Philip Kerr - A Quiet Flame

“So far I know very little. Possibly it precedes Directive Twelve. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone one day discovered that it followed Directive Ten. How am I doing so far?”

“Not very well. You’re German, yes?”

I nodded.

“The country of Beethoven and Goethe. Printing and X-rays. Aspirin and the rocket engine.”

“Don’t forget the Hindenburg, ” I said.

“You must feel very proud. In Argentina we have given the modern world only one invention.” He lifted his metal stick. “The electric cattle prod. It speaks for itself, does it not? The device emits a strong bolt of electricity, sufficient to move a cow wherever one wants it to go. On average, a cow weighs about two thousand pounds. Ten times as much as you, perhaps. But this is still a highly effective means of shocking the animal into submission. So you can imagine the effect it will have on a human being. At least I hope you can imagine it while I’m asking my next question.”

“I’ll certainly try my best,” I said.

He rolled up one sleeve to reveal an arm covered in a shocking amount of hair. Somewhere in Argentina there was a freak show missing its missing link. The frayed cuff of the sleeve went all the way up the arm to the crescent of sweat underneath his armpit before he stopped rolling. Probably he didn’t want to get anything on his shirt. At the very least, he looked like a man who took his work seriously.

“I should like to know the name of the person who told you about Directive Eleven.”

“It was someone at the Casa Rosada. One of my colleagues, I suppose. I don’t remember who, exactly. Look, one hears all kinds of talk in a place like that.”

The small hairy man tore open the body of my shirt to reveal the scar on my collarbone. He tapped it with his filthiest fingernail. “Aiee. You’ve had an operation. Forgive me, I didn’t know. What was the matter with you?”

“I had half of my thyroid removed.”

“Why?”

“It was cancerous.”

He nodded, almost sympathetic. “It’s healing nicely.” Then he touched the scar with the end of the cattle prod. Fortunately for me, it was not yet switched on. “Normally, we concentrate on the genitals. But in your case, I think we might make an exception.” He jerked his head at the big man holding me. A moment or two later, I was tied securely to the chair in my cell.

“The name of the person who told you about Directive Eleven, please,” he said.

I tried to put Anna Yagubsky’s name to the farthest corner of my mind. I wasn’t worried that I’d reveal that she was the person who’d told me about Directive Eleven, but I’d seen the way pain can jolt words out of a man. I hated to think what a pair like this would do to a woman like her. So I started telling myself that the person who’d told me about Directive Eleven was Marcello, the duty officer in the records department at the Casa Rosada. Just in case I had to say something. I shook my head. “Look. Honestly. I don’t remember. It was weeks ago. There were several of us talking in the records department. It could have been anyone.”

But he wasn’t listening. “Here,” he said. “Let me help jog your memory.” He touched my knee with the cattle prod, and this time it was switched on. Even through the material of my trousers, the pain shifted me and the chair several feet along the floor and left my leg jerking uncontrollably for several minutes.

“Feels nice, doesn’t it?” he said. “And you’re going to think that was just a tickle when I put it on your bare flesh.”

“I’m laughing already.”

“Then the joke is on you, I’m afraid.” He came at me again with the cattle prod, aiming it squarely at the scar on my collarbone. For a split second, I had a vision of the remains of my thyroid sizzling inside my throat like a piece of fried liver. Then a voice I recognized said,

“That’s enough, I think.” It was Colonel Montalban. “Untie him.”

There were no words of protest. Certainly none from me. My two would-be tormentors obeyed instantly, almost as if they had expected to be stopped. Montalban himself lit a cigarette and put it in my grateful, trembling mouth.

“Am I glad to see you,” I said.

“Come on,” he said quietly. “Let’s get out of this place.”

Resisting the temptation to say something to the man with the cattle prod, I followed the colonel outside into the fortress courtyard, where a nice white Jaguar was parked. I drew a deep breath that was a mixture of relief and exhilaration. He opened the trunk and took out a neatly folded shirt and a tie that I half recognized.

“Here,” he said. “I brought you these from your hotel room.”

“That was very thoughtful of you, Colonel,” I said, unbuttoning the ragged remains of the shirt I was almost wearing.

“Don’t mention it,” he said, climbing into the driver’s seat.

“Always a nice car, Colonel,” I said, getting in beside him.

“This car belonged to an admiral who was plotting a coup d’etat,” he said. “Can you imagine an admiral owning such a car?” He lit a cigarette for himself and drove out of the gate.

“Where is he now? The admiral?”

“He disappeared. Perhaps he is in Paraguay. Perhaps he is in Chile. Then again, perhaps he is nowhere in particular. But then again, sometimes it is best not to ask such a question. You understand?”

“I think so. But who’s minding the navy?”

“Truly, the only safe questions to ask in Argentina are the questions one asks of oneself. That is why there are so many psychoanalysts in this country.”

We drove east, toward the River Plate.

“Are there? Many psychoanalysts in this country?”

“Oh, yes. A great many. There is more psychoanalysis done here in Buenos Aires than almost anywhere else in the world. No one in Argentina thinks himself so perfect that he can’t be improved. Take you, for instance. A little psychoanalysis might help you to stay out of trouble. That’s what I thought, anyway. That’s why I arranged for you to see two of the best men in the city. So that you might understand yourself and your relationship to society. And to appreciate what I told you before: that in Argentina, it is better to know everything than to know too much. Of course, my men are better than most at helping a man to understand himself. Fewer sessions are required. Sometimes only one. And of course, they work much more cheaply than the kind of Freudian analysts most people go to see. But the results, I’m sure you’ll agree, are much more spectacular. It’s rare that anyone comes out of a session at Caseros without a profound sense of what is needed to survive in a city like this. Yes. Yes, I do believe that. This city will kill you unless, psychologically, you are equipped to deal with it. I hope I’m not being too cryptic here.”

“Not at all, Colonel. I understand you perfectly.”

“You’ll find a hip flask in the glove box,” he said. “Sometimes therapy gives a man a keen thirst for more than just self-knowledge.”

There was cognac in the flask. It tasted just fine. It gave me more breathing space, as if someone had opened a window. I offered him the flask. He shook his head and grinned.

“You’re a nice guy, Gunther. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you. I’ve told you before. You used to be a real hero of mine. In life, a man should have a hero, don’t you think so?”

“That’s sweet of you, Colonel.”

“Rodolfo-that’s Rodolfo Freude, the head of SIDE. He thinks my belief in your abilities is irrational. And perhaps it is. But he’s not a real policeman, like us, Gunther. He doesn’t understand what it takes to be a great detective.”

“I’m not so sure I understand that myself, Colonel.”