squads because they were committed to fighting ‘Marxists.’ These days a ‘Marxist’ was anyone who was opposed to President d’Aubuisson. By now every dictator in Latin America knew that if he wanted guns and planes, he just had to honey the hook with some leftist guerillas, and the US came snapping on the line every time.

  Daniels’ Canon clicked and whirred.

  There was no proof that the government was involved, as there was no proof that the current president of the country, Roberto ‘Uncle Bob’ d’Aubuisson had ordered Archbishop Romero murdered as he said Mass in the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador. There was no proof; even though d’Aubuisson’s diary, with the date of the assassination ringed in red, had been produced in evidence, with a list of the armaments required for the job listed on the same page.

  There was no proof because one of d’Aubuisson’s judges said there wasn’t.

  Daniels changed film, fired off half a dozen frames of the bones littered along the rocks.

  Every morning in the national daily, El Diario del Hoy, there were photographs of the missing, juxtaposed with grainy photographs of mutilated bodies found the previous day by the side of the road. Officially the government blamed the desconocidos, the ‘unknown men’, claiming their victims were casualties in a clandestine war being waged between rightist militia and leftist guerillas.

  Daniels was standing over a disjointed spine. He raised his camera, changed his mind, lowered it again. He seemed overcome.

  When he first arrived in El Salvador, Webb had interviewed an ORDEN member. ORDEN was one of the death squads, they had links with the current president, and its members were reportedly paid off by one of the country’s leading businessmen, Fabian Ventura.

  The man had claimed that if you were asked to join one of the death squads, and you refused, you were labeled a subversive and became their next victim. But there were other reasons men joined, besides fear; he had also been promised year-round employment on Ventura’s coffee plantation, as well as an interest-free loan. The choice was simple. If you did not want to become one of the oppressed, then you joined the oppressors.

  ‘Do you enjoy killing?’ Webb had asked him.

  The man had stared at his hands, trying to frame an answer to this difficult question. ‘Once a victim is chosen,’ he said. ‘everyone has to join in, so that the guilt is shared equally. Everyone must have a little of the victim’s blood on their hands. It is not death but brutality that makes people afraid. That is what they teach us.’

  ‘But do you enjoy it?’ Webb repeated.

  ‘It is like sex with a prostitute,’ he said. ‘Afterwards you feel dirty. But at the time . . .’

  Daniels put down his camera and turned away. ‘Look too long into the abyss and the abyss looks into you. That’s Nietzsche.’

  ‘And I think to myself, what a wonderful world. That’s Louis Armstrong.’
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  The atmosphere was oppressive. Mist rose from the ground like corpse gas. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Daniels said.

  ‘Got everything you needed?’

  ‘There’s only so many ways you can do death. I think I did them all the first day I got here.’

  When they got back to the car park a battered Toyota pick-up truck - it had no plates - was parked right behind their Golf. Half a dozen men were sprawled on the bonnet and the tray. They all wore aviator sunglasses and cowboy boots, and had machetes or revolvers tucked into their leather belts.

  ORDEN.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Daniels said.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ Webb said.

  He walked over to one of the men sitting on the bonnet of the pick-up. His paunch swelled his golf shirt and bulged over his jeans. ''Buenos dias, señor,’ Webb said to him, smiling, and then, still in Spanish: ‘Do you think you could move your truck? We have to return to San Salvador.’

  He grinned at the others. No one spoke. The man took off his cowboy hat and brushed some imaginary dust off the brim. He hawked deep in his throat and spat on the ground by Webb’s boot.

  Webb turned away and went back to Daniels.

  ‘They know who we are,’ Daniels whispered. ‘This is a fucking set-up!’ His face shone with sweat.

  ‘Stay calm,’ Webb said.

  ‘We’ve been set up! Let’s just walk. Leave the fucking car right here.’

  ‘I’m not walking all the way back to San Salvador.’

  The men were grinning at them. This was a good game, some light entertainment on a slow morning. Webb checked the clearance between the cars. A foot, perhaps a foot and a half.

  He climbed in behind the wheel of the Golf. Daniels leaned in the window. Webb could smell the sweat on him. ‘What the fuck are you going to do? Drive over the cliff?’

  ‘I used to live in a terraced house in Hammersmith. I know how to get a car in and out of tight spaces.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Hugh! You dent their truck, what the hell do you think they’ll do to us?’

  ‘I’m not walking and I’m not waiting.’ He started the engine.

  He reversed three times, wrestling with the wheel to get full lock on each forward turn. The desconocidos watched intently from the bed of the truck, leaning forward with rapt attention as if they were watching a chess game. They grinned at each other; bad teeth, stubble and toothpicks.

  Webb inched forward, then inched back. He tried to forget about the giddying drop below. He left the door open. If the Golf started to topple he hoped he would have time to jump clear.

  Daniels slammed his fist hard on the boot. He came to the open door. ‘You’re about an inch from their front bumper.’

  Webb nodded and the Golf crept forward again. He thought he could do it this time. He heard the truck roar to life behind him. Perhaps the desconocidos had tired of the game.

  Not a bit of it. The truck drew forward and the space behind him was gone, trapping him against the edge of the cliff.

  Daniels came back to the window. ‘Let’s just get the fuck out of here.’

  Webb glanced in his mirror. He remembered something Ryan had told him once, that he’d seen more men killed running blindly from a battle than staying behind and using their instincts to get them out of trouble.

  These guys were not about to let them walk off the mountain. If they tried, they would follow them in the truck. Running just persuaded people to run after you.

  Webb left the engine running and walked around to the front of the car. The wheels were at full lock; there was just inches between the left front wheel and the edge of the cliff.

  It was possibly enough; and anyway, there was no choice.

