The Argentina Rhodochrosite (28 page)

58

As they started the return to
Lago de Miel, Ainsley saw a bird fly backwards.

It wasn’t flying in reverse. It was facing forwards, the usual way, and flapping its wings in the usual way too. But the wind was so powerful that it was being blown straight backwards. It had lost all aerodynamics.

Ainsley couldn’t imagine what might happen to an airplane trying to land in such weather.

The wind obliterated everything. It made her eyes water, froze her nostrils, blistered her cheeks, and ended the possibility of conversation. She held onto Marcelo’s jacket and kept her face hidden inside her coat.

The horse carried them back below the treeline, and when they forded the swollen river, which hadn’t subsided at all overnight, they emerged equally wet but doubly cold on the other side.

A few minutes later, Marcelo steered them towards a small cave formed in the overhang of a boulder. It was almost completely protected from the wind. They dismounted, and he quickly gathered some wood and started a small fire.

Ainsley watched him work. “You’re really fast,” she said.

“I learned from my
gauchos
,” he said. “They’re the experts.”

“I wonder how they’re doing.”

“Those assholes? They are doing fine. They’re cockroaches. They will survive the end of the world, if they don’t kill each other first.”

The two of them stripped off some of their outer clothes and held them over the fire. As Marcelo’s wool sweater dried, the heavy odor of wet sheep floated into Ainsley’s nostrils. The smell was oddly reassuring in this dry landscape.

“Ortiz,” he said, then shook his head. “It’s difficult for me to believe that I sold three hundred gemstones to one of the designers of the dirty war. I mean, I helped him accomplish his mission.”

“He was the bad man,” Ainsley said, “not you.”

“I hope he gets his day in court,” said the rancher. He chewed on his lower lip, suddenly pensive. “There is something else that I remembered on the ride.”

“What is it?”

“A rumor I heard about Ortiz. A friend told me. I can’t remember who, exactly.”

Ainsley could see him physically trying to remember, the squinted eyes, the jaw working itself, the stuttered sentences.

She waited patiently. Marcelo had a way of circling around his points. But the points so far had certainly been worth the wait.

“What was it?” she repeated.

“It was about his wife.”

“I met her,” Ainsley said. “She was an empty vessel.”

“What do you mean?”

“She had no personality.”

Marcelo nodded. “My friend said that she herself had been a
desaparacido
.”

Ainsley sat there gaping at him over this miniscule campfire. She wondered how many bombshells were going to be dropped onto her in a single twenty-four-hour period.

But the rancher kept talking. “They said that she had been a prisoner. That she was pregnant when she was disappeared, along with her fiancé.”

“What else?” said Ainsley weakly.

“They said that she broke under torture. She turned in all her friends, pointed out other subversives on the street. They said that she had fallen in love with her torturer.” He looked at Ainsley. “Have you ever heard of anything that sick?”

It was seriously hard to breathe, and not because of the altitude. Ainsley heard herself gasp the next few words. “Do you know what happened to… the baby?”

“The baby.” Marcelo watched her for a moment. Then he shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine such a
milico
raising a subversive’s child. It just wouldn’t happen.”

Their clothes were mostly dry now. Marcelo stood up, stamped on the small fire, offered Ainsley some water. She shook her head. There was too much confusion in her at the moment.

“Enough about that,” he said. “I have to prepare to see my herd.”

She could see him stuffing his emotions away. He swung onto the saddle, helped his rider up, and pointed the horse downhill again.

Ainsley sat behind him for the remainder of the time, the now-familiar feel of his corduroy jacket in her hands. She was in an almost catatonic state.

Lieutenant Colonel Ortiz’s wife had been a pregnant
desaparecido
.

The whereabouts of the baby, if it had survived, were unknown.

Then she remembered that Lieutenant Colonel Ortiz had boasted about attending every one of Ovidio’s soccer games. That he had “discovered” the boy as a teen in Bahía Blanca. That he felt almost as much pride as a father would.

The crayons had been handed to her. She just needed to color in the last piece of the picture.

Ainsley mused upon her next move until the horse crested the familiar lip of the grassy bowl of Lago de Miel.

She felt Marcelo’s body tense. She craned her head around his body.

On the field, the carcasses of one hundred and seventeen cows lay fallen on the grass. Many were concentrated in a single group at the shore of the lake. The edge of the water had gone dark red with their blood. Other carcasses were stretched further down along the shore.

Some—the younger, more agile ones—had tried to escape up the sides of the bowl, and had been shot there, in the grass.

There were no humans anywhere in sight. The military had shot the cows and then left. To teach Marcelo a lesson.

The rancher walked the horse through the killing field. Ainsley looked down as they passed the corpse of a steer. Its black fur was matted but still fresh. It had been shot directly between the eyes. Very professional.

“I’m sorry,” said Ainsley, “this is awful.”

“I guess I’m finished,” he said. “My emergency plan was sell them all for meat. Now I can’t even do that.”

“You’ll be okay.”

