A Quiet Flame

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

“Yes.”

That was what I had told her. But already I was begi

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 A

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.

A

“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 gri

“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, A

“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.”

“What about conscience?”

I let the gun lie flat on my hand for a moment. “Maybe you’d feel better if I put this away.”

“No,” she said quickly.

“So it’s all right if I have to kill someone, just as long as your conscience is clear, is that it?”

“Maybe if I was as tough as you, I could do it. I mean, shoot someone. But I’m not.”

“Angel? If there’s one thing the last war proved it’s that anyone can kill anyone. All you need is a reason. And a gun.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“There are no murderers,” I said. “There are just plumbers and shopkeepers and lawyers who kill people. Everyone’s quite normal until they pull the trigger. That’s all you need to fight a war. Lots of ordinary people to kill lots of other ordinary people. Couldn’t be easier.”

“And that makes it all right?”

“No. But that’s the way it is.”

She said nothing to that, and for a while, we walked in silence, as if the preternaturally quiet forest had affected us in some way. There was just a light breeze in the treetops and the sound of twigs cracking under our feet to remind us of where we were. Then, emerging from the trees, we found ourselves facing a second wire fence. It was about two hundred meters long, and behind it stood a number of temporary-looking wooden buildings. At opposite ends of the fence were watchtowers and, fortunately for us, these were not ma

“Melville called this place Dulce,” I said, snipping one length of the little Scotsman’s galvanized wire, and then another.

“Someone’s idea of a joke, perhaps,” said A

“It’s my guess that this is where they held illegal Jewish immigrants like your aunt and uncle, and Isabel Pekerman’s sisters. That’s the assumption I’ve been working on, anyway.”

We ducked through the wire and into the camp.

I counted five watchtowers-one on each corner of the perimeter fence and a fifth in the center of the camp, overlooking a kind of trench that seemed to co

We went inside, breathing a musty, mildewed air. On a table we found an old copy of La Prensa. On the front page was a picture of Peron wearing a military uniform, a white officer’s cap, white gloves, a sash in the colors of the Argentine national flag, and a big, generous grin. The lead story was something about Peron a

“Nineteen forty-seven,” I said. “I guess that was the last time anyone was here.”

“I certainly hope so,” she said.

I walked into another room and picked up an old helmet. Other rooms were no more enlightening.

“This must have been where the soldiers relaxed,” I said.

We went outside again, crossing the parade ground to a group of four long barracks. We went inside one. It was like a stable, except that instead of stalls there were wide wooden shelves, some of which were covered with handfuls of straw, and almost a minute had passed before I realized that these were supposed to be beds. Probably two or three people could have been accommodated on each of the shelves.

A

The fourth building was just a long, empty shed. The far end of the shed led down into a sort of trench that was covered with a ceiling of more barbed wire. The trench was about thirty yards long and two yards wide. We entered it and walked down into a barrack that you knew was there only when you had entered the trench. This one was divided into three chambers by two wooden walls. Each chamber was about ten feet high and thirty feet wide, and the inside walls were covered with sheets of zinc. On the ceiling were shower pipes. The door of each chamber was extra thick and could be closed from the outside by an iron locking bar. These doors were sealed with rubber gaskets around the edges. In each of the three chambers, a copper pipe entered through a wall a few inches above a tiled floor. The pipes were all co