Blood Makes Noise (6 page)

It was during a walk through Recoleta Park that it finally happened. They’d been talking about something trivial. The afternoon breeze was off the pampas, full of March and the snap of camaraderie. Gulliano’s voice had suddenly changed, and with it Michael’s heart leaped and his palms dampened, because he knew, after months of work, that he
had him.
In a tone struggling to remain casual, to brush it off as inconsequential, Gulliano let drop that Michael could, if he was discreet, perhaps glance at the mail of certain individuals of concern to his embassy. Through the blood slamming excitedly in his skull, Michael managed to protest that it was too great a risk to ask of a friend, but Gulliano had waved it away. “In the interest of justice…”

Schmidt’s mail was in the side drawer of Gulliano’s desk, a half a dozen or so letters, all postmarked Germany but for one
from Chile. That would be Schmidt’s brother, who owned a small farm in the Lake District. Michael would steam them open, have an old German couple the station kept on retainer transcribe the contents, seal them again, and have the packet returned the next day. He already knew what the letters would say—pathetic drivel from aunts and uncles back home complaining of shortages and demanding money. There’d be no secret Fourth Reich codes or reminiscences about gas chambers and firing squads.

“You must stay for coffee. I have some West African roast, just the way you like it.” Meaning the way Michael drank it when he was going to school in France.

“If it’s not any trouble, thank you.”

After the third time Gulliano had slipped him somebody’s mail, Michael had suggested that perhaps his friend, who was clearly running a risk, might be incurring certain costs. Surely it was only fair that he be reimbursed by the embassy, say, a hundred dollars a month? Michael knew that was at least double the struggling civil servant’s salary, but he knew also, as he did that first day, that Sobranies didn’t come cheap…

With his bullshit FBI Nazi hunt out of the way, Michael felt free to at least make a stab with Gulliano at some of his real CIA work—the GRU Soviet Personality Reports. He was, of course—despite a direct policy command from Washington—the only spook in the station trying to finish the damn thing. But then he was the only spook there that actually bothered to work for the CIA.

Gulliano handed him a stack of incoming East Bloc mail. Michael didn’t expect any state secrets—those were shipped by pouch—but sometimes the staffs wrote private letters to friends and lovers within Argentina, letters they didn’t want passed through the diplomatic system. It was these letters that could give a small hint about the personalities of his potential targets: who hated his wife, who was broke, who might be looking for a way
out. The staff at those embassies weren’t stupid enough not to at least suspect some of this sort of mail was being read, so there were no outright confessions. Still, if you read between the lines…Michael would do it himself, being the only Russian speaker and damn near the only
Spanish
speaker there. More homework, more nights away from Karen…

On the way out, Michael lingered and looked back at Gulliano, returned now to his work, and treated himself to that first memory. How the thrill had been not unlike the day Kimberly Mann let him clasp her hand when he was twelve. Something pure, almost childlike. A singular instant Michael had never before experienced with another male. The jolt of tasting for the first time the knowledge that someone will betray their government, their work, possibly their life, not for patriotism or money, but for friendship. You never forget your first…

Michael didn’t see as much of Gulliano as he used to. The money changed it. Without anything being said, their relationship had become…business. Still, Michael wouldn’t let Miller or any of the other flatfoots near Gulliano. Like with an old girlfriend, he couldn’t stand the idea of someone else manhandling the slightly built postal clerk who was not only Michael’s first, but the CIA’s first agent-in-place in Buenos Aires.

I
t was dark when he finally got home, and he felt foul with it. Loosening his tie in the foyer, he could see Karen grilling a steak in the kitchen for dinner, her growing belly keeping her nearly a hand’s length from the range. Five months. Five months and their lives would be changed forever.

“Barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. I finally feel like a real Argentine husband.”

She smiled, eyes still on dinner, and he came up and reached around her from behind. She leaned into him and the damp smell of her neck wiped away his day.

“I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I’m sneaky that way.”

His strokes moved south and took on another character. “Your
asada
is going to be
negra
,” she breathed, “again.”

