by Giles Blunt
“My name is not Perez,” he said at last. “Ignacio Perez is dead. He was shot a few days before you were taken to Puerto del Diablo.”
He had said it now. It could not be unsaid. He felt no sense of relief, only-once again-the sensation of stepping off a cliff. He tried to prepare himself to receive her hatred, the way a fighter prepares to receive blows. “My name is Victor Pena. I was a soldier. A soldier at the little school.”
Lorca remained staring up at him from her seat on the chair, one hand still gripping her shoe. Her face had gone pale. A terrible silence flowed from her, as if a knife had entered her ribs but the pain had not yet registered.
“These scars?” Victor showed her the knuckles of his right hand. “I got these scars when I punched you. It was me who punched you in the mouth and broke your tooth.”
From Lorca, a sharp intake of breath.
“The Captain was screaming, ‘Hit her, hit her, hit her.’ I had to obey. They would have killed me. Everyone had to take part-otherwise, how could they trust you? I should have refused. That would have been the right thing, but I could not refuse. I was too afraid. I was not brave like you.” The memory of her bravery brought tears to his eyes, but he repressed them. He had no right to tears.
“No,” Lorca said. “I don’t believe you. Why you are telling me these lies? It cannot be true. I won’t believe.”
“It’s true. It was my hand on the General when they questioned you. You remember they were instructing someone? ‘First you turn it no higher than two. Gradually you make it stronger.’ It was me they were instructing.”
She shook her head. “Why are you saying this? You are not capable of such things. All right, maybe you were in the room. Maybe they forced you to do some things …. Where are you going, Ignacio? Come back!”
Victor went down the hall to his room. He didn’t switch the light on, he didn’t have to. He reached under the mattress and found the two items he was looking for, one small and light, the other dark and heavy. He crossed to the window. The lights were out across the street, he could not make out any shadows on the balcony. They would be closer now.
Lorca was sitting as he had left her, except that one hand shaded her eyes now, as if from a terrible light.
“For the first three days, I threw cold water on you. I fed you a meal full of salt. A meal full of cockroaches. One day I watched you sucking water from your shirt.”
Lorca’s hand moved from her eyes to cover her mouth. Her eyes went dark as pits.
“Then they raped you. We raped you. I lay on top of you myself.”
“No,” she said behind her hand. “No.”
“I was the last one, that first day. The fourth one. I could not do anything because I was so sick and afraid. But I would have, Lorca. I would have. I am not like you.”
“No. No, please. It’s not true.”
“It is true. That’s how I recognize these soldiers, Lorca. I was one of them.”
“It’s not true. You were a prisoner.”
He took hold of her hand and opened the fingers like a child’s. He thrust into her palm the watch that had been ripped from her wrist. “This was my reward for hitting you that day. For breaking your tooth. Remember how they cheered? The Captain pulled this off your wrist and gave it to me.”
The watch lay ticking in her hand like a bomb. Lorca stared at it dumbly for a moment, then turned it over and looked at the inscription.
Suddenly exhausted, Victor sank to the edge of the bed and hung his head. He could no longer bear to look at her. He stared at the carpet as he spoke. “Your courage changed me, Lorca. Seeing how you bore your pain. Seeing how you cared not for yourself but only for others. Ever since we hurt you, I have wanted nothing but to make it up to you. To take back the wrongs I committed. Probably I wanted your forgiveness. Not probably, definitely. I wanted your forgiveness.”
“I hate you,” she said softly.
“So do I, Lorca.”
“I hate you more than I have ever hated anybody. I hate you more than the man who ran that stinking place. I hate you more than any of them.”
“Yes. I don’t blame you. But now you must run. You must run, before they come for you.” He was still on the edge of the bed, his head hanging down. There was a sudden movement, and then a white light exploded in his skull.
