Open Pit (30 page)

Wall looks ready to leave, but now he snaps back around. “It's senseless!” he yells. “If you knew the kinds of lies that have been involved in this case. I am not the bad guy, believe me. I am responsible for letting you be here at all.” He points a finger in the general direction of the dig. Both the team members and the local hires have stopped working and are staring at his raised voice.

Reverte puts out his bottom lip and nods in acknowledgement of this generosity, then picks up his trowel and returns down the marked path to within the dig's parameter, putting the small blade in the dirt to cast a little of it in Mitch's direction.

After Reverte's assistant politely reclaims the map from him, Wall stands there a minute longer, unsatisfied until, finally, he signals for his guard to follow and goes back down the road towards wherever it is a man like him prefers to spend his time.

11:15 AM
. Near the Salvadoran-Honduran border

Danielle is back in Toronto. Aida and Antoine are set to marry, but her invitation names only a date and time, not the place of the ceremony, so she's on the subway, guessing which stop is hers, frustrated by endless delays, wearing an uncomfortable and unflattering outfit of her daughter's choosing. She's retying the strap on one of her too-tight high heels when blood begins to pool at her feet. It fills the subway car, rising to her armpits. She tries to scream, but no sound comes out. The blood is pushing past her lips when the car begins to shake. Someone has her by the shoulder.

Danielle blinks. Pepe's palm is over her mouth. He signals for her to get up. She rises, trying to shake off a feeling of horror as she steps over the rest of her group, all asleep, then past Rita, who is sitting, wide awake but refusing eye contact. The reality that Antoine is dead and buried somewhere behind them, that they've left him there and walked away, returns to Danielle like the taste of blood.

After the shooting, Pepe ordered everyone moved out of sight of Antoine's body. The hostages protested, crying and refusing to get up. Cristóbal took Pierre by the arms and lifted him forcibly. After that, the others followed. They carried their backpacks and tarps like sacks of stones and went into the trees in the same direction from which the bullet that killed their friend had come. All of them were sweaty and shaky. Rita was especially dirty, her balaclava torn on one side, revealing a pale bit of forehead. Her hands tied behind her, she kept her eyes on the ground. Delmi and Cristóbal held a steady watch over everyone, Cristóbal's mask taking on a grim flatness as he stared at his wife in plain disappointment.

Early in the afternoon Pierre became hysterical. Half lying on the ground, he started grabbing at the earth and weeds, pulling up random handfuls and mumbling in French about Antoine. He was only calmed by a lot of effort from Tina, who gently persuaded him to sit back down, putting her head on his shoulder and an arm around his waist and rocking him. After a time, she reached her free hand out and clasped Martin's wrist. Martin let her hold him that way as he prayed aloud. In turn, he reached over and put his free hand on Danielle's back.

Danielle had become so unaccustomed to being offered physical support that she jumped, but then relaxed some. They all cried together, knowing Pepe had moved them so that he could bury Antoine. He'd refused any help, which Danielle offered on the group's behalf. And so they had to wait, watching the sun drift across the sky and fall, eventually growing less visible to one another in the darkness.

When Pepe finally returned it was so dark only his bulky outline was visible. A stubby Grim Reaper. “
Cinco minutos,
” he said to Cristóbal, who went about getting everyone into line.

Danielle could see that for Pierre, leaving was worse than knowing that his closest friend was dead. It was punishment. She watched as he called upon all his strength just to get up. She and the others helped, easing on his pack and sticking close until he found his feet.

They hiked all night, as usual, but more slowly than before. Each focused on the physical labour of their nighttime, fugitive life. They were allowed a longer rest in the middle, but it felt superfluous. There would be no whispering now and no escape plans to excite or worry anyone.

Just as Danielle started to notice gritty light opening across her field of vision, the predawn set to turn blue, they reached the new campsite — an abandoned shack with crumbling earthen brick walls and no roof. Cristóbal had everyone wait outside, shivering and fatigued, as he quickly fashioned several beams from tree branches, spacing them evenly across the top of the structure, then covering them with bows, as they'd seen him do before, ensuring no one would notice them from above. Finally, the hostages were ordered inside, where each fell into their fitful sleep.

“We'll be over there,” Pepe says to Cristóbal. He pushes Danielle behind the shoulder to hurry her out the doorway and about fifteen feet away, but still within sight. No more leaving Cristóbal and Delmi alone with Rita.

To her surprise, Pepe pulls out the papers Danielle assumed had been lost before the shooting, the ones she'd been writing on, and thrusts them at her along with a pen. When he speaks, his voice is as dull as the first grey light of day. “Write what I say.”

Danielle physically aches with resentment. “We all need to bathe,” she says.

“There is inadequate water here for that. I want you to write.”

“We need time to mourn our friend.” What's the worst he'll do to her for talking now? Hit her? Truss her up like Rita? These feel diminished as punishments. Danielle realizes for the first time how much Pepe needs her. For her language and her writing skills — maybe more. As a sounding board. It makes her brave. “There should be a ceremony. It's only right.”

Behind his mask, Pepe's eyes roll in a strange pattern, as if he can't take in the visual of an open-air funeral for someone he's so recently killed. A beautiful young man. An innocent. “I can consider this later,” he all but grunts. “Now, write.”

Danielle wants to scream. How can he still care about ancient history? How could he leave Antoine back there? She's replayed the shooting over and over. She wants to pity Pepe the way she did before, but she can't feel anything about what he's done except confusion. Why? Why has he really taken them hostage? Maybe, she thinks, feeling ill at the prospect, it's as simple as the fact that Pepe was trained to distill everything into violence. He never had the chance to exploit a different range of reactions. What else could you expect from a wild animal? Then again, maybe Pepe is just evil.

She looks for a place to sit. There is none. So she drops onto her haunches with her back against the nearest tree. Despite her dwindling forces, Danielle's legs have become much stronger since this started, and she feels a shameful glimmer of pride at the thought of how she can now do things she hasn't been able to do since her thirties, at how she might look to others at home if they could see her so transformed.

Pepe sits directly on the ground with his knees ahead of him, his black army boots scuffed and worn-looking, his mask stiff with dried sweat. “This will be the last report. To let people know why we are here.”

So. He's going to own up. Finally. Danielle is all ears.

“I described my transition to
la guerrilla
. I believed in what I was doing. The man who saved me, my friend, was admired. But he was like some of the other highly placed combatants. He'd spent a lot of time with
internacionalistas,
had gone on training and fundraising missions to Europe and Africa. He was from a different class. He didn't like to talk to some people. Probably he started to hate the poorest among us. I don't know. I know I saw him one time and he was talking about how this great offensive was going to work, how we would knock out the government and the military, and I had my first moment of distrust.

“I'd been hearing rumours that the very top commanders only wanted to use the offensive as a bargaining chip. They wanted to do just enough damage to shock the military and the elites. Just enough to make them negotiate an end to the war. They were sick of fighting. We all were. But some of them were tired of living like peasants, too. My friend was. He came from a rich family. That never leaves you. Like being poor.

“I had a foreign acquaintance of my own. An Italian photojournalist. Someone respected by the faction. I ran into him when I was travelling near the Guazapa volcano. This was after my mentor had started to take clandestine trips to the capital to prepare for the offensive. The Italian had pictures. He didn't know what to do with them. He was a supporter of our cause and didn't want to publish anything that would hurt us internationally. I looked at these pictures. In them, the man who'd saved my life was in San Salvador. Dressed in civilian clothes, but it was him. He was meeting with an American.
CIA
, probably.

“I thought no, it's a mistake. I told the Italian that this man was a friend, someone I could talk to. The journalist and I, we had a history. He trusted me. He gave me the photos and his negatives. It didn't matter. I never saw him again. He was killed a few months later.

