The Argentina Rhodochrosite (19 page)

38

Even though she was inside a
taxicab, Ainsley knew from the whooping and shouting on the sidewalks that this wasn’t going to be any ordinary game.

She was approaching the outskirts of La Boca, a colorful neighborhood whose homes traditionally were painted a garish display of bright blues, greens, red, oranges, and yellows. The tradition reached back to the Genoese tradition of decorating homes with leftover paint from ships.

But today, on either side of the cars, a flood of soccer supporters, bouncing and chanting, were flooding down the sidewalk.

All wore blue and gold jerseys.

She looked down at her own clothing. She was dressed in neutrals today. Hopefully the other team wouldn’t be similarly clothed.

Three minutes passed, and the taxicab inched forward. Ainsley leaned out of her window, much like a dog sniffing the wind, and peered ahead. She saw nothing but a long line of red brakelights stretched ahead.

It was game night in La Boca.

The driver shrugged at her. “Okay, this is good,” she said, handing him a twenty-peso note, and stepping out of the cab.

The air was electric with anticipation. She twitched her nose as the sharp stench of pollution hit her nostrils. It was coming from her left, where an ugly iron bridge crossed a shit-brown inlet of the river. This was the old port, the original site where the Italian and Spanish immigrants had first stepped into South America, where the tango had been invented, where millions of people had come and gone, lived and died, and nobody had ever known their names.

But Ainsley wasn’t going to be forgotten.

The difference was the secret inside her purse. The simple necklace that could release Ovidio from his neurotic dilemma, send him back onto the field. And potentially turn her into a hero, if anyone were to find out.

None of that was guaranteed, however.

She slipped into the flood of fans moving down the sidewalks, wedged herself tightly behind a group of men who were linked shoulder-to-shoulder. She could smell their booze, their sweat, their body odor.

She was carried by the river of fans down the street towards an abandoned railroad track. Ainsley guessed this was a relic of La Boca’s industrial days.

And that’s when, over the heads of the crowd, she finally glimpsed the stadium.

It was a blue-and-gold behemoth sitting like a mirage at the far end of the railroad track. The pride of Argentina soccer, its formal name is the Estadio Alberto J. Armando. Around the world, however, it’s known by another name.

La Bombonera
.

Translation: the Chocolate Box. The legendary home of the legendary soccer club Boca Juniors, whose players included the legendary Diego Maradona, among others.

When the fans around Ainsley caught sight of the blue-and-gold ramparts of their beloved stadium, they started to sing. Really loudly. It was a fight song, bellowed with such gusto that Ainsley even felt stirred herself.

She was carried along by the flood of people towards the bright lights of the entrance. The first thing she saw were the police, in full riot gear, arranged in long, intimidating lines. The second thing she noticed were the signs directing Boca fans to one entrance and visitor fans to a different entrance. They would presumably be separated for the whole game. Their fandom was that intense.

Ainsley pulled out the handwritten directions that Nadia had given her. She was to circle La Bombonera until she found the secret VIP entrance, near the loading dock, behind the hurricane fence.

She walked on the old cobblestones in the shadow of the structure, navigating the sea of fans rushing into the various entrances. Overhead, hundreds of oblong security cameras watched the crowd like very curious shoeboxes.

Standing near an alleyway, a heavy man wearing a dirty Boca jacket grabbed her arm. “You need a ticket.”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t have to lie. I can read you. You’re not wearing any colors, walking around like a lost sheep.”

“I’m looking for the VIP entrance.”

He chuckled and jerked a finger over his shoulder. “It’s that way, but nobody gets in that way.” He lifted his hand far above his head to illustrate. “You come back here when you need a ticket. This is where the real fans come.” He pounded his chest proudly.

Ainsley kept walking. She was sure that she wouldn’t be needing his help.

A few minutes later, around the flat back end of the stadium, she finally spotted the loading dock. Next to it was a piece of green fencing, behind which stood a door and a few imposing security guards.

She approached them and went through the usual routine: name, passport, clipboard, check. They waved her through.

Ainsley stepped into a long, dark tunnel. At the far end was a small circle of spotlit grass. As she walked, she could hear the crowd above her. She could feel the people jumping, their shoes literally shaking the concrete all around her.

These Boca fans were
loud
.

The disk of spotlit grass ahead had grown larger. Ainsley caught the scent of rank humanity ahead. She was approaching the end of the tunnel. Ainsley drew a deep breath and clenched her hands.

She stepped out onto a small terrace and found herself in the midst of thousands of people. To the left, to the right, forward, behind, across the field—La Bombonera was a human carpet, thousands of heads covered in shaggy mops of hair.

And the human carpet was moving.

The green field was flush up against the sides of the stands; there was no distance between the fans and the players. A pair of white tunnels extended out onto the pitch from the sides of the stands.

Proud fight music burst out of the speakers. A fleet of soccer players exploded out of one end of the tunnel, each running like mad, each wearing the blue-and-gold strip of Boca Juniors.

