Another Kind of Country (2 page)

Santiago

Chile

The attack planes were flying
so
low that she could make out their markings. Planes of the Chile Air Force. Hawker Hunters. When you were the daughter of a government minister you picked up things almost without knowing you were doing so. Not that it did you much good, crouched at your bedroom window, hands on your ears as the planes tore across the blue sky, unloading their bombs on La Moneda.

La Moneda. The President’s palace. She’d been there a couple of times with her father; the President himself had spoken to her, asked her how she was doing at school. Sometimes she’d hear her classmates at school whispering behind her back, mocking her as a bastard, the illegitimate spawn of a politician’s mistress. President Allende didn’t give a toss about that. After all, everybody knew that the President spent most of the week with his own mistress.

Anyway, she didn’t think of Franco as a politician. He was her father, the guy who loved her and her mother. Although right now Rosa couldn’t forget that her father was not just a politician but a minister in a government under attack. From her window high up on the Barrio Alto she could see where the bombs were falling; she could see, too,
the puffs of smoke from the tank barrels trained on La Moneda.

She hoped Franco wasn’t inside. Nobody was going to walk out of there except with his hands in the air – and she couldn’t see her father doing that. The only people she could imagine Franco surrendering to were her mother and herself.

The phone rang.

She broke away from the window, rushed downstairs to stand beside her mother.

‘Franco?’

‘Caro, Felipe will be with you in a few minutes.’

Rosa’s head was close to her mother’s, the phone between them.

‘But you, Franco, where are you? You have to come with Felipe.’

‘I’ll come when I can, just get out of the city now.’

‘But, darling—’

‘Tell Rosa I’m sorry about this morning, tell her I love her.’

‘Papa!’ She pushed her lips close to the phone. ‘I’m so sorry, Papa, I’m so sorry for what I said.’

‘I love you, princess.’ The line was crackly. ‘Look after your mama. Get her out of there the moment Felipe arrives.’

‘I love you!’ Her mother’s voice blended with her own in a single cry into the phone.

‘My gorgeous ladies—’

The phone went dead.

‘Franco! Franco!’ Elena was shouting into the phone, shaking it as if she might spill his voice from it.

‘Mama, please.’

Rosa took the phone from her mother, put it for a moment to her ear. Only seashell static came back to her. She put the phone down, looked at her
mother’s face, made older now with tears, and she put her arms around her, as though she were the mother, comforting her weeping child.

‘We have to be ready, Mama.’

‘I know.’ Her mother’s voice choked with snuffles.

‘You’ve packed a few things?’

Her mother nodded, swallowing back tears.

‘You can only take twenty-five bags and a dozen cases.’

Elena looked blankly at her daughter, then she laughed. And then started crying again.

‘C’mon, Mama.’ She took her mother’s hand. ‘Felipe will be here any minute.’

‘If he can get through.’ Elena swallowed. ‘The radio said the tanks are everywhere in the city.’

‘Felipe loves Papa as much as we do,’ Rosa said. ‘If anybody can get through, Felipe can.’

From behind the gold-tipped, black iron gates Rosa watched the jeep swing into the street. Felipe’s bald pate shone like a dark-brown egg in the morning sun. His white shirt clung sweatily to his thin frame. He saw Rosa at the window, shouted as he gunned the jeep through the gateway, into the yard.

‘Now, Rosa! Now! We haven’t much time!’ He swung down from the jeep, the engine still running. ‘Señora Rossman!’ His voice echoed in the courtyard. ‘The soldiers are coming, please hurry!’

He looked with dismay at the line of bags and cases standing at the door of the house.

‘Where is Franco?’ Elena’s voice was steady; she looked immaculate in pale blue slacks and lemon blouse, framed in the open doorway.

‘We have to get out of here, Señora.’ Felipe was bundling bags into the back of
the jeep. ‘And we can’t take all of these. Please, Señora, get in the jeep.’

‘Is Franco safe, Felipe?’ She was like a statue, immovable in the doorway.

‘Who knows, Señora? Nobody is safe. There are soldiers and carabineros everywhere, and tanks around the palace. Please, Señora, I promised the minister I’d get you and Rosa out of the city.’

Elena moved then.
We knew this was coming, Rosa and I should have gone yesterday, as Franco wished
.

She looked at the luggage in the jeep, seized two cases, exchanged them for two others from the array at the door.

‘Rosa, you have your stuff?’

