The Argentina Rhodochrosite (21 page)

43

Ainsley Walker thumbed through the money
in her purse.

She was sitting at an outdoor cafe on Avenida Libertador, the remains of a cappuccino with perfect foam before her. It was a warm spring morning in the Southern Hemisphere. She was not yet thirty, fairly attractive, and free as a bird. And, by her count, she was carrying six thousand pesos in her purse, which, at four-to-one, translated to about fifteen hundred dollars.

So why did she feel so miserable?

One reason could be found in the small ashtray on her table. Seven cigarette butts lay inside, freshly stubbed out. She’d sworn off this habit more times than she could remember. The problem lay in the nature of nicotine. It really did relieve stress.

Ainsley pulled out her latest purchase. A pack of Nicorette chewing gum. She’d bought it this morning, right along with the cigarettes themselves. The clerk had snickered at her. That was all right. She didn’t have to always make sense.

The other reason for her mood was more abstract. Ainsley had no purpose. Some people thrived on this feeling. Ainsley had always secretly admired people like that, those free spirits in peasant dresses and sandals and no makeup, the ones who flitted from place to place, thought to thought, man to man. The girls who lived happily on a diet of whim and impulse.

But Ainsley couldn’t live like that. She was much too goal-oriented. She was built for constant, purposeful, forward motion.

And now her only remaining objective—to find a rhodochrosite necklace—had been yanked away. Ovidio had fired her. It stung a little, but not too much. After all, she’d been fired several times already. She’d walked this path before, knew the road well.

She reflected on her dilemma. The idea of returning to the United States tasted like soggy cardboard. After all, she knew what awaited her there: an empty apartment, an empty savings account, an empty workday. The nagging feeling of missing the boat, of watching others building conventionally successful lives. That task was getting harder and harder to do anyways.

Not that Argentina was much better. There was proof right on this street. Ainsley could see it from her chair.

She peered down to the corner, where a lovely, three-story mansion stood on an expanse of pine-dotted lawn. It was white with a terracotta roof. The portico had four columns. A large, official Argentina seal hung prominently over the front door.

This was the Navy Mechanics School. She had recognized the name on the sign from her afternoon of Internet research back at the hotel a few days earlier.

Its history wasn’t nearly as pretty as the setting.

The Navy Mechanics School was the detention center where, during the dirty war, an estimated five thousand prisoners had been stored before being ultimately “transferred”. Prisoners had slept in the attic when they weren’t being tortured in the basement. The goods that had been stolen from their homes— books, televisions, mattresses, washing machines, paintings, furniture, clothing, jewelry, tango records—were kept in The Hold, a chamber near the officers’ quarters on the first and second floors.

There had been many, many other detention centers too, all across the country. Most of them had been destroyed, others converted. To erase the memory of the disappeared.

But Ainsley wasn’t disappeared. She was right here, with three more nights of prepaid hotel, and she needed to feel useful. Her thoughts turned back to the rhodochrosite necklace.

She remembered how quickly Bernabé had recognized the Zorro vein of rhodochrosite, as he’d called it. He’d told Ainsley about the man who had mined it, Marcelo Carrazo. He’d given her the contact information too. Talking to that gentleman might prove worthwhile, even if she wasn’t being paid any more.

Would that be considered overstepping her bounds? Continuing to work, for no money, on a task from which she’d been fired?

Probably. It was also a little crazy. Ainsley needed to think about that.

She downed the rest of her cappuccino and put a ten-peso note on the table. She needed to use the bathroom. Making the decision to continue the mission, in defiance of Ovidio, would require a clear head.

Ainsley stood up and walked inside the café. “Restroom?” she asked. A nervous-looking waiter with darting eyes nodded towards the rear of the establishment.

She found the women’s toilet and locked the door behind her. She stared at herself in the mirror, thinking about her next step.