Total chaos erupted around her. The human carpet let loose with all of its props—blue confetti, gold streamers, air horns, noisemakers, waving flags, whirled jackets. She watched a grown man thrust his fists into the air, throw his head backwards, and openly cry.

Then a vast movement across the stadium caught her attention. An enormous blue-and-gold banner, forty meters across and twenty meters long, had been unfurled across the heads of the people sitting behind the far goal. It bore the famous Boca Juniors shield and words
No. 12
.

Number twelve. She was clueless about its meaning.

Then Ainsley noticed something else. On the field, a man dressed as a king was parading around, wearing a blue cape with the number 12 on the back. He was followed by a team of female dancers clad in blue wigs, short gold skirts, and glittery heels.

Ainsley had never seen anything like this. These people were utterly mad. There was no sporting event in the United States whose supporters could even begin to compare with these maniacs. She clutched her purse and shrank back inside the opening of the tunnel.

Then she collected herself. Nadia had told her to find executive suite 47, so Ainsley circled the terraces, towards the flat side of the arena. She walked quickly.

It didn’t take long. She found Nadia standing outside the door to the suite, her face drawn as tightly as drumhead.

“I’m sorry,” said Ainsley, “but Bernabé didn’t arrive until seven. I came as quickly as possible.”

Nadia seemed distraught. “They’re booing him,” she said. “Every time he comes on camera, they boo him.”

The manager gestured behind her. At that moment, a picture of Ovidio filled the video screen. He was sitting on the bench, wrapped in his warmup gear, arms crossed. He wasn’t even watching his team. He was just staring at nothing, his lower lip jutting out stubbornly. He looked even more like a chimpanzee than he had before.

The booing immediately erupted. A shower of trash rained down upon the canopy over his head.

Ainsley nodded. “He has a serious public relations problem.”

“I accepted the job of managing this asshole,” said Nadia. “I mean, I could’ve said no. But I thought that I would be the one to rehabilitate him.” She spat on the ground. “He is uncontrollable.”

Ainsley understood. This wasn’t the first time that a woman had tried to rescue a man from himself. Except in this case, the relationship was professional, not romantic.

Then Nadia suddenly seemed to return to her senses. She noticed Ainsley, almost for the first time.

“So you have the necklace?”

“I do.”

“Good. Let me see if we can meet him in the locker room at halftime. Just wait in the suite until I come get you.”

She gestured towards the executive suite. A guard was standing at the entrance. Nadia pointed to her visitor and nodded.

The guard stepped aside, and Ainsley entered.

39

Thirty people were inside, all pressed
against the glass wall that looked out over the field. They spoke in excited voices, pointing fingers at the action on the turf, voicing loud opinions about the coaching, the players’ strengths and weaknesses.

A waiter appeared at Ainsley’s side and accepted her coat.

“Will you be having anything to drink?” he asked.

“White wine,” she said.

“And to eat?”

“There’s a kitchen?” she said.

He pointed towards a swinging door. Through the porthole, Ainsley could see a cook and the bright lights of a kitchen. It was tempting, but she was too nervous to eat.

“No, thank you, just the drink.”

The waiter disappeared. Ainsley tossed her hair and waited for one of the Argentine men to make his move.

It didn’t take long. One man peeled himself away from the window to introduce himself; he was the owner of a leather retail chain. Then a second man joined the conversation: the vice-president of a bank. A third butted in; he was a well-known restauranteur from the local neighborhood.

For her part, Ainsley played the part of a bubbly
periodista
. She laughed, flattered, flirted, even played dumb. Soon she had gathered a group of male admirers. She had become Scarlett O’Hara in the southern hemisphere.

The men were more than happy to explain to the journalist the inner workings of La Bombonera. They started with the ubiquitous number twelve.

That, Ainsley learned, was the symbol of the Boca fans themselves. Famous for their intensity, and their ability to intimidate the opposing team, the Boca Juniors crowd literally influenced the outcome of the games. And they knew it. Since there were eleven players on a team, they had christened themselves La Doce, or “the twelfth player”.

The most rabid fans, Ainsley learned, were corralled behind the far goal. She could see the fence at that end of the field was almost eighty feet high, with spiraled razor wire at the top. This was where the
barra brava
gathered, the organized crime syndicate that controlled much ticket distribution and influenced the election of club presidents. They had grown in importance, one man told Ainsley, to the point that television news programs showed the
barra brava
arriving at home games right alongside the team itself.

Furthermore, after the three long whistles that signalled the end of each game, the
barra brava
were locked into their section. Literally. They weren’t allowed to leave the stadium, not until the opposing team’s fans had left first, and dispersed throughout the city.

The waiter brought Ainsley a glass of white wine. It was sweet. It tasted even sweeter after she learned that alcohol was strictly forbidden in the stadium. On game days, you couldn’t even get a drink in the surrounding neighborhood.

Such were the perks of the executive suite.

