A Certain Kind of Power Page 20

  “What would you do in MinEx’s place, now, with all that has already happened?”

  “I’d find myself a nice Chinese partner. Sell them forty-nine percent and let them earn it by dealing with the locals, let them get their hands dirty. I’d concentrate on building the bloody thing or running it or whatever it is that MinEx does.”

  Stelton’s class had finished and he dragged himself up the beach, back towards the bars. Mike had to take a second look to confirm that Stelton wasn’t still attached to his kite such was his slow progress.

  “Tell Quinn to be careful. He has no idea how far he’s in. If he did, he wouldn’t be here.”

  To Mike’s ears the words sounded liked the first true sentence that Alex had ever spoken to him. He almost sounded concerned for Quinn. He would relay the message though he suspected that Alex’s expressed humanity came more from an interest in avoiding the last-minute workload that a diplomatic issue would create rather than any real concern for Simon’s well-being.

  “Alex, what about our deal? That is why I thought you called me up here.”

  “Ah that. Yes, our request has gone in to the Argentines. I have left a note for my successor. I am sure he will follow it up for you. As for Quinn. No longer my problem. Advise him as you wish.”

  Mike stared out over the river. There was nothing to say. His utility to Alex Harper had reached its limit. Mike was someone else’s problem now. He wondered what it would feel like to take the empty beer bottle from the table and smash it into Alex’s face. Could he first grab the bottle by the neck and smash off the bottom on the edge of the table? He was unsure if the plastic table was up to leaving a nice jagged, face-cutting edge. He closed his eyes and savored the fantasy.

  “It has all worked out well for you hasn’t it, Alex? You’re out of here tomorrow, the Falklands are still British, you got what you wanted.”

  “Yes, that has worked out quite well for me, the Malvinas,” said Alex, oblivious to the threat circulating through Mike but still alert to any opportunity to turn the conversation to self-praise. “The navy’s left with inoperable submarines, the leadership removed. I almost feel like the president has done my job for me. My only regret is that I won’t be around for the navy’s riposte.” Alex squinted into the sun.

  Mike stood, fixed his eyes on Alex Harper, his back to the river. “You’re a cunt, Alex.”

  On the street Mike hailed a taxi and joined the flow of traffic back to the city. He chewed on his conversation with Alex Harper, rolling it around in his mouth, his jaw tensed. He thought about Alex Harper burning on the outside, pickling on the inside. He hoped he’d meet a mortar in Iraq. Somehow he knew he wouldn’t. He would be the same Alex in Iraq as he was here; lying, cajoling, manipulating, and always moving forward.

  As he passed the hippodrome for the second time that day Mike’s thoughts settled on Simon Quinn. Alex was right, Simon was in over his head and he didn’t know it. He would work that out for himself soon enough.

  Nothing more could be done today; it would have to wait until tomorrow. Quinn had calmed down and wanted to meet to discuss Marcelo Decoud. Dealing with Decoud while the standoff with Planning continued was the equivalent of watering your garden while the house burned. Nothing good would come of talking. The only solution would be money. That had been Mike’s experience and he was yet to find a convincing argument against it. Talk was cheap and solutions were often expensive. There was no way around that. The problem was that Quinn never listened. After tomorrow it would no longer be Mike’s problem. He would tell Quinn he was on his own from now.

  Mike tried to conjure the image of the Limay River in his mind but he couldn’t bring it forth. The cab turned off Libertador and wound its way through Recoleta. The pull of the Oak Bar was strong, challenging Mike’s determination to go straight home, but an early night would be a good thing.

  CHAPTER 26

  When Mike Costello woke the next morning, his skin tingled with the burn of the previous day’s sun. His determination to avoid the Oak bar had come to nothing. After exiting the taxi instead of turning left on to Alvear as he had promised himself, he had turned right onto Posadas, a trajectory that led him to the Oak Bar. Just one, he said as he settled into the familiar chair by the fireplace.

