Blood Makes Noise (28 page)

“You killed military officers.”

“If you want to kill a snake, start with the head.”

“That’s Montonero shit talk. Not that I especially mind killing colonels—I am not terribly fond of most of them myself—but I want to know why
you
do it.”

No one had spoken to Alejandro, save the ghost stories, for ten days. When at last it was Hector himself who sat down one midnight beside the cemetery grate, he could hear in the young man’s voice the relief, the need for human contact. Most who came this far craved it so deeply they wished even for the beatings again—anything to stop the isolation. But this one in a thousand had proved molded of stronger pampa clay, his sanity holding even as everything else weakened.

Alejandro allowed himself a small smile of vanity now, sitting in darkness, listening to Hector’s voice outside the grate.

“Their stupid medals, earned for nothing, peacocks ordering free coffees on sidewalk cafés. They fucking beg for it, man.”

“Who are you, Alejandro Morales?”

Silence.

“What is your life’s meaning?”

“The revolution.”

“That’s a stupid Montonero answer. Your life, Alejandro. What drives
your
life?”

“Her.”

The next night: “Who am I, Alejandro?”

“A state interrogator.”

“Am I like any interrogator you’ve met?”

“No.”

“Then who am I, Alejandro? What drives my life? What do I believe in?
Come
, Alejandro, look in my eyes, look, and tell me what drives my life.”

“…Her.”

“You and I both. Outcasts from our tribes, committed only to Her word. Alone in woods gone dark for years.”

And for the first time he heard the boy sniffle. “Yes…”

“You and I are people apart, Alejandro, and so can make a pact apart. Do you trust me?”

“What a question. Jesus Christ…”

“I come when I say I will. I beat when I say it shall happen. I am a man of my word. Now, within the confines our relationship, do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then listen: you will return to your revolutionary cell. You may continue slaughtering colonels, for I care little of colonels. As I shall continue slaughtering Montonero half-wits. But you and I
are now joined, Alejandro, and when the moment comes, we will answer to duties larger than these.” He paused and let the instant have its twinkling. “I once asked you to tell me what I wanted from you. I ask now again.”

“You want me to work for you.”

“I want us to work together and change the world.”

And the pause was a gust of eternity.

“All right.”

Hector never tired of these moments. Honey from the bosom of the earth. He drank of it, sighed, and climbed to his feet.

“Sleep now, my son. Sleep and know the world has changed.”

The next night Hector was called to Rosario, and one of the goons tipped off the colonels. They took Alejandro out of his cemetery cell, marched him to a depression filled with rotten leaves, and there shot him. It was cold and they had dates waiting so they halfheartedly buried him where he fell, and went home.

He was unearthed by feral dogs looking for dinner.

They’d spent the effort digging him up and were not to be denied easily. One went for his face, and he locked his arm around it and broke its neck. The others reconsidered, gave him room as he rose—half-mud and blood—and climbed from the hollow. He held out a hand in warning, and the dogs slunk away, watched him move stiffly out of the abandoned cemetery and around an elm that shivered as he passed.

The next morning Hector stood over the small cemetery hollow, saw the blood everywhere on the leaves. What a waste, he thought. What a waste…

D
awn coming fast, purple to blue lances over Michael’s shoulder, the air clear and washed, the Bedford’s tires singing on damp asphalt.

He was heading west, morning in his rearview, the autostrada empty and flat, for he was still on the Lombardy plain. Milan died stubbornly in the manner of great plain cities, suburbs breaking reluctantly into light industrial tilt-ups that in turn surrendered to open land filled with the seasonal smell of burning fields; their smoke, in no hurry, drifting like pedestrians over the highway.

His cargo shifted, and Michael felt his head lighten with adrenaline.
Hardly started and I’m a wreck
. Two days flat out, maybe a few hours unconscious on an off-ramp in France somewhere, and it would be over. The tarp he’d tied over the back flapped a steady tattoo, but the truck drove firm enough, issuing occasional grumblings. Giancarlo hadn’t thought of
filling
the truck when he bought it, and Michael had made a fuel stop at a ghostly all-nighter on the autostrada. The attendant had been incurious, and Michael thanked his god for one in what he hoped would be several dozen small favors. He’d bolted two espressos at the bar to help keep his mind framed, and the pressure of that was making itself known now on his bladder.

