Jonny waits for the sharp hiss of the coffee machine before starting to fill Paloma in. Only salient details. Just enough to answer her most burning questions.
‘So. Last night. I thought we were just being robbed too at first. But everything changed once I was in the car. It turns out I was only dragged inside so one of the other passengers could talk to me.’
Paloma’s eyes widen. Jonny drops his voice another notch.
‘And it was a pilot. A military pilot. He was even wearing his uniform. Said he flew some of the original death flights. Confirmed the months of torture alleged to have gone on beforehand. I know, it’s unbelievable,’ he finishes, as Paloma just stares in shock.
When she replies, she’s almost having to choke the words out. ‘How … how did he know where to find you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jonny replies grimly, ‘and I don’t know his name either. He knocked me out before I had a chance to ask.’
Paloma is aghast. ‘Knocked you out? Oh my God, what? I thought you said that you were OK —’
‘I am.’ Jonny reaches for his coffee, thick white china cup appearing steaming on top of the glass counter. ‘I’ve just got a bit of a headache, honestly. This’ll sort me right out.’
Paloma shakes her head. ‘I don’t understand. A former death-flight pilot breaks his silence on something so horrific out of … of nowhere?’
‘Not exactly.’ Holding his cup with one hand, he beckons her 55over to a small table with the other. ‘It must be something to do with the body on the beach. That must be how he knew about us in the first place. Because he knew exactly what I was talking about when I asked him about it. Not only that – he confirmed it was deliberately staged to look like an attempted disappearance. But he just answered in riddles when I asked why, or how he knew. Then one of his honchos laid me out before I had a chance to ask anything else. When I came to I was on the pavement outside my apartment. I have no idea what happened in the intervening few hours. Now we’ve just got to work out who he is and try and find him again.’
Paloma shakes her head again, blinking at him wild-eyed. She’s still standing, hovering by her chair; it’s as if she can’t bring herself to actually sit down.
‘I don’t see how. Did you even see his face?’
Jonny nods, taking a sip of coffee. ‘He was far younger than I was expecting, too.’
‘Than you were expecting?’ Paloma parrots back, finally pulling out her chair. ‘What were you expecting? Don’t tell me you expected any of this.’
‘You know what I mean.’ Jonny drains the rest of his coffee in a scalding gulp. ‘My point is, we have to find out who he is and talk to him again to be able to report anything at all. And I’m pretty sure I know where we can make a start.’
He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a map of the city and unfolds it on to the table.
‘When I first thought of it I wondered if it was why we’ve been given the other map. You know …’ He taps a fist on the table rather than say it out loud, so that Paloma recalls the scrap of paper she’d shown him clutched barely twelve hours earlier. ‘But that drawing is completely different. It’s all loops and circles, crosses and dashes.’
‘So?’ Paloma prompts.
Leaning forward, Jonny drops his voice as low as it will go, 56tapping a finger on the map between them. ‘We need to get inside the former prison complex. I can’t believe we haven’t thought of it before. Forget about the police station in La Plata. That’s just the nearest precinct to where the body was found. But the place where most of the missing were held and tortured before they were flown away is barely ten miles from here. We need to get inside.’
Paloma blanches. ‘No, Jonny. No way. We can’t.’
‘Of course we can. Look where it is. It’s literally up the road.’
‘What difference does it make where it is? It’s fifteen years too late.’
‘And yet it’s still operating as a military training facility. In fucking Belgrano, of all places. Like it’s completely normal to find a former torture complex sitting in between a bunch of swanky houses and shops.’
‘That’s where you think we should start?’ She reaches over with a warm hand, running fingers purposefully through his hair. Jonny’s heart starts to race, but it’s only for the briefest of moments, because he realises what she is actually doing. ‘Honestly, I think we should start by getting you properly checked out.’
‘Stop it, OK?’ He half-heartedly bats her hand away. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You are most definitely not fine. Those men must have knocked half your brain out.’
‘He said the guards’ quarters were below the cells,’ Jonny continues regardless. ‘That they were all imprisoned together for months, just on different floors of the building. That commanders would pass prisoners they’d just tortured going in opposite directions on the stairs. Like it was just another day at the office. If he lived there himself for months, who knows what we might find left there now?’
