The Argentina Rhodochrosite (34 page)

70

The soccer star didn’t respond. His
eyes were looking over her shoulder. The news hadn’t sunk in. So Ainsley repeated it.

“Your mother isn’t dead. She’s alive.”

“No,” said Ovidio, “she’s dead. I’m sure of it.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they told me.”

“Who told you?”

“My stepparents, before they died.”

“How did they know?”

“Because the angel who brought me to them said so.”

“Do you know who that angel was?”

“No.”

“It was Lieutenant Colonel Ortiz.”

He stepped backwards. Ainsley felt horrible. It was no fun being the bearer of such news. She imagined how he must be feeling.

“Are you sure?” he said.

“Ninety-nine percent. This is why.” She handed him the sheaf of documents from Ortiz’s desk.

He looked through the documents, a confused expression on his face. “What about my mother?”

Ainsley swallowed hard. “Based on these documents, and from what I’ve read and learned about the history of the dirty war, it looks like Maria Libertad Ortiz is your mother.”

He stood completely still.

“Ortiz took you from a young woman in a torture facility. She fell in love with him around the time of your birth. They were married. They’re still married. It’s right there.”

Ovidio staggered back against the island countertop. His knees started to buckle. Nadia ran to his side and caught him.

Then Ovidio did a surprising thing. He lifted his legs, swiveled sideways, and laid himself down on the stainless steel counter. He was stretched out in the animal blood. He didn’t care.

“Tell me everything you know,” he finally said, “from the beginning.”

Ainsley could do that. She leaned against the sink and began to patiently explain every move that she had made since the last time they’d seen each other. Nadia posted herself near the door in case anybody tried to enter.

Ovidio listened intently. He stared into the overhead light without blinking.

The story took almost ten minutes. When she was done, Ovidio exhaled loudly. “Sebastian was in my room the night it was stolen. I never even considered him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He was the only one of my friends who didn’t tried to screw me. We were almost like brothers.”

“Maybe Ortiz paid him.”

The soccer player groaned as he sat up. His hair and back were speckled in blood. “Yes, Ortiz supported him too, back in the early days.” He thought for a moment. “You know, I always wondered why I went to the Bahia Blanca under-fourteen team. My adopted mother made me to go to those tryouts. It never made any sense.”

Ainsley nodded. “Maybe Ortiz felt bad about making his wife put you up for adoption. Maybe he was trying to make up for it by taking care of you.”

“So he could act like a father,” said Ovidio. The light dawned in his eyes. Ainsley knew that this had really struck some kind of chord.

Then he shook his head. “It’s all too much,” he said. “I don’t believe it.”

“You can believe it,” Ainsley said. She fished out the tissue paper with the Nicorette wrapped inside.

“What is this?”

“A piece of chewing gum. Maria Libertad had it in her mouth this afternoon.”

“So what?”

“It can be used for a DNA test. Take it to a lab. They’ll let you know if Maria Libertad could be your mother. If so, you can pursue her for a full blood test, if you want.”

He looked at the tissue. “I cannot believe you have done all this.”

“I’m a full-service agency,” Ainsley wisecracked. “I even keep working after I’ve been fired.”

The soccer star just smirked at her. The point had been made.

The door swung open. Ainsley watched Lalo and the rest of his sleazy entourage came sliming into the kitchen. Nadia couldn’t stop them.

Ovidio smiled broadly when he saw his friends. He held up the rhodochrosite necklace. “Look,” he said.

“For real?” said Lalo.

“It’s no joke.”

The entourage roared. “
Que groso
!” shouted Lalo. He pulled the lit cigarette out of his mouth and flicked it across the room in celebration.

“Which bastard stole it?” he said.

Ovidio pointed at Ainsley. “She says it was Sebastian.”

“I never liked that asshole. He’s too smooth.” The professional minder looked at Ainsley with new eyes. “Oh, I remember you.”

“And I remember you,” she said.

“I’m still keeping my promise.”

“You’d better be.”

One of the entourage piped up. “Ovidio, Sebastian is on the field.”

The soccer player looked up. “Impossible. He’s one step from the glue factory.”

“River Plate just substituted him in. But it’s almost halftime.”

Ovidio slid off the bloody table and wobbled on his feet. “So now I have my necklace. And Sebastian is on the field.”

“Kill him,” said one of his friends.

Ovidio fastened the rhodochrosite around his neck. A wistful expression came over his face. “It’s funny, Ainsley. Even though I know that this is bullshit, I still can’t play without it.”

“I would feel the same way,” she said.

“Come here.”

He brought Ainsley in tightly. Then he kissed her cheek. “Thank you,” he said. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

“It’s my job.”

He turned to his men. “I need to get to the locker room. Who wants to be security?”

The entourage roared, and Ovidio led everybody out of the kitchen.