A hundred miles out of Milan he crossed the Forty-Fifth Parallel, and the plain turned a pinkish chalk. Caesar had earned his fame on that chalk, and it had tempted every generation since—French, Austrians, Goths, Nazis, papal mercenaries. Still
the flowers glowed, the grain flourished, covering over a hundred million boot prints, taking the land, always, back again.

Small hillocks appeared on the smoky plain, standing as gateway sentinels to Asti Province. Beyond them the land began to softly undulate in a motion that a hundred miles further would yield the Alps.

Michael slipped on sunglasses against the building glare. The truck had evened out its hum on the road. He had a headache and his eyes stung, but he was feeling better, more confident…

When the flashing blue light appeared behind him.

A broad, pebbly riverbed fronted the highway, and he could hear the soft rill of shallow water. Alders winked in the breeze, surrounded by plowed fields crinkling with tiny harvest flames.

The Carabinieri four-wheel had just sat there after pulling him over, considering. Michael stayed behind the wheel, fought a thousand possibilities now jockeying for purchase in his mind. Had he been speeding? Didn’t Italian autostradas not have real speed limits? Did he have a taillight out? Did they fucking
know
?

The two Carabinieri officers climbed warily out of their vehicle. White shoulder boards and chest strap, high peaked hats, red-striped blue trousers. A radio blurted distorted unintelligibles. They wore old-fashioned military-style holsters, and as Michael watched in the rearview, they unbuckled the flaps on them.

The driver—older, belly folding over his belt—hung back near the front bumper of the four-wheel as his younger partner moved gingerly along the side of the truck to Michael’s window.

“Good morning.”

He was speaking English. A car shot past and puckered the air, but traffic was light. “May I see your driving papers, please?”

His manner was correct, but he was standing almost completely to the side of the window, as if expecting trouble. Michael
took an international driver’s permit in the name of Gary Phillips from his wallet and passed it over.

“Can you step out of the truck, please?”

Michael opened the door, and the both of them tensed, so he slowed down, kept his hands in view. “Is there a problem?”

“Wait here, please.”

Michael felt his armpits chill as the officer walked back to his partner and compared the driver’s license to something on a clipboard. Another clump of minutes standing there as the air rocked with a passing truck. The older officer got on the radio as the partner watched Michael. The radio conversation went on forever, Michael feeling lightheaded and leaning against the door of the Bedford.

The older officer climbed out of the four-wheel, and the two conversed before the younger partner walked back to Michael, carrying a telex in his hand.

“May I see your passport, please?”

“It’s in the truck.”

“Very well.”

Michael slowly unzipped his overnight in plain view and handed the Gary Phillips passport to the officer.

“What are you doing in Italia?”

“I’m a tourist.”

“Why this truck?”

“I’m moving some things for a friend.”

“What things?”

“A chest with a few belongings.”

At that the older officer edged to the back of the truck, and Michael used every ounce of concentration not to watch him peek under the tarp.

“Where are you moving them to?”

“Torino.”

“And you came from?”

“America.”

“The
truck
.”

“Parma.”

“Your friend lives in Parma?”

“Nearby.”

The driver was tapping the steel box. “Does this open?” he called from the rear.

“No. It’s locked. I don’t have a key.”

“Your friend didn’t give you a key?”

“It didn’t occur to me to ask.”

“May I see the truck’s papers, please?”

He had no idea where the truck had been registered, but it sure as hell wasn’t Parma. If they were following a lead off the cemetery caper in Milan—a witness?—and the truck’s registration read Milan, the water in this pot was going to suddenly heat up several degrees.

Michael opened the glove box and rooted through it, but there was no registration to be found. He stepped back out. “I can’t find it.”

“Where did you get this truck?”

“I rented it.”

“From?”

“A man in Parma.”

“He lived there?”

“I have no idea. That’s where I met him.”

“And he just rented you this on the spot?”

“It’s not much of a truck.”