Paloma looks nervous. ‘Come on, Jonny. We can’t just pitch up and try the bell. You said it yourself, it’s a military training facility.’
‘I know that.’ Jonny smacks the map closed, shoving it back into 57his pocket. ‘Obviously we need to figure out how we’re actually going to pull it off – we’ll need a distraction as well as a cover story to get past the gates. We’ve got to get to the Plaza de Mayo now in any case. I just meant —’
‘Are you serious? That’s where you want to go now? Just head on down to the Plaza de Mayo as if nothing remotely dodgy has happened since we last discussed it?’
‘Yes, I’m serious. We have to keep investigating, and we can only trust people with similar goals to us. And I’d say they don’t get much more similar than the group of women demanding to know what’s become of their missing children who have been marching outside the presidential palace every Thursday for the last twenty years.’
‘You honestly think we can just turn up and talk to whoever we want? That we won’t attract even the least bit of controversial attention?’
Jonny tries and fails to keep a note of irritation out of his voice. ‘So what if we do? These woman marched even when it was illegal to gather in groups of two.’
‘You know what I mean. You said we needed to be more careful. I’m just trying to make up for lost time. You were snatched off the street last night by someone potentially instrumental in disappearing some of these missing people.’
Jonny pushes back his chair as if it might bring an end to the debate but can’t quite bring himself to get up until she does. ‘Look, if these women aren’t worried about doing it, then neither am I. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.’
Paloma’s expression is caught somewhere between mutinous and hurt. ‘Well you can’t do it on your own.’
‘I don’t want to, either,’ Jonny concedes, inwardly cursing for at least the eightieth time his resistance to learning Spanish. ‘You should have heard me on the phone this morning. I had my dictionary out and everything – it was still painful. And you were right, by the way. It’s never too late – or early – in the day around 58here. I called first thing and someone answered the phone straight away. It’s not just going to be the mothers today, either. The grandmothers are going to be there too.’
And suddenly Jonny doesn’t care whether she comes with him or not, picturing the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo’s trademark white headscarves teeming like doves in front of the presidential palace. Is there anything more powerful than a group of mothers demanding answers on behalf of their disappeared children? It turns out there is. Try being cheated out of both children and grandchildren. The grandmothers are the angriest of all. And Jonny Murphy knows a whole lot about angry grandparents and disappeared children. If he can’t find his own answers, he can damn well try and find some for other people like him. His mind’s echo chamber suddenly clamours with his own personal questions, the ones he asks in those stupid fucking airletters but never gets answers to.
‘Let’s go, come on.’ He makes a show of looking at his watch. ‘I know you’ll want to scour the place for the best composition, find exactly the right jacaranda bush. Or rubber tree. Or whatever. Let’s just go.’
He walks out without glancing back at her. Paloma has to hurry to catch him up.
‘All I meant was that we should maybe just take a breath. Last night wasn’t exactly easy for me either, you know.’ There’s an audible crack in her voice. Jonny slows, instantly suffused with the heat of regret.
‘Look, I know this is my fault. I’m the one asking the dodgy questions. But we can’t just stop asking them because they’ve got us noticed. We’re obviously on to something. That’s the whole point. We can’t let ourselves be intimidated.’
‘That’s not what I’m saying.’ Paloma tangles with her sleeve. ‘I just think we should lie low for a while, is all. Look at some more routine stuff. Stop making waves.’
59‘Which is exactly what we’re doing. We’re going to the Plaza de Mayo like a gazillion other people do on any given day. We’re going to talk to a group of women who couldn’t be better known. It’s really not particularly controversial behaviour.’
He rounds the corner into the square itself only to stop dead immediately. The Plaza de Mayo is a sight arresting enough even without the benefit of historical background. But in the full context of its political significance – named for the May revolution that heralded Argentinian independence from Spain – it is breathtaking. Paloma pulls up next to him as they gaze at the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace at the far eastern end of the square, morning sun lighting its pink stucco an otherworldly shade of crimson blush. Not so routine, then, Jonny says to himself.
