Philip Kerr - A Quiet Flame

“May I borrow this?”

“Sure,” he said. “Don’t tell me you’ve found your top bastard. This murderer you’ve been after.”

“Something like that. It’s best I don’t tell you any more, Herbert. Not right now.”

Geller shrugged. “Not knowing won’t make me itch.” He grinned. “While you’re borrowing my jeep, I’m off to see a rather attractive girl who works for the Institute of Anthropology, here in Tucuman. I’m planning to let her study me in considerable detail.”

I TRIED TO PERSUADE Anna to stay behind, at the hotel, but she wasn’t having it.

“I told you before, Gunther. I’m not the type who sits at home darning your socks. I didn’t get to be a lawyer without outsmarting a few dumb cops.”

“For a lawyer you don’t seem to have much in the way of caution.”

“I never said I was a good lawyer. But get this straight. I started this case and I intend to see it through.”

“You know something? For a lawyer, you’re a pretty nice girl. I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Do all Germans treat women like they’re made of porcelain? No wonder you lost the war. Come on. Let’s get in the car.”

Anna and I drove southwest out of the city. Soon we were on a narrow, pitted road that was bordered on both sides by the parted waves of a Red Sea of sugarcane. This was green on top, and an impenetrable wooden thicket below. There were miles of the stuff, almost as if imagination had failed the earth’s creator.

“Sugarcane. It’s just a lot of giant grass,” said Anna.

“Sure, but I’d hate to see the lawn mowers.”

From time to time I was obliged to slow down as we passed little walking thickets of cane that, on closer inspection, revealed themselves to be loads on the backs of mules, which elicited cries of pity from Anna. Every few miles we came across a shantytown of concrete-block houses with corrugated iron roofs. Half-naked children chewing lengths of sugarcane like dogs gnawing bones observed our arrival and departure from their villas miseria with wild, gesticulating enthusiasm. From the metropolitan comfort of Buenos Aires, Argentina had looked like an affluent country; but out here, on the plantations of the humid pampa, the eighth-largest country in the world seemed one of the poorest.

Several miles farther on, the sugarcane receded and we came to some fields of corn that led down to the River Dulce and a wooden bridge that wasn’t much more than a continuation of the dirt road. On the other side, I pulled over and took another look at the map. I had the Sierra rising in front of me, the river on my right, fields of maize on my left, and the road leading down a long incline immediately ahead of us.

“There’s nothing here,” said Anna. “Just a lot of sugar and a lot more sky.” She paused. “What exactly does this place look like, anyway?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” I said. “But I’ll know it when I see it.” I tossed the map onto her lap, shoved the jeep in gear, and drove on.

A few minutes later, we came to the ruins of a village. A village that didn’t appear on the map. Small, white, roofless shacks lined the road, and a derelict church was home to a number of stray dogs, but there was no sign of anyone living there.

“Where have all the people gone?”

“I suppose they were moved by the government. This whole area will be flooded when they dam the river.”

“I’m missing it already,” she said.

At the bottom of the street, a narrow alley led off to the right and, on a wall, we saw the faintest outline of an arrow and the words LAGUNA DULCE-Sweet Lagoon. We turned down the alley, which became a dirt track leading into a narrow valley. A thick canopy of trees covered the track, and I switched on the headlights until we were in sunlight again.

“I’d hate to run out of gas here,” observed Anna as we bounced from one pothole to another. “The middle of nowhere has its depressing moments.”

“Anytime you want to go back, just say the word.”

“And miss what’s just around the next corner? I don’t think so.”

At last, we came to a clearing and a kind of crossroads.

“Which way now?” she asked.

I drove a little farther on before reversing to the crossroads and choosing another direction. A moment or two later, I saw it.

“This is the right way,” I said.

“How do you know?”

I slowed down. In the bushes by the side of the track was an empty wooden roll labeled GLASGOW WIRE. I pointed to it. “This is where the Scotsman delivered his wire.”

“And you think it was for a refugee camp?”

“Yes.”

That was what I had told her. But already I was beginning to realize that if a refugee camp had once existed out here, it didn’t any longer. The whole valley was deserted. Any refugee camp would have needed supplies. Supplies needed transport. There was no evidence that anyone had been down that red-clay road in a while. Our own tire tracks were the only ones visible.

We drove on for almost a mile until I found what we were looking for. A thick line of trees and a barbed-wire gate in front of an anonymous dirt road that led farther down into the valley. Behind the tree line was an equally high barbed-wire fence. There was a sign in Spanish on the gate. Translated, it read:

PRIVATE PROPERTY OF THE CAPRI CONSTRUCTION AND HYDROELECTRIC COMPANY. UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY STRICTLY FORBIDDEN BY ORDER OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. KEEP OUT. DANGER.

There were three padlocked chains around the gate, and as it was about ten feet high, I hardly saw us climbing over it. Moreover, the padlocks were of a type that usually resisted picking. I steered the jeep off the road and into a small gap in the tree line. Then I cut the engine.

“I think we’re here,” I said.

“What now?” asked Anna, surveying the fence.

I unlocked the toolbox in the back of the jeep and searched it hopefully. It seemed that Geller went equipped for almost any eventuality. I found a pair of hand-sized, heavy-duty wire cutters. We were in business.

“Now, we walk,” I said.

We walked through the trees and along the length of the fence. There was no one about. Even the birds remained silent here. All the same, I figured it was better to cut the wire about thirty or forty yards from the jeep, in case anyone saw it and stopped to see why it was there. With the wire cutters in hand, I set about making an entrance for us.

“We’ll just go in and have a look and see what there is to see,” I said.

“Don’t you think we should maybe come back and do this in the dark? In case anyone sees us?”

“Stand back.” As I cut another length of Melville’s wire, it zipped away into the trees, singing like a broken piano string.

Anna looked around nervously.

“You really are quite tenacious, aren’t you?” she said.

I pocketed the wire cutters. Something bit me, and I slapped my neck. I almost wished it had been her. “Tenacious?” I grinned. “This is your search for answers. Not mine.”

“Then perhaps I just lost my appetite for them,” she said. “Fear does that to you. I certainly haven’t forgotten what happened the last time we broke into somewhere we weren’t supposed to be.”

“Good point,” I said, and took out my gun. I opened and closed the magazine, checked that everything was working, and slipped off the safety. Then I stepped through the gap I’d made in the fence.

Reluctantly, Anna followed. “I suppose killing people gets easier each time that you do it. That’s what they say, isn’t it?”

“They usually don’t know what they’re talking about,” I said, treading carefully through the trees. “The first time I killed a man was in the trenches. And it was me or him. I can’t say I’ve ever killed anyone who didn’t have it coming.”