“Nevertheless, you were warned. Not to ask questions about Directive Eleven. I couldn’t have been more specific. I thought, after your trip to Caseros, you might appreciate that a little more keenly.” He sighed. “I was wrong, of course. And now you’re in a tight spot. Truly, I regret having to kill you, Gunther. I meant all I said when we first met. You really were a hero of mine.”

“Well, then, let’s get to it,” I said.

“You’re forgetting something, surely?”

“I don’t pray so well these days, if that’s what you mean. And my memory is not so good at altitude. How high are we, anyway?”

“About five thousand feet.”

“That explains why it’s so damned drafty in here. Perhaps if those two altar boys were to close the door, I might warm up a little. I’m like a lizard that way. You’ll be surprised what I can do for you if you just let me sit for a while on a nice warm rock.”

The colonel jerked his head at the door, and with a weary look of disappointment, like some French Catholic noblemen denied the pleasure of defenestrating a big-mouthed Huguenot, the two men closed it. “There,” the colonel said. “How’s your memory now?”

“Improving all the time. Perhaps when we’re on the ground again, I’ll remember Evita’s daughter’s name. That’s assuming she really is Evita’s daughter. To my untutored, cynical eye, she and the president’s wife looked very unalike.”

“You’re bluffing, Gunther.”

“Maybe. But you can’t afford to take a chance on that, can you? If you knew any different, Colonel, I’d be in the river, looking for my old comrades from the Graf Spee.”

“So why not tell me?”

“Don’t make me laugh. As soon as I’ve spilled my guts, there’s nothing to stop you from spilling me out the door.”

“Maybe. But look at it this way. If you tell me when we’re on the ground, there’s nothing to stop me killing you in a day or two. A week from now.”

“You’re right. I never looked at it that way. You’d better think of something to put my mind at ease about that possibility, or you’ll wind up not knowing anything at all.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. Really I don’t. You work it out. You’re the colonel. Perhaps if I had another cigarette and my hands free, we might reach some sort of understanding.”

The colonel put his hand in the pocket of his suit. It came out with a switchblade as big as a drumstick. He turned me around and sawed at the cord binding my wrists. While I was rubbing some pain back into my hands, he put the knife away and took out his cigarettes. He shook one loose from the pack, put it into my mouth, and then tossed me a book of matches. If I’d had any feeling in my hands, I might have caught them. One of the colonel’s thugs picked up the matches and got my cigarette going for me. Meanwhile, the colonel leaned through the open cockpit door and spoke to the pilot. A moment later, the plane began to turn back toward the city.

I was desperate to know if Anna had been one of those poor people thrown out of the aircraft. But I hardly knew how to ask the colonel. If I didn’t ask about Anna, he might get the idea there was no one important in my life who might be used against me. If I did ask, I’d be putting her in grave danger.

“We’re going back to Ezeira,” he said.

“I feel better already. Never was one for air travel.”

I glanced around the inside of the plane. There was a large pool of blood and something worse on the floor. Now that the door was closed, I could smell the lingering stench of fear inside the Dakota. There were some seats up front. The colonel sat in one. I got up off the floor and went and sat beside him. I leaned across his lap and glanced out of the window at the gray river beneath us.

“The people you just murdered,” I said. “I suppose that they were Communists.”

“Some were.”

“And the others? There were women, weren’t there?”

“These are enlightened times we live in, Gunther. Women can be Communists, too. Sometimes-no, usually-they’re more fanatical than the men. More courageous, also. I wonder if you could take as much torture as one of the women we just dumped.”

I said nothing.

“You know, I could always take you back to Caseros. Have my men go to work on you with that electric cattle prod. Then you’d tell me what I want to know.”

“I know a little bit more about torture than you think, Colonel. I know that if you torture a man to make him tell you lots of things, then gradually he’ll give them up, one by one. But if you torture a man to make him tell you one thing, the chances are he’ll clam up and take it. Make it a contest of wills. Now that I know how important this is to you, Colonel, I’d make it my life’s last mission to say nothing.”

“A tough guy, huh?”

“Only when I have to be.”

“I believe you are. I suppose that’s one of the reasons I like you.”

“Sure you like me. That’s why you wanted to throw me out of a plane at five thousand feet.”

“You don’t think I enjoy this sort of thing, do you? But it has to be done. If the Communists were in power, they’d do the same thing to us, I can assure you.”

“That’s what Hitler used to say.”

“Wasn’t he right? Look what Stalin has done.”

“It’s the politics of the cemetery, Colonel. I should know. I just crawled out of the one called Germany.”

The colonel sighed. “Perhaps you’re right. But I think it’s better to live without principles than be righteous and dead. That’s what I’ve learned in the cemetery. There’s this, too, that I’ve learned. If my father leaves me a gold watch, I want my son to have it after me, not some paisano carrying a copy of Marx he’s never read. They want my watch? They’d better kill me first. Or it’s out the door they go. They’d better know that in Argentina we practice the redistribution of health. Anyone goes around thinking that all property is theft soon finds out that all killing is not murder. The last Communist we hang will be the one who helped himself to our rope.”

“I don’t want to take anything from anyone, Colonel. When I came here, I wanted a quiet life, remember? Nothing made your business my business except you. For all I care, you can hang all the Communists in South America on your Christmas tree. All the Nazis, too. But when you hire me to be your dog and sniff around, you shouldn’t be surprised if I bark a bit and piss on your flower bed. That may be embarrassing to you, but that’s the way it is. I embarrass myself sometimes.”

“Fair enough.”

“Fair enough, he says. You haven’t played fair with me since I got off the damn boat, Colonel. I want to know everything. And when I know everything, I’m going to get off this plane and I’m going back to my hotel and I’m going to take a bath. And when I’ve had some dinner and I’m good and ready and I’ve understood how everything works, I’m going to tell you what you want to know. And when you find that I’m telling the truth, you and von Bader and Evita are going to be so damned grateful you’re even going to pay me like you all said you would.”

“As you wish, Gunther.”

“No. Just what I said. What I wish would be too much to expect.”