are as brief as the winking of a firefly on a summer night, and he would
not feel sorry for himself.
He thought of his father, wherever he’d vanished to, and regretted only
that he’d never know the entire truth about the man.
Out of the darkness came a sudden voice. The older man.
“Now you answer some questions. What the hell you want with Josef
Strasser?”
So they wanted to talk after all.
These goons were protecting Strasser.
He waited for Anna to speak first, and when she didn’t, he said, “I’m an
attorney. An American lawyer. I’m probating an estate that means I’m
trying to get him some money that’s been left to him.”
Something cracked hard against the side of his head.
“I want the truth, not your bullshit!”
“I’m telling you the truth.” Ben’s voice was shaky. “Leave this woman
out of it she’s just my girlfriend. She’s got nothing to do with it. I
dragged her along, she’d never been to Buenos Aires ”
“Shut up!” one of them bellowed. Something slammed into his right
kidney, and he tumbled to the ground, his face inside the burlap flat
against the dirt. The pain was so acute he could not even groan. Then
came a blinding pain as something cracked into the side of his face,
perhaps a foot, and he smelled and tasted blood. Everything was
bleached out.
He screamed, “Stop! What do you want? I’ll tell you what you want!”
He hunched forward, brought his hands around to protect his face,
gasping from the unfathomable pain, and he felt blood seeping from his
mouth. He braced himself for the next blow, but for a moment nothing
happened.
Then came the voice of the older one, quiet and matter-of-fact, as if
making a reasonable point in a pleasant conversation. “The woman is not
‘just’ your girlfriend. She is Agent Anna Navarro, and she is on the
payroll of the United States Justice Department. This we know. You, we
want to know about.”
“I’m helping her,” he managed to get out, cringing, and it came, a swift
blow to the other side of his head. A lightning bolt of pain pierced
his eyes. The pain was so great now, so constant and overwhelming, that
he thought he could not possibly survive it.
Then a pause, a momentary intermission in the torture session, and there
was silence, the men seemingly waiting for him to speak again.
But Ben’s mind was sluggish. Who where were these men from? The man
called Jtirgen Lenz? Sigma itself? Their methods seemed too homespun
for that. The Kamaradenwerk? That was more plausible. What answer
would satisfy them, end the beatings, forestall the execution?
Anna spoke. His ears were plugged, probably with blood, and he could
barely hear what she said. “If you’re protecting Strasser,” she said in
a voice that was surprisingly steady, “you’ll want to know what I’m
doing here. I’ve come to Buenos Aires to warn him not to seek his
extradition.”
One of the men laughed, but she kept speaking. Her voice seemed so far
away. “Do you know that a number of Strasser’s comrades have been
murdered in the last few weeks?”
There was no response. “We have information that Strasser is about to
be killed. The U.S. Justice Department has no interest in trying to
seize him, or we’d have done it long ago. Whatever terrible things he’s
done, he’s not wanted for war crimes. I’m trying to keep him from being
murdered, so I can talk to him.”
“Liar!” one of the men screamed. There was a thud, and Anna cried out.
“Stop!” she shouted, her voice cracking. “There are ways you can check
that I’m telling you the truth! We need to get to Strasser to warn him!
If you kill us, you’ll be harming dim!”
“Anna!” Ben yelled. He needed to connect with her. “Anna, you O.K.?
Just tell me you’re O.K.”
His throat felt as if it were going to burst. The exertion of yelling
made his head throb excruciatingly.
Silence. Then her muffled voice: “I’m O.K.”
It was the last thing he heard before everything vanished.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN.
Ben awoke in a bed in a large, unfamiliar room with high ceilings, and
tall windows that looked out over a city street he didn’t recognize.
Evening, traffic noise, twinkling lights.
A lanky woman with dark brown hair and brown eyes, in a T-shirt and
black Lycra bicycle shorts, languidly curled in a chair, watching him.
Anna.
His head throbbed.
In a sedate voice, she said, “Hey.”