  Now, as he examined his face in the bathroom mirror, he saw that his forehead had turned an attractive hue of pink. A scalp peel was inevitable. He doused his face in cold water and washed away the internal scratchiness left by too many fingers of whiskey. He shouldn’t have mixed though it was never the mixing, always the quantity. One beer followed by one whiskey was fine. Three beers followed by three whiskies, four if he counted the one for the road, which being on the house he never did, and he was in trouble. Once again, he made a mental note to remember this.

  Washed and dressed, Mike felt eighty percent again, as much as he dared hope for these days. He made his way down to Dos Escudos. He greeted the waitresses and took a seat at the table located in the back, the rest of the room, and most importantly the entrance, in full view. The morning crowd was quiet, tables occupied by individuals, the sound of newspaper pages being turned scratched the air. A television set was wedged high in the back corner, sound turned down. An attractive female presenter spoke to camera, a 24-hour news ticker crawled across the bottom of the screen.

  Mike awaited the arrival of his media lunas and coffee and checked his phone. Three missed calls from Julian Martinelli was unusual though not irregular these days. It had been months since he had spoken with Julian, periods of silence broken by a message asking if there was any work for him. It annoyed Mike that Julian still signed off his messages with “The Doctor”, the affectionate nickname that he had lost all rights to use. As he stared at the screen a text message from Julian arrived: Please call me. Mike deleted the message.

  His order arrived and he delivered a media luna to his mouth and glanced at the television screen above him. Before his hand could reach his coffee cup the shock of realization dried his throat; the light, buttery pastry stuck to the roof of his mouth; a leaden weight thumped to the pit of his stomach.

  He stared at the screen, his mouth open, frozen mid chew, flakes of pastry clinging to his lips. On the television, two men wheeled a body out of an apartment in what looked like the early hours of morning. Yellow-and-black police tape lined the path of the stretcher. The ticker below the images merged into a conga line of letters, with the one word, “Suicide”, forming, blurring, and reforming in Mike’s vision.

  A still image overlaid the footage. The type of photo provided by a family member who hoped to show the deceased in happier times, as the family would have them remembered, a counterpoint to the lifeless skin and bone being trolleyed out in the images. Mike stared in disbelief at the familiar face. Simon Quinn’s 9.30 a.m. meeting would be an apology. Marcelo Decoud was dead.

  Mike’s mind creaked into gear. He rinsed his mouth with coffee, registering neither taste nor temperature. Julian’s missed calls now made sense. He retrieved his phone from his shoulder bag and dialed, his sense of survival overriding his sense of betrayal. He skipped the niceties; Julian could only be calling for one reason.

  “I saw. Yes. Where? OK.”

  Mike hung up and was halfway to the counter to settle his bill. He overpaid, even more than usual, and made for the street. He flagged the first taxi that passed. The driver pulled over to the curb and leaned his head towards the passenger side, his hand flapped over the steering wheel, a toothpick hung from his lips. Through the open window he asked for the destination. At Mike’s response, he shook his head, the toothpick moved back and forth like the hand of a tiny compass unable to settle on north. Mike punched the door, swore, and stalked off, glancing over his shoulder for approaching taxis as he went. On the third attempt he found a driver willing to work. He settled into the back, accommodated his bag on the worn, leather seat beside him and asked for the radio.

  The first bulletin led with the government’s decision to procee
d with the nationalization of another Spanish company, this one in the oil and gas sector. That was followed by the trial of the ousted transport minister, a daily update required to communicate the litany of abuses that were being investigated. An interview with a local author who was about to set off on a cultural tour of China preceded the story of the suicide. The bulletin failed to provide any further information than that which Mike had gathered from the muted images he had witnessed in the café.

  The second bulletin carried the same information, though the item of interest had moved up the priority line and now came before the news of the embattled former transport minister, a jump that could be ascribed to the addition of a quote from the president. The China-bound author was bumped all together.

