City of Knives Page 8

  "There're rumors you're planning to run for President. Any comment on that?"

  "When and if I make that decision, there will be an official announcement. For now I can only do my best to serve the people of Argentina."

  "You've been associated with extreme elements in the political spectrum. Do you view yourself as an extremist?"

  "If being a patriot is considered an extremist these days, then, yes, that's what I am. I'll say one more thing: matters cannot continue as they are; the nation requires a great cleansing. If we're to surmount our difficulties, and, let there be no mistake, this crisis is grave, then we need strong, decisive leadership. The only alternative is to sink further into the morass."

  The interview was over. Leon flicked off the TV.

  "What do you think of him?" Marta asked.

  Leon shook his head of floppy curls. "I think he wants the presidency so much he can taste it."

  The apartment phone rang in the middle of the night. Marta reached across Leon to pick it up. No one spoke, but she could hear heavy breathing at the other end.

  "What a pathetic soul you are," she whispered and hung up.

  Seconds later her cell phone rang. She got up to answer it. She heard the same heavy breathing. The message was clear: whoever-was-calling knew her private number, knew how to reach her in numerous ways.

  "Who was it?" Leon asked.

  "Just some jerk," she said, getting back into bed.

  "I heard you call him pathetic."

  "I was being nice," she said. "It's two in the morning, darling. Let's go back to sleep."

  She was driving Marina to school when her cell phone rang. It was Raúl Vargas.

  "I met with my North American friend last night. She promised to look into the matter. She just called back. I was pretty surprised by what she said. I think you will be too. Your victim, Señor Granic—seems he definitely was a foreign agent, but not for any of the countries we talked about."

  "Damnit, Raúl!"

  "Forgive me, but this is so good I have to string it out. Granic worked for the Israelis. And get this, he wasn't just one of their intelligence assets. He was a fullftime staffer here on a deep penetration assignment. You know what that means?"

  "Mossad," she said.

  She could hear a roar as he accelerated his Kawasaki, then silence when he clicked off.

  She spent a good part of the day trying to make contact with the Israeli Embassy. Twice she was put on hold, then disconnected. On her third try, she was put through to a man who identified himself as a public affairs officer but refused to give his name. He told her that any contact between an Argentine official and the Israeli Mission would have to be made through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He also told her that all Israeli diplomats had diplomatic immunity, and that it was Israeli government policy not to respond to questions about diplomatic personnel.

  She phoned the Foreign Ministry, finally made contact with the Israeli desk. A clerk told her she would have to file a written request through the Federal Police Liaison Office. When she told him that she couldn't do that due to the confidential nature of her inquiry, he told her she was wasting his time and hung up.

  She phoned the Israeli Mission again, asked to speak to someone in public affairs. The same man came on, repeated even more abruptly what he'd told her before, adding "we're very busy here. If you can't work through normal channels we'd prefer you not call us again."

  She phoned Rolo, told him what Raúl had said, and that she now believed that the people who'd spent the night at Granic's house then left at dawn in the blacked-out van, were an Israeli undercover clean-up squad.

  "Find out who claimed Granic's body," she told him. "While you're at it, find out who claimed Silvia's."

  A little past four o'clock, she received a call on her cell. A woman whose voice she didn't recognize asked if she was speaking to Inspector Abecasis.

  "Who are you?" Marta asked, since few people had her cell number.

  "You've been bothering a lot of people today, Inspector, asking a lot of questions. Meet me in twenty minutes at the corner of Arroyo and Suipacha, and maybe you'll get some answers."

  Marta rushed to her car, drove directly to the specified corner knowing exactly where it was and fully understanding its significance. It was the Memorial Plaza that marked the site of the March, 1992 car bombing of the Israeli Embassy, an explosion that destroyed the building, killed twenty-nine people, and which her father, then still alive, called the worst anti-Jewish act ever perpetrated in Argentina.