‘They’re already here, look.’ Paloma waves at the group of women in the distance, white scarves pinned over their heads. Crossing the square, Jonny’s hand is outstretched, but Paloma arrives first. The women greet her like she is already one of their own, clasping her hands and smiling. When Paloma turns back to him, he is heartened. She finally looks as animated as he feels.
‘It’s probably better if I translate from the start,’ she says, ushering the group over to a bench in the shade of a jacaranda tree radiant with purple blossom. ‘It’ll be more fluent overall. Is that OK with you? I’ll do it regularly so you can chime in with questions.’
‘Of course,’ Jonny replies. ‘We need as much detail as we can get.’
And what detail it is. Every name they’re told comes with an unforgettable face. Every faded photograph they’re shown gives voice to an avalanche of memory. Basking in the rosy splendour of the Casa Rosada, Jonny feels as if these conversations are reconstituting people with each word. These are mothers breathing life into their missing children just by talking about them.
60‘This is Soledad,’ Paloma translates as a woman sits down between them. ‘Her daughter’s name was Julia. She was an academic, pregnant with her first child when she was snatched from the street just outside her university building. Soledad’s mother is here too.’ She points into the crowd.
Soledad, Jonny thinks, wincing. Again, the direct translation is painfully appropriate. Solitude. Nothing compares to the agonised isolation of losing a child.
‘And this is Maria.’ A small, elderly lady takes the seat next to Soledad. ‘Maria is a founder member. There were only fourteen of them at first. Mothers united by their quest to find their missing children. They first met when the dictatorship was at its most repressive, when public gatherings were forbidden. So they partnered in groups of two, walking, much as they’ll do today, in pairs, round and round the square. The goal was to be seen. Not just to be heard, but to be seen. So they couldn’t be ignored.’
To be seen, Jonny says to himself. To prove they would not disappear without a fight. Overwhelmed by the lack of answers, by the mockery and contempt with which they were received by public office, these women grew in number until they were impossible to ignore.
‘They continued even after three of them were disappeared themselves,’ Paloma continues as if she’s picking up his mental thread. ‘They vowed they would never stop looking. They would remain visible for as long as it took.’
Jonny tries not to picture the more harrowing details that follow. How these women were snatched by a naval squad from their homes, from their churches, even from hospitals – locations usually revered as sanctuaries – to never be seen again. The sudden touch of a small, determined hand on his arm makes him flinch in fear.
‘We held on to what we said at the beginning,’ Maria states in halting English. ‘We must keep going. No matter what happens.’
61‘Do you think enough is being done to bring those responsible to justice?’
A frown crosses Paloma’s face, Maria starting to reply before she’s finished translating.
‘What is it?’ Jonny asks her, but Maria is still talking, a rapid, incomprehensible stream.
‘That they will never bring everyone to justice,’ Paloma finally answers.
‘And?’ Jonny prompts. Paloma is still frowning as their back-and-forth continues, a draught of purple petals whipping distractingly from the branch overhead.
‘Hang on,’ Paloma mutters, Maria standing and beckoning her over to a huddle a few feet away. Paloma narrowly misses swatting Jonny in the face with her camera case as she stands up herself to follow.
‘Sorry,’ she says, flustered.
‘What are they saying?’
‘I told you. That they will never be able to bring everyone to justice,’ Paloma repeats, staring at the women gesturing to each other – or is it at the Casa Rosada beyond? The sun is higher in the sky now, washing its façade a crystalline sugar-pink.
‘You already said that,’ Jonny snaps.
‘Sorry.’ Paloma pulls her camera out of the case, squints into the viewfinder.
‘That too. Don’t tell me – you’ve never seen a more perfect composition?’
But all he gets in response is a volley of shutter-fly.
Jonny scratches his head, stepping towards the women.
‘Permiso,’ he says tentatively. ‘Excuse me …’
The gaggle of women opens up immediately. Jonny replies in kind, summoning all the Spanish he’s got, pencil poised at the top of a new page.
‘Is there anything left that the government can do for you now?’
62An elderly woman steps forward. Jonny’s pencil stills with her answer – in perfect, if heavily accented, English.
‘Yes.’ The rest of the group echoes her sentiments with a determined, co-ordinated nod. ‘They know where the babies are. And we want them back. We want our grandchildren back.’