Open Pit (15 page)

These three skinny kids wandered over to us, practically naked, with cuts and blood all over them. They'd lost their parents (kidnapped? killed?). The children had hidden in a shed behind their house until the soldiers left. It was filled with bats — those giant, evil ones I told you about. The oldest got on the shoulders of one of the guerrillas and came with us, back to camp.

When I came to El Salvador I thought it was going to help me, as a journalist. Like if I published really good stories, I'd get somewhere. But I'm having trouble with that idea now. There are so many stories like those kids. Publishing in Canada — what will that do for them? I wish I was the kind of person who could pick up a gun and fight. But I know I'm not and won't ever be. I don't like the way they're running this war. I don't like the lower status the women have. Everything is done ass-backwards.

I've tried to talk to Adrian about the problems I see, but he's always distracted. Always has some important mission to plan. Why won't he make more time for me? I intend to corner him about this next time he's here.

DB

FRIDAY
APRIL 8

9:00 AM
.
Mil Sueños
mine

“Namaste.”

“Namaste,” Mitch replies, then separates his palms and lifts them over his head before bowing and bringing them to the floor to begin his sun salutations.

“Remember to constrict the throat,” the instructor continues. “Build the fire.”

Mitch does the loud Ashtanga nose breathing, immediately breaking into a sweat. But five minutes later, after arching into an upward dog, he lets himself down onto his stomach while the video plays on.

“Extend. . . breathe!”

Mitch promised his wife he'd keep up his practice until his next trip home, but it's no fun without her. And this room is making it impossible to relax. He's never minded sleeping at the mine when the two-hour drive back to his apartment in San Salvador feels like too much. But the stress of this abduction is making him long for basic comforts. This portable has none. He sits up.

“Try to feel the energy of the earth rising through your sit bones, your heels. . . .”

Mitch wonders exactly what kind of “energy” he's receiving from the land beneath his trailer — bad karma? Initially, Mitch didn't give much thought to the hostages. He genuinely feels that they came to El Salvador with their eyes open and must live with the consequences. But this morning he woke up with Carlos's voice in his head, an echo of something he said over the phone last night. “I don't see this person shifting their deadline,” he told Mitch. “By Sunday, you'll have to decide what's best for you and your business.” All doom and gloom. Mitch wonders if he's setting himself up for cosmic retribution if he doesn't agree to an exhumation. It's a morbid thought, but Mitch lets it drift into his consciousness without judgment, then out again, the way the thin male instructor on the video always tells him to. Mitch sees the Canadian hostages sitting around a campfire somewhere at the crack of dawn, Monday morning. One of them is called to stand and bang-bang! Shot at point blank range. Because of him.

The image is alarming enough that Mitch stands and begins to pace. This is crazy. In his heart, he knows that if Catharine Keil would just mind her own business, the police would deal with the kidnappers long before that scenario plays out. Why the hell is the Attorney General listening to her over his own police? And what is that woman's problem? Keil is unnecessarily rude, first of all. And now Mitch hears she's brought in some senior bureaucrats from Ottawa to lobby Schiffer even harder into keeping Hernán-dez and the anti-kidnapping unit leashed. Meanwhile, she tries to put the blame on him? As if Mitch made those fools come here on their sham “delegation”! It's not going to be Keil's face on the news if the kidnapping goes south.

Mitch feels his heart accelerating. He's not practicing his letting-go. He closes his eyes, sits back down, crosses his legs and promises himself to just be.

A knock at the door.

Sometimes when his director of operations or the geologists know he's staying on site, they come by for advice. But Mitch isn't even dressed. Just the Lululemon shorts and tank top set his wife bought him. “Busy here,” he yells.

“You asked for the update as soon as I had it,
Señor
Wall.”

Sobero. Mitch grabs a t-shirt from his single chair and throws it on. He answers the door to find his Chief of Security looking cool in the brilliant morning.

“The newspapers,” says Sobero, handing Mitch a stack of Salvadoran dailies.

Above the fold of the top copy is a blaring headline that reads, “Kidnapper received high-level military training, admits to previous violence.” Mitch scans the article. What kind of warped. . . ?

The hostages are writing on behalf of the kidnapper now?

“Christ,” he says, rereading the byline: Danielle Byrd. The old one — delegation “leader.” A total loser, from what he's read in the Canadian papers.

“It is not unusual in El Salvador for men to have some formal training,” says Sobero, as if the fact that they're dealing with a professional killer who's talked one of his hostages into publicly making his case is an insignificant detail. “Also, it seems they'll have a few extra today. In the capital.” Mitch isn't sure he can take more bad news. “How many?” he asks, reluctantly.

“Not so many.”

“Like how many?”

“Two hundred, two hundred and fifty.”

“What —” Mitch cannot understand why people are attending those demonstrations in San Salvador, or why the papers in Canada are making such a big deal of them. “We should've reached out to those families before that Committee for the fucking Environment did. They got them onside while they were easy pickings.”