THIRTY
Victor was sprawled on the floor near the bed. Unconsciousness drained from his skull like dishwater. His tongue would not work: try as he might, he could not make it form the syllables of Lorca’s name. He pulled himself to a sitting position and promptly vomited on a lamp beside him on the floor. That would be what she had hit him with. He felt the back of his head. There was no blood, but a large lump was forming.
He crawled over to the window. There was no sign of activity in the room across the street. Placing his weight on the sill, leaning his forehead against the glass, he tried to focus on the swirl of traffic below. Beneath the first set of traffic lights, he could just see Lorca running across the road. Horns honked, and there was a squeal of brakes. The watchers would have seen her too.
The door was open a little. Leaning against the desk, the dresser, the back of a chair, Victor slowly made his way toward it. He was halfway across the room when the door swung wide, and Greg Wheat was there with Bob Wyatt and one of the security guards. The security guard had his gun drawn. He held it muzzle-up as he checked the closet, the bathroom. “Nobody else.”
“Where’s Lorca?” Wyatt asked. He looked frightened, and Victor was amazed that he could have ever seen anything bearlike in the fluffy beard and brows. Bob Wyatt was a stuffed animal, at best.
“I don’t know where she went. She ran away.”
“Well, we better find her, don’t you think?”
From the moment they had entered, Wheat had been staring at Victor, looking him up and down with a contempt he did not bother to conceal. He turned now to Wyatt. “Would you be kind enough to leave us alone for a few minutes, Mr. Wyatt? I want to ask your associate a few questions.”
Wyatt stood uncertainly in the doorway. “I don’t know. I think maybe I should stay.”
“I need you to give us some privacy, Mr. Wyatt. Just go and wait in your room, sir.”
Wheat would not be armed, Victor thought. He was too high up for that.
“I’ll be in our room,” Wyatt said to Victor, as if he had just thought of it. “If you need me.”
The security guard closed the door. By the time he turned around again, Victor had drawn his own weapon, the only thing he had taken with him from Fort Benning, and had it aimed at Greg Wheat’s head. “Hand over your gun,” Victor told the guard, “or I kill your boss. Don’t hesitate, because I won’t.”
The security guard hesitated. Victor shot him, he hoped not fatally. The man lay groaning on his stomach.
Greg Wheat was backing toward the door, hands raised. “Just calm down now,” he was saying. “Just take it easy.”
“You’re the one who told them,” Victor said. “The famous reciprocal relationship. You gave them the names of the witnesses, didn’t you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We help you with your security leaks in Salvador, you help us with our little problems up here. It’s only common sense. Or maybe you think of it as professional courtesy.”
“Listen. I’m a State staffer in charge of security. I look after visitors for State. Nothing else. Don’t cast me as the bad guy in some fantasy you’re having, okay?”
“I recognize you from El Salvador. We didn’t get many Americans at the little school. The truth is, you were the only one, Mr. Wheat.”
“You’re confused. I was with the State Department, stationed in El Salvador. End of story. You and I never met. I don’t know anything about any school.”
“Out on the balcony.” Victor gestured with the revolver.
“This man needs medical attention.”
“Go. Move.”
Wheat backed
out onto the balcony, and Victor locked the door. The man on the floor groaned. Victor picked up his weapon on the way out. He ran to the end of the hall and took the fire stairs down the three floors to the lobby. There was a commotion around the front desk, men with walkie-talkies. The shot would have been heard. Victor pushed his way through a knot of Japanese tourists and out to the street.
He went the way he had seen Lorca go; beyond that, he had no goal other than to put distance between him and the hotel. Lorca was afraid. She was alone. She didn’t know the city. Where would she go?
A block farther, and Victor came to the gates of the Washington Zoo. Lorca had said it was near. In fact, she had wanted to see it. A sign said it was closed, but the chain-link fence, though high, did not look formidable. Far down the hill, sirens wailed.