She decided what she would do. She would head over to Parque Lezama and check out San Telmo, the historic
barrio
popular with tourists, before making her decision. In other words, Ainsley would relax, just for one afternoon, and try to enjoy herself, like a normal goddamn person. Then, maybe, if she felt like it, she would call this Marcelo Carrazo to see if he knew anything at all.

There was no rush. She was out of danger. It felt like volunteer work now. She had as much time as she wanted in this country, and a little bit of money to carry her over. Maybe she’d even call Sebastian back.

Ainsley splashed water on her face. She used a paper towels to dab it dry. Then she unlocked the bathroom door and opened it.

Three men dressed in black paramilitary garb were blocking the door. Their faces were covered except for their eyes. They were carrying guns.

And the guns were pointed directly at her.

44

Ainsley stopped in midstride. Her mouth
dropped open. She was having trouble registering their presence.

“What the hell is this?” she said.

The men said nothing. She sensed that they were trying to identify her. One nodded. Another stepped forward and put his hand roughly on her shoulder. She slapped it away using the classic windmilling arm technique she’d learned in self-defense class. The first guy attempted it on the other side, but she knocked him away too.

Ainsley fell backwards into the bathroom and tried to kick the door shut, but the assailants had already followed her. There was no hope of overpowering them.

In the small space, the men surrounded her, turned her around against the wall. She felt the cold metal of a weapon pressed sideways across her shoulder blades, pinning her to the wall. She felt her purse being slipped off her left arm.

She felt panic mixed with infuriation. They’d pressed her face against the cool tile, so she cranked her head a little further sideways and used her best peripheral vision. She could see that the men had unzipped her purse and had found her passport. One of them held it up to her face. To compare.

That satisfied the men. She was yanked roughly from the wall and felt her hands being bound. The plastic bit into her wrists. A hand on her neck pushed her out of the bathroom.

That’s when Ainsley realized that this wasn’t a robbery.

This was a kidnapping.

The cafe had been emptied. Ainsley glimpsed the waiter and the cook on the sidewalk, being detained by another man in paramilitary garb.

But they didn’t push her towards the front door. Instead, they pushed her into the kitchen, past the stoves, the walk-in freezer, the bags of flour and sacks of vegetables, out the back door and into the alley.

In the alley was a green Ford Falcon. With heavily tinted windows.

Ainsley felt her stomach pitch. That was exactly the same type of car that the government had used in the dirty war to “disappear” political prisoners. To snatch them off the streets.

And presumably, even out of café bathrooms.

Ainsley instantly tried to bolt, but the men had anticipated this—maybe this wasn’t their first kidnapping—and had already surrounded her. Six rough hands stopped her instantly.

She began screaming until she felt a hand cover her mouth. Her face grimacing, her body writhing, she twisted and turned like a tempermental four-year-old being dragged off to bed. Ainsley had always been able to make a stink when she wanted to.

But it wasn’t enough. They dragged her towards the Ford Falcon. A fourth man had opened the back door. She felt hands pushing down on her head, other hands clamped on her shoulders, arms, and before she knew it—

—she found herself thrust into the backseat.

The door slammed shut behind her. Ainsley sat down on her butt, arranged her legs, looked around the compartment. A thick plexiglass divider separated her from the front seat. There were no handles, no window cranks, nothing but smooth surfaces.

Breathing heavily, Ainsley considered her options. It didn’t take long.

She had no options.

Two of the men entered the front seat. One started the car, and floored the accelerator. They peeled out of the alley and turned onto Avenida Libertador.

She pounded on the divider with her shoe.
“What’s happening to me?”

They didn’t respond.

Ainsley saw the Navy Mechanics School coming up on the left. She could feel her heart thumping faster. The dirty war had ended thirty years ago, but if it had happened once, it could happen twice. After all, they’d already disappeared the hotel maid from Villa 27. What if she were next?

She raced through the problem in her mind. Who in the United States would be willing to look for her? What kind of diplomatic rescue could she expect? She hadn’t told anybody back home that she was going to Argentina. The cavalry would never be on its way.

She was truly, undisputably
alone
.