  Nico Abecasis did not live to see the results of an even more destructive attack, the bombing in July, 1994 of the AMIA, the center of Jewish-Argentine cultural life, in which eighty-six people were murdered. Marta was a young detective at the time, called in with many others to divert traffic while specialized units conducted rescue. It was a morning she would never forget, a turning point in her identity as an Argentine Jew. Before the attack, she had thought of herself as a totally secular person whose mother happened to be Catholic and whose father happened to be Jewish. Afterwards, she would make a point of letting people know her background. She wanted there to be no mistake about who she was, and that she would not tolerate anti-Semitism in any form including jokes.

  She parked in a police zone on Pellegrini, walked a block to the Memorial Plaza on Arroyo where a lone policeman stood watch from a guard cabin.

  The memorial was austere. The outline of the old Embassy was depicted on the wall behind, along with stonework, protected by bulletproof glass, on which a description of the events of March 17, 1992 was carved in Spanish, English and Hebrew. Twenty-nine trees to commemorate the victims had been planted in two parallel rows. As she waited in front of the steel rope barrier, she noticed how pedestrians tended to speed up and look away as they passed. Such a powerful memorial evidently was not something most porteños cared to confront.

  She waited fifteen minutes, was about to leave, when a taxi pulled up to the curb.

  A woman rolled down the window. "Inspector Abecasis?" Marta nodded. "Please get in."

  The woman, in her forties with close-cropped dark hair and an intense manner, didn't introduce herself, nor did she tell the driver where to go. He drove a few blocks in silence, parked in an empty spot on Libertad, then got out and stood with his back to the car as if to guard it while they talked.

  "Doesn't seem like your typical taxi driver?" Marta said.

  "He isn't," the woman replied, peering directly into Marta's eyes. "I'm meeting with you to tell you straight out that Señor Ivo Granic was an Argentine citizen who immigrated from Yugoslavia some years back, and that he had no connection whatsoever with the Israeli Mission."

  "That's not what I hear," Marta said. "I have it from an excellent source that Granic was a deep-cover Mossad agent."

  "You've been misinformed. I suggest you find a more reliable source before you bother busy people with your crazy questions."

  The woman was coming on very strong, eyes never wavering from Marta's.

  Much too stern and pitiless, Marta thought. As if she's trying to convey one thing while telling me the opposite.

  "It would have been easy to tell me this over the phone," Marta said. "I was hung up on several times. Some of your people are pretty rude."

  "Please don't make any assumptions about who my people might be. And please remember that Israelis aren't especially fond of the Buenos Aires Federal Police. I'm sure you know the reasons."

  Marta nodded. Though the two anti-Jewish bombings were believed to have been the work of Hezbollah agents operating out of the Arab immigrant community in the three borders area of Northern Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, there had been local police involvement as well.

  "I know about the van, of course. That it was from a cop's brother-in-law's garage."

  "And the radio warning?"

  Marta nodded again. She knew that just two minutes before the car bomb went off, cops guarding the street in front of the Embassy were call
ed away by police radio. The origin of that radio call had never been traced.

  "There's been no justice in the matter of the two bombings," the woman reminded her.

  Marta found her manner annoying. "Don't lecture me," she said. "My father was Jewish. I identify as an Argentine Jew."

  "I know. That's the only reason I'm talking to you. I also know of your reputation. Please listen to me carefully, Inspector Abecasis. The Israeli Government knows nothing of this man, Ivo Granic. Furthermore, there's no such thing as 'the Mossad.'"

  "Excuse me!"

  "'The Mossad' doesn't exist. It's a spy story writer's fantasy."

  Marta scoffed. "You're telling me Israel does not have a foreign intelligence service?"

  The woman nodded. "I hope I've answered all your questions." She rapped on the window, the driver got back inside, then drove them back to the Memorial Plaza.

  "I suggest you spend some time here," the woman told her, pointing at the plaque on the wall. "Think about what happened here and the criminals who did it. They should be rooted out and punished."

  Marta paused before she got out. "That's it?" she asked.

  "That's it," the nameless woman said.