Nadia threw her arm around Ainsley. “Do you want a drink?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t have one in this suite.” Then she sprung the punchline: “You must have at least
two
.”

Laughing to the point of tears, the women stepped out of the kitchen, back into the executive club.

Twenty minutes later, drink in hand, Ainsley stood at the window of the executive suite, watching the second half begin. When Ovidio ripped off his warmup jacket and jogged into the center of the grassy field, the roar of the fans nearly tore apart the stadium. It felt like La Bombonera was about to split the ground open and fall into the earth.

“They really love him,” said Ainsley.

“Watch the players,” said Nadia. “They’re up to something.”

Ainsley watched. The Boca Juniors did something odd: they had split into three small groups. Now, each group crowded a different referee. They seemed to be complaining mightily about something.

Meanwhile, with the authorities distracted, but the fans watching his every move, Ovidio ran directly to Sebastian, arms open. Sebastian returned the gesture.

But instead of an embrace, Ovidio drove his right cleat into Sebastian’s foot. The traitor dropped to the grass..

The crowd roared even harder, thinking about the rivalry. Nobody knew the reason behind the violence except for Ainsley and Nadia. The referees had missed it entirely.

“He planned that, didn’t he?” said Ainsley.

“Ovidio doesn’t know politics,” said Nadia, “but he knows this sport, both clean and dirty.”

Limping, Sebastian took his place for the second-half kickoff. The whistle blew; play began. A Boca midfielder immediately chipped the ball to Ovidio. The crowd roared. Ovidio bolted sideways with the ball, turned on a dime, then ran at a diagonal in the other direction. Then he whirled again, and ran back parallel with the first sprint. He fired off a long shot, twenty meters, and it slipped through the hands of the goalkeeper.

His first goal. It took less than two minutes.

The crowd thundered. Nadia leaned in to Ainsley. “Did you notice anything about the way he ran?”

“No.”

“Watch. I bet he’s going to do it again.”

Three minutes later, there was another pass to Ovidio. Again, he bolted sideways, lost the defender, turned on a dime, ran at a diagonal the other way, then turned again and sprinted parallel to the first line he’d run.

It was exactly the same as the first attempt. And it ended in a second goal.

“Don’t you get it?” said Nadia.

“No,” said Ainsley.

She smiled. “He’s making a Z. It’s his signature play. Didn’t I tell you about this?”

“No,” she said, “you didn’t.”

Ainsley was aghast. He really was an artist, someone who applied his inner passions to his craft, taking the sport in a new directions.

Ovidio played like a man on fire. She watched him score two goals using the same play. No living defender could keep up with his ferocious speed and deft turns.

When the final whistle blew, Ainsley watched the Boca Juniors hoist him high onto their shoulders in victory. She watched him throw his fists into the air. She felt the walls shake with the thunderous sounds of La Doce. It had been the best game of his career, according to Nadia.

In the end, it didn’t really matter whether the necklace had really come from his biological mother or not.

The Argentina rhodochrosite didn’t just define Ovidio’s life.

It
gave
him life.

71

When the shopowner closed and locked
the door behind her, Ainsley Walker understood what life as a celebrity was like.

She had just entered the Louis Vuitton shop on the ground floor of the Alvear Palace Hotel. Two black-suited private security guards had followed her from store to store. Now they were posted outside the door.

They were protecting
her
. They had been for the past week.

Since the Superclásico, Ovidio had become a changed man. The laboratory results from the chewing gum had signalled the strong possibility that Maria Libertad was in fact his mother.

Nadia had alerted the celebrity of the danger that Ainsley was potentially in. After all, she had infiltrated Lieutenant Colonel Ortiz’s home. The navy officer’s theft had been revealed. His dignity had been publicly injured. He was most likely going to try to retaliate.

That’s why, for the last seven days, Ovidio had stashed Ainsley in a room at the Alvear Palace Hotel. She’d been free to move around within the hotel, but stepping outside was discouraged. She wasn’t the only one under lock and key, either. Marcelo, Laura, Luca, and even Nadia herself had been brought here for temporary protection. They all shared a warren of adjoining rooms in a private hallway.

Through the store window, Ainsley glanced at the men, their arms crossed, stances wide. Having this level of personal protection, the same given to most rich South Americans, made her feel much safer. But she also felt cooped up.

She wasn’t alone. Laura was annoyed at being yanked from her home. So Ainsley had suggested that a little bit of shopping downstairs would do them both some good. Besides, she had promised.

“Do you like these?” said Laura, modeling a pair of five-inch platform pumps.

“They cost three thousand pesos,” said Ainsley. That was about seven hundred dollars.

Laura tried to hide her surprise. Then she picked up a purse. Ainsley waited for the sticker shock. Laura looked at the price tag and blanched.

Laura wrinkled her nose and put the shoe and the purse back on their displays. “Can we go back up to the room? I don’t like shopping as much as I thought I would.”