  The president, employing that sincere tone reserved for death and tax hikes, lamented the suicide of a man who had dedicated his life to defending the resources of the country he loved, expressing a sentiment that his death was a tragedy for all those who desired the progress and development of the nation. It was hoped that the unfortunate death of Decoud would not be used as a weapon to further undermine the government by those that did not wish the country to progress, by those that worked day and night to destabilize rather than develop, to destroy rather than construct. The president’s intervention confirmed Mike’s initial instinct. Events had escalated.

  When Mike arrived at his destination he found Julian Martinelli standing on the pavement in the impatient pose of a man who had been waiting quite a while. On sighting Julian his former anger at the man returned. He breathed in, stuffing the anger deep inside, and disembarked from the taxi.

  “Good morning, Julian,” he said, his voice devoid of any emotion that could be misconstrued as forgiveness.

  “Good morning, Mike, thank you for coming,” returned Julian with a warm smile, as if Mike had arrived to enjoy a day out on the river.

  Julian showed no hint of uneasiness; the way that some men can have coffee with a colleague in the morning then fuck his wife that evening. “Let’s walk and talk. Much safer to do so until we get a handle on what’s happening.”

  The two men strolled along cracked footpaths, no set direction, passing the well-manicured lawns and high-walled residences of the city’s affluent. Julian was a picture of calm. The casual observer would have had no reason to connect him to the events of the early morning. Mike though noticed the occasional glance over a shoulder or the hesitation and second look at a parked car and its occupants.

  “What have you learnt?” Mike asked.

  “Not much. They took the body to the Palermo Clinic this morning. Naturally, I reached out to my guy there to see what he might know. The prostate guy,” he added for unneeded clarity.

  “You’re still in contact with him?”

  “After the effort I put into him I was never going to just throw him back. Once compromised, Mike, with the right handling, they’re yours forever. You never know when you might need them.”

  “And you’ve spoken to him?” asked Mike, ignoring Julian’s gentle lecturing.

  “Briefly. He’ll see us tonight. Late. And he wants to be paid. He’s running a considerable risk. You’ll have to do it. I swore I’d never pay that man another cent. I am nothing if not a man of my word.”

  Mike wondered what his word might be. It wasn’t honesty. Mike suspected it started with C and rhymed with bunt.

  The two men finalized their plans for the evening and walked back to where they had begun. Julian stopped to pick some flowers for his wife. Her favorites, he explained, he would never be forgiven if he didn’t collect a few for her, seeing as they bloom so rarely in these climes.

  At the appointed hour, long after the sun had set and at a time when the city’s residents were preparing to venture forth for an evening meal, Mike waited on the pre-appointed curbside. He had taken the train from Central station and had alighted at Lisandro de la Torre. He had attempted to make sure he wasn’t followed but had no real way of telling. He saw the small red Golf approach, Julian perched behind the wheel like a bantam rooster. He flashed the headlights.

  Mike got in and they drove to their rendezvous in silence, the overhead street lights—the ones that were functioning—scanned over their faces as they passed beneath as if they were bar codes. Mike switched on the radio. Carlos Gardel was lamenting the difficulties of distinguishing between a thief from a gentleman. Mike agreed. It was a difficult task.

  • • •

  “He was suicided,” said the man in the blue scrubs, his surgical mask crumpled around his neck. His ears were pricked forward, an effect of the mask’s elastic straps that were stretched back behind his ears. It gave the impression that he was on high alert.

  Mike Costello looked at the man, wondering if he should correct him. He expected greater precision from a medical practitioner. Even in times like this grammar was important.

  He looked around the empty parking lot. The red Golf they had arrived in was parked three blocks away to avoid suspicion. Through the trees to his right he could see the sparkle of the hospital lights and he imagined Decoud, the victim, as he had just been described, lying up there, a sheet pulled over his face. Mike shook his head to remove the image.

  Mike could not resist. “Committed suicide,” he said, at the same time regretting the impulse to correct the man in his own language.