  Marta stared at her. "I don't like being patronized. Still, I appreciate your help."

  For a moment the woman met her stare, then quickly turned her head.

  As soon as Marta stepped out of the taxi, it sped away. Marta turned to the plaque, read the inscription again, then bowed her head in memory of those who had died there.

  Back at the Homicide Division, Rolo was waiting with his report on the disposition of the victims' bodies.

  "Silvia Santini was claimed by her mother, who took her back to Mendoza Province for burial. Ivo Granic was claimed by his former wife, Sofia Granic, through the Yugoslav Consular Office. The body was shipped to New York for forwarding to Belgrade."

  Rolo was grinning.

  "What?"

  "Working narcotics, Marta, I learned to never take a customs manifest at face value. The Granic crate was delivered to New York, then something unusual happened. A new airwaybill was created, the crate was turned over to El Al, then shipped out on the next plane to Tel Aviv."

  Driving home, it struck her that the Israelis had an odd way of doing things:

  One of their agents is killed. They go to his house, clean it out, but leave his body for us. When I ask if he's Israeli, they not only deny it, they even deny their foreign intelligence service exists. Which apparently is their way of saying that, yes, he was their agent, and no, they have no interest in assisting me. Which probably means they intend to take care of the matter themselves, and that, far as they're concerned, I'm irrelevant.

  She found that notion infuriating.

  She parked, was walking through the shadows toward her building, when she heard her name called out.

  "Señora! Señora Inspector!"

  She turned, recognized the caller. He operated a little locksmith shop on the corner. He was running to catch up.

  "Please, Señora, come back to the shop with me. My wife has something important to tell you."

  Marta followed him back. The locksmithing business, she knew, was good these days, one of the few businesses that thrived with the economy in shambles and the city suffering an epidemic of break-ins.

  The locksmith's wife, grinding a key for a customer, finished the job, took payment, then, before facing Marta, waited for her customer to leave.

  "I feel you should know this, Señora Inspector," She said. "Two men were here yesterday morning asking about you. Tough guys. At first I thought they could be cops."

  "What'd they want?"

  "They asked all sorts of questions about your habits—comings, goings, where you shop, where you park, your husband's job, where your daughter goes to school. Of course I didn't tell them anything. You and your husband have always been kind with us. But I must tell you that we were not the only ones they questioned. They were up and down the street a good part of the morning asking about you at all the stores."

  The woman paused. It was clear to Marta she had more to say, perhaps something difficult that made her hesitate.

  Marta gazed at her. "Please go on," she said gently.

  "There was another question they asked." The woman glanced at her husband.

  Marta turned to him. "What?"

  The locksmith glanced at her shyly, then lowered his voice.

  "They asked if you were Jewish, Señora," he whispered. "My wife told them she didn't know."

  Yes, they would want to know that...of course!

  Marta showed the woman a copy of Costas's computer sketch.

  "Did they look like these guys?"

  The woman squinted at the sketch. "Perhaps a little. But one of them had a mustache and the other had a big scar on his face." She paused. "I hope we did right, Señora?"

  "Of course you did. Thank you for telling me."

  Marta leaned forward so she and the locksmith's wife could kiss one another's cheeks.

  Chapter Four

  A CALL IN THE NIGHT

  Dr. Tomás Hudson, reclining in his therapist's chair in his high-rise consulting room in Villa Freud, listened attentively as his patient, Claudio G, spewed out his rage at his adoptive parents.

  Claudio, twenty-two years old, a talented painter, was the son of left-wing people who'd been arrested and subsequently disappeared during the time of the Proceso. His mother had given birth to him in prison. Immediately afterwards he was snatched from her arms, then adopted by José and Prudencia Soler, a conservative, childless military couple.

  "They wanted a blond blue-eyed boy, you see, to match their Northern European heritage."

  Claudio, whose typical gesture when agitated was to repetitively brush away the shock of blond hair that hung across his forehead, was in the midst of a mortifying description of the Solers, whom he couldn't bring himself to call "dad" or "mama," or anything other than "he," "she," or "they," the pronouns enunciated with such revulsion that at times Claudio nearly spat them out.