By the end they were lying in a blanket, half in, half out of the garden’s french doors. The night was peaceful, he was peaceful; even the alien constellations seemed on their side.

“How was work?”

“Stupidness. Another day of stupidness.”

“I hate it here. Hate what this place is doing to us. To you. We never talk anymore. Not really. You’re never here, and when you are you’re still not here. You’re still at work…or La Boca…”

He stroked her head absently. “It’s okay. You’ll feel better. It’s just the baby. I’ll be here more…”

She stiffened suddenly and stared fiercely at him. “Don’t work me, Michael. Don’t
ever
work me like one of your johns.”

“I’d never do that.” But he wasn’t sure if he just hadn’t.
Christ. I’m not at work. This is my wife. This is my real life
. He caressed her arm. “I’ll get us out of here, Karen. I promise. I’ll get us out of here…”

And he still wasn’t entirely sure what part of him was speaking.

She went to bed early, and he read till he couldn’t stand the heat or the stare of his living room and went out.

There was a small café on Juramento that served sidewalk cappuccinos. The owner, a transplanted West African who did little but nod, dispensed drinks from a bar behind which a record player spun solely ’30s French cabaret tunes. Michael sat there, the only patron, and listened to the flare of bugs against an electrified lamp, the singing of damp power lines, a bruised recording of Jean Sablon.

Christ, the alienation didn’t help their marriage any. Karen and he had rented a house in the wealthy Belgrano district, a city’s-width away from La Boca. But still his childhood kept creeping in around the edges of his vision, cutting him off from her. To make matters worse, nobody at the American mission would talk to them. To the legit embassy wives, Karen was a spook’s spouse, to be tolerated for cover’s sake but not drawn close. The station support wives and flatfoot spouses had their own inner circle, forged over years here, that effortlessly froze her out. That left the BA oligarchy, the serrated generals’ wives whom Karen loathed. Michael had his work, such as it was, and Karen had nothing. Long, wet days with no one to talk to but a distracted husband slowly turning to smoke…

“Michael.”

That voice. The one that always seemed to come from the hollowed end of dark alleys. He hadn’t heard him come up. But then you never did with Hector.

The crippled deputy head of Argentine military intelligence took a chair beside him. It had been nearly six months since Michael had seen Hector, candlelit beside the embalmed remains of his former employer’s wife. It seemed a thousand.

“Such heat so late in the year.” Hector dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief. “You’re out late, Michael.”

“I could say the same about you.”

“It is my natural condition.”

Hector smiled his Hector smile, but there was something wrong with it.

“How is Karen?”

“Confused. Pregnant. A little pissed off at me tonight.”

“Our life is hard on the ones we love.”

“You’re not married.”

“It is an academic observation.”

Michael toyed with his coffee. “I lie to her every day. About my work, my thoughts, my life, really. It’s become easier than telling the truth.”

“The fear of being truly known. Perhaps it is that, more than anything, that unites people like us.”

“I think I was known only once, and then just for a moment.”

“Where?”

“Italy. A thousand years ago. Her name was Gina. I didn’t know her long, but she’s still the only person who ever stared straight through the chaos in me.”

“What became of her?”

“No idea…”

“You’ve never called her?”

“It was complicated…” His thoughts drifted a beat on the memory before returning reluctantly. “Everything feels so out of control lately…”

“You’re young, Michael. Soon you’ll understand that the basic condition of life is chaos. Given enough time, you’ll even grow
to prefer it that way. And with your abilities, Buenos Aires isn’t forever.”

“It’s sucking the life out of me.”

“Talk to Carmelina, Michael. You must tell these things to your wife, not your coffee.”

Carmelina was Hector’s pet name for Karen, from that night four and a half years ago when the CIA’s first real man in BA stood with his wife, alone on the edge of their third embassy reception, where no one would speak to them. The other foreign missions, the local power elite—none of them had yet figured if Suslov-and-spouse were worth talking to. So they were left standing next to the shrimp bowl, bored, ignored.

