His Own Man (36 page)

“We traded the classic
Fancy meeting you here …
and got to chatting. He told me he’d been living in the States close to four years and was the deputy at your embassy. ‘Fine career you’ve
got,’ I remarked. ‘Number two in Washington at your age, not bad.’ He laughed again, modestly this time. I told him then that I’d left active service but was doing consulting work. I asked if he was expecting anyone, to which he replied no. He thanked me for the invitation to join our table but made clear that he preferred to remain at the bar. He’d be leaving shortly, he added, and wouldn’t be staying for the second set. We exchanged business cards before saying goodbye.

“I thought I’d never see him again, but a week later he called and asked if my consulting allowed time for extended lunches. He wanted to have me to his house, only he was living in Chevy Chase. It wasn’t all that far, but the suburb was somewhat removed from downtown. ‘Lot of snow out that way,’ I commented, trying to get out of the invitation. ‘A lot of snow,’ he agreed, but he insisted. The following Friday, I left my car at the embassy parking lot and we drove to his house together.”

Eric paused to catch his breath. Quite possibly he was also gauging how much to tell of the encounter.

“It was snowing pretty hard. At first, we were kind of quiet, other than a comment now and then about the city, its traffic, its museums and galleries, and, above all, its jazz clubs. I found out that he loved jazz, which I hadn’t realized. He knew a great deal about the subject, as far as I could tell. I still didn’t have any idea what he might want from me, since, for obvious reasons, we wouldn’t be able to talk about old times, as usually happens in these situations.

“Along the way, we chatted about US politics. Maybe that’s what he was interested in, as the embassy’s number two. Trading playing cards with someone he assumed to be an expert on the subject. I also got to thinking that he might want to sound me out as to what kind of file the CIA had on him. Because, at one point, he’d said something like, ‘Sooner or later, things are going to end up changing in Brazil.’ He might have been concerned about that. We talked about Jimmy Carter and what
he represented on the American political scene. We spoke of Iran, of the student demonstrations against the shah, of the dead and wounded, and what all of this might lead to. Then we moved on to terrorism in Europe, the assassination of Aldo Moro, the return to democracy in Spain, those kinds of topics. All things considered, we managed to avoid Uruguay without much effort.”

Eric described that day as though he were reliving it. “The snow was falling more heavily by the time we arrived. The house was big, one of those typical suburban homes. There were toys piled up in the front entry and hallway leading to the living room, but no children in sight. They were at school, Max explained, before noticing that it was cold in the house too. Actually, it was colder inside than out, or that was my impression, given the dampness. He quickly apologized, looking rather surprised himself.”

The unexpected
,
which always makes its presence felt at the wrong time
.

“His wife came out to complain, having just realized herself that there was a problem with the heat. Evidently, she’d gone back to bed after taking the kids to school. Annoyed, she barely acknowledged my presence and glared at me. I found it strange, thinking maybe Max had forgotten to say he’d be bringing a guest to lunch. Why else would she treat me hostilely, without even a hint of a smile? For someone like me, who had spent so many years living in South America, a stern look from a woman was a bad sign.”

I took a deep breath, frightened by what would be coming next. My poor, dear friend Marina. Just what had she gotten herself into?

“At any rate, I picked up on the unpleasant vibe between us, or between the two of them, I don’t know. Max and I had a drink. During lunch, his wife rejoined us. And once again, she hardly spoke to me. Or to him, as a matter of fact … Max,
however, was quite lively. He’d opened a bottle of red wine and talked for all three of us. There were indications he’d be invited to work in the president’s office when he returned to Brasilia. At the recommendation of one of his former bosses. He mentioned that the move would be very good for his career. But there was something strange in the air, something that went beyond his wife’s silence. At one point, Max leaned toward her and softly asked a question in Portuguese. It sounded like, ‘What’s up with you?’ Or ‘Anything wrong?’ I didn’t detect the slightest animosity in his voice. Just concern. He sensed she wasn’t quite herself yet had no way of identifying the cause. And the damnedest thing is that he was right, as I well knew, something was indeed wrong. Because even if she didn’t know me, I knew her a little too well. And although she had no way of knowing that, she’d sensed it. A matter of instinct.”