‘Here.’ Rosa swung a rucksack. ‘I have my script and some books.’

‘And underwear and a nightdress?’

‘Mama.’

Elena laughed. Felipe tried to hide his smile.

‘Please, Señora, we haven’t much time.’ He waved his sunglasses for emphasis. He had no wish to join the dead bodies he’d passed on the streets, scuttling along back alleys to the Barrio Alto.

‘All aboard?’ Felipe looked at his passengers, Elena beside him, Rosa wedged between cases on the back seat. Both of them sat stiffly, faces pale under wide-brimmed hats. The sun was high: it was going to be a long, sticky journey in the open jeep.

He eased the jeep round the red-tiled well that was the centrepiece of the courtyard. Overhead a Harrier Hunter roared across the sky. Shells were still falling on the city below.

‘There’s a car coming,’ Elena said. ‘Maybe it’s Franco.’

The noise drew closer, the unseen car clattering across the cobblestones.

It didn’t sound like any car Felipe had ever
driven. He pushed the jeep into gear, gunned it towards the open gateway.

A black American automobile, all chrome and fins, slammed across the gateway, blocking the jeep’s exit. The driver who leapt from the car was ponytailed in blue jeans and white T-shirt.

‘Everybody out!’ He stood in front of the jeep, slightly crouched. The black pistol pointing at them seemed like a metal extension of his big hands. ‘Now! Everybody out!’ He was shouting in English.

‘You’re American.’ Rosa wondered at the calmness of her mother’s voice.

‘Get out of the vehicle, lady. Now!’

‘There’s no need to point a gun at us.’

‘You.’ The American pointed the gun at Felipe. ‘Raise your hands higher above your head. Higher – I want to see you stretch for the sky, man – now!’

‘We’re not deaf.’

‘Lady, for the last time, shut your Communist mouth and get out of the fucking car.’

‘That kind of language—’

The gun bucked in his hands.

Felipe screamed. For a second his right arm was still upright but his hand was nothing more than a bleeding mass of shattered bone and tissue. He whimpered, cradling his mangled hand in his lap.

‘I might not be so accurate with the next one.’ A flash of white American teeth. ‘And my orders didn’t say I had to keep the driver alive, just the minister’s mistress and her daughter.’ The lank ponytail swung jauntily above the T-shirt. ‘Now come to me, ladies, nice and gently and we’ll wait until your liberating army arrives and decides what to do with you.’

Rosa started to scream.

‘My ears, lady.’ The American gestured with
the pistol.

Elena turned in her seat and swung her arm. The sound of her open palm on Rosa’s face was like another gunshot.

‘Stop it,’ she hissed. ‘I want you to live.’

The screaming died in Rosa’s throat.

She looked from her mother to their tormentor. The American’s hair needed washing, she thought; maybe he wore it long to cover the spreading birthmark she could make out below his left ear when he turned his head.

Felipe was moaning, blood leaking from the crushed mass of his hand.

‘Let me help him,’ Elena said.

‘Get out of the car, lady.’

He kept the gun trained on them as they climbed out of the jeep. Elena drew her daughter close to her, murmured into her ear.

‘Felipe is losing so much blood.’ She spoke over her daughter’s shoulder. ‘Please let me help him.’

‘He won’t need any help soon,’ the American said.

He stood beside them and trained the gun on Felipe. Horror dawned in Felipe’s eyes as he realized what was about to happen. The American shot him in the face.

For a couple of seconds Felipe’s body remained upright in the jeep. A gurgled moaning issued from the mashed red mass that had been his face and then he tumbled, still moaning, from the jeep. He hit the ground with a thump; his body twitched, blood pooling on the tiles, and was finally still.

The American poked at the body with his feet. ‘A bit messy.’ He might have been talking about the bloody tissue that stuck to his canvas boot. ‘Still, the carabineros would’ve made him suffer a lot more.’ He looked at Elena, white-faced, her arm around her trembling daughter. ‘All things considered, lady, you could say that I’m an angel of mercy.’ When he grinned, his high forehead furrowed into ridges that ran into
the receding hairline of his skull.

Rosa chose that moment to be sick. Her body heaved as she bent beside the jeep. The morning air was foul with the stench of blood and vomit.

‘My, my, I’m surprised by such behaviour. I’d have expected more delicacy from the females of a Communist minister.’ The American tut-tutted. He shook his head and the birthmark on his neck flashed a dull red in the sunshine. ‘I guess you never can tell—’

He was suddenly silent. Elena and Rosa looked up.