At one point she mentioned Ovidio’s refusal to play. Her admirers offered several rumors. Ovidio had become mentally ill. Ovidio had been diagnosed with a tumor. Ovidio was part of a satanic cult.

None of them mentioned his rhodochrosite necklace.

Two glasses of wine later, Ainsley was feeling completely comfortable. She glided through the suite, chatting easily, touching men’s forearms. Maybe she was being too friendly. She didn’t care.

She found a piece of open window and looked out upon the game. Under the floodlights, on the green grass, the twenty-two players were feinting, dodging, sprinting, leaping, and colliding. Ainsley was impressed with the physicality of the game. Anyone who thought that soccer was boring hadn’t ever seen it played like this.

“These guys are spectacular,” she said.

“Actually they’re not playing so well today,” said the man standing to her side. She looked over. He was sixtyish, blonde, handsome. He was wearing a crisp military uniform.

“Why is that?”

“One, they played three days ago and are still tired. Two, Ovidio isn’t on the field.”

“You’re still a fan of his?”

He looked at her sternly. “I have been a supporter of Ovidio since I saw him play on the Bahia Blanca youth team at age twelve.”

Ainsley noticed an odd twitch in the man’s left eye. It was one of those weird quirks, especially on a handsome person, that she had to force herself to ignore.

“And you’ve followed him all this time,” she said.

“He is very special,” the man said. “I have attended every game, except for the ones when he was playing out of the country. It’s almost like the pride of a father.”

“Good for you.”

The man nodded. “He is an absolutely superior human. One of the fruits of our civilization.”

This guy sounded heavy, but she decided to continue the conversation anyways. “I’m Ainsley,” she said, “a journalist from the United States.”

He suddenly adopted a very formal tone. “And your family name?”

“Walker.”

“Ainsley Walker.” The military man repeated the name to himself, as if committing it to memory. “I am Lieutenant Colonel Ortiz.” They shared a firm handshake. “This is my wife, Maria Libertad.”

On his other side, a thin woman glanced down at her shoes. She was well turned out, pantsuit, gold earrings, heels. Around her head floated a brittle shell of dyed blonde hair. It looked like she used it to protect herself from new ideas. Sometimes Ainsley had intuitions about people, and she was feeling that Maria Libertad was an empty vessel.

She really couldn’t stand women like that. Devolving into a mere plus-one was Ainsley’s greatest fear, but this woman looked like she had aspired to the position. Maybe life as an integer was better than life as a fraction.

Lieutenant Colonel Ortiz placed a hand on the back of his wife’s neck. “We have been married for thirty-five years.”

He announced this with obvious pride. Maria Libertad didn’t react in any way. She stood there like a pretty silk handkerchief stuffed into her husband’s shirt pocket.

“Congratulations,” said Ainsley.

The waiter came over. Ortiz shooed him away. His hand never left Maria Libertad’s neck. He seemed like a good candidate for most controlling husband ever.

“What magazine do you write for, Miss Walker?”

“I’m freelance,” she answered, well-versed in the lie now. “I’m doing a piece on Ovidio that I hope to sell when I get back.”

“Listen to me. I know the man very well. I helped him early on, when his parents were dying, and when he was very poor. If you need any background, let me know.”

“I will, thank you.”

“What part of his life in particular are you focusing on?”

Ainsley hesitated. She didn’t know whether or not she could trust this man, but she was just tipsy enough to plunge in.

“I’ve heard rumors about a rhodochrosite necklace,” she said, “a sentimental object to him. I might focus on that, if he ever finds it.”

The lieutenant colonel fixed his eyes upon hers. Ortiz had a strong gaze and it wasn’t easy for Ainsley to return it. “I haven’t heard about that necklace,” he said. “I wonder why Ovidio never mentioned it to me.”

Ainsley shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t trust you.”

The man’s nostrils flared. She suddenly realized that the wine had gotten the better of her. She was pissing off one of the superstar’s oldest benefactors.

Then she felt someone grab her elbow. It was Nadia. The manager looked very upset. “Let’s go,” she said.

She hauled Ainsley across the floor and pushed her out of the executive suite.

When they were on the concourse, Ainsley faced her boss. “What’s the problem?”

“What were you doing talking to that man?” asked Nadia.

“That guy? He introduced himself to me.”

Nadia shook her head. “No, no, no. Listen to me. You don’t talk to the
milicos
.”

“Why?”

“You just
don’t
. Nobody does. It’s dangerous. They are not with us.” Nadia emphasized the concept by pushing her hands apart from each other. “They are
separate
. Understand?”

Ainsley shrugged. “Sure.”

But Nadia still looked agitated. “Now, about my client. We have been given permission to enter the locker room at halftime.”

“We have?”

“This is very unusual, but the Boca Juniors manager has made an exception. He knows what is at stake.”

Ainsley nodded. “I’m ready.”

There was no middle ground here. This stunt was going to be either an explosive success or a mind-boggling disaster.

“Then let’s go,” said Nadia. “We have five minutes until halftime.”