Michael knew they’d certainly called in the plates and had the owner’s name, that this was a dance to see how long he could keep the balls in the air. Yet they were unsure of something, fishing, and Michael held his narrow ground.

“What was this man’s name?”

“I don’t remember.”

“How were you to return the truck?”

“To a
tabacchi
shop in Parma a friend of his owns.”

The two officers exchanged glances; the younger one sighed and looked at the passport once more. “Is this the correct spelling of your name?”

It was then Michael got a glimpse of the telex. It was in Italian and listed a Michael Suslov, below which in bold lettering read,
WANTED BY AMERICAN FBI. DETAIN. SUSPECT BELIEVED DRIVING A LATE 1950S MODEL LIGHT BLUE BRITISH-MADE TRUCK, HEADING WEST. NO PLATES KNOWN. FORTY-FOUR YEARS OLD, NO CURRENT PICTURE. HOLD FOR CONSULAR OFFICIALS.

He was in a light-blue British truck heading west, but his documents listed him as a thirty-eight-year-old Gary Phillips, not forty-four-year-old Michael Suslov, and so these officers were stalling, waiting to see if he would solve this himself.

The FBI?

Michael couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He stood there swimming in his thoughts, barely heard the red Fiat that passed by slower than the others, hardly noticed even as it stopped, shifted into reverse, and whined back at them.

The popping sounds were like bubble wrap. He looked at the older Carabinieri and the officer looked back not at Michael but way beyond, to something infinitely distant, and there were blooming red circles on his chest swelling and joining, and the officer slumped soundlessly against the sidewall of the truck, crumpling to his knees, head bending to the pavement like a supplicant.

The second officer understood faster than Michael, and his service pistol came out of its holster, the barrel snapping and flaring as he shot at the lingering Fiat, punching windshield blossoms and knocking out pale chunks of radiator. The Fiat driver rolled out his door on the protected side of the car. Michael jumped backward into the truck’s cab as the bubble wrap sounds started
again and there was breaking wood in the truck bed, dully tinkling metal and hornet buzzes over the roof.

The Italian cop was still firing, his gun twice as loud as the other’s machine pistol, and Michael flattened on the cab seat and twisted the ignition. The younger cop tumbled through the open door behind him, muttering obscenities. Michael dragged the cop inside right over the top of himself, released the parking brake, and hit the gas pedal with his fist, launching the truck blindly.

Michael couldn’t see out the windshield, and the steering wheel drifted on its own whim. He was tangled in the muttering cop, felt wetness spread over his stomach and realized the cop must have been shot, heard first tires squeal then horns blow as the truck rocked across lanes, hit the median, and there was shushing grass, another howl from opposing traffic, and a wallop as the truck bashed across a drainage ditch and spun out in the plowed, burning earth.

Michael pushed the cop against the back of the seat, got up, and the view was violent Dutch angles of a rumpled field wrapped in blue haze. The truck was bouncing furiously toward the riverbed, and Michael yanked the wheel. Chunks of mud and charcoaled husks spun up around the windows, and the Bedford slid sideways, the engine screamed, then a tire caught and it bucked along the edge of the short palisade.

Michael was half sitting on the sprawled cop who kept muttering
Motherfucker
. He whipped a glance back at the autostrada—police four-wheel and Fiat still there—and in the jostling confusion now appeared a single figure running resolutely across the top of the ember-strewn furrows at them.

He stomped the gas and the Bedford fishtailed forward, pitching, and there was no way they’d outrun the guy. Not on this dirt. Michael wrenched the truck away from the riverbed, made for a narrow bricked barn standing in the middle of the field. The truck
strained and grinded, and he heard the First Lady of Argentina bounce against the lid of her casket.

The Fiat driver was coming up fast but wasn’t shooting. Not yet. His build was strong but his face was a destroyed mask, and Michael thought of childhood dreams as his mouth dried and stung with smoke.

The truck caught a patch of gravel, spat, and he gunned it along the wall of the barn, shuddered around the back, and drove in through a pair of open doors. The inside was high and stacked with hay rolls, light arcing through spaced hollow bricks. Michael forced the Bedford through tumbling bales, stopped, left the truck idling while he closed the barn doors shut and bolted them.