The shopkeeper unlocked the door, and the two women slipped out into the grand, red-carpeted hallways.

“I don’t know how people afford to look this good,” said Laura.

“Most people can’t.”

Laura thought for a moment. “When do you think we will be able to leave?”

Ainsley shrugged. “Nadia said that Ovidio was putting something together. Maybe tomorrow.”

The private security guards followed the women into the elevator and pressed the buttons for them. They stepped out first when the doors opened. Ainsley thought it was very chivalrous.

The women walked down the hall towards their rooms. Ainsley slid the keycard in the slot. The green light beeped. She stepped inside.

She leaped back, startled. A man was sitting on her bed. He was silhouetted against the light from the window.

Then the man stood up. It was Ovidio.

“The manager let me in,” he said. “I can’t just stand around the lobby waiting. People harass me.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “You’re the one paying.”

“In more ways than one,” he replied. He handed her a brown package. She peered inside. There was a stack of American dollars.

“It’s twenty thousand,” he said. “Your price.”

“I didn’t think you would do it,” said Ainsley.

He looked offended. “Why wouldn’t I? You’ve given me what I asked for, and even more. You’ve changed my life.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Now there is something you have to do,” he said.

Ainsley shook her head and waited for the other shoe to fall. She had been through enough already.

“You have to leave Argentina today.”

“Why?”

He stood at the window. “The only way to guarantee your safety is to bring everything out into the open. Just like during the trials. So Nadia is preparing the media rollout for this afternoon. We want to present you in a press conference at the airport. You’ll give public testimony about your kidnapping, the maid’s kidnapping, Marcelo’s cattle, everything you know. All the newspapers and magazines are going to be there. Your name will become spread all across the world.”

“And then—”

“You’ll turn and walk with me through immigration and onto your airplane. The cameras will be following. In that spotlight, with your knowledge, they’ll have to let you leave. No tricks from them.”

Ainsley admitted that it sounded like a good idea. “But what about your political plans?”

The athlete shook his head. “I’m giving that up. The presidency isn’t for me. How can I tell other people what to do when I’m still trying to find out who I am?”

He sat back, confounded by the mystery of his own identity. Ainsley was impressed by the change. Ovidio was in the process of discovering himself.

“Besides,” he continued, “I think they stole my necklace for political reasons.”

“What do you mean?”

A cynical look came onto his face. “The military knows that they can’t control me. And that’s what the history of this country is. Military control of the president. It’s either hidden or open, but it’s always the same.”

Ainsley didn’t know enough whether to agree or disagree. “So you think Ortiz was taking orders from someone higher?”

The athlete nodded. “They knew how important the necklace was to me. Stealing it was a good way to neutralize my popularity. To use my own neuroses against me.”

Ainsley was stunned. Nadia had been right when she had said that Ovidio was an intelligent man. He had just been too overwhelmed by his own emotional issues to show it.

“That’s a wise insight,” she said.

Ovidio smiled ruefully. “El Oido helped me discover that yesterday.”

Ainsley thought back to the psychotherapist. Her suspicion had been right. He’d figured out a lot more of the situation than he had revealed.

“And Horacio?” she said.

“I fired him. That
maricón
was helping Ortiz. Him and Sebastian. Both crooks.” He moped. “I can’t trust anybody.”

“I know how you feel,” said Ainsley.

Then Ovidio brushed off the melancholy. “So it’s all good?” he said, clapping his hands.

“It’s all good,” she said. “When do we leave?”

“Right now. The conference starts in an hour. Your plane to the States leaves after that.”

Ainsley thought for a moment. “Can I do something first?”

“Of course.”

She picked up the payment money and went out into the hallway and knocked on another door. Laura opened it. “No more shopping,” she said.

“I’m leaving,” said Ainsley, “and I need to see Marcelo.”

She welcomed the American into the room. The rancher was sitting stiffly in a chair near the window. He seemed ill at ease in this environment.

“I have to leave,” she said.

Marcelo nodded. He seemed very dejected.

“What are you going to do?” she said.

“I don’t know. Luca and Laura still want me to move in with them.”

“I’d like to help.”

“How?”

She reached into the package and counted off five thousand dollars. Then she put the money into his hand.

“I couldn’t have found the necklace without you,” she explained, “so you shouldn’t be the only one who suffers.”

He stood up. A single spasm of emotion seized his face. “Come here and say goodbye.”

They embraced. Then Ainsley hugged Laura goodbye. She went back to her room, assembled her clothing into a bag, and took the elevator downstairs.

As the red-coated doormen welcomed her through the heavy doors, she saw Ovidio waiting in his Mercedes. She slid into the backseat next to him. He clasped her hand. She clasped it back.

“To think I fired you,” he said, shaking his head.

“And to think I came back,” she replied.

“We’re both a little
loco
.”

“Agreed.”

He nodded to his driver, and the Mercedes tore off towards the airport.