“No, I won’t,” he said. “Twice now that asshole has tried to destroy me financially. Just because I sold him three hundred rhodochrosites.” She watched his fist clench the reins tightly. “He doesn’t have the right.”

“No, he doesn’t,” she agreed.

“Oh no,” said Marcelo, looking into the distance. “No no no no no…”

She realized that the rancher had spotted something else, even worse. He spurred the horse forward into a full gallop. Ainsley held tight and peered around him.

They were heading towards what seemed to be an odd pile of clothing on the grass. Purple pants. Blue denim shirt.

Then she saw the bowler hat nearby.

It was the Englishman.

59

The lunatic shepherd was laying facedown
on the grass. His arms were spread out at an uncomfortable angle. Ainsley thought that this was a weird position in which to sleep.

Then she saw the brain matter blown across the grass.

Ainsley turned her head away, disgusted, horrified, and deeply sorry. The Englishman had driven up to this lake to warn her and Marcelo. Now he was dead.

“I knew this would happen,” said Marcelo. “All he needed to do was stay in his car.”

“It’s awful.”

“I knew this would happen,” he said again. “I knew it.”

A movement on the grass caught Ainsley’s eye. The Englishman’s pet bird, the one with the broken wing, was in the grass near his body. It was flapping its wings, desperately trying to launch.

“Hold on,” she said to Marcelo.

She hopped off the horse, picked up the bird, and put it gently into her purse. It was the very least she could do.

Then she tapped Marcelo, who was still on the horse, on his leg. “Do you want to help me destroy them?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “I will make it my life’s work. I have the
bronca
.”

“Then take me to Bahía Blanca.”

“Why?”

“Because I think that Ovidio’s mother is Lieutenant Admiral Ortiz’s wife.”

Marcelo just stared at her, mouth open. He’d been nailing Ainsley with new information for well over a day now. It felt good to surprise him, for once.

“How do you know this?” he said.

“I don’t know, not for sure. But it’s an educated guess.”

“Okay.”

“There’s a navy base in Bahía Blanca?”

Marcelo nodded. “Of course, the biggest one. It’s the very heart of the navy.”

“I need to get onto that base to find her. Your son lives nearby?”

“Just a few miles away.”

“Then maybe he can help me.”

Marcelo swung his horse around in a circle. “All right. We have a plan.”

Ainsley looked around. “Where’s your car?”

“There.”

She saw his Toyota, in the same place where he’d left it. The tires had been shot and the windshield destroyed. She could smell gasoline; the gas tank had evidently been punctured too.

“I expected that,” said the rancher. “That’s why I kept these.”

He produced a set of keys and jangled them.

“What are those?”

“The Englishman’s. I keep a spare set because he always loses them. I’ll be right back.”

Marcelo galloped away. Ainsley looked down at the grass. She could see the tracks of the vehicles that had been here. She could see how the men’s bootprints had stamped down the grass. She shuddered as she thought about how close she had come to ending up like the Englishman.

Then she realized what exactly she had just committed herself to doing next. She was voluntarily going into the heart of the enemy’s nest. It was either pure genius or sheer idiocy, more likely the latter.

Ten minutes later, the other Toyota Hi-Lux roared around the corner. It screeched up alongside Ainsley, and she climbed inside.

“I’m ready to nail these bastards,” the rancher said. His eyes were on fire.

“Me too,” said Ainsley.

She climbed into the car. Before she could even buckle her seat belt, he had floored the accelerator. Soon were tearing down the mountain road, and this time, Ainsley kept her lunch down.

Three hours later, Marcelo flew past his own ranch without even a sideways glance.

“We can stop, if you want to,” said Ainsley.

He shook his head with steely resolve. “I can weep later. Now is the time for revenge.”

And then they were back onto the steppe, gradually descending through the series of plateaus. The air grew warmer. Eventually Route 40 came into view, the place where Ainsley had begun her Patagonian adventure. The tavern was still there too, unchanged from the morning before.

“Should we stop and thank the owner for his phone call?” she said.

“I don’t think so,” said Marcelo. “He might not be happy to see you. Who knows what they did to him.”

That statement depressed Ainsley. Her presence here, at the far end of the world, had attracted the worst element of the Argentine government. She had damaged too many people here.

As they drew closer, she could see that the catalytic converter was still leaning against the outside wall. The automotive part that he needed to ship back to Buenos Aires.

“Pull over for a moment,” she said.

“Why? You shouldn’t talk to him.”

“I won’t.”

Marcelo pulled over and stopped. Ainsley hopped out, grabbed the catalytic converter, and dragged it across the dirt to the Toyota. She opened the trunk and heaved the thing inside.

When she got back into the passenger seat, she was breathing heavily. Marcelo was staring at her.

“What was that?” he said.

“I’m returning his favor. Just go.”

The rancher nodded. He understood how favors worked.

Ainsley felt herself pressed backwards into her seat as the Toyota turned onto Route 40 and accelerated down the ruler-straight highway, beneath the dome of blue Patagonian sky.