A Quiet Flame

“I think we’re here,” I said.

“What now?” asked Anna, surveying the fence.

I unlocked the toolbox in the back of the jeep and searched it hopefully. It seemed that Geller went equipped for almost any eventuality. I found a pair of hand-sized, heavy-duty wire cutters. We were in business.

“Now, we walk,” I said.

We walked through the trees and along the length of the fence. There was no one about. Even the birds remained silent here. All the same, I figured it was better to cut the wire about thirty or forty yards from the jeep, in case anyone saw it and stopped to see why it was there. With the wire cutters in hand, I set about making an entrance for us.

“We’ll just go in and have a look and see what there is to see,” I said.

“Don’t you think we should maybe come back and do this in the dark? In case anyone sees us?”

“Stand back.” As I cut another length of Melville’s wire, it zipped away into the trees, singing like a broken piano string.

Anna looked around nervously.

“You really are quite tenacious, aren’t you?” she said.

I pocketed the wire cutters. Something bit me, and I slapped my neck. I almost wished it had been her. “Tenacious?” I grinned. “This is your search for answers. Not mine.”

“Then perhaps I just lost my appetite for them,” she said. “Fear does that to you. I certainly haven’t forgotten what happened the last time we broke into somewhere we weren’t supposed to be.”

“Good point,” I said, and took out my gun. I opened and closed the magazine, checked that everything was working, and slipped off the safety. Then I stepped through the gap I’d made in the fence.

Reluctantly, Anna followed. “I suppose killing people gets easier each time that you do it. That’s what they say, isn’t it?”

“They usually don’t know what they’re talking about,” I said, treading carefully through the trees. “The first time I killed a man was in the trenches. And it was me or him. I can’t say I’ve ever killed anyone who didn’t have it coming.”

“What about conscience?”

I let the gun lie flat on my hand for a moment. “Maybe you’d feel better if I put this away.”

“No,” she said quickly.

“So it’s all right if I have to kill someone, just as long as your conscience is clear, is that it?”

“Maybe if I was as tough as you, I could do it. I mean, shoot someone. But I’m not.”

“Angel? If there’s one thing the last war proved it’s that anyone can kill anyone. All you need is a reason. And a gun.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“There are no murderers,” I said. “There are just plumbers and shopkeepers and lawyers who kill people. Everyone’s quite normal until they pull the trigger. That’s all you need to fight a war. Lots of ordinary people to kill lots of other ordinary people. Couldn’t be easier.”

“And that makes it all right?”

“No. But that’s the way it is.”

She said nothing to that, and for a while, we walked in silence, as if the preternaturally quiet forest had affected us in some way. There was just a light breeze in the treetops and the sound of twigs cracking under our feet to remind us of where we were. Then, emerging from the trees, we found ourselves facing a second wire fence. It was about two hundred meters long, and behind it stood a number of temporary-looking wooden buildings. At opposite ends of the fence were watchtowers and, fortunately for us, these were not manned. The camp, if camp this was, looked deserted. I took out the wire cutters.

“Melville called this place Dulce,” I said, snipping one length of the little Scotsman’s galvanized wire, and then another.

“Someone’s idea of a joke, perhaps,” said Anna. “There’s nothing sweet about it.”

“It’s my guess that this is where they held illegal Jewish immigrants like your aunt and uncle, and Isabel Pekerman’s sisters. That’s the assumption I’ve been working on, anyway.”

We ducked through the wire and into the camp.

I counted five watchtowers—one on each corner of the perimeter fence and a fifth in the center of the camp, overlooking a kind of trench that seemed to connect one long barrack to another. Near the main gate was a small guardhouse. A road led into the camp from the main gate and onto what looked like a parade ground. In the center of the parade ground was an empty flagpole. Nearest to the place where we had entered the camp was a large ranch house. We peered through the dusty windows. There was furniture: tables, chairs, an old radio, a picture of Juan Perón, a room with a dozen or so beds on which the mattresses had been rolled up. In a canteen-sized kitchen, pots and pans hung neatly on a wall-mounted rack. I tried the door, and found it was not locked.