Wet Work

Soledad stared away. He left. Outside the room, he said to Reynoso, "Watch her."

He went downstairs to the basement room. Arriaga's men were huddled by the door. They stared at him with the usual suspicion, making him feel like an unworthy visitor in his own house. Arriaga required members of his personal bodyguard to prove their loyalty to him by killing with their hands a member of their family. He knocked and went in.

Arriaga's back was to him. He was looking at the painting.

"Goya," he said.

"Manet. 'The Execution of Maximilian.' But you're very observant. It was inspired by Goya's 'Third of May,' in the Prado."

Arriaga turned slowly in the chair to face him. "I have not come to discuss art with you, comrade."

"No, of course."

"You told your men there was gold on board the boat?"

My men. "My purpose was to take the American alive, with the yacht. The propaganda value is… impossible to estimate. The men were very agitated after the air attack. They only wanted to sink it. I reasoned that if they thought there was gold on board they would take a lighter touch."

Arriaga stared. He had learned not to fill Arriaga's conversational vacuums. Finally Arriaga said, "And?"

"We got him alive. Also one of his men. We spotted him with the helicopter, floating downriver on a life raft."

"And-was there gold?"

"No. As I say, it was a fiction, an incentive. But it worked."

"And what was your incentive in all this, comrade?"

"To present you with a gift beyond imagining, Comandante. A lot of my men died to get it. Shall we spend our time together examining my motives or may I get back to burying my dead?"

"No one is questioning your motives, Niño." Arriaga gave his vinegary smile as he exercised the prerogative of nullifying what he himself had just said. "What do you propose?"

He listened as El Niño explained his plan. "Good," he said. "Very good. I will communicate this to Presidente Gonzalo personally."

The mention of the name had great shock value; in another time and place it would be like uttering the sacred Tetragrammaton, YHWH. Arriaga was known to be one of the few Senderista cadres in direct contact with Abimael Guzman. Arriaga had never before spoken the name in his presence. It was both a compliment and a way of reminding him of Arriaga's significance.

"My communications equipment is temporarily out of order. But my own phone is at your service, of course."

Arriaga stared coldly. Guzman had not been seen in over ten years. It was said that Guzman's whereabouts were unknown-even to Guzman. To propose one's own phone to communicate with Sendero's founder and supreme commander was… a lapse of judgment.

"I will remain here while the plan is executed," said Arriaga.

"Good," El Niño lied.

"Do you have room for my men? This pathetic old man seems to have destroyed most of your infrastructure." It pleased Arriaga to use a word like "infrastructure" instead of "buildings."

"He was lucky. One of their bombs hit the chemical shed. That's what made the fire. My own house is at your disposal, Comandante."

Arriaga stood and stared at "The Execution of Maximilian." "The men in the firing squad, they're dressed up like penguins."

"Well, yes, you could put it that way."

Arriaga turned to him. "I do put it that way, comrade."

Diatri paddled the inflatable Zodiac out of the current, hugging the riverbank, watching with suspicion the logs that floated past him to see if they blinked. The light was fading and he seemed to remember that crocodiles mostly like to eat at night. He paddled until he thought he recognized a small muddy island on the map and put in to shore and set out on foot.

He told himself over and over that the animals, reptiles, birds, monkeys, bats and unspecified things shrieking in his ears were more scared of him than he was of them, though he knew this to be extremely false. Large insects swarmed in and out of his flashlight beam. Eyes the size of bicycle reflectors flashed at him. He kept touching the compass around his neck to make sure it was there. Rivulets of bug juice and sweat ran into his eyes and stung.

He marched in a southwesterly direction for two hours until he smelled smoke. He stopped to get his bearings, blood pounding in his ears. He saw the glow of light off to the south. He took a step forward and felt it, just below his kneecap.

"How do you feel, billonario?"

The face came into focus just as it had months ago on the wall of the cabin on the island.

"Now I see you're still alive, worse."

"You were asking for The Wall Street Journal. When I heard that, I knew you were going to make it. Here, drink some orange juice. Morphine makes you thirsty."

Charley gulped. It was cold and sweet. It tasted wonderful.

"Why did you do it, billonario?"

"Your dope killed someone I loved," said Charley.

"No no," said El Niño dismissively. "Not that. The Manet. The Baudelaire 'Absinthe Drinker.' How could you have done that?"

"You know how Eskimos hunt polar bear? They take a piece of sharp whalebone and bend it inside a chunk of seal fat and freeze it. The bear eats the fat, the bone straightens, the bear chokes."

"Yes," he said with barely controlled anger. "But you can replace seal fat."

"You can replace art."

"It's criminal, what you did!"

"Criminal, you say." Charley laughed. "Well, now." If the bone had not pierced through the bear's throat, perhaps he could at least make it stick in his craw. "The painting's a fake."

"No."

"A copy. You don't think I'd float down into your sewer with the real McCoy? That's back home in the vault."

"You're lying. I had a look before you blew it up. That wasn't a copy."

"Well, now, you won't ever really know, will you?"

El Niño walked toward the door. "Tell me, billonario. All this effort and expense-just for the granddaughter?"

"My way of dealing with grief."

"I still don't understand. No one forced her to inhale cocaine. You're a Catholic. You believe in the consequences of free will. What's the problem?"

"You are the problem."

"What's your understanding of me, billonario?"

"I'm not trying to understand you, son. I'm just trying to kill you."

"But all this effort, you must have done some biographical research."

"I lifted up the rock. You were underneath."

"Do you feel well enough to move? There's something I want to show you."

Charley was on a narrow bed on wheels. El Niño pushed him out into a damp, cement corridor. A man opened a door. It was dark inside, but the air was less humid. Charley heard an electric fan somewhere. He wondered if this was the room where he would die. He wasn't afraid. Was it the morphine? He said a Hail Mary. He'd been sure he was about to die a half dozen times in his life and each time he'd turned to a woman.

"Leave us," he heard El Niño tell his man. Alone in the dark, Charley waited for the fatal bullet or knife thrust. Instead he saw a spotlight brighten gradually on a canvas in front of him.

The Hapsburg emperor stood between his two faithful Mexican generals, Miramon and Mejia. He was wearing a sombrero. The muzzles of the executioners' guns seemed to touch the victims' chests. White smoke poured out. A crowd of spectators peered over the top of the enclosure.

"Do you know what Renoir said when he first saw this? 'A pure Goya, and yet Manet has never been more himself!'"

Charley stared up at the painting. He lost himself in it for a moment. "You rob museums on the side?"

El Niño smiled. "I use a service. A Belgian. He calls himself a 'deaccessionizer.' Rupert Bendinck, do you know him? He has a lot of North American clients."