Two men took Rafael out of his cell. One of them dragged him by the hair while the other repeatedly struck his calves with a club to make sure he couldn’t stand up. The pain in his head was so intense he thought his scalp was going to be ripped off. He kept trying to straighten up as they moved forward, but his knees caved in each time from the strength of the blows. His torturers’ little game ceased for a moment when they reached an iron door.
It opened onto a large windowless room. Long red streaks stained the walls. The beaten-earth floor reeked with the unbearable, acrid stench of dried blood and excrement. Two bare bulbs hung from the ceiling.
The light was blinding, unless it was just the contrast with the darkness of the cell where he’d spent two days without being brought food or drink.
They made him strip naked, then forced him into an iron chair cemented into the ground. Two straps were nailed to the armrests and another two to the legs. The leather cut into Rafael’s flesh as they strapped him in.
An army captain wearing a pristinely ironed uniform entered the room. He sat down on the corner of a table, stroked his hand across the wood to remove the dust, and put down his cap. Then he stood up in silence, walked over to Rafael and punched him in the jaw. Rafael tasted blood in his mouth. He didn’t mind; his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth because it was so parched.
“Antonio . . . (a punch shattered his nose), Alfonso . . . (a second his chin), Roberto . . . (a third split his eyebrow open) Sánchez. Will you remember my name or do you want me to say it again?”
Rafael had passed out. A bucketful of stinking water was thrown in his face.
“Repeat my name, scum!” the captain ordered.
“Antonio Alfonso Roberto sonofabitch,” murmured Rafael.
The captain raised his arm, but stopped himself from striking. Instead he smiled and signaled to his two henchmen to get this uncooperative dissident ready.
They fixed copper plates to his chest and thighs so the current would circulate properly, then wrapped bare electric wires around his ankles, wrists and testicles.
The first electric shock propelled his body forwards. He understood why the chair had been fixed to the ground. It felt as if thousands of thorns were rushing through his veins just under his skin.
“Antonio Alfonso Roberto Sánchez,” the captain said again coolly.
Each time Rafael lost consciousness, another bucket of putrid water brought him back to that room and his tortures.
“Ant . . . Alfonso . . . Rob . . . ánchez,” he mumbled after the sixth electric shock.
“Claims to be an intellectual and doesn’t even know how to pronounce a name correctly,” the captain sneered.
He lifted Rafael’s chin with the end of his rod, then slashed it across his cheek.
Rafael’s only thoughts were of Isabel and María Luz, and of not dishonoring his family by begging for mercy.
“Where’s your goddam printing works?” the captain asked.
At the mention of the place, Rafael escaped momentarily from the reality of his swollen face and battered body by imagining himself within the room’s blue, peeling walls, inhaling the smell of paper and ink and the methylated spirits his friends used to make the duplicating machine work. These olfactory recollections restored an inkling of lucidity.
Another electric shock bolted through him. He began convulsing and his sphincter muscles opened. Blood-tinged urine trickled down his legs. His eyes, tongue and genitals had been burned to ash. He lost consciousness.
The doctor accompanying the captain listened to Rafael’s heart, examined his pupils and said that was enough for today if they wanted to keep their prisoner alive. Captain Antonio Alfonso Roberto Sánchez definitely did. If he’d wanted to kill him, he could have simply put a bullet in his head. He wanted to take pleasure in Rafael’s suffering, not his death, to make him pay for his treason.
As the men dragged him back to his cell, Rafael regained consciousness. He suffered the worst torture yet when he heard Captain Sánchez call out from the end of the corridor: “Bring me his wife.”
Isabel and Rafael spent two months at ESMA. They had their eyelids stuck open with surgical tape to prevent them from sleeping. If they drifted into unconsciousness, they were kicked and beaten awake.
During their time at ESMA, Isabel and Rafael, who didn’t once cross each other’s paths in the corridor leading to the torture room, became more and more dissociated from a world in which humanity existed. Through the long days and nights that passed without them knowing the difference, they sank deeper and deeper into a dark abyss that even the most fervent of believers could not imagine.
Yet, when Captain Sánchez had them brought to the room where he tortured them, he spoke of the treachery they had committed against their homeland and against God. As he uttered the word “God,” Sánchez would hit them even harder.
The captain had Isabel’s eyes gouged out. But one light refused to go out in her: María Luz’s face. Sometimes she wished her daughter’s features would disappear so she could give in to death. Only death would set her free. Only death would restore her humanity.