Victor found a spot half hidden by a chestnut tree where the fence had been bent inward. He climbed over, landing with a soft thud on the other side. For a few moments he crouched in the shadows. The zoo was spread out before him in a series of winding paths and one wide road through the middle. The storm had moved on, but everything still dripped with rain. Lamps glowed every hundred yards or so, but he saw no one, heard no one. Keeping to the trees, he made his way toward one of the darker paths. Somewhere in the dark, an elephant trumpeted.
He followed the inside of a stone fence. Houses and apartment buildings high on the hill overlooked the trees and paths. He wanted to call out Lorca’s name, but was afraid to alert Tito and the Captain in case they had followed her.
He passed two enclosures where invisible birds squawked and chattered. They made a flapping sound like madness. Then, from farther off, Victor heard a man’s laugh. Tito. How often that dirty laugh had echoed along the hall of the little school when he was about to hurt someone.
Victor moved with his pistol in hand, the security guard’s weapon tucked into his belt. He kept low, behind a stone fence, taking the darker of two paths that forked away from him. A moat rippled quietly on his left. Beyond it, a dark shape moved on heavy padded feet, growling softly.
Monkeys gibbered and screamed in the trees. Victor passed a shuttered snack bar. Rough voices became audible, and Lorca’s voice answering.
He rounded a stone pavilion, drew back swiftly into the darkness, and peered around the corner. Tito was laughing again. He waved Lorca’s shirt over his head, as if it were an enemy flag. Lorca cowered against the rocks, trying to cover herself with her arms. A street lamp shone pitilessly down on her and turned the faces of Tito and Captain Pena into gargoyles. “Let’s smash her head in, Captain. Hand me that rock. I want to knock this bitch into a coma.”
“No,” came Captain Pena’s calm voice. “We want to prevent her testimony, not provoke a major investigation.” It was strange to see the Captain in civilian clothes-a sight Victor had not seen since he was a boy.
Both the Captain and Tito were armed, though only the Captain’s pistol was drawn. As Tito closed in on Lorca, Victor slipped the safety off his revolver.
Tito kicked Lorca’s shin, and she fell to one knee.
Fear turned Victor’s legs to water. He prayed for a lightning bolt, a bullet in the head-anything to take him out of this. Lorca was crawling away, Tito following. His shadow fell over her. The smack of flesh on flesh made a sharp report against the rocks. This time Lorca cried out. If I do nothing, Victor thought, if I run now, no one will ever know.
He started to back away. He stumbled on a rock, nearly falling. Then Lorca let out a high, piercing wail, and he froze. Sweat poured down his ribs, acrid with the chemistry of fear. A better soldier would save her, he thought. A better soldier would wade right in, guns blazing. But he had never been a good soldier.
Lorca’s scream had silenced the monkeys. And the birds had gone still. There was a sound of tearing fabric. Another cry. And Tito’s curses.
Victor stepped forward into the light and said, “Stop.” Both men whirled round to face him, the Captain’s gun glinting. “Let her go,” Victor said. He thought his voice sounded not too fearful.
“Don’t worry about him,” the Captain said to Tito. “He was always a coward.”
“Hey, Pena,” Tito called. “You going to stop me? Come down here right now and try, you little faggot.”
“He will do nothing,” the Captain said.
“Tell the sergeant to back away from her,” Victor said. “Or I will shoot.”
“You’re going to shoot?” It was the Captain’s turn to laugh. “I don’t believe you’ve ever fired a weapon in your life, little Victor. You couldn’t stop a butterfly. You couldn’t stop a flea, let alone a man. To shoot a man takes more balls than you will ever have.”
Tito had Lorca by the hair now. He yanked and twisted, forcing her to the ground. Victor pulled the trigger. Fear roared in his ears, so that he did not even hear the shot. He simply pulled the trigger, and the Captain fell-knelt, rather, like a supplicant. He pressed a hand to his chest. Blood gleamed blackly on his fingers. Captain Pena’s face bore the stunned, disgusted look of a man who has just lost a huge bet.