  "I can imagine them shopping in the prison birthing ward, moving methodically from bed to bed, shaking their heads over infants who looked too Italian. God forbid their child would have an olive skin. Or show the slightest sign of Indian blood! Or be female. 'No stinkin' girls for us!' No! They knew exactly what they were looking for, and when Captain Shitface, the fucker in charge of handing us out, brought them over to me, they practically pissed in their pants. 'Isn't he darling!' 'So cute!' 'So sweet and tender!' 'So just-like-us!' 'He'll make a fine little soldier.' 'An outstanding cadet-officer!' 'We'll take the little tyke.' 'Don't bother to wrap him. We'll take him "as is"!'

  "Then the pompous little lieutenant slyly slipped a hundred pesos to Captain Shitface. 'A little something for your trouble, sir!' 'Oh, thanks, José. And if you need a godfather for him, I'm sure Colonel Cocksucker would be proud to fulfill the role.'"

  Claudio fell into a fit of coughing. The young man was exhausting himself, yet Tomás did not interrupt. Claudio's fantasy, he understood, was a way to release his venom, hopefully clearing the way for a more accurate appraisal of the Solers later on, an appraisal which, Tomás felt strongly, must encompass a view of his adoptive parents as mediocrities rather than outsize personifications of evil.

  Tomás had been working with Claudio for six months, seeing him once a week in face-to-face therapy sessions. The young man inevitably turned up for sessions in a black T-shirt and black jeans, "in mourning," as he put it, "for my lost boyhood."

  Tomás considered Claudio's case exemplary on account of the way his adopted-orphan identity crisis intruded on his work. He was immensely gifted. Tomás had seen that immediately. But Claudio's development as an artist was now blocked by his rage, which he could only express in a cycle of devastating portraits in which his adoptive parents were depicted wearing halos, kneeling at an altar, taking communion, or in some other posture of public piety—the piety refuted by the contortions of their ha
nds, the cruelty in their eyes and their fierce, tightly-drawn, smirking lips.

  A gallery in Palermo, which had taken Claudio on, had managed to sell several of these canvasses. But Claudio was frustrated. As he told Tomás when he entered therapy: "I don't want to paint pretty pictures. But am I doomed to spend my life making images of their phony rectitude?"

  It was a difficult case, for the young man seemed unable to find an exit. His hands, Tomás observed, shook all the time, except, Claudio informed him, when he was drawing or painting. He also had difficulty maintaining intimate relationships. He was good looking, attracted girls, but inevitably his attempts at romance would fail. Sooner or later the young woman would complain of coldness or find herself unable to deal with his stress. Yet, Claudio confided in Tomás, he wanted more than anything to have a steady girlfriend.

  Often, as Tomás listened to Claudio, the boy's agony would rend his heart. He desperately wanted to equip him to cope in the world and to fulfill himself as an artist. Over the months he had led Claudio through the labyrinth of childhood events that had aroused his suspicions that he was not really the Solers' child. Then his euphoria when, at age sixteen, he discovered who his real birth parents had been: María G, a principal dancer in the National Ballet, and Inigo G, chief set designer for the company.

  "They were artists! Artists, Dr. Hudson! Which meant that all the creative impulses I'd always felt were in my genes, that same 'bad seed' he and she despised in me...."

  Claudio, having discovered his true identity, located his aunt and asked her to take him in. His aunt had been thrilled to do so, and then to fight and win a custody battle against the Solers. Claudio, taking back his birth parents' name, refused even to nod at the Solers in court.

  "Perhaps the most ironic aspect," he told Tomás, grinning, "was that they always ridiculed my artwork, because, knowing my birth parents had been artists, they feared I'd inherit their politics."

  For Tomás, Claudio's use of the word "ironic," was the most promising event in the session. If Claudio could find irony in the behavior of the Solers, then perhaps he could begin the process of reframing them in his imagination.