“I travelled here, to this province, near Los Pampanos, and eventually my mentor came back too. By then I was suspicious. I said to him, ‘What you're doing is wrong. You're selling secrets.' He said I was crazy, that I should get my head checked. I said I had proof. He told me it was all part of the plan by Command. But I knew by his eyes that he was lying.

“A week later, some guerrillas came and said I was to come with them. They wouldn't explain why. They took me to the place where the faction handled internal conflicts. Finally I was told I was being charged with treason. They had a witness willing to say I'd been in contact with my old military commanders on the government side, that I'd been working as a double agent. They confiscated all my belongings, including the photos.

“It was him, of course. My old friend. He wanted me gone. By this time, he'd gone underground for good in San Salvador and there was no possibility of contacting him. The punishment for what I'd done was death. They were going to keePMe under guard until they made their final decision. I thought I was a goner. I didn't mind so much. But I was sorry that he'd done away with me like that, like I hadn't been worth anything to him.

“Security in those camps was not ideal. It was late in the war. People got lazy in the controlled zones. The good guerrillas were either on the fronts or dead. I was experienced. I got out of the place they were keeping me by overpowering two guards. Just country kids. I retrieved the negatives of those photos, which I had hidden, just in case. But what was I going to do with them? Who would believe me? I'd left both sides of the war. And both sides were everywhere.

“I must be fated to spend time in holes,” he says, and Danielle looks up to see if this is meant as a joke. It isn't. Pepe's mouth has a slackness about it that repels humour. “I lived in one again, a large cave. Several weeks underground. I wasn't alone. There were other
campesinos.
They always shared the bits of food they had. You probably met some like this,” he says, throwing Danielle a harsh look to make her return to her notes instead of ogling. “I took what they offered, went to San Miguel and blended in, tried to look like I'd been there for the whole war just praying not to be killed. I had no
ID
. If they asked me for any, I was a dead man. So I moved and moved again. Survived for two years that way, until I nearly starved.

“The general insurrection was a failure for those of us who'd wanted victory, but it was exactly what my mentor had hoped for: it let both sides sit down and sign off on Peace. They did the deal in Mexico City and the big boys in the
guerrilla
came out of the mountains and formed a political party. It was over. For them. But for many of us it was like an amputation. People who'd been in the mountains since they were seven, who'd been carrying a gun all their lives.

“I was one of those who couldn't claim any benefits in the government programs. I was nobody. I was not human. I drank so that I would die, but my body wouldn't let me go. . . . Then I met up with Cristóbal — you'll change the name in your story. Call him David. They were handing out meal tickets to dig holes and fill them in again.
UN
money. The drinking didn't stop, but with him, I could continue.

“I liked the news. I read all about the Truth Commission. The political parties. All about the things they were doing ‘for the people.' I saw that a lot of the commanders I'd worked under on the military side, some of the cruelest, were doing very well, starting businesses, private security mostly. On the other side, some of the guerrilla commanders were doing okay, too. The man who'd been my friend was placed in charge of all kinds of things. Cooperative farms. Micro-credit schemes. Then he took his big job overseeing police conduct. Because people trusted the
Comandante
.

“I watched all of it and did nothing. Too drunk. I'd always intended to go to the place where I'd last seen my parents. But I'd been too ashamed. Just when I finally decided I would do it, the mine came. They cleared Ixtán — wiped it out, bought the land the
guerrilla
had won for the people. They installed guards and their big electric fence. You know the rest.”

A strange sensation makes Danielle shiver: this really is about the mine. The same gold mine Partners for Justice sent the delegation to observe. Pepe's asking something from the mine; he wants his family acknowledged somehow, or he wants the right to — to what? Visit their grave? But he doesn't even know for certain that they died there. Whatever it is, the mine hasn't conceded to it. Or she'd be home by now. And Antoine would be alive. She suddenly burns with a brand new hatred for a company whose name she can barely remember. North — something. “All of us came here to support the people who want to shut that mine down,” she says, gulping air, feeling like she'll hyperventilate. “Why would you choose
us?
”