Sobero looks disappointed in this outburst. “Families are of no use to this mine. We are going to start putting people on the ground at the cathedral. Eyes and ears. I am also working on some meetings that could assist us.”

Mitch nods, knowing Sobero will say nothing more about his security strategy. “Thank you, Manuel. I'll shower and talk to you when I get settled.”

Mitch closes the door and goes to shut off his video. The shot has changed to a close-up of the instructor in a twisted seated position, his left elbow hooked around his right knee, looking behind him at the camera. “Keep your eyes going further right, extend the stretch. Hold here. Five. Slow. Breaths.”

1:00 PM
. San Salvador Cathedral

The microphone squeaks. Marta taps it. “
Sí?
”

Several people nod. She's being heard.

“
Bueno. Gracias a todos y todas que están aquí con nosotros. Qué bien!
” She claps for the crowd. Their swelled numbers do impress her. She predicted to Pedro that the story in the morning papers about the kidnapper's life would strike a chord. It has. “Thank you to the Archdiocese of San Salvador for permitting us, again, to be here, on their doorstep.” Marta keeps her eyes on two heavily armed police who are strutting back and forth across the roof of one of the buildings on the west side of the plaza. The cops have also seen the story, apparently. Despite the violence described in it, some people are taking Enrique's side. The police are on alert. And worried police are always dangerous. Maybe, Marta thinks, it's the same all over, the way talk of the past makes them trigger-happy. But in Central America, the past is also recent. Its residue is everywhere. “And thanks too to the police and to our government,” she says, “for extending to us such
full
protection today — to all of us citizens, who have come here in the name of our country's historical memory and a future in which our environment flourishes.”

Laughter and applause from the maybe three hundred people on hand. Now Marta shifts her focus to their faces, looking for anyone that might be a plant. She's still being threatened. More phone calls. One distorted voice that grunted at her, “If you like your life, stop the demonstrations!” then hung up.

She ploughs ahead, trying to forget those words. “We have all read in the newspapers today an account of the life of the man who carried out this abduction. This letter has affected me deeply. Maybe, like me, these words have caused you pain, and you are wondering why we should continue to be here in support of demands by a man like this. But hear me out. The crimes he describes committing are heinous, unfeeling. But I challenge anyone here to tell me that
Mil Sueños,
with its
famoso
expansion at El Pico, is not carrying out crimes today that parallel those of the military during our war. What else can we call the dynamiting that has destroyed the land around Los Pampanos except unfeeling? Have the people who've made millions selling this gold internationally given a single thought to the families who live downstream from the mine? To the value of their lives? Their children's lives? I challenge anyone to deny the crucial role the people of Los Pampanos played in dismantling El Salvador's military. They faced terror, death squads, mutilation. And yet they succeeded because they knew the regime was criminal. So tell me why we shouldn't do the same to
Mil Sueños
now? What you read today about ‘Enrique' is a crime of the past. He has owned up to it.
Mil Sueños
and the El Pico expansion are crimes of our time. Of this very day. No one wants to admit to those. But we can prevent more tragedies. We must write a new ending for El Salvador.”

Just as Marta feels her face flushing with emotion and she's begun leading the crowd in a cheer of “
El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!
” she looks out and her eyes fall on the person she's least expected to see again so soon: Carlos Reyes. She watches, confounded, as he actively ignores her, shaking hands with people, moving forward, stealing away one vote at a time for his new political party. Why should this surprise her? Men like Carlos always sniff out opportunities for political gain. It takes an effort for Marta to keep on with her cheer and look like a leader for those gathered and the several news crews that have come out to cover the event.

Then Carlos stops. He has come to stand behind Marta's young guest, Aida Byrd.

Aida feels a hand on her shoulder.

“Miss Byrd?” says a deep voice.

She turns to see a middle-aged man with a lazy smile and a thick head of curly hair extending his other hand towards her to shake.

“Carlos Reyes.”

It's him. The man in the suit. Mitch Wall's friend. Aida blushes. “I know.”

“Ah?”

“You were in the papers. With the helicopter.”

Benoît, overhearing from nearby, practically leaps towards them. “You're with the mine! I think that you need to leave 'ere,” he says to Carlos, looking like he'll either hit him or fall down crying. Benoît has found a real live human who sides with the company that's condemning his son to death. Aida is embarrassed for him. Benoît and Sylvie are disintegrating by the hour. Ralph, meanwhile, looks and seems the same. Not particularly friendly towards anyone. He keeps a calm eye on the confrontation between Benoît and Carlos. Sylvie just shakes her head.

“Please. I am only here to acknowledge the situation you are all in,” Carlos says, continuing in excellent English. “I offer my support. I am not ‘with the mine.' I work as an independent investigator of the police. My office is close by. I thought I would introduce myself. I believe there is still room to negotiate the —”

As he talks, Aida feels that Carlos is addressing her more than the others, often turning to look her in her eyes. She can't decide if he's being flirtatious or just acknowledging that they've seen one another before. She loses track of his words.

Eventually Benoît interrupts. “I don't think we should trust any man that walk off the street with a business card.” He eyes the one Carlos has just handed to him.