One evening, when Captain Sánchez was bored, he had Rafael’s genitals severed. One of his men cut them off with a pair of scissors. The doctor stitched up the wound. They had no intention of letting all the blood drain from his body.
At the beginning of their second month of captivity, they had the tape ripped off their eyes, and their eyelids came off in the process. Each time the captain summoned back his victims, they lost a little more of their human appearance. Isabel was unrecognizable. Her face and breasts were covered with burns from cigarettes the captain put out on her skin (he smoked two packs a day). Her intestines, also charred from the electric torture, couldn’t digest the gruel she was force-fed with a spoon. Her nostrils had long ago stopped smelling the odor of her own excrement, in which she lay. Reduced to this animal state, Isabel held on to the image of María Luz’s face in the shadows, uttering her name over and over again.
One morning, the captain tired of his task. Neither Rafael nor Isabel would reveal the address of their printing works. He didn’t care; he never had. A captain of his rank had more important things to do than track down some old copy machine. Looking at his victims with disgust, he was delighted to have achieved at least part of his mission: breaking the spirits of two immoral individuals who had disowned their homeland and refused to submit to the only regime capable of restoring to Argentina the greatness it deserved. Captain Sánchez was a devoted patriot. God would reward his devotion.
At dusk, the doctor went into Isabel’s cell. In a final moment of irony, he disinfected the crook of her arm with a cotton swab soaked in alcohol before administering an injection of Pentothal. The drug sent her into a deep sleep, but did not kill her. That was the idea. Rafael was given the same treatment in his cell at the other end of the corridor.
Once night fell, they were transported in the back of a van to a clandestine airfield in the sprawling Buenos Aires suburbs. A twin-engine Air Force plane was waiting for them in a hangar. Isabel and Rafael were laid out in the cabin alongside twenty or so other lifeless prisoners guarded by four soldiers. With the cargo loaded, the aircraft took off without lights. Its pilot had been given instructions to fly towards the river, then head in a southeasterly direction at very low altitude. He was instructed not to go anywhere near the coast of Uruguay. When he reached the ocean he should turn around and fly back to his point of departure. A routine mission.
Major Ortiz followed these instructions to the letter. The aircraft climbed into the Argentinean sky, flew across the Río de la Plata and reached its destination an hour later.
Once there, the soldiers opened the rear door and in a matter of minutes threw the ten men and ten women, all unconscious but alive, into the sea below. The roar of the engines shielded their ears from the thud of the bodies as they hit the waves and sank. Schools of sharks had made a habit of lurking in these gloomy waters, waiting for the meal that fell from the sky at the same time every evening.
Isabel and Rafael spent the final moments of their lives side by side but unaware of each other’s presence. By the time the plane arrived back at the airfield, they had joined the ranks of the thirty thousand people who were made to disappear forever by the Argentinean dictatorship.
Unable to utter a word, Valerie put down the sheets of paper and went over to the window. She felt a pressing need for fresh air.
Andrew came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.
“You insisted on reading it. I warned you not to.”
“What happened to María Luz?” Valerie asked.
“They didn’t kill children. They gave them to the families and friends of the ruling military junta and created new identities for them under the names of their adoptive parents. María Luz was two when Rafael and Isabel were kidnapped, but hundreds of women were pregnant when they were arrested.”
“You mean those bastards tortured pregnant women too?”
“Yes, but they made sure they kept them alive until they gave birth, then they stole their newborns. The military boasted that they were saving innocent souls from perversion by handing them over to families who could raise them in keeping with the dictatorship’s values. They claimed that what they were doing was Christian and charitable, and that they had the wholehearted support of Church officials, who knew what was going on.
“For the final months of their pregnancy, the mothers-to-be were shut up in makeshift maternity units in the detention centers. As soon as the babies were born, they were taken away. You know now what lay in store for those women,” Andrew said, pointing to his article. “Most of the stolen children, now adults, aren’t aware their birth parents were tortured and then dropped into the ocean alive. María Luz among them, probably.”
Valerie turned round. Andrew had never seen her so distressed and angry. The look in her eyes almost frightened him.
“Please tell me the perpetrators are in jail and that they’ll stay there for the rest of their lives.”
“I wish I could. The men who committed the atrocities were protected by an amnesty passed in the name of national reconciliation. By the time it was repealed, most of the criminals had slipped under the radar or gotten new identities.”
“Swear to me you’ll go back there and finish your investigation. You’ve got to find Ortiz and those other bastards!”
