Open Pit (16 page)

“Benoît!” Aida chides, taking one for herself. As she does, her hand comes into the briefest contact with Carlos`s. His palm is dry and warm, unlike her own, which is unpleasantly sweaty. If anything, the city air is denser and more pungent than yesterday. “I don't think the people who are trying to hurt us would come here — to this demonstration.” Her defense emerges before she's had time to think it through, and Aida searches Carlos's eyes, looking for proof that he deserves it.

“I hope I will not cause you any trouble at all,” he says earnestly. “I came by to see if any of you would consider discussing with me what interactions you've had so far with the police.”

He's old. But still good-looking. Authoritative, though Aida can't figure out what makes him seem that way. The voice? The hair? She hears her mother telling her she should be more wary of older men. What Danielle has never understood is that it's exactly wariness that repels Aida from men her own age. She filters out inexperience and game-playing. Older men are direct — even when they intend to use you. Still, as an offering to her invisible mother, Aida decides to reserve judgment on Carlos. For now.

“I want to ensure that you are treated with respect,” Carlos continues, but he doesn't get any further because Marta Ramos has appeared.

“Here you are,” she says, her face unusually severe. “Again.” Aida looks between her and Carlos: these two know each other?

“Marta. I came in support of the spirit of your event. And to offer my assistance to these Canadians.”

But Marta doesn't seem to be listening, which reignites Aida's protective urge towards her new acquaintance.

“As you know, I have a greater chance of controlling the police than you,” Carlos adds.

“Coddle, yes. Control. . . ?”

Carlos's smile fades. “You're being unfair, Marta. I only —”

“Okay!” Marta says over him, reverting to her poor English. “Everyone, Pedro is ready. Maybe you go home a leetle bit early today.”

Aida watches the others nod obediently, preparing to leave in the direction Marta is pointing, back across the plaza. Like lambs. Aida stands her ground. As of this morning, it appears that her mother is writing on behalf of the kidnappers, a fact that, in truth, Aida doesn't doubt. The kidnappers are toying with the press. But from the tone of the piece, Danielle is more than their middleman. Like Neela, she's prone to seeing the world through the lens of victimhood. Her mother has always been susceptible to thinking she feels other people's pain. It's easier for her to deal with than her own, or Aida's. Since reading about that horrible man, Aida has been struggling all morning to keep a positive frame of mind, and she doesn't need Marta robbing her of the one personal contact she's enjoyed all day.

But to her surprise, Carlos is giving in like the rest. He bows, excuses himself politely and waves goodbye.

Aida trails the others to the car, where Marta issues a warning that Aida is forced to translate. “Carlos Mendoza Reyes is a man our country owes a debt to for his bravery in our civil war. But he has important political ambitions and a lot to gain by ingratiating himself with many different people, even while he remains close to Mitchell Wall.”

Benoît crosses his arms and whistles, Sylvie shakes her hair, and Ralph sighs, all of them united in judgment. Aida's face remains neutral. As soon as she can, she jumps into the car and stares straight out her window all the way home.

4:05 PM
. 33 KM southeast of previous campsite

The hostages are spending the day in an actual house. Just a one-room adobe shanty, but it has an owner, which makes it ten million times better than that rotting shed, as exciting as theatre. He was sitting in a corner on his haunches when they arrived. Looked about seventy, with the palest beige button-down, through which Danielle could see a patch of grey chest hair. He had exceptionally long arms that ended in a pair of skeletal hands. It was only through sheer discipline that Danielle tore her eyes from him and put down her tarp for sleep, worried that he might leave before she woke up. The others obviously felt the same, arranging themselves in nearly a line so that they could look until their eyes drooped closed. This man might be capable of something — a great performance, of telling them their ordeal is nearly over, that his house is their last stop. But when Danielle awoke around noon, he was still squatting in exactly the same place, smoking the cigarettes Cristóbal gave him and saying nothing.

Now Danielle feels the hope she and the others have shared — of an ally or a show or a miracle — thinning, blowing away with the man's languorously exhaled smoke. He's only changed positions once since lunch, to go out and piss. They all overheard the stubbornly healthy-sounding stream.

Pepe only reappears after his usual absence, just before supper. He nods briefly at the man, who responds with a single, slow bat of his turtle-like eyelids. Danielle is busy trying to figure out how the two might know one another — from their home village? the war? — when Pepe turns to address her. “
Venga,
” he says, calling her away as he has each time before.

Danielle's heart rises and drops simultaneously. She actually wants to go, break up the monotony. But as she gets up, she hears at least one tongue click among the others, and she is miserable at the idea of whatever supply of goodwill is left being squandered through more suspicion.

Pepe walks Danielle past the man's small farmyard, in which bony, nearly featherless chickens dart around, straining their pink necks towards invisible specks of food. At a certain distance he tells her to sit down on the bare ground, under tree cover, as always.

“When you take me away, they think I'm collaborating,” she says.

“Be quiet.”

Danielle reddens. What's coming is inevitable. More horrific stories. More scribbling. There's no arguing it away. But instead of pulling out pen and paper, Pepe reaches back and tugs out his phone — the one he so inexplicably pulled apart and put back together. Stunned, Danielle lets herself imagine that Pepe is about to give it to her. A reward for her help. He's going to let her call home. She'll be a hero to the group. She hears Aida answering: “Danielle?” (Aida only ever calls her by her first name.) “Is it really you?” But Pepe puts the phone down in front of him and stares at it wordlessly. His gaze is impatient. This is what he looked like that other time, too. He's only waiting for a call from whoever out there works with him — for him. Out, Danielle thinks with sudden despair, in the world of people who move freely, who do whatever they want, eat and sleep what and where they want. And so the phone takes on a sinister aspect. It will lead nowhere except to more help for Pepe.