The hour of the wolf …
I thought. Why not? If it was snowing so heavily out there? And the climate inside that house had also proved to be quite chilly?

“Years before, at a social dinner a few days after his arrival in Chile, Max had told an agent of ours that he would no longer be cooperating with us as he’d done in Montevideo. Training the police forces. He’d been polite but firm. He claimed he’d changed sectors within the embassy. When I was informed of the fact, I suggested that my people keep an eye on him in any event. Standard procedure, even when the split is on friendly terms. One of my colleagues handed the task off to the Chilean secret service. And they tailed him.

“After a month, the Chileans determined that he was clean. He had indeed taken charge of the embassy’s commercial affairs, with a brief stint in the consular sector. So I ordered the operation to be suspended. But the Chileans continued to track Max on their own, now on a weekly basis. Three months later, I received a curious message from my agent in Santiago. There was something on Max’s wife that might be of interest to us. I asked
what it had to do with. And then the photos arrived. Personal delivery, marked top secret. In an envelope addressed to me.”

It was the most delicate moment of our conversation. Either I put on the brakes right then or we’d all be tumbling downhill, Marina, Paolo, Max, and me. To this day I have no idea why I kept quiet. It wasn’t out of morbid curiosity, or lewd voyeurism. I simply remember that I felt completely helpless, unable to react.

“The envelope contained a series of photos of Max’s wife snorting cocaine with a young Italian man. According to the DINA report, the two got it on several times a week at his place, in the morning or afternoon. Sometimes at night, when Max was traveling. And there was coke aplenty. The police did a sweep of the apartment while the Italian was attending a party at Max’s house. He’d been to several social dinners at the couple’s home. From the photos (some even taken at Max’s house), the two men appeared to get along with one another. The sentiment was probably forced in the Italian’s case, but genuine in Max’s.

“The cocaine was of the highest quality, as analyses revealed. The DINA team went over the Italian’s apartment with a fine-tooth comb. The guy wasn’t a dealer. As the police gradually discovered, he’d give two or three grams to friends in exchange for some favor. At first we didn’t know where the stuff had come from. Until our bugs recorded that the Italian was planning to go after more. So I had my agent alert our people in La Paz. And we never again heard of the poor guy. Even though the Italian embassy in Bolivia was always asking for our help. Just our bad luck that the fellow was the nephew of an Italian senator. These mishaps happen sometimes. And there was nothing we could have done. The Italian ended up at the bottom of Lake Titicaca in a burlap sack with a weight tied to his feet. We never imagined it would come to that. But at the time we were also interested in discouraging trafficking, even among sometime users. His Indian friends went down with him, poor wretches. Each in a burlap sack.”

How many others had suffered the same fate?

“At any rate, it ended up being very unsettling having lunch with that sullen-faced woman, whose personal life I knew so much about. Who was now blatantly snubbing me, as if she sensed what had happened at my doing. Odd, don’t you think?”

Another pause to collect his thoughts. “At some point during lunch, my embarrassment did in fact make me uncomfortable, as if I were invading her privacy simply by being there, seated at her table. Especially since, along with the photos of the two snorting coke, I’d received many others of … well …”

It was too much, even for him. He had the decency to change the subject then. And veered down a path that allowed me at least to catch my breath. “But the strangest part of that lunch happened later. After dessert, which we ate alone, Max and I. Because his wife, what was her name again?”

“Marina.”

“That’s it … 
Marina
. She didn’t stay for dessert. She excused herself, got up from the table, and left without waiting for coffee. And so we went back out to the closed-in porch, where we’d had our drinks earlier. The only more or less warm part of the house, I might add. When we’d arrived, Max had brought out an electric space heater.”

I knew that at that point, Marina was up in her room packing her bags. In a few minutes, she’d leave that house for good.