Then Hector appeared. Smiling and arms wide with charm, he asked their names, brought them drinks, pointed out who was who and told funny stories about each. They liked him instantly, were flattered by his attention, his smile, his uncliquishness. It wouldn’t be long before Michael learned that a foreign intelligence officer is always the first to bring you a drink.

But that night Hector was just a free radical, a friendly uncle who suggested they three become their own clique. Declaring himself clique president, Hector moved that the first order of business be to adjourn somewhere else. The motion was seconded and passed unanimously.

The night was freezing, and Michael’s tux kept grabbing at his crotch. The cabbie Hector stopped spoke English and turned out to have played two years of AA ball in the Carolina league. When the cabbie asked “Where to?” Hector deferred to the vice president and secretary of the new clique, and the secretary declared, “Music!” Hector mumbled an address to the former third baseman, and soon they were down along the nervous side of the river, past shadowy docks, and finally at a blank door that opened with a hot red gust onto a working-class tango bar.

They took a bug-gut-stained table right up front, their tuxes ludicrous, the lights and noise and arrogant thrusts of the dancers prickly on their skins. They drank, got drunk, laughed, and slurred stories they wouldn’t remember to people they’d never see again. He remembered Hector’s ease with everyone there. That unique confidence with kings and prostitutes, possible only by vice cops and spooks. And somehow Karen ended up on the dance floor, whirled and spun and locked hip to hip with a lustful ship mechanic who kept insisting she was a woman named Carmelina. And Michael remembered Hector’s laugh and his promise that from now on Karen would always be Carmelina to him. He remembered the heat and the music and the bites of his tux. But most of all Michael remembered looking at his wife, sweaty and naughty in the hands of her tango partner, and thinking that he loved her and that their lives here were, after all, going to be good.

The taxi ride home had been a blurry hiss of tires and damp hair. Impossibly, they hailed their AA ballplayer again, and joining in their sloppy harmony he missed the turnoff, plunging through a strange, shuttered neighborhood that with a hollow thump Michael realized was that of his childhood: La Boca. As if a part of his thoughts, Hector had leaned close to his ear and whispered, for the first time in Spanish,
“Welcome home, Michael…”

“How is the Senora?” It’d been several moments of silence before Michael said it. He couldn’t keep his eyes off Hector’s dog-headed cane, the way the light spun off the silver from the café’s single lamp. Its master spoke carefully.

“History is sometimes…difficult.”

“Argentina loves a corpse.”

This nation had an unreal fixation with the remains of their famous. School children here were taught to dutifully recite the last words of national heroes, like San Martin, and celebrated not
their birthdays but the day of their deaths. General Manuel de Rosas, a nineteenth-century strongman who died in England, had been buried there more than a hundred years, yet the government was today using all its wheat power to blackmail a hungry Europe into shipping his moldy bones home. The dead have power everywhere, but nowhere, it seemed, did their bodies themselves speak more forcefully than in Argentina.

“I’ve heard the rumors,” Michael said. Everyone had. That since that night at the CGT five and a half months ago, each time they moved her, no matter how secret the new location, how remote, flowers would follow. Always.

“A woman loves her flowers.” It was perhaps Hector’s first joke, and Michael knew something was wrong. “We have never spoken of that night.” Hector calmed the dog head with soft strokes.

“Then we’re the only two people in BA that haven’t.”

“Do they press you? At work?”

Michael shrugged. “They’ve got their rumors too. Ninth-generation cocktail drivel.”

“These are very strange times. You can feel it everywhere.” On clear nights you could hear it too. The muffled thwack of kitchen bombs. The hiss of spray paint, someone’s thirty seconds of four a.m. courage bled across a wall:
WHERE IS SHE?
The first snips in the fabric of a society deciding if it should unravel completely.

Hector stared down the dark throat of road fronting the café. “Michael, within the confines of our relationship, would you say you trust me?”

He couldn’t place the emotion behind it. “Within the confines of our relationship, I suppose so.”

“I trust you, Michael.”

That silence again. The buzz of damp transformers.

“Michael, I may someday—possibly someday soon—ask you to do something. It will not be a favor but a request. Of someone I trust.”