“That’s been my intention since the start. Do you see why I’m devoting so much of my time to it? Do you forgive me for neglecting you?” Andrew asked.
“I’d like to rip their guts out.”
“I know. Me too. But come on, calm down.”
“If I found them . . . I’d feel less remorse about killing monsters who torture pregnant women than about destroying a pack of rabid dogs.”
“And end up in prison for life? Very smart.”
“Trust me—I’d know how to go about it without leaving a trace,” Valerie continued, still seething.
Andrew looked at her closely, then hugged her a bit tighter.
“I hadn’t realized my article would put you in such a state. Maybe I shouldn’t have let you read it.”
“I’ve never read anything so horrendous. I’d like to come with you to track down those brutes.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” asked Valerie, getting carried away.
“Because most of those monsters, as you call them, are still alive, and the passing of time hasn’t necessarily made them any less dangerous.”
“Says the man who’s scared of horses . . . ”
* * *
When he left home the following morning, Andrew was surprised to find Simon outside of his apartment building.
“Got time for a coffee?” Simon asked.
“And a very good morning to you too.”
“Follow me,” instructed his friend, who looked more anxious than Andrew had ever seen him.
They walked up Charles Street in silence.
“What’s the matter?” Andrew asked worriedly as they went into Starbucks.
“Go get a couple of coffees. I’ll save us this table,” Simon replied, sitting down in an armchair next to the window.
“Yes, sir!”
Andrew waited in line, not taking his eyes off Simon, puzzled by his behavior.
“A mochaccino for me and a cappuccino for His Highness,” he said, joining Simon at the table a few minutes later.
“I’ve got bad news,” Simon announced.
“Go ahead.”
“It’s to do with Freddy Olson.”
“You tailed him and realized the guy isn’t going anywhere. I’ve known that for a long time.”
“Very funny. I spent the whole of yesterday evening at my computer browsing your newspaper’s website, looking up your stories.”
“Simon, if you were that bored you should’ve called me.”
“You’ll stop playing the wise guy in a couple of minutes. It wasn’t your wonderful prose I was interested in, it was the comments section. I wanted to see if there was some lunatic out there writing evil stuff about you.”
“I bet there are quite a few.”
“I’m not talking about people who think you’re a bad journalist.”
“Do readers post that kind of comment on the website?”
“Some do. But . . . ”
“I didn’t know that,” Andrew interrupted.
“Can I finish?”
“Wasn’t that your bad news?”
“There was a series of messages that were so hostile, they went way beyond criticism of your professional skills. They were incredibly abusive.”
“Saying what?”
“Things nobody would like to read about themselves. Some of the most aggressive ones were written by someone calling themself SpookyKid. They caught my eye because there were so many of them. I don’t know what you’ve done to that guy, but he sure doesn’t like you. I searched some more to see if the person behind that username also comments on any forums, or has a blog.”
“And?”
“He’s got it in for you real bad. Every time you publish an article, he lays into you. Even when you don’t publish anything. If you read everything I found on the net posted by him, you’d be amazed. Like I was.”
“Let me get this straight—a failed writer, whose bedroom is probably a shrine to Marilyn Manson, hates my work. Was that your bad news?”
“Why do you say Marilyn Manson?”
“I don’t know—it just came to me. Carry on.”
“Seriously, it just came to you like that?”
“Spooky Kids was the name of Manson’s first group.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’m a journalist. Get on with it!”
“I happen to know a computer whiz kid, if you get what I mean.”
“No, I don’t.”
“A hacker. A good one. The kind of guy who can tell you who you were dating fifteen years ago and where you went on your first date.”
“How come you know a hacker?”
“When I first opened the shop, I used to rent out my cars to rich kids on the weekends to make some extra money. One of them left something behind inside the central armrest when he returned a Corvette to me.”
“A gun?”
“Weed. Enough for a herd of cows to graze on. I’ve never been into smoking dope. If I had taken his stuff to the police, his acne would have cleared up long before he would have been able to get back to his cherished computer. But I’m not a snitch, so I gave him back what was rightfully his. He said I was ‘super honest’ and vowed to be there for me if I ever needed his help. At eleven o’clock last night, I realized I needed a favor that was right up his alley. Don’t ask me how he did it—I know nothing about computers—but he called me this morning saying he’d found Spooky Kid’s IP address. It’s like his computer’s license plate, and it appears every time he goes online.”
“Has your hard-drive raider identified this Spooky Kid who’s spitting his venom at me?”