The Navy Mechanics School drew closer. Every muscle in Ainsley’s body drew tightly.

To her surprise, however, the car passed the Navy Mechanics School. The men didn’t even turn their heads. She let out a small breath of relief.

Two minutes later, the Falcon drove up to an elevated freeway, joining the flood of vehicles headed away from the city center, towards the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

This kidnapping could be going anywhere.

Ainsley looked at the people in the cars next to her, working men in garbage trucks, ordinary office workers in beat-up jalopies. They had no idea about the horrendous event that was occurring behind these tinted windows. She felt a sudden overwhelming love for these strangers, a need to talk to them. She’d never felt like this before.

Ahead, a sign above the freeway read
Aeropuerto Internacional Ministro Pistarini: ½ km
.

The driver put on the right-turn blinker and shifted into the exit lane. Ainsley gripped the upholstery.

The car exited the freeway and followed the curve. Ainsley saw ads for car-rental agencies, hotels, parking, airlines.

She was being taken to an airport. Ainsley couldn’t make sense of this.

The driver avoided the arrivals and departures circle, instead turning onto a small gravel road. It ran parallel with the fence that surrounded the tarmac.

Soon they came to a gate. A guard was smoking outside the security booth, his hand resting casually on the mechanical arm. When his eyes landed on the green Falcon, he flicked the cigarette away and headed into his booth. The mechanical arm quickly lifted.

No ID check.

Then they were on the tarmac, roaring back the way they had just driven, the fence passing by on her left.

Ahead was the terminal. A large commercial airplane, the usual Boeing 737, was parked with its nose in the loading dock. She could see the luggage trucking up the conveyor belt to the luggage hold.

That’s when the terrible realization hit her. Of what they were about to do.

The Falcon roared up under the belly of the plane. A door opened on the terminal and a customs official walked down the stairs. His bearing seemed serious.

He approached the Falcon. The driver rolled down the window and handed him something. Ainsley recognized it.

Her passport.

The customs official disappeared into the airport. Ainsley closed her eyes. Her stomach had dropped. They could be doing anything with the document. She wondered if she would ever see it again.

She watched the last of the baggage being thrown into the hold, the luggage truck pulling away. She watched a worker disconnect the fuel hose, and then the fuel truck pulled away too.

At last the customs official reappeared, her passport in hand. He moved across the asphalt and silently handed it back to the driver.

Just before the customs official turned away for good, he glanced at Ainsley in the backseat. There was a small smirk on his face. Then he was gone.

The door on her left was suddenly yanked open. A pair of men stood there, dressed in military uniforms. She hadn’t seen them approach.

Then the door on her right opened too. She felt rough hands pulling her by the upper arm across the upholstery.

“Ainsley,” said one of the military uniforms on her left. She turned her head to look at him.

Then she felt a prick on her right shoulder. Ouch. She looked back to her right. The needle was already being withdrawn from her skin. Another military man held the needle. He quickly disposed of it in a small case and stowed it in his pocket.

“Stand up,” a voice said.

Ainsley obeyed. She was feeling woozy. She felt her plastic snipped off her wrists. Then she felt a man on either side of her. One arm snaked around her shoulders, another across her lower back, both directing her towards the staircase that led to the airplane.

“Move your legs,” the voice said. “Keep walking.”

She was having trouble focusing her eyes, but she could still follow the orders. They directed her towards the staircase.

“Go up the stairs,” the voice said.

She obeyed. The metal steps beneath her shoes, ordinarily so hard, felt squishy and soft.

Then she felt herself being guided inside the accordion gangplank. The walls were rippling oddly. Her thighs had started to feel rubbery. Her mouth was dry. Her head hurt.

Then she was passed into the airplane. She saw the distinctive black rubber floor beneath her shoes. She couldn’t lift her head; it felt extraordinarily heavy. She watched her shoes shuffle down the aisle. She felt herself being guided into a seat. She felt a seatbelt click across her waist. She felt the side of her head thump against the window.

And then, for many hours, Ainsley didn’t feel anything at all.