Mapuche (27 page)

Jana had listed three airfields where María might have been taken for a night flight, one south of the city, two north. Rubén was returning from the San Miguel flying club, where all the pilots had provided information about their flights on the night of the kidnapping. It was now past noon, a stormy heat was making the air in the car sticky, and the mufflers of the stacked-up cars were rumbling. He passed depressing areas saturated with billboards, tediously flashy shopping areas that had been inflicted on them since the triumph of Wal-Mart and financial capitalism, a tacky hedonism smoking over the void that would soon submerge the planet. Bar-coded despair; Rubén was thinking about lethal waves when he turned off toward the residential suburb of El Tigre.

An area where the well-born used to have vacation homes at the turn of the twentieth century, the little city of El Tigre was located at the entrance to the eponymous delta that extended north of the capital. Rowing clubs, swimming clubs, and cricket clubs: on weekends, people from Buenos Aires crowded around the open-air cafes in the marina, from which they travelled the canals in wooden boats of an old-fashioned luxury. The houses here were surrounded by flowers and had large gardens and carefully tended lawns. The storm had given way to wicked sunbreaks during which the puddles on the asphalt glistened: according to the map, the airfield was located not far from the city.

A field of lush grass was followed by a marsh. A few cattle ready for export were grazing there, half-asleep; beyond the barbed wire, Rubén spotted the red and white windsock at the airfield, inflated by the breeze. He stopped the car at the end of the dry land that served as a parking lot and stretched his shoulder muscles.

A dilapidated shed with closed shutters stood next to the gas station at the edge of the runway. Too small to have a control tower, the El Tigre airfield consisted of a corrugated iron hangar, a prefab office, and a training plane, which was sitting on the tarmac—a little two-seater with faded white paint. A country airfield, deserted, where time seemed suspended. Rubén made his way past the office, glanced briefly at the plane on the runway, and walked to the hangar. Another plane was parked at the back of the hangar, a Cessna 185. Neither pilot nor mechanic anywhere around. He retraced his steps, moving along in the shadow of the buildings.

A fan perched on a stained counter was blowing around the damp air in the main office. An obese man was halfheartedly wiping his brow in front of a computer screen; bits of greasy paper rolled into balls were lying near the keyboard. Valdés, the manager of the flying club and head pilot, hardly raised his head when he saw Rubén come in. He had played forward on a high-level rugby team, and had even thought for a while of going pro before being taken down a peg by the steroid-charged players from Tucumán. Valdés had completed his pilot's certification and because afterward he got no exercise, he'd gained fifty kilos in pizza, which he seemed in no hurry to lose.

Rubén showed him his detective's badge.

“I'd like to talk to one of your pilots,” he said, peering into the adjoining room. “It looks like there isn't anyone . . . ”

Disturbed just as he was having an electronic success, Valdés raised his walrus-like chin.

“What do you want with my pilots?”

“How many of you work here?”

“My secretary is far along in her pregnancy and I have to deal with the paperwork all by myself,” he replied gruffly. “There's only Del Piro. When he's here.”

“Is he one of your pilots?”

“The only one. Except for me. But I no longer fly very much,” the big man added.

“I can see that. Where is he, this Del Piro?”

“He took a week off to do a training course in acrobatics. Why?”

“You have no other instructors?”

“Haven't for the past two years,” the head pilot said. “There's an economic crisis, have you heard?”

Rubén looked at the dusty shelves and the file drawers behind the guy.

“Was the acrobatic ace on duty at the end of last week?” he asked.

“Don't know,” Valdés replied. “Here we give lessons, not information.”

The old rugby man went back to his computer screen, moved a few electronic cards in the cooling breeze of the fan. Rubén leaned over the counter and pulled the plug. Valdés's face looked like that of a forward before the scrum.

“What's your problem?”

“A night flight,” Rubén said. “Do you keep a record of what happens here or are your planes there for show?”