A slight man in a grey suit and sunglasses was standing behind the American. His right arm was outstretched, pointing a gun at the American’s head.

The American was motionless. The pistol in his hand seemed limp, useless.

‘Take it easy, Dieter,’ he said. ‘No need for anyone to get hurt.’

‘Tell that to the driver.’ Dieter spoke English with a thick, guttural accent. Anyway, Rosa thought, wiping her mouth with her hands, with a name like Dieter, he
had
to be German.

‘Drop it,’ Dieter said. ‘Slowly.’

The gun clattered on the ground.

‘Now push it with your foot towards Señora Rossman.’

The American put his canvas-booted foot on the gun, shoved it away from him. It scraped along the tiles; dark pearls of blood clung to the darker gunmetal.

‘Please pick it up, Señora Rossman.’

Elena stooped to retrieve the weapon. Its cold stickiness repelled her. She began to wipe the gun with a white, lace-edged handkerchief.

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m your friend,’ Dieter said. ‘Just in case you doubt
me, Señora Rossman, I have a letter in my pocket from,’ he almost smiled, ‘from Rosa’s father. My job is to get both of you out of the country to safety.’

The American made a kind of whinnying sound; his ponytail swung like a mane.

‘Out of the country, Dieter! You’ll be fucking lucky – even the port of Valparaiso is closed. What’re you going to do – get out in a spaceship?’

Dieter stepped back a pace. His short, slight body seemed lost in the grey suit. The raised gun seemed monstrous in his small hand.

‘Time for you to be leaving us, Mr Dover.’

‘No!’ Elena took a step forward. ‘Please, there’s been enough killing.’

‘He murdered your driver, Señora Rossman, he was going to hand you over to the soldiers—’

‘But you stopped him,’ Rosa butted in.

‘You’d better stop me permanently, Dieter.’ The ponytail swung again. ‘You know I always like to settle old scores.’

‘Where are you taking us?’ Elena let the bloodied handkerchief fall from her fingers. ‘And how did you get here? You have no car.’

‘I’m guessing old Dieter wants to take you all the way behind the Iron Curtain to the Democratic Republic of Germany. Right, Dieter? And you haven’t a prayer – the roads are blocked, the ports are closed, and the skies,’ he glanced upwards at the jet trails in the blue sky, ‘the skies are ours, right, Dieter?’

Dieter pulled the trigger.

Dover collapsed, howling, clutching at his blasted knee.

Rosa looked in fascination at the blood seeping through the American’s blue jeans.

‘Please,’ she said as Dieter stood above
the American, ‘he can’t harm us now.’

‘You’d better finish it, Dieter.’ The American spat the words out through clenched teeth. Sweat bled from his furrowed forehead.

‘If you kill him,’ Rosa said, ‘you’re no better than him.’

Dieter fired again. Dover bucked on the ground. A pool of redness flowed from his other knee.

‘I hope,’ Dieter said in his guttural English, ‘that I don’t regret letting this bastard live.’ He looked at Rosa and her mother. ‘We have to move. My car is on the next street but this,’ he pointed at the jeep, ‘this is what we need for our journey. It’s what Franco intended. He asked me to tail Felipe in case something happened. I’m just sorry I couldn’t get here in time. A couple of carabineros stopped me and it took some time and some
dinero
to get past them.’

It took only moments for Dieter to move the American car out of the way.

‘You won’t be needing these,’ he said over his shoulder as he tossed the car keys into the courtyard well. Herbert Dover heard neither Dieter’s words nor the splashing sound of the keys hitting the water; the American had passed out, blood leaking from his shattered knees on the ground beside the jeep.

‘
Vamos
,’ Dieter said.

The street was quiet, deserted, as he nosed the jeep out of the courtyard but sporadic gunfire rattled through the air from the distant streets around La Moneda.

Tuesday, 11 September 1973, noon

Santiago

Chile

Rosa felt she was seeing her city with
different
eyes. Dieter swung the jeep left and right along alleys she had never seen. Sometimes she was sure he backtracked but always, when he straightened out, the mountains rose closer in front of them to the east.

From all around came the noises of a city at war, yet it was a war that remained unseen. Strange, she thought, that this saviour, who spoke English and Spanish with a German accent, seemed to know the streets of Santiago better than herself.