  The man in blue shook his head and repeated the phrase. “He was suicided. If you commit suicide, or you suicide,” he said, imitating Mike’s own accent, “you don’t cave in your own ribs and kick in your own kidneys before placing a bullet in your brain.”

  Mike looked at Julian for direction and received none.

  “We have proof of this?”

  “Only what I saw. There will be no file. The body has been taken away for cremation.”

  “Already?”

  “Normal procedure, I’m afraid,” offered Julian. “In the case of government-assisted suicides.”

  “There’s nothing more,” the nurse said, indicating that the meeting had finished.

  He extended an open hand. Unsure if the informant was asking for the prearranged envelope or saying goodbye, Mike fumbled in his jacket. He grabbed hold of the envelope and passed it over. Without opening it the man turned and walked away.

  Mike watched him make his way down the path that led back through the trees to the hospital, his blue uniform blending into the black of the night.

  He turned to Julian. “Murdered,” he said. “Another tragedy in a long history of tragedies.”

  Julian shook his head. “We don’t have a long history of tragedies, Mike. We have just one tragedy that we insist on reliving every day. That’s our tragedy.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Mike stared straight ahead unblinking, the word suicided bouncing around his head. Julian Martinelli had both hands on the wheel, steering the red Golf through the late-night traffic with a minimalist’s regard to the use of the indicator. Neither man spoke. Mike was going over the conversation with the nurse. After a while he broke the silence.

  “I’d never heard that phrase before, ‘he was suicided.’ I thought he had misspoken.”

  Julian spoke without turning his head. “I’m afraid it has become a part of the local dialect. Mr. Decoud is just one more in a …” He paused to think. “What’s the collective noun for a group of victims? A murder?”

  “No, that’s crows. Not sure.”

  Julian shrugged. “Let’s say one more in a line of victims who, for whatever reason, are sacrificed in the name of something that they will never understand or even know about. Understanding is often beyond even us,” he said, with no clarification of who “us” comprised. He nodded his head toward a street sign. “Libertador, 9 de Julio, Lisandro de la Torre, 25 de Mayo, San Martin, Arenales. Every street named after someone or something from history, stepping stones of the nation’s progress. Or so they want us to believe.” He grunted in disgust. “This country was built on the bodies of those who have tried to cha
nge it. There are no signs for them. Just obituaries, forgotten the next day. Their bodies are the shadows of objects being moved by those that we cannot see and for reasons that we cannot grasp.

  “In this instance, our connection to the deceased places us in an uncomfortably close position. Dangerous even, Mike. When I heard the president speak this morning I had a sick feeling that this was not a suicide. Did you not think it strange that the president of the nation would pronounce on the suicide of an unknown activist from Cordoba from a prepared press release? Make no mistake, Mike, this is not the action of a rogue element, or a settling of provincial scores. This has been sanctioned at the highest level. That body is a message. For us,” he said, leaving no doubt who he referred to this time.

  Julian continued. “I spoke to Decoud last week. Thought he might still be useful at some point. He told me he was coming down to Buenos Aires to meet with MinEx. He seemed excited at the prospect. It didn’t make any sense that he would come all this way to take his own life.”

  It didn’t make sense to Mike that anyone would take their own life anywhere, regardless of the distance travelled. He had spent his life clinging to it. The closest he had come to death were a few funerals and even then, only the necessary ones. The others he had avoided where possible. The thought of not existing was a prospect too large and powerful to hold in his mind, like trying to hold a wave in the palm of his hand.

  “What now?” asked Mike.

  “We assume that they know or will soon know of our involvement with Mr. Decoud. I trust that there are no loose ends on your side?”

  Mike assured him there weren’t. He had destroyed all materials and all communication between himself and Julian and himself and Simon. No physical evidence that had been in his possession still existed.

  Julian nodded in satisfaction. “Still, there may be evidence that we do not have. My ticket to Cordoba must be retrievable from a system somewhere, video of you and I meeting. Who knows? We need to take precautions. You need to stay close to Quinn. Make sure he doesn’t panic and do anything to endanger us.”