“The yard was lovely, all covered in snow. I’ve always liked snow. Outside the city, of course. Nice and white, the kind that doesn’t turn into mud, making our lives difficult. We were standing out there, the two of us, holding our coffee cups, in front of the picture windows overlooking the deserted yard, when he apologized for his wife’s behavior. He said something like, ‘I don’t know what’s gotten into her.’ I waved it off, indicating he need not worry about it. We must have both let out a sigh, meaning
women …
” Here Eric smiled.

“Then, maybe to shift gears, Max pointed to a snowman in the middle of the yard. ‘My kids say that’s me out there,’ he said, laughing. And I laughed too. Until I looked more closely. The snowman had no eyes, nose, or ears. No carrot or other vegetables. The poor thing didn’t even have arms, the kind made with twigs or sticks, nothing. It was just two balls of snow, a big one for the body and a smaller one for the head. That was it.”

“A work in progress,” I ventured.

“Maybe … I don’t know … I found it strange. I’d had three glasses of wine at lunch and remember kidding with Max, ‘That snowman needs a drink,’ to which he replied, ‘Who doesn’t?’ With that, we finished our coffee, I hit the loo, and we returned to Washington.

“On the ride back, our conversation revisited the international scene. This time, as I recall, we talked solely of the Camp David Accords, and wondered if we’d finally see a longer-lasting peace process in the Middle East. It almost seems like a joke remembering that today.… At no point did we mention Uruguay. And at no point did the omission bother us, or seem to represent anything out of the ordinary. It was as if the country, where we’d once lived, had been wiped off the map. As in fact it was. For many years.”

He’d made the remark in the tone of someone who’d had nothing to do with the fraudulent 1973 elections, which had led to the dissolution of Congress and the suspension of the Uruguayan constitution, as well as the banning of the unions, censorship of the press, and all kinds of upheaval, resulting in imprisonments, torture, and deaths — in a process that had put the military in power. He spoke as if he hadn’t financed the opposition and the country’s conservative forces, to the tune of millions and millions of dollars, and destabilized the government in countless ways, just as he’d done in Chile for years. Instead, he’d studied his fingernails, as if suddenly realizing that they were due for a trim.

He’d actually said,
the country had been wiped off the map
. I’d heard him quite clearly. And noted something in his tone, which suggested a rupture with the past. It was hoping for a lot from that man, I know. By that point, however, I was exhausted. Drained by the conversations, the booze, the comings and goings in the labyrinths of that garage and its secrets, the painful references to Marina, what had been said and left unsaid.…

It was time to leave. Weariness had set in for good this time. The heat around us, moreover, had become unbearable. An hour earlier, when Eric had flipped the light switch in his garage, he’d also turned on a temperamental air conditioner, which hadn’t been up to the task. How could it, considering the ultracentrifuge energy contained in each of those boxes? We ambled down the last aisle of shelves toward the door that would take us back to the house. Just as I was starting to rehearse my goodbyes, however, Eric stopped in front of a box. I raised my eyes to the label he was pointing at. And there were the three magic words, along with their corresponding numbers:
Sam Beckett
,
Montevideo
,
1970–1973
. The symbols reverberated with the intensity of an epitaph.

“A present for you,” my host announced formally, lifting the box into his arms. With the offering, Eric was neither claiming victory nor surrendering. He knew I had judged and condemned him. But he sensed I hadn’t crucified him. And that in itself, at the end of his life, was enough. As such, he was now
offering me a gift for having shown mercy, by not dealing him the coup de grâce he might have imagined he deserved.

“
For me?
” I asked, not knowing how to react.

“Yes for you. Who else? This is where I found you.”

“The letter …”

“A copy, but perfectly legible. Faithful to the original you wrote Max on April 5, 1973. Thirty-three years ago.”

The reference to the exact date cast a solemnness on the scene we were going through. As if it dignified Eric’s belated appearance on the stage where he’d performed for so many years. The final act … except, of course, for the one that would eventually bring together his daughter, son-in-law, and a few friends from his Friday lunch group one rainy afternoon at his grave site.

“At the time, none of my Montevideo agents had the patience to read that letter. It was in Portuguese, a language I alone of our group would have understood. Even so, it never made it into my hands. Because, in the eyes of whoever tried to decipher it, it seemed confused and repetitive. And, at first glance, it was.”