My first instinct was to run to him, but something told me not to. He went on about the people's struggle,
âla lucha,'
and everyone cheered, until this kid stepped out. He was fifteen, maybe sixteen. I was too far away to hear, but he was obviously disagreeing, and he wouldn't give up. Adrian reacted really badly, tried to turn the crowd against him.
This went on until Adrian gave an order and two
compas
pulled the kid out of the crowd. They forced him down on his knees. There was more arguing. And then Adrian shot him.
Neela, he pulled out a gun and shot a kid. Just like that. Dead.
Carlos has his lips pressed together tightly when Aida looks up.
“What?” she asks. “It sounds made up, right?”
“No. It doesn't sound made up.” Carlos begins attacking his food, putting an entire chicken ball in his mouth. “Continue,” he manages to say, chewing rapidly.
“That's all, actually,” says Aida, folding the letter back up. “I don't even know why I read it.”
“It's very upsetting.”
“You were a guerrilla fighter too, right?” Aida asks, tentatively, the scribble of his scar still facing her as Carlos picks up a forkful of fried rice. “Is that why you can't sleep?”
Carlos flinches, a few grains falling to his plate. “No.” He doesn't elaborate. He uses his napkin to wipe his mouth. “It was a hard life. I am glad it's over. We should all be glad.”
“I think it sounds terrible. People did terrible things.”
Carlos lifts his eyebrows, creating confused ridges along his forehead. “We were fighting because we thought that conditions were extremely unjust.” He points down at her bag, where Aida has put her letter. “That incident was an isolated case.” He goes back to eating for a long moment, then says without looking up from his plate, “Your mother, she wrote more about what she saw in that village?”
Aida shakes her head. “This was her last letter home. She left your country not long afterwards, chickened out of publishing the news articles she'd written â which pretty much wrecked her idea of becoming a journalist. . . that and the pregnancy.”
“The man, in the village. He got away with murder, you think.”
“I guess.”
“Was he a person who knew your father?”
Aida looks out the windows at a full parking lot below, its gleaming rows of cars absorbing the intense afternoon sun.
“Aida, in the war, people did things that they thought were necessary.“
“Don't say it wasn't his fault. He had options. He didn't have to do what he did.”
“Our war was not optional. And, in a way, you came out of those difficult circumstances.”
“Me? No. Biologically, maybe. But I have nothing to do with that. My grandparents raised me. My grandfather worked until the morning he died. Studying. Writing. My mother, meanwhile, she barely works to this day. She blames your war and me for everything that happened to her! It's seriously sad. People should move on. You did! The people at this mall did!”
“They have, in some ways. In other ways, they live with the past.”
“Well, I'm trying to move on, okay? Obviously, it sounds looks like this killer was my father. But that doesn't mean anything about me. Only about Danielle. She couldn't resist a tough case. It's like catnip for her. Marta and the Committee are just another example of that. They don't let anything go. They've made a big political issue out of the mine and the kidnappers are using that rift. Meanwhile, they haven't seen the possibilities. The Committee should have worked with Mr. Wall. The way you do.”
“Negotiations are always possible,” says Carlos, and something seems to cross his mind. “But, even so, you shouldn't be so hard on Marta.”
Aida nods uncertainly. Why should Carlos care what she thinks of Marta? Those two seem to repel one another.
“Marta lost a great deal in the war,” Carlos goes on. “Her parents were early activists. They were harassed, beaten. And then her husband was disappeared. Her life was threatened. She had to leave her country.”
Aida remembers the photos on Marta's wall, how there's no husband anywhere. “Disappeared? For good?”
Carlos touches her hand again. She pulls it back, ashamed.
“If you talk to her about it, you'll see that she's quite understanding. She's always been that way. With everyone except me.”
Aida smiles, though she is perplexed. Do Marta and Carlos share so much history? If so, why does Carlos still trust Marta when Marta doesn't trust him back?
“You should eat,” Carlos says, pointing at Aida's nearly untouched plate.
“I'm not hungry.”
Carlos smiles more widely. “Eat anyway.”
