A Quiet Flame

Melville smacked his thigh with the flat of his hand. “I knew it,” he said triumphantly. “I just knew it. Course it doesn’t matter to me what you did. The war’s over now. And we’re going to need Germany if we’re to keep the Russians out of Europe.”

“What would the Ministry of Foreign Affairs need with a large quantity of wire fencing?” I asked.

“You’d better ask your General Kammler,” said Melville. “We met several times, he and I. The last time at a place near Tucumán, where I delivered the wire.”

“Oh, right,” I said, my curiosity relaxing a little now. “You must mean the hydroelectric plant run by the Capri Construction Company.”

“No, no. They’re a client of mine, it’s true. But this was something different. Something much more secret. My guess is that it was something to do with the atom bomb. Of course, I could be wrong. But Perón’s always wanted Argentina to be the first nuclear power in South America. Kammler used to refer to the project as memorandum something or other. A number.”

“Eleven? Directive Eleven?”

“That’s right. No, wait. It was Directive Twelve.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Quite sure. Either way, it was all top-secret stuff. They paid well over the odds for the wire. Largely, I suppose, because we had to deliver the stuff to a valley in the middle of nowhere in the Sierra de Aconquija. Oh, it was easy enough as far as Tucumán itself. There’s quite a reasonable railway from Buenos Aires to Tucumán, as you probably know. But from there to Dulce—that was the name of the facility they were building up there, after the river of the same name, I suppose—we had to use mules. Hundreds of mules.”

“Melville. Do you think you could point the place out on a map?”

He smiled uncertainly. “I think I probably said too much already. I mean, if it is a secret nuclear facility, they might not care for me telling people exactly where it is.”

“You have a point there,” I admitted. “They’d probably kill you if they found out you’d told someone like me about it. In fact, I’m quite sure of it. But on the other hand”—I lifted my jacket clear of the shoulder holster I was wearing and let him see the Smith that was nesting there—“on the other hand, it isn’t so good, either. In a moment, you and I are going to walk to the bookshop across the street. And I’m going to buy a map. And either your brains or your finger is going to be on it by the time I leave.”

“You’re joking,” he said.

“I’m German. We’re not exactly famous for our sense of humor, Melville. Especially not when it comes to killing people. We take that sort of thing quite seriously. Which is why we’re so good at it.”

“Suppose I don’t want to go to the bookshop,” he said, looking around. The Richmond was busy. “You wouldn’t dare shoot me here, in front of all these people.”

“Why not? I’ve finished my coffee. And you’ve thoughtfully taken care of the check. It certainly won’t spoil my morning to put a bullet in your head. And when the cops ask me why I did it, I’ll simply tell them you resisted arrest.” I took out my SIDE credentials and showed them to him. “You see, I’m sort of a cop, myself. The secret kind that doesn’t usually get held to account.”

“So that’s what you do.” Melville uttered his manic laugh. Only now it was more of a nervous laugh. “I was kind of wondering.”

“Well, now that your curiosity has been satisfied, let’s go. And try to remember what I said about the German sense of humor.”

In the Figuera bookshop on the corner of Florida and Alsina, I bought a map of Argentina for a hundred pesos and, taking Melville by the arm, walked him onto Plaza de Mayo, where, in full sight of the Casa Rosada, I unfolded the map on the grass.

“So let’s have it,” I said. “Where exactly was this place? And if I find you’ve lied to me, I’m going to come back like Banquo in that play of yours, Scotsman. And I’m going to make your hair a lot more red than it is now.”

The Scotsman moved a forefinger north from Buenos Aires, past Córdoba and Santiago del Estero, and west of La Cocha, where Eichmann was now living.

“About here,” he said. “It’s not actually marked on the map. But that’s where I met Kammler. Just north of Andalgalá there are a couple of lagoons in a depression near the basin of the Dulce River. They were building a small railway when I saw the place. Probably to make it easier to move materials up there.”

“Yeah, probably,” I said, folding up the map and sliding it into my pocket. “If you’ll take my advice, you won’t mention this to anyone. Probably they’d kill you before killing me, but only after torturing you first. Luckily for you, they already tortured me and it didn’t work, so you’re in the clear from my end of this conversation. The best thing you could do now would be just to go away and forget you ever met me. Not even across a chessboard.”

“Suits me,” Melville said, and walked quickly away.