Blood Makes Noise (37 page)

Gina took Alejandro into the cottage, laid him down, and did what she could with her vet bag. Michael tried to sleep and for his trouble got amphetamine-warped half dreams of blood and Argentina, waking from them exhausted, his clothes soaked and clinging, Alejandro groaning incoherently on the couch.

Michael stepped outside, and it was nearly sunset. He popped an amphetamine, felt the sweat on his body chill, and looked out across the breezy mudflats, the disorganized farms climbing the hillside, the toffee-colored bay. The Pyrénées sat in hazy distance, old with rounded, gentle tops, pushing the coast farther to sea, and that was the Spanish border that he, Gina, and Alejandro—if he lived—would try for tonight.

Gina offered him an espresso she’d rounded up inside. Michael sipped it like a child, and they both watched the day sink behind mountains as dark clouds raced the sun, their torn undersides bleeding pink. “Have you eaten?” she asked.

“No.”

“You should.”

“In Spain.”

Inside, Alejandro shouted out in dreamy agony, and it should have fried Michael’s nerves, but he had nothing left to fry and so just stared at the sunset. “I gave him some morphine,” she said, “some antibiotics. He’s bleeding inside.”

“He’s bleeding everywhere.”

“It’s the inside that’ll kill him.”

“I think I’m losing it. I keep seeing things, in the dark.”

“I’m here.”

He looked at her bag. “Do you have anything for pets losing their minds?”

“We just put them to sleep.”

Michael held her hand. “I think that was your first joke.”

“How did I do?”

“Terrible.”

She pressed herself against him, and he let his face rest in her hand. Over the Pyrénées a last defiant shot of sunset had caught the clouds, and the horizon exploded one last time. There were insects in the grass, and Alejandro’s screams on the couch.

“I think it will be a good thing when this is over,” Gina said.

H
ector napped till four o’clock. He rose, bathed, put on the old suit coat and a new tie he bought the day before near the Prado. The villa on Calle de Navalmanzano hummed with heat and the snores of siesta. Even the flies drowsed. Though rest never failed him, Hector did not like sleep as a rule and found naps especially bad for the soul. But the General would nap—would nap until Hector returned his dead wife and would only wake then if Lopez Rega said it was okay.

He could see through the window a sedan pull up to the villa’s gates. One of Franco’s drivers. Michael had chosen his own route, his own schedule, but from what Hector could glean from his French contacts, from what he knew of the boy himself, Hector felt sure Michael would make the journey into Spain tonight. Hector would let Franco’s driver take him across the dry plains to the border crossing he had arranged a thousand million years ago in Beatty, Nevada, and wait.

It had been hot that day too in Beatty, with tiny grains of sand aloft as time tried to bury them all early. Hector felt a grain of sand strike his cheek through the sedan’s passenger window. He held it between fingers and crushed its sandstone core. Time would have to wait one more night.

There were no crickets, and the silence as they left after sundown was total but for gusts of salty wind. The cottage, lifeless once
more, receded on the unlit street as they chanced the small road that webbed southward into the foothills.

Alejandro was still breathing. He sat between Gina and Michael, the dog morphine forcing his eyes open to cartoon size. He held a soaked compress to his belly and he didn’t moan, though his teeth chattered occasionally. He spoke to Michael in Spanish, dreamy, drugged. “She is the light, the mother of the revolution.”

“She’ll be safe.”

“We didn’t trust the government. We didn’t even trust Perón. Not in bringing Her home.”

“Perón will bring Her home. We’ll see to it.”

Alejandro’s eyes were frozen open, unblinking. “I may still have to kill you.”

“I understand.”

Gina tried to pretend she wasn’t listening and heard the sound of a helicopter.

“Turn off the lights,” Alejandro said. She did. They slowed and crept in darkness, the treeless, wind-battered land around them emerging as moonscape.

Michael held a penlight in his mouth and a map in his lap. “Take the next right. Toward Col de Banyuls.”

“Will someone be waiting?” Gina asked.

“Only if we’re unlucky.”

The wind that never stopped shook the low brush just over the Spanish border. Generations spent on the exposed flank of the Pyrénées bred them thick and low to the ground. They hissed first this way, then that, and Hector thought himself kin to them: bred thick, low to the ground, flexible to shifting winds.

The customs post was small, little more than a shack and striped barrier bar. A single dirt road ran off in both windy
directions, and not much disturbed the three Guardia Civil officers’ evenings of pulp magazines and TV. Hector’s driver carried with him a letter from Franco himself to the effect that one Michael Suslov and cargo were not to be disturbed or detained in any way, whatever hysterics the officers heard over their radios from the French or Italians. Or Americans.