Aida finishes about half her food. Then Carlos suggests they take a walk. They stroll past electronics and shoe stores, a children's clothing store and then a jewelry shop, where reams of cheap gold necklaces and earrings cascade down the forms of necks and ears. Aida still refuses to see the blood that Neela and Marta want people to imagine is inseparable from the production of this precious metal. André gave Aida an
18 K
gold bracelet last year. Thin, with a simple turn of the metal to make it pop. She wouldn't give it up for anything.
When they get to one end of the mall, they stare out over the thoroughfare that passes the main entrance below. Traffic is thick and smog gives the scene an otherworldly sheen. Then they turn and walk all the way back. The entire time they say nothing, but it's a good silence, like when they're not talking she and Carlos understand one another better. Aida lets thoughts of blood and killers and mines slip away.
As they pass a women's clothing store, Carlos stops. “You said you have some things to buy. And I must get back to work. I will leave you.”
Aida is crestfallen. She's imagined this meeting lasting longer, turning into the afternoon together.
“I will come see you at the demonstration tomorrow,” says Carlos. “If you're attending.”
“Okay, yes. I will. It's just I thought we would. . . I shouldn't have read that letter. It was stupid.”
Carlos smiles. “It was courageous.”
Aida feels a wave of heat reach her ears: he thinks she's got courage. “I will see you at the demonstration tomorrow. Yes?”
“Yes.” She makes a mental note to tell Marta she's changed her mind.
“Good.
Hasta mañana, tonces
.” Carlos looks at her long enough that Aida starts to wonder whether he intends to kiss her, or simply communicate something profound that she's missed. But a moment later he steps onto the downward escalator, blending with the rest of the shoppers as he glides to the lower level.
2:20 PM
. Unknown location, northern Morazán
The men keep their eyes down, scanning the earth and stones and grasses. Every so many steps one of them pauses to survey three hundred and sixty degrees at eye level, tilting his head to scrutinize tree branches, trunks and the spaces between them. They've been walking since before dawn and both ache with fatigue. One man takes out a bandana, ties it around his head, scratches his substantial beard, itchy from layers of perspiration. Their movements are more or less in sync. For this reason, they spot them almost simultaneously â small cuts aligned and angled on a single tree. The man with wide, square shoulders puts two fingertips into one of the cuts, pulls them out, rubs them against a practised thumb. He nods to his companion.
Keeping silent, each crouches and pulls up his weapon. The man with the beard gives the signal to split up and walk deeper into the bushes, one this way, one that way, silent footfalls, leaves grazing their large forearms. Ten minutes later, the bearded man calls out, “
Nada
.” His companion yells back the same.
They meet by the tree and look again at the machete marks. They know these could be traces of passing herdsmen or anyone else. A few nicks don't make a lead. Then, just as they're about to walk on, feeling deflated after three long days of trudging through heat and insects with nothing significant to report to the
Jefe,
one of the men looks into a thickness of bushes and finds something much, much more promising: two strips of coloured cloth tied together to a branch with a crude knot, near which the men also locate human feces â fresh, watery, carefully buried, though not quite carefully enough. The man with the beard, who feels himself to be in charge, pulls out his phone triumphantly.
Sobero answers on the first ring and takes in the update with a faint click of his tongue. There are loud traffic sounds behind him. “Unless you are eager to stand there sniffing their shit all night, hang up and keep moving,” he says.
The men obey, continuing on. The mountains cast longer shadows over the land. In the early evening, the two trackers take rest. Just enough. Just what they will need to keePMoving through the night, under Sobero's orders, closer and closer to their targets.
8:00 PM
. Trattoria Al Ceppo, San Salvador
Mitch imagines facing all the people whose cars are parked outside. This is not the kind of notoriety he has spent his life building toward. He takes a deep breath and repeats to himself what Carlos told him: now, more than ever, he has to seem relaxed. A week ago, that would've been as effortless as breathing. But as the maitre d' leads him through the arched brick entrance and into the restaurant, Mitch has to fake it.