“Not his identity, but the location he publishes his comments from. And you’ll be surprised to hear he posts his messages from the New York Times network.”
“What did you say?” Andrew asked, stunned.
“You heard me. I’ve printed off a few examples. They’re not actually death threats, but they’re so hate-filled they nearly could be. Who at your newspaper could be writing such hateful things about you? Look, here’s the latest one,” Simon continued, handing Andrew a printout. “If a bus ran over that bastard Andrew Stilman, its tires would be covered in shit and national press would be spared this disaster.”
“I think we both know the answer,” Andrew replied, shocked by the comment he’d just read. “I’ll take care of Olson myself, thanks.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort, pal. First off, I have no proof it’s him. He’s not the only other person working at the Times. Plus, if you stick your nose in, he’ll only get suspicious. Let me do my thing, and don’t budge until I give you the green light. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Andrew replied.
“At the office, keep acting like nothing’s wrong. Who knows what a guy who hates you so much is capable of? The main thing is to make sure it’s him. As far as I’m concerned, whether or not he’s Freddy Olson, this Spooky Kid character is now at the top of the list of the people that want you dead, and he’s certainly taking every opportunity to let everyone know.”
Andrew got up and said goodbye to his friend.
“Shall I keep following him, or do you still think I’m being ridiculous?” Simon asked with a smile as Andrew walked away.
* * *
Andrew spent the rest of the day getting ready for Argentina, making one phone call after another to organize his trip. At dusk, still at work, he began to drift off at his desk. The figure of a little girl appeared to him in a dream. She was standing still, alone at the end of a long avenue of cypress trees leading up a hillside. Andrew put his feet up on the desk and sank back in his chair.
The little girl led him toward a village set high in the mountains. Each time he thought he was catching up with her, she quickened her pace and the gap between them widened. Her peals of laughter guided him in the absurd chase. The wind lifted as night fell. Andrew shivered. He was cold. So cold he started to tremble. He came to a derelict barn and went in. The little girl was waiting for him, sitting on the ledge of a window just under the roof, swinging her legs. Andrew walked over to the wall and looked up at her, but couldn’t make out the child’s features. He only saw her smile—a strange, almost adult smile. The young girl breathed words that the wind carried down to him.
“Seek me, find me, Andrew. Don’t abandon me. I’m counting on you. We can’t afford to make a mistake. I need you.”
She fell forward into the void. Andrew ran to catch her, but she disappeared before she’d touched the ground.
Alone in the barn, Andrew knelt down, shaking. His back was aching. A sharp twinge made him pass out. When he regained consciousness, he found himself strapped into a metal chair. He could hardly breathe. His lungs burned. He was suffocating. An electric shock surged through his body. All of his muscles contracted and he felt himself being propelled by a great force. In the distance he heard a voice shout “again.” An even more powerful shock flung him forward, his arteries thumping, his heart in flames. The smell of smoldering flesh entered his nostrils. The straps shackling his limbs cut into him. His head lolled to one side and he begged them to stop.
His racing heart began to calm. The air he’d been desperate for entered his lungs and he inhaled deeply, as if he’d been holding his breath for an age.
A hand touched his shoulder and shook him roughly.
“Stilman! Stilman!”
Andrew opened his eyes to see Olson’s face pressed right up to his.
“Sleep at the office if you want, but don’t dream so loudly! Some of us are working.”
Andrew sat up with a jump.
“Shit! What are you doing here, Freddy?”
“I’ve been listening to you groaning for the past ten minutes. You’re making it impossible to concentrate. I thought you were ill or something, so I came to see what was up. But if that’s the greeting I get, I don’t know why I bothered.”
Beads of sweat stood out on Andrew’s forehead, yet he felt frozen stiff.
“You ought to go home and get some rest. You must be coming down with something. Even I don’t like seeing you in this state,” Freddy sighed. “I’m leaving soon. Do you want me to drop you somewhere in a taxi?”
Andrew had had a few nightmares in his life, but none that had seemed so real. He looked at Freddy for a moment, then replied, “No thanks. I’ll be okay. Must be something I ate at lunch.”
“It’s eight o’clock in the evening.”
Andrew wondered how long he’d been disconnected from reality, lost in his dreams. As he tried to recall what time he’d seen displayed on his screen before he’d dropped off, he asked himself what was real in his life anymore.
Exhausted, he headed home. He called Valerie on the way to warn her he wouldn’t wait up, but Sam informed him that she’d only just gone into surgery and probably wouldn’t be finished until late.