Thomas Cook - The Crime of Julian Wells

None of the photographs was the sort normally taken by tourists. Save for one, they were all black-and-white and appeared to have been shot from a considerable distance, no doubt by someone who did not want to be seen, and clearly without Marisol’s knowledge.

The exception, in color and quite the sort one would expect from a tourist, was a picture I’d taken in San Martin. In the photograph Marisol was seated next to Father Rodrigo. The two of them appeared to be locked in an intense conversation. Rodrigo had his hand in the air, his finger pointed upward, as if making a crucial point. I had taken it as Julian and I closed in upon them and had only gotten it developed after returning home. When I showed it to Julian, he peered at it for a long time, then said simply, “May I have this?” I’d given it to him, of course, and had never seen it again until now.

I had no idea who might have taken the remaining pictures.

In the first, Marisol is alone, this time in the Plaza de Mayo, the Casa Rosada behind her. In the picture she stares off to the right. Her expression is curiously troubled, and anxiety shows in her posture, suggesting that she might have been waiting for someone who had not appeared.

The second photograph shows Marisol on what is clearly a different day. It is raining and she is drawing in her umbrella as she prepares to board a bus.

In the third photograph Marisol is sitting with a young man near the entrance to Recoleta. His features are indigenous, like Marisol’s. But his hair is black and curly, and even though he is sitting, it is obvious that he is quite tall. He is wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, and something in his manner seems wary. Marisol is leaning toward him, the black beads Father Rodrigo had given her hanging loosely from her throat. Her lips are at the young man’s ear, parted slightly, so that she is clearly speaking. When I turned it over, I found a typed inscription: Marisol Menendez y Emilio Vargas.

“Look at these,” I said to Rene.

He stepped over and looked at the pictures I’d spread out before him.

“I took that one,” I told him, “but I don’t know where the others came from. The young woman is Marisol. She was our guide in Argentina, the young woman who disappeared.”

“Ah,” Rene said softly. “Pretty, but not my type.” He smiled. “Too small. Not enough meat. Who is the guy?”

“Someone named Emilio Vargas,” I said. “At least that’s what it says on the back of the picture.”

Rene continued to stare at the pictures. “They look like surveillance photographs,” he said. “They remind me of the old days in Algiers.” He took out a cigarette and lit it. “There are eyes upon these two.”

“Police surveillance, you mean,” I said.

“Police, army, intelligence operatives,” Rene said. “What’s the difference?” He smiled, but rather mirthlessly, like one recalling a memory that still troubled him. “There was a young woman in Algiers,” he said. “Her name was Khalida. It means ‘eternal’ in Arabic, but it didn’t turn out to be so with this girl.” Something in Rene’s eyes shifted to the dark side. “By what you call coincidence, one of our men-”

“Our men?” I interrupted.

“A cop, like me,” Rene answered casually, then continued. “Anyway, he took a picture outside the Milk Bar Cafe a few minutes before the bombing. Khalida was in this picture, standing a few feet from the door, looking nervous.” He tapped the face of Emilio Vargas in the photograph. “Like this one. You can see it in his eyes. He is not at rest, this fellow. His mind is busy. With Khalida, we thought she was this way because she knew about the bomb, that she was maybe a lookout, waiting for the man who was to bring it, but it turned out to be a boy she was waiting for, a boy her father didn’t like.” He shrugged. “But it was too late before we found this out.”

That outcome seemed to strike Rene as one of life’s cruel turns, a twist in events that had swept poor innocent Khalida into the maelstrom of the Algerian revolt.

Rene laughed, but dryly. “In those days, we did what we did to whoever we thought deserved it.” He laughed again, no less humorlessly. “Revolution is not a kind mother to its children.”

“What happened to Khalida?” I asked.

“We followed her,” Rene answered. “We thought maybe she would lead us to the big boss. But this girl, she goes to the casbah to buy vegetables; then she goes home with her little basket. She lives with her stupid father, who fills her mind with the massacre at Setif, how the Pieds-Noirs must all be killed, the usual ‘ Allahu Akbar’ bullshit.”

“She told you what her father said to her?” I asked.

“Not for a while,” Rene answered with a casual shrug of the shoulders. “But like I said, we did what we did. And by the time we finished, it was too late for little Khalida.” He picked up the picture of Marisol and Emilio Vargas and looked at it closely. “Their hands are touching.”

I glanced at the photograph, and it was true. On the bench between them, they’d rested their hands in such a way that their fingers touched.

Rene continued to stare at the picture. “Betrayal is like a landslide in your soul, no?” he said. “After it, you cannot regain your footing.” When I gave no response to this, he looked at me. “Perhaps this boy was Marisol’s lover,” he said. “It is an old story, no? The secret lover. It would have made Julian very jealous, no?”

I shook my head. “Not at all, because Julian was never in love with Marisol,” I said. “You’ve read too many bodice rippers, Rene.”

He was clearly puzzled by the phrase. “Bodice rippers?”

“Romance novels,” I explained.

Rene dutifully drew out his notebook and added the phrase to it. “Very good,” he said with small laugh. “I like the English language.” His lingering smile coiled into a grimace. “The people, not so much.”

We left Julian’s place a few minutes later. Rene had obviously found Julian’s apartment depressing. But so had I, and thus, with no reason to linger, I had already returned to my hotel later that afternoon when the phone rang.

“Philip Anders?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Walter Hendricks. Your father asked me to call you. He said that you were investigating a friend of yours.”

Investigating?

Was that truly what I was doing now? I asked myself.

“Your friend was Julian Carlton Wells, I believe?” Hendricks asked.

He had pronounced Julian’s full name in the way of a man reading it from a dossier, but I only said, “Yes.”

“I live in London now,” Hendricks said. “But in the early eighties I was stationed in Buenos Aires. Your father thought I might be of help since I was in charge of the Argentine desk at the time that Mr. Wells became involved with a young woman who worked as a guide for the consulate.”

“Marisol,” I said. “What do you mean by ‘became involved’?”

“Well, at least to the extent that after her disappearance, he inquired about her at Casa Rosada,” Hendricks said.

“Julian went to Casa Rosada? I didn’t know that.”

“It’s a matter of record,” Hendricks said.

“What kind of record?”

“Well, I’m sure you’re aware that dictatorships keep good records on people who visit the seat of government.”

“Yes, of course.”

“They record their names, their addresses, and if a flag is raised, they investigate them.”

“Did Casa Rosada investigate Julian?” I asked.

“No, he wasn’t investigated,” Hendricks said. “But he was noted. Anyone connected to Ms. Menendez would have been noted.”

“Anyone connected with Marisol?” I asked. “Why?”