“Hey,” he said. “I’m alive.” The nightmarish scene began to come back
to him, but he couldn’t remember when he lost consciousness.
She smiled. “How1 re you feeling?”
He thought about this for a moment. “Sort of like the guy who falls
from the top of a skyscraper, and someone sticks his head out of a tenth
floor window and asks how he’s doing, and the guy says, Well, so far I’m
fine.”
Anna chuckled.
“I have kind of a low-grade headache.” He turned his head from side to
side, felt the pain sear and sparkle behind his eyeballs. “Maybe not so
low-grade.”
“Well, you got bashed up pretty bad. For a while I thought you might
have a concussion, but I guess not. Not from what I can tell.” She
paused. “They kicked me around a little, but they seemed to be focusing
on you.”
“Real gentlemen.” He thought a moment, still disoriented. “How’d I get
back here?”
“I guess they got tired of beating on you, or maybe they got scared when
you passed out. At any rate, they brought us back to town, dropped us
off somewhere in La Boca.”
The only light in the room came from a lamp beside the bed where he lay.
He became aware of bandages, on his forehead and side. “Who did this?”
“What do you mean who were they? Or who bandaged you up?”
“Who fixed me up?”
“Moi,” she said, bowing her head modestly. “Medical supplies courtesy
the Sphinx, mostly peroxide and Betadine.”
“Thank you.” His thinking was muzzy and slow. “So who were those
guys?”
“Well, we’re alive,” she said, “so I’m guessing they’re local muscle.
Pistoleros, they’re called, guns for hire.”
“But the police car…”
“The Argentine police are famous for corruption. A lot of them
moonlight as pistol eros But I don’t think they were connected with
Sigma. Kamaradenwerk, or something along those lines thugs who look out
for the old Germans. The local network could have been alerted lots of
ways. My Interpol friend I gave him a fake name, but he might have seen
an ID photo. Maybe it was the stolen package at American Express. Maybe
it was my investigator guy, Machado. Maybe your pistol-packin’ priest.
But enough questions. I want you to take it easy.”
He tried to sit up, felt a pain in his side, lay back down. Now he
remembered being kicked in the stomach, the groin, the kidneys.
His eyelids kept drooping, the room going in and out of focus, and soon
he succumbed to sleep.
When he awoke again, it was still night, and the room was mostly dark.
The only light came from the street, but it was enough to see the shape
in bed next to him. He could smell her faint perfume. He thought, Now
she’s willing to share a bed.
The next time he awoke, the room was bright. It hurt his eyes to look
around. He heard the sound of water running in the bathroom, and
struggled to sit up.
Anna emerged in a cloud of steam, wrapped in a bath towel.
“He’s awake,” she said. “How’s it feel?”
“A little better.”
“Good. You want me to order some coffee from room service?”
“They have room service here?”
“Yeah, you’re feeling better,” she said with a laugh. “The old sense of
humor’s starting to come back.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Understandable. We didn’t have a chance to eat dinner last night.” She
turned back toward the bathroom.
He was in a clean T-shirt and boxer shorts. “Who changed my clothes?”
“Me.”
“My shorts, too?”
“Mm-hmm. You were soaked in blood.”
Well, well, he thought, amused. Our first moment of intimacy and I
slept through it.
She began brushing her teeth and reemerged a few minutes later, makeup
applied, wearing a white T-shirt and violet gym shorts.
“What do you think happened?” he asked. His head was beginning to
clear. “You think your call to that private detective, what’s-his-name,
was intercepted?”
“Possibly.”
“From now on we use my digital phone only. Let’s assume even the
Sphinx’s switchboard is tapped.”
She placed two pillows behind him. She wore no perfume now but smelled
pleasantly of soap and shampoo. “Mind if I use it now to call our last
hotel? My friend in Washington thinks I’m staying there, and might be
trying to reach me.” She tossed him a copy of the International Herald
Tribune. “You take it easy. Read, sleep, whatever.”