  He went back to the Golf, got behind the wheel and gunned the motor. If he was going to do it, there was no point in being prissy about it. ‘Get ready to jump in,’ he said to Daniels. ‘If I don’t make it, you’re on your own. See if you can win them over with a few jokes.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Webb put the car in gear, keeping his body weight on the wheel, holding the lock as far to the right as it would go.

  He released the clutch. The tires shrieked, and the passenger-side front wheel lost traction for a moment, but then the car swung around through 180 degrees. He slammed on the brake.

  Daniels jumped in and Webb gunned the car back on to the highway, his driver’s door still flapping open. He put his foot to the floor and headed back towards San Salvador.

  Daniels wound down his windows. There was a ripe and overpowering smell in the car. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I shat.’

  Chapter 24

  Among the correspondents it was known as the Number Four War; numbers one to three being Beirut, the Iran-Iraq conflict, and the Falklands. The American public had grown bored with the bodies on El Playon. Been there, done that. So many reporters had abandoned the Camino Real that the dining room had discontinued its breakfast buffet. Webb had propounded a theory that the political climate of El Salvador could be gauged by the Camino Real’s breakfast menu. All You Can Eat was front page on the Washington Post; à la carte meant no bang-bang and complete editorial indifference in New York.

  The routine reminded him of Saigon. Every morning he presented himself at COPREFA, the press office at the Ministry of Defence, to listen to their spokesman exaggerate the number of rebel casualties claimed by their forces in the surrounding provinces, much as the JUSPAO press officers subverted their reports at the Five O’clock Follies at the Rex. Each day COPREFA officials taped ‘Urgent’ notices to the front desk at the Camino Real announcing staged press events, such as the ritual display of ‘defectors’, thin and unshaven men with the demeanor of beaten dogs who were seldom allowed to speak more than a few words.

  Like Saigon, the city of San Salvador was a sour cocktail of excess and fear, an island of imported Americana surrounded by enemies. On the Boulevard de los Heroes, directly opposite the Camino Real, was the Metrocenter, claimed as ‘Central America’s Largest Shopping Mall’. Plump Escalon matrons in too-tight Levi jeans, trailing maids and babies, shopped for beach towels printed with maps of Manhattan and muzak played ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco’. Outside, National Guardsmen cradled M-3 machine guns, fidgeting, clicking the safeties on and off.

  On Wednesday nights at the Camino Real wealthy middle-aged Latinos shuffled past the oysters and spare ribs at the poolside buffet, and danced a few stiff rumbas before hurrying home for the 9.30 curfew, when the crackle of small-arms fire again echoed around the city. In the discotheque off the lobby, waiters in black cowboy hats darted around the strobe-lit dance floor carrying piña coladas to the rich sons and daughters of San Benito, until their shrieks of laughter were cut short by the FMLN cutting the power lines to the city, leaving the room in darkness.

  Webb had heard Vietnam’s name invoked many times since he arrived in El Salvador. One night in the Sheraton’s paino bar he overheard a crewcut American in a tan suit giving a fellow journalist from a provincial Mid-West newspaper his view of the war: ‘Yes, sir, we sure as hell are not losing this one. This is no Vietnam. Nossir. Make sure your folks back home understand that, loud and clear. We can win this one.’

  But unlike Vietnam there were no free chopper rides to the front lines to see how the war was being fought. Instead, every day Webb and his fellow correspondents went to the US Embassy and were handed transcripts from the rebel radio station, Venceremos, heavily censored by the CIA in Panama.

  The only other option was to speak to the dead at El Playon.

  * * *

  The next morning, Daniels was still unsettled by their brush with ORDEN at Puerto del Diablo. He hardly touched his breakfast. He stared out of the window at the volcano, but Webb guessed that what he was actually seeing was his own bones mouldering in the gorge with the other disappeareds.

  Webb just felt angry. These latest efforts to intimidate him had only strengthened his resolve.

  Daniels put dow
n his coffee cup. It rattled in the saucer.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘I didn’t sleep very well. Are we out to El Playon again this morning?’

  ‘Change of pace. I’ve arranged an interview with Ricardo Beltran.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘He’s a guiding light in the Fourteen Families. A finquera, one of d’Aubuisson’s staunchest supporters. He’s also said to be ORDEN’s paymaster.’

  Daniels nodded. ‘Okay. Just be careful where you park the car.’

  Chapter 25

  As they drove through the streets that morning they passed automobile showrooms, Coke billboards and air-conditioned shopping malls. It was the worst of American freeway culture transferred to the malaria belt.

  It was only around the plaza that you were reminded that you were in Latin America; vendors squatted beside panniers of oranges and corn; shoeshine boys haunted the outdoor cafés; toothless old women with arthritic fingers sat on the sidewalks begging. This was where you found the lottery ticket sellers and the newspaper vendors, the drunk and the mad, the hungry and the hopeless. The ones they called la chusma - the rabble.

  Black and white police cars patrolled the sidestreets, rifle barrels bristling from the windows. Violence and despair simmered in the heat.

  The crossroads at the Avenida Roosevelt and the Avenida Gustavo Guerrero was the divide between the downtown and the pleasant avenues of the wealthy. Here the houses were insulated from la chusma by high walls and luxuriant gardens. They passed a small park surrounded by expensive fashion boutiques, a supermarket and a busy McDonald’s. Above it presided the statue of Jesus, his arms outstretched, balanced on a tiny globe. The city’s namesake: El Salvador del Mundo, Saviour of the World.

  ‘Christ on the ball,’ Daniels observed.

  ‘I wish He was,’ Webb said.

  San Benito was leafy quiet, the preserve of only the most privileged. The so-called Fourteen Families had their homes here and in neighboring Colonia Escalon.