Tito let go of Lorca. He was reaching for his weapon, and Victor hesitated, his finger frozen on the trigger. He had shot two people in the past hour. It seemed impossible to shoot another. Tito was raising his gun. Victor squeezed the trigger, and closed his eyes to receive Tito’s bullet.
When he opened his eyes again, a dark stain was spreading across Tito’s chest. The big man clutched at the chain-link fence, lowering himself slowly, almost delicately, to the ground. He turned himself over, his head propped against the fence at a sharp angle, like a drunk’s. His pistol, wavering, was coming up again. He levelled it against his other arm, sighting along the barrel. Even in his terror Victor admired such relentlessness. The sergeant was tough, you couldn’t take that away from him. Tito’s bullet caught him in the chest.
The trees looked very beautiful overhead, and with the animals silent now, the boughs made soothing, soughing noises in the breeze. How intricately the branches tangle, he thought. How stupid that he had never noticed before. Such wild precision in their scrawl against the clouds.
She would be gone by now. She would be safe. Halfway to the train station, perhaps. Lorca knew how to survive, she would be gone by now.
“Tell me what to do,” the harsh voice said.
He knew that voice. Why could he not see her?
“Tell me what to do. You’re bleeding so much, I don’t know what to do.”
“Come closer. I can’t see you.”
A shadow loomed, took shape and definition: Lorca’s face, a cut on her cheek, her bare shoulders.
“Get me to the road. A taxi or a bus.”
“I am afraid to leave you like this.”
“It’s not that bad, is it?”
“Your chest is open. Your leg is pouring blood. You took three or four bullets.”
“No, no. There was only one, Lorca. Only one bullet. We will hide somewhere, and tomorrow we will testify. I want to tell them what we did to you. I wrote it all down.”
“I will tell them. Show them.”
“No, I want to go too. I will testify tomorrow with you.”
“Sure. But why did you stop your friends?”
“Three or four bullets-is that what you said?”
“The big man. He fired at you many times. You would not stop. You would not stay down.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You fought bravely.”
“No, no. Not me.”
“Yes, you. But why did you kill your friends?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I was not afraid anymore. No, it wasn’t that. I was afraid.” He had been terrified of pain and death-he had been terrified through every minute, except for the minutes he couldn’t seem to recall. You couldn’t call that bravery. It must be something else, something to do with forgiveness, with loving her. No, not loving her, he knew he did not love her. Shame and sorrow and a strange, bitter longing, those had been his feelings. Not love.
>
“Mother of God,” he said, and choked. His lungs were filling. “Even dying, it is hard to be honest.” The thought made him laugh, and he inhaled fluid. Blood, he supposed.
It was not bravery and it was not love. He had pitied her and he had been sorry-but it wasn’t that either. Not pity. “There were two sides,” he said, and started to drown.
“Don’t talk. I am going for help.” Something tightened around his leg, and the woman closed his hand around the knot she had tied. A tourniquet. She got up, and the sense of her moving away was unbearable.
“Two sides,” he tried to say, but it came out in a gargle. The woman-what was her name? — Lorca did not hear. Had she really gone away? Victor raised his free hand to his face and felt around. His skin was slick with blood, his hair sticky. Blood spread away from him in a black pool. Could all that blood really be his? His grip loosened on the tourniquet. The pool was spreading farther, he could see the tangle of branches reflected in his blood. The tourniquet slipped from his fingers. Let all his blood flow out. Let it all flow out and into the earth. Take it, he wanted to say. Take every drop of blood I have. There was not enough blood in the world to make up for the wrongs he had done.
Two sides, he wanted to say. There had been two sides. And, he wanted to tell her, if there were going to be two sides in this world-two sides in any matter, even if it involved bullets and pain and every chance of getting slaughtered-he had wanted, wanted all along, to be on hers.
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Giles Blunt
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