“We'll hear it ring soon,” Pepe says, speaking quietly. “I will listen first. Then you will talk. You will say you have a report. You will read this.” He shoves some papers towards her. Danielle is momentarily confused, then realizes this is the second report she wrote, that what she saw before was Pepe delivering the first one. Is it already published, then? She can't know. Doesn't want to. Doesn't want any part of Pepe's justifications to the outside world. The others are right to be suspicious. She's becoming as much of an accessory to this kidnapping as whoever's about to call. She shakes her head.

“Yes, you will,” Pepe says and spits loudly to one side. “Or I will shoot one of them.”

“You wouldn't —”

Pepe grabs Danielle's wrist, wrenching it painfully. “Tell the caller to take down your report, that it should be signed in your name. They should deliver it to the media tonight.” Then he throws her wrist back at her like it's contagious.

To keep calm, Danielle tells herself his behaviour is the result of mental illness. First he thinks his phone's bugged. Now he doesn't want to use his own voice, making her his stand-in. It's schizophrenia. Bi-polar disorder. Looney Tunes.

But Pepe appears unsatisfyingly sane as they sit in a strained silence. Only after an excruciatingly long time does the phone finally begin to vibrate. Who can it be? The only image that fits is a stock character from a film noir, standing in a tipped fedora at a payphone on a foggy
LA
street corner. Pepe answers and turns away.

Danielle waits, noting the construction of his head in profile, his eyelashes long enough to reach past the edges of the eyeholes in his ski mask, parting and closing at a furious pace, registering the intake of information like telegraph needles — a sign of bad news? Confirmation that things are going well? His hand presses the phone to his ear as if it's a seashell and inside the secrets of the world are swishing around. Suddenly, he pushes the phone at her. “
Ahora,
” he says, and Danielle takes it, feeling its heft, the moisture where Pepe's palm has just been.

She wants to let it drop. He's crazy. But Pepe tenses threateningly, and Danielle puts it to her ear. She hears a voice speaking Spanish. “. . . I am going to hang up now.”

“No. No.
Tengo un informe,
” she croaks back across the line. I have a report.

Her interlocutor, a man, sucks in his breath. Obviously it's as unexpected to him as it is to her to be connected this way. What a tight operation her captor is running, everyone working on a need-to-know basis. Danielle receives no verbal reply, only breathing. She has an odd sensation she can't identify, something not right about the moment, about the person on the other end of the line. It makes her free hand tighten into a fist. Anxiety. The madness catching. She launches into her text.

By the time she finishes, she's crying all over again at the story of Pepe's family's murder and at her knowledge that this report is going to be read by a lot of people, including Aida. She'll be hurt. Her deadbeat mom's name attached to such words. Danielle can't do anything about it.

Then the line goes dead and Pepe grabs back all his communications links — the phone, its invisible satellite, the papers full of her own words — leaving Danielle utterly empty-handed.

August 30, 1980

Dear Neela,

Adrian and I are through. I'm going to tell him next time he's in camp. I'm sure it bores you to hear about him all the time. It bores me. I didn't come here to go gaga over some guy. But I can't seem to focus on anything else anymore. We're always saying goodbye. I end up feeling so desperate. I'm not going to do it anymore.

Sometimes I just want to leave. Then what would he do? Come back here and find that I decided to get out early, that I followed one of those groups leaving for Honduras. He'd never see me again.

To be honest, it would be a relief. People in the camps are so crude. They don't seem to know it's not normal to live this badly. It's hard not to feel like they're being used. It's confusing though, because they seem to believe in the war more than anyone. I swear, we're from different planets. I am sick to death of theirs.

DB

SATURDAY
APRIL 9

12:45 PM
.
San Salvador

Aida is wandering around. There isn't much else to do at this time of day after Pedro drops them at the usual spot and before the demonstration gets going. It's her third afternoon in a row at the cathedral, and both the fear and the novelty have worn off. She's pretty sure she won't come again.

The other families are trying to keep up their enthusiasm. Aida can see them a few feet off, Benoît and Sylvie huddled in serious discussion, likely parsing the minutiae of the news surrounding the kidnapping, Ralph beside them with a hand in his pocket, listening in, his dark sunglasses making it hard to judge what he makes of their chatter. Aida sighs. These are her people — for now. She bends to fix the strap on one of her sandals.

“Hello again,” says a voice behind her, in English. Just like last time. Carlos Reyes.

Aida bolts upright, surprised and excited. “Hello,” she says, then remembers her resolution to remain on her guard. “Hello,” she repeats, more seriously, and turns towards the others, as if to join them.

“Would you be free to have a coffee?” Carlos asks, stepping closer.

A coffee. The most interesting person Aida's met since arriving in El Salvador wants to take her for coffee. But there are the others to consider. Aida promised herself in the morning to be extra nice. Though no one's said anything, she can tell they're upset by Danielle's bizarre involvement with the kidnapper, this writing she's done for “Enrique.” Aida has to work against the possibility that she'll be excluded by the other families over questions about Danielle's loyalties — or her sanity — if any more articles show up.

“It's going to start soon,” she says, smiling apologetically. She glances towards the steps of the cathedral. Marta should be up there somewhere by now. She's not going to approve of more interactions with Carlos either.