One letter, three guards, a quiet little adjustment of routine quickly forgotten by everyone involved.

The road went gravel and they drove slower, in deference to the steepening terrain, in deference to French police officers Michael imagined around each bend. There was little moon but you could see, far off, the faint winking of white caps on the Mediterranean. The truck growled through its gears.

No one seemed to be on the road anywhere, and Michael wasn’t sure if he should be thanking God for the favor. Ahead, the ridgeline appeared faintly, and that meant Spain. The French had their border checkpoint down the mountain, nearer town, and by sidestepping it on a dirt track, all that remained between them and the border would be the Spanish post.

Hector waited in the sedan with Franco’s driver. It would be dawn in less than two hours, and he hoped Michael would be out of France before then. He longed for an espresso, Italian-style, and was surprised when the local guards hadn’t at least offered him some Spanish instant coffee. No matter. Hector smiled to the driver, let himself out, and trudged against the wind, with his cane, toward the guards’ duty shack.

Amber light spilled from the doorway; the soft purr of Spanish military frequencies carried on the wind. Hector stepped into the shack. There was a warm kettle, half-drunk plastic coffee cups…

And no guards.

Hector stepped back into the wind. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. When the land around him came back, he saw his car and driver were missing. In their place, standing in the clearing, were Lopez Rega, two young malevolent men Hector didn’t recognize, and Ed Lofton. “Good morning, Hector. Or nearly morning. You look good.”

“You look exactly the same.”

Lofton smiled. Hector turned to Lopez Rega. “This your idea, Lopez?”

“I work only for the interests of the General.”

“Ah. And is he aware of this particular interest?”

“Your Michael Suslov is a wanted criminal, endangering the vessel of our nation’s beloved Evita. We want what you want, Hector: her safe return with the General to Argentina.”

Hector’s eyes went back to Lofton. “I suppose this has nothing to do with the money?”

“It always had to do with the money, Hector,” Lofton said. “Just ask Evita’s brother, Juan.”

Hector drifted back over the decades to that night with him, Perón, and Juan Duarte’s official suicide. He sighed. So many suicides. Pity, really.

Lofton again: “You’ll get her back, Hector. Clean as a whistle. Argentina will be saved. There’s enough of the Senora for everyone.”

Hector turned to Lopez Rega. “I never thought the money would matter to you, Lopez.”

“The General cannot last long after his return. You’ve seen him. A year? Two? Then it will be Isabel’s turn. She will need the money, Hector, to help the poor. To secure her reputation…”

“To become Evita.”

“There will be only one Evita. But the beloved Senora will be in Her crypt, and Isabel will live, will carry on the Senora’s work, and I will be right beside her, guiding her…”

“You’ve forgotten one thing, Lopez.”

“What is that?”

“You can only become a hero in our country after you’re dead.”

Lopez Rega smiled. “Dear Hector. Perón’s favorite. And Edelmiro’s before that. And Ramirez’s before he. And how many before Ramirez? I’ve done your horoscope, Hector Cabanillas, read your signs, and I think you can become Isabel’s favorite too.”

They could hear the truck engine. Lofton craned his neck down the dirt path for a glimpse of headlights. One of Lopez Rega’s men raised the striped barrier bar, and the other rested a machine pistol against his leg.

“Well, don’t be rude,” Lofton said to Hector. “Go and welcome them.”

Around a bend the post came up suddenly, and Gina braked to a stop at the concrete marker dividing France from Spain. The barrier bar was open and a single figure stood in the road. Dark and backlit by the guard shack, it leaned on a dog-headed cane.

Michael got out as Hector stepped up and grabbed his arm. “Michael. Michael. You made it. You’re injured.”

“Just mortally.”

“We’ll get you a doctor immediately.” Hector set off to the cab. Leaned in and saw Alejandro ashen faced on the seat. “Alejandro. My son.”

“Hector…”

“I knew you and Michael would find each other. Are you hurt badly?”

“He’s dying,” Gina said.

“No one need die, my lady. Not now.” He touched Alejandro’s face, icy and wet.

“Don’t let them take Her…” the young man wheezed.

Hector glanced at the passenger in the backseat and shook his head in amazement. “Remarkable.” He swept back Alejandro’s hair. “We are an understanding apart. You and I. Do not worry about the Senora’s safety. She is with us, both of us, now.” Alejandro nodded. Hector backed out and turned to Michael beside him. “Please. Michael. Climb back inside.” Hector spoke brightly, enthusiastically.

“Why?”

“Let’s get you out of France, no? Just a few meters, and we can make it official.”