Valdés stared at him with sullen eyes. The detective didn't blink.

“Open that damned register.”

The swiveling fan blew in his direction.

“There's no law that says I have to do that, fellow,” he replied.

“It will take you two minutes. Maybe two years in the joint if you refuse to cooperate. I'm conducting an investigation into a murder that also interests the cops, and I'm sure that they would be delighted to nose around in your accounts. You don't seem to be doing a lot of business,” Rubén insinuated, looking around.

Valdés bared his teeth, which sparkled with disdain, despite the tobacco stains.

“I just want to verify one or two things on the registers,” Rubén went on in a voice he tried to make conciliatory. “Then I'll leave you to your little affairs. Unless you have some reason for refusing?”

Valdés shrugged, blew out enough air to fill two dirigibles as a sign of consent, made his way around the desk, and opened the register in which the flight plans were recorded.

“The weekend of the eighth, right?” he grumbled. “Nope, there's nothing mentioned.”

Rubén turned the document over to check. Nothing.

“Maybe the pilot didn't file his flight plan,” he suggested.

“Why would he do that?”

“To go take a piss at two thousand feet.”

“Not Del Piro's style,” the manager retorted, with a jeering look.

“Is that right? And what is his style?”

“Skirt-chasing. Like all pilots.”

“I see. What about you, where were you last weekend?”

“With my wife. It was her birthday, and we've been married for twenty years. If you have a problem with that, comfort yourself with the knowledge that I do too: O.K.?”

“Can I see Del Piro's file?”

Valdés complained but pulled the file out of a metal drawer and threw it on the counter, fairly exasperated.

Gianni Del Piro, born April 15, 1954, residing in El Tigre. Tanned, emaciated face, graying sideburns, a rather good-looking man despite the look of an eagle on the hunt that he tried to give himself in the photo.

“Did Del Piro get his pilot's license in the army?”

“Like nine-tenths of the guys I've met,” the manager answered.

Rubén took out his BlackBerry and took a digital photo of Del Piro's name and address. Valdés ruminated.

“Are you the one who lives in the shed outside?” he asked.

The obese man shook his jowls.

“No. It's had a leaky roof for years. I live in town.”

“So the flying club is empty at night.”

“Yep.”

“Does Del Piro have a set of keys to the hangar?”

“Of course,” Valdés grumbled. “This is a small flying club: the pilots don't wait for me to be there to give their lessons. Are you going to go on bugging me like this for a long time?”

Rubén picked up the flight plan registers.

“Give me the key to the Cessna in the hangar.”

“Why, are you planning to cross the Andes in that little thing?” the chief pilot joked.

Rubén didn't laugh.

“Hurry up, let's get this over with.”

Valdés threw a set of keys on the counter and pointed to the registers.

“You're going to bring those back to me, right?”

 

It smelled like motor oil and grease in the hangar. Rubén briefly inspected the equipment stored there before going to the Cessna at the back of the hangar. The little touring plane could carry two persons in front and the same load in the back: by taking off the door, you could very easily push out a body in flight and return to the airfield. He climbed into the cockpit.

The pilots recorded the number of hours on the motor after each flight. Rubén compared the log with the plane's timer. The numbers corresponded. Del Piro could also have disconnected the timer. Rubén pulled out the stick in the gas tank, put on latex gloves, dug around in the cockpit, ran his torch over the rear of the plane: the floor, the seats, the back of the cabin, everything was immaculate, or recently cleaned. In any case, there was nothing to indicate a phantom flight.

The sun dazzled him for a moment as he came out of the hangar. He walked alongside the tarmac and headed for the gas pump, fifty yards before Valdés's office. It was a very elementary service station with a simple pump and a register in which the pilots recorded their fill-ups. Rubén consulted the document: no fill-up was mentioned during the weekend in question.