Two tables on, a refined-looking gentleman stands, startling him. He takes Mitch's hand and shakes it thoroughly. “We are so, so very sorry for what you're going through,” he says, in good English. “
Gracias, Señor,
” says Mitch, taken aback. The maitre d' smiles and urges Mitch on to his table, where he sits and checks his messages. Every so often, he glances around and sees someone smiling and nodding at him.
Carlos enters not long afterwards, a newspaper under his arm. He shakes hands with several people along the way, elicits whispers from others. When he's settled, Mitch recounts his own entrance, but Carlos shows no surprise. “People here, this kind of people, they take your presence as a sign of strength,” he says. “They are like you â and they will like you.”
Mitch smiles, but receives this explanation with a twinge of annoyance. He has never once thought of any Salvadoran as being “like him.” No matter how well-dressed and mannered the people are here, he'll be hard pressed to start now. None of them know what it feels like to have a deadline looming like the one haunting his mine. Neither does Carlos, for that matter, who is looking less than inspirational on the eve of it. Unshaven. White crust in one corner of his mouth. When he unbuttons his suit jacket, there's a large, reddish stain on his shirt. “You feeling alright?” Mitch asks, trying to sound casual before turning to accept a taste from the bottle of red he's ordered. He nods to the waiter that it's fine, though he's had better.
“I am working very long hours right now,” says Carlos without looking up from his menu.
So this dinner is a waste of his time? It was Carlos's idea to meet up! Mitch stares at his companion, trying to reinterpret the comment, but he can't read his blank expression. Carlos is a foreigner, any way you slice it. Fundamentally different from him. The whole country is. Mitch taps his BlackBerry, which is resting on the table. The image he uses as his wallpaper appears: his twin daughters huddled into the jogging stroller. He works to mentally transport himself to their safe world of naps and tickling, to his own house in Vancouver, good
BC
wine, the everyday Canadian things he loves. But the voices from the table nearby, speaking a mile a minute in Spanish, and the Latin music being pumped into the room keep nudging him back. The screen on his device goes black, into power-save mode. How did he get here? Mitch never intended to work abroad as much as he has. But the government makes it practically impossible to turn a profit at home. Red tape and treaty negotiations over supposedly traditional lands are a uniquely Canadian kind of bullshit. Catharine Keil is the long arm of that nonsense. “They're betting against me,” he hears himself say.
Carlos looks up. He's placed his newspaper atop his menu and has become absorbed in it. “Who?”
“Keil and your Attorney General. Schiffer. They're betting I'll give in.”
Carlos sighs deeply, his whole upper body lifting and falling. The waiter takes their order and leaves. “Whatever happens now, Mitch,” he says, “at this time, I see damage for you. You've lost some investors, I expect.”
“A handful,” says Mitch, his back up. That's no one's problem but his own. “But if the police went in right now, we'd pull up our nose.”
“
If
they find them in time.
If
they free the hostages. Those are not certainties. Maybe there are problems. Casualties. Then people ask why you didn't save these lives by just opening your gate. All you had to do: unlock a single gate to the mine.”
“We've been over this.”
“That was before. Today, you are in a different position. How will your name remain separate from the murder of these tourists after tomorrow?”
Mitch is about to say that he doesn't have a fucking clue how, but Carlos reaches across the table and touches his arm to hush him while casting around the room, as if checking that it's safe to go on.
“There might be another way.”
All of Mitch's senses open towards Carlos. These are the words he's been waiting for all week. “What way?”
“I have received some information.” Carlos curls his index downward to tap the photo that appears on the newspaper. It's a grainy black-and-white image of a haggard-looking woman with light-coloured, ratty hair. The caption reads: “Rita Guadalupe Canales de Santos, identified by police as a person of interest in the abduction of five Canadian tourists.”
“You know where she is,” says Mitch, guessing. He pictures the police bursting through a door and finding this woman and some man named Enrique sleeping it off while the hostages sit bound at the hands, like in the movies. He sees the police cutting their bindings, sees himself at the mine, receiving the call that everyone is home safe, sees his top investors at the next meeting in Vancouver reviewing the strong numbers from Pico, and him and Carlos, toasting success together at this very restaurant.