A Quiet Flame

I glanced around the inside of the plane. There was a large pool of blood and something worse on the floor. Now that the door was closed, I could smell the lingering stench of fear inside the Dakota. There were some seats up front. The colonel sat in one. I got up off the floor and went and sat beside him. I leaned across his lap and glanced out of the window at the gray river beneath us.

“The people you just murdered,” I said. “I suppose that they were Communists.”

“Some were.”

“And the others? There were women, weren’t there?”

“These are enlightened times we live in, Gunther. Women can be Communists, too. Sometimes—no, usually—they’re more fanatical than the men. More courageous, also. I wonder if you could take as much torture as one of the women we just dumped.”

I said nothing.

“You know, I could always take you back to Caseros. Have my men go to work on you with that electric cattle prod. Then you’d tell me what I want to know.”

“I know a little bit more about torture than you think, Colonel. I know that if you torture a man to make him tell you lots of things, then gradually he’ll give them up, one by one. But if you torture a man to make him tell you one thing, the chances are he’ll clam up and take it. Make it a contest of wills. Now that I know how important this is to you, Colonel, I’d make it my life’s last mission to say nothing.”

“A tough guy, huh?”

“Only when I have to be.”

“I believe you are. I suppose that’s one of the reasons I like you.”

“Sure you like me. That’s why you wanted to throw me out of a plane at five thousand feet.”

“You don’t think I enjoy this sort of thing, do you? But it has to be done. If the Communists were in power, they’d do the same thing to us, I can assure you.”

“That’s what Hitler used to say.”

“Wasn’t he right? Look what Stalin has done.”

“It’s the politics of the cemetery, Colonel. I should know. I just crawled out of the one called Germany.”

The colonel sighed. “Perhaps you’re right. But I think it’s better to live without principles than be righteous and dead. That’s what I’ve learned in the cemetery. There’s this, too, that I’ve learned. If my father leaves me a gold watch, I want my son to have it after me, not some paisano carrying a copy of Marx he’s never read. They want my watch? They’d better kill me first. Or it’s out the door they go. They’d better know that in Argentina we practice the redistribution of health. Anyone goes around thinking that all property is theft soon finds out that all killing is not murder. The last Communist we hang will be the one who helped himself to our rope.”

“I don’t want to take anything from anyone, Colonel. When I came here, I wanted a quiet life, remember? Nothing made your business my business except you. For all I care, you can hang all the Communists in South America on your Christmas tree. All the Nazis, too. But when you hire me to be your dog and sniff around, you shouldn’t be surprised if I bark a bit and piss on your flower bed. That may be embarrassing to you, but that’s the way it is. I embarrass myself sometimes.”

“Fair enough.”

“Fair enough, he says. You haven’t played fair with me since I got off the damn boat, Colonel. I want to know everything. And when I know everything, I’m going to get off this plane and I’m going back to my hotel and I’m going to take a bath. And when I’ve had some dinner and I’m good and ready and I’ve understood how everything works, I’m going to tell you what you want to know. And when you find that I’m telling the truth, you and von Bader and Evita are going to be so damned grateful you’re even going to pay me like you all said you would.”

“As you wish, Gunther.”

“No. Just what I said. What I wish would be too much to expect.”

24 BUENOS AIRES, 1950

BY THE TIME we landed at Ezeira, I knew almost everything. Almost. I still didn’t know if Anna Yagubsky was dead or alive. I found a pay phone and called Anna’s parents, who told me they hadn’t seen her since the trip to Tucumán but that she’d left them a note saying she was going to stay with a friend.

“Do you know who this friend is?” I asked Roman Yagubsky.

“As a matter of fact, I thought it might be you.”

“If she comes back or calls, tell her I need to speak to her, urgently.”

“Always in a hurry,” he said.

“It’s the business I’m in.”

“Did you find my brother yet?”

“Not exactly.”

“What kind of an answer is that?”