He calculated the average fuel consumption based on how often the tank was filled, compared it with the flights made by the Cessna and the raised fuel stick on the plane, and frowned. There was something wrong. Del Piro had filled up too early following the weekend of the 8th.

Rubén checked his calculations several times. His adrenaline was surging: a two-to-three-hour flight's worth of fuel was missing.

 

*

 

Jana managed to contact three-fourths of the forty-two people named Montañez who were listed in the phone book, giving them a story about a lottery game that was based on birth dates. After a series of tedious calls, she found eleven persons who were as old as the former corporal involved in the murder of the Verón couple.

The DDHH (The Ministry of Justice and Human Rights), the ANM (National Memorial Archives, based at the former ESMA), and the CONADEP: Jana searched the lists of the members of the armed forces who were connected with the repression, the lists of the Center for Legal and Social Studies made available to the Grandmothers, and the files stored on Rubén's hard drive, without finding the slightest trace of a corresponding Montañez. She had only these eleven names lined up on the paper, eleven suspects scattered all over the country. It would take too long. Paula would have been dead for a thousand years before they found anything. There remained the archives of the armed forces.

The top secret documents connected with the sequestration and murder of thirty thousand
desaparecidos
had been burned when democracy arrived (and any possible copies probably destroyed as well), but the Navy, like all the branches of the armed forces, had kept its archives. The public did not have access to them, for the simple reason that the Navy refused to grant it: in exceptional cases only, “legitimate users” justifying the “necessity of consulting” the documents could have access to them—in other words, very few people, and at the cost of efforts that had very little chance of succeeding. That's what Rubén had said that morning before leaving, as she was emerging from the
flores
fog.

Waking from the sleep of the dead, Ledzep made a conspicuous appearance as soon as she opened the fridge. He had feasted on the remains of breakfast left on the table in the living room, but his sly air belied a plea for meat. Jana drank a cold beer to give herself courage, and left the hideout at noon.

 

In a macabre ironic twist peculiar to Argentina, the building housing the Navy archives was located near the Morgue Judicial, on the Avenida Comodoro Py
.
The building, called Libertad, had the form of a hexagonal prism a dozen stories high, newly repainted in white, and meant to erase the memory of the sadly famous Navy Engineering School.

Jana had come on the
colectivo
, the local bus, her black canvas bag on her shoulder and her identity card in the pocket of her jumpsuit. The sky was blue after the rainstorm, and the wind was rustling through the few trees bordering the parking lot. She climbed the stairs, full of apprehension, showed her bag to the two burly guards at the entrance, walked through the metal detectors, and presented herself at the reception desk.

A woman in her forties with a parrotlike voice was talking on the telephone with what seemed to be a girlfriend: the visitor's arrival seemed not to interest her, since she continued her discussion for a while before turning to the Mapuche, who was fidgeting on the other side of the counter.

“Hang on a second,” she said to her friend before pressing the receiver to her breast. “Yes, what do you want?”

Jana made a superhuman effort to smile.

“I'm looking for my cousin,” she said, moving up to the Formica-topped counter. “García Márquez. He was a petty officer in the Navy. I've lost touch with him and am trying to get back in contact with him, for family and also legal reasons.”

Since the woman was scowling beneath her makeup, Jana persisted.

“It's about an inheritance, papers that have to be filled out. The notary handling it told me that I would find information about my cousin in your archives. Do you know where they are?”

A few aging men in uniform passed through the great lobby, carrying files under their arms. The woman at the reception desk gestured nervously in the direction of the elevators.

“Tenth floor. You have to make an official request at the office concerned, fill out the forms, provide justifying documents, and return when you receive a response, usually not before two weeks have passed,” she added as a kind of litany. “Do you have identification?”

Jana handed over her ID card, which the employee photocopied without getting out of her swivel chair. Then she mechanically threw a badge on the counter.

“You will return this to me on your way out!”

“Thank you, madam.”

The woman put the telephone back to her ear.

“Hello, Gina, are you still there?”