Days of the Dead. David Monnery
to an end, and the party had not returned to the college that evening.
No suspicious groups or vehicles had been seen in the area, but when after several days the women had still failed to reappear the assumption had grown that a new guerrilla group must be holding them to ransom. Once two weeks had passed without any demand for money being received, the betting had shifted in favour of either some catastrophic and completely unfathomable accident or what seemed an equally improbable mass rape and murder.
Now it seemed likely that they had been in the hands of drug traffickers all this time. Placida was dead and Victoria was ‘unable to help’, whatever that might mean. Where were the other three, and what had their lives been like for the last two years?
The answer to the last question was too horrific to contemplate.
Victoria would know, Carmen thought, and she was more likely to talk to a friend than a gringo policeman. If her father didn’t get anywhere with his contacts, she decided, then she would go to Miami herself, with or without her parents’ blessing, and find out what had happened to Marysa.
Docherty and Isabel didn’t discover the reason for Rosa’s summons until three days after their arrival in Buenos Aires. On that Tuesday Docherty and Rosa’s husband, Giorgio, a second-generation immigrant of Italian descent, had driven to the university, where the media unit’s satellite link-up was being put to good use, showing England’s final group game against Holland in Euro 96. England outplayed the Dutch and Docherty, a true Scot, duly lamented the Auld Enemy’s victory. But as they drove home to Recoleta he had to admit that England seemed to be playing football these days, rather than just kicking it upfield and running after it like headless chickens.
The two men arrived back to find the children running riot in the house while their wives were preparing the ingredients for a barbecue on the patio. Rosa gave the task of igniting the charcoal to Giorgio, collected a bottle of chilled white wine from the fridge and poured glasses for the four of them on the patio table. ‘A toast,’ she said. ‘The future.’
They all drank. Here it comes, Docherty thought.
‘Though it’s the past I want to talk to you about,’ Rosa began carefully. Behind her the evening sun glinted on the waters of the River Plate estuary, and the panorama of Recoleta’s famous brightly coloured houses seemed like a child’s drawing. ‘I have something to ask you – you, Jamie, though of course it concerns Isabel too.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t even know if I should ask you, but I promised I would. And you can always say no.’
His SAS bosses used to say that, Docherty thought.
‘Do you remember Gustavo and Eva Macías?’ Rosa asked Isabel.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Gustavo was a close friend of my father. He and his family used to visit us quite often when I was a child.’
‘I do remember one friend of your father’s,’ Isabel said. ‘A tall man, stood very straight. He had a beard, I think.’
‘That’s him. He and Eva had three children – two daughters and one son. The son’s name was Guillermo – he was about three years younger than us, I think. I probably didn’t pay much attention to him, but I seem to remember he was nice enough.’ She took another sip of wine. ‘He was arrested by the Army in 1976 – he was a student at the university in Rosario – and never seen again. He wasn’t interested in politics, apparently, and no one knows why they took him away.’
‘Except the Army,’ her husband said drily.
‘True. But I’ll leave Gustavo and Eva to tell you the details, if you’re willing to talk to them.’
‘Why now?’ Docherty asked. ‘After so long.’
‘Two reasons, as far as I can see,’ Rosa said. ‘Are you two aware of what’s been going on here the past couple of years? With the Disappeared, I mean.’
‘Only vaguely.’
‘Well, basically, when Menem became President he made a few noises and sat back to wait for the whole business to just fade away. But it didn’t, the Mothers were still at his gates, and then for reasons best known to themselves, a few of the beasts broke ranks and started talking. The old Navy commander not only admitted that up to two thousand people had been dropped in the Atlantic, but even went into details – how those who’d been weakened by torture had to be helped on to the aircraft, and were then given sedatives by Navy doctors before being stripped and thrown out. A little while later the Head of the Armed Forces actually admitted responsibility for human rights abuses in the late 70s and early 80s, although of course no individuals were called to account, and the files have still not been produced.’
‘They’ve probably lost them,’ Isabel said scornfully.
‘I doubt it,’ Giorgio said. ‘They may not be very good at fighting other soldiers, but they know how to keep records.’
‘The Eichmann syndrome,’ Docherty murmured.
‘Something like that. A lot of people have claimed that the military kept meticulous records of each and every person they tortured and killed.’
They all sat silent for a few seconds. All these years on, it was still hard to accept the enormity of what had happened.
‘Anyway,’ Rosa said, ‘the other thing that happened was that the graves started coming to light. A group of young people calling themselves forensic anthropologists have started digging in many of the rumoured locations, and they’ve already found several mass graves. One of them was outside Rosario, and I think that was what set Gustavo off. From what I can gather, both he and Eva have been busy pretending that they never had a son for most of the past twenty years, but the discovery of that grave…’ She sighed. ‘And then there’s the fact that he’s dying himself. Some sort of cancer, and I don’t think he’s expected to last many more months.’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘But whatever his reasons – mostly guilt, I suppose – he seems hell bent on making up for lost time. Over the last year – and much to his daughters’ annoyance, I might add – he’s spent a small fortune trying to find out why Guillermo was arrested and what happened to him. It’s become an obsession. He has to know.’
Docherty looked at Isabel, whose face in the shadows seemed drawn with pain, and he knew that she was reliving the traumas of her own arrest and torture, the loss of so many friends. For her sake he wanted to leave the surface of the past undisturbed. ‘Death will heal the man’s need to know,’ he said, the words sounding harsher than he intended.
Isabel looked up at him. ‘What does he want from Jamie?’ she asked.
‘I think he has the name of a man, an Argentinian living in Mexico. I’m not sure, but I think he wants someone to go and talk to this man.’
‘Why Jamie?’ Isabel persisted.
‘Gustavo is convinced this man will not talk to another Argentinian. But Jamie – he is both a foreigner and a soldier, someone both safe and simpático, yes? This man might be willing to talk to him, just man to man.’
‘Macho to macho,’ Docherty murmured.
Rosa rolled her eyes in exasperation.
‘We should at least talk to Gustavo,’ Isabel interjected.
It was Docherty’s turn to look at her. The word ‘Mexico’ had taken him back to a buried chapter of his own life, one that came before Isabel. ‘OK,’ he said quietly. ‘But no promises.’ He knew Isabel still had nightmares about her time in the Naval Mechanical School – he had been shot into wakefulness on enough occasions by her sudden screams – and if it looked like this was going to upset her, there was no way he was touching it.
But there was always the chance it might have the opposite effect, he realized. Maybe something like this would help Isabel to finally exorcize her past.
He was probably grasping at straws, rationalizing his own desire to see Mexico again. Or even