After that encounter, Turk was ready to believe anything good said about Monsignor Zanini. The nuncio led him to his office, offered him a cold drink, encouraged him to let out what he was carrying inside, with affable comments in a Spanish spoken with Italian music that had the effect of an angelic melody on Salvador. The nuncio heard him say that he could no longer endure what was happening, that the regime’s actions against the Church and its bishops were driving him mad. After a long pause, he grasped the nuncio’s ringed hand:
“I’m going to kill Trujillo, Monsignor. Will there be forgiveness for my soul?”
His voice broke. He sat, his eyes lowered, his breathing agitated. He felt Monsignor Zanini’s paternal hand on his back. When, at last, he raised his eyes, the nuncio was holding a book by St. Thomas Aquinas. His fresh face smiled at him with a roguish air. One of his fingers was pointing to a passage on the open page. Salvador leaned forward and read: “God looks with favor upon the physical elimination of the Beast if a people is freed thereby.”
He left the nunciature in a trance. He walked for a long time along Avenida George Washington, at the edge of the sea, feeling a tranquillity of spirit he had not known for years. He would kill the Beast, and God and His Church would forgive him; staining his hands with blood would wash away the blood the Beast was spilling in his homeland.
But would he come? He felt the awful tension that waiting had caused in his companions. Nobody opened his mouth, or even moved. He could hear them breathing: Antonio Imbert, in long, quiet inhalations as he clutched the wheel; Antonio de la Maza, panting rapidly, did not take his eyes from the road; and, beside him, the regular, deep breathing of Amadito, whose face was turned as well toward Ciudad Trujillo. His three friends probably held their weapons in their hands, as he did. Turk felt the butt of the Smith & Wesson .38, bought some time ago at a friend’s hardware store in Santiago. Amadito, in addition to his .45 pistol, was carrying an M-1 rifle—part of the ludicrous Yankee contribution to the conspiracy—and, like Antonio, one of the two 12-gauge Browning shotguns, the barrels cut down by a Spaniard, Miguel Ángel Bissié, a friend of Antonio de la Maza, in his workshop. They were loaded with special projectiles that another Spanish friend of Antonio’s, Manuel de Ovín Filpo, a former artillery officer, had prepared for them with the assurance that each shell had enough killing power to pulverize an elephant. God willing. It was Salvador who proposed that the CIA’s carbines be used by Lieutenant García Guerrero and Antonio de la Maza, and that they occupy the right-hand seats next to the windows. They were the best shots, they should be the first to shoot at the closest distance. But would he come, would he come?
Salvador Estrella Sadhalá’s gratitude and admiration for Monsignor Zanini increased when, a few weeks after their conversation in the nunciature, he learned that the Sisters of Mercy had decided to transfer Gisela, his sister who was a nun—Sor Paulina—from Santiago to Puerto Rico. Gisela, his pampered little sister, Salvador’s favorite. Even more so since she had embraced the religious life. On the day she made her vows and adopted Mama Paulina’s name, huge tears ran down Turk’s cheeks. Whenever he could spend time with Sor Paulina, he felt redeemed, comforted, more spiritual, touched by the serenity and joy emanating from his beloved sister, the tranquil certainty with which she lived her life of service to God. Had Father Fortín told the nuncio how frightened he was about what might happen to his sister if the regime discovered that he was conspiring? Not for a moment did he believe that the transfer of Sor Paulina to Puerto Rico was coincidental. It was a wise and generous decision by the Church of Christ to place a pure, innocent young woman, whom Johnny Abbes’s killers would devour, beyond the reach of the Beast. It was one of the regime’s customs that most angered Salvador: venting its wrath on the families of those it wanted to punish, on their parents, children, brothers and sisters, confiscating all they had, imprisoning them, taking away their jobs. If the plan failed, the reprisals against his sisters and brothers would be implacable. Not even his father, General Piro Estrella, the Benefactor’s good friend, who gave banquets in Trujillo’s honor at his ranch in Las Lavas, would be excused. He had weighed all of this, over and over again. He had made his decision. And it was a relief to know that criminal hands could not touch Sor Paulina in her convent in Puerto Rico. From time to time she sent him a letter filled with affection and good humor, written in her clear, upright hand.
In spite of his religious devotion, it had never occurred to Salvador to do what Giselita had done and enter an order. It was a vocation he admired and envied, but one from which the Lord had excluded him. He never would have been able to keep the vows, especially the one of chastity. God had made him too earthbound, too willing to surrender to the instincts that a shepherd of Christ had to annihilate in order to fulfill his mission. He had always liked women; even now, when he led a life of marital fidelity with only occasional slips that tore at his conscience for a long time afterward, the presence of a brunette with a narrow waist and rounded hips, a sensual mouth and flashing eyes—the typical Dominican beauty with mischief in her glance, her walk, her talk, the movements of her hands—aroused Salvador and inflamed him with fantasies and desires.
These were temptations he usually resisted. His friends often made fun of him, in particular Antonio de la Maza, who, after Tavito’s murder, had turned to the wild life, because Turk refused to join them on their all-night visits to brothels, or to the houses where the madams had young girls rumored to be virgins. True, sometimes he succumbed. And then the bitterness lasted many days. For some time he had held Trujillo responsible when he gave in to these temptations. It was the fault of the Beast that so many Dominicans turned to whores, drinking binges, and other dissipations in order to ease their anguish at leading a life without a shred of liberty or dignity, in a country where human life was worth nothing. Trujillo had been one of Satan’s most effective allies.
“That’s him!” roared Antonio de la Maza.
And Amadito and Tony Imbert:
“It’s him! That’s him!”
“Pull out, damn it!”
Antonio Imbert already had, and the Chevrolet that had been parked facing Ciudad Trujillo whirled around, tires screeching—Salvador thought of a police movie—and headed for San Cristóbal, following Trujillo’s car along the dark, deserted highway. Was it him? Salvador didn’t see, but his companions seemed so certain it had to be him that it had to be him. His heart pounded in his chest. Antonio and Amadito lowered the windows, and as Imbert, who leaned over the wheel like a rider making his horse jump, accelerated, the wind was so strong that Salvador could barely keep his eyes open. He protected them with his free hand—the other was holding the revolver—as their distance from the red taillights gradually diminished.
“Are you sure it’s the Goat’s Chevrolet, Amadito?” he shouted.
“I’m sure, I’m sure,” the lieutenant cried. “I recognized the driver, Zacarías de la Cruz. Didn’t I tell you he would come?”
“Step on it, damn it,” Antonio de la Maza repeated for the third or fourth time. He had put his head, and the sawed-off barrel of his carbine, out the window.
“You were right, Amadito,” Salvador heard himself shout. “He came, and without an escort, just like you said.”
The lieutenant held his rifle in both hands. He leaned to one side, his back was turned, and with his finger on the trigger, he rested the butt of the M-1 on his shoulder. “Thank you, God, in the name of your Dominican children,” Salvador prayed.
Antonio de la Maza’s Chevrolet Biscayne raced along the highway, gaining on the light blue Chevrolet Bel Air that Amadito García Guerrero had described to them so many times. Turk identified the official black-and-white license plate, number 0–1823, and the cloth curtains on the windows. It was, yes, it was, the car the Chief used to go to his Mahogany House in San Cristóbal. Salvador had been having a recurrent nightmare about the Chevrolet Biscayne that Tony Imbert was driving. In it, they were driving just as they were now, under a moonlit, star-filled sky, and suddenly this brand-new car, specially prepared for pursuit, began to decelerate, to go more slowly, until, with all of them cursing, it stopped dead. And Salvador watched the Benefactor’s automobile disappear into the darkness.
The Chevrolet Bel Air continued to speed—it must have been going more than a hundred kilometers an hour—and was clearly outlined in the high beams that Imbert turned on. Salvador had heard in detail the story of this vehicle ever since, following Lieutenant García Guerrero’s proposal, they had agreed to ambush Trujillo on his weekly drive to San Cristóbal. It was evident that their success would depend on a fast car. Antonio de la Maza had a passion for cars. At Santo Domingo Motors they were not surprised that someone whose job near the Haitian border required him to drive hundreds of kilometers a week would want a special automobile. They recommended a Chevrolet Biscayne and ordered it for him from the United States. It had arrived in Ciudad Trujillo three months ago. Salvador remembered the day they took it out for a test drive, and how they laughed when they read in the brochure that this car was identical to the ones used by the New York police to pursue criminals. Air conditioning, automatic transmission, hydraulic brakes, and a 350 cc eight-cylinder engine. It cost seven thousand dollars and Antonio had said, “Pesos have never been put to better use.” They tested it on the outskirts of Moca, and the brochure did not exaggerate: it could reach a hundred sixty kilometers an hour.
“Careful, Tony,” he heard himself say after a jolt that must have dented a fender. Antonio and Amadito did not seem to notice; their weapons and heads were still leaning out the windows, waiting for Imbert to pass Trujillo’s car. They were less than twenty meters away, the wind was choking him, and Salvador did not take his eyes off the closed curtains on the back window. They would have to shoot blindly, riddle the entire seat with bullets. He prayed to God that the Goat was not accompanied by one of those unfortunate women he often took to his Mahogany House.
As if, suddenly, it had noticed that they were in pursuit, or as if its sporting instinct refused to let any other car pass, the Chevrolet Bel Air pulled ahead a few meters.
“Step on it, damn it,” ordered Antonio de la Maza. “Faster, damn it!”
In a few seconds the Chevrolet Biscayne made up the distance and kept drawing closer. And the others? Why hadn’t Pedro Livio and Huáscar Tejeda shown up? They were in the Oldsmobile—it also belonged to Antonio de la Maza—only a couple of kilometers away, and they should have intercepted Trujillo’s car by now. Did Imbert forget to turn the headlights on and off three times in a row? Fifí Pastoriza in Salvador’s old Mercury, waiting two kilometers beyond the Oldsmobile, had not appeared either. They already had driven two, three, four, or more kilometers. Where were they?
“You forgot the signals, Tony,” shouted Turk. “We left Pedro Livio and Fifí behind.”
They were about eight meters from Trujillo’s car, and Tony was trying to pass, flashing the headlights and blowing the horn.
“Step on it, faster!” roared Antonio de la Maza.
They drove even closer, but the Chevrolet Bel Air, indifferent to Tony’s signals, would not leave the center of the highway. Where the hell was the Oldsmobile with Pedro Livio and Huáscar? Where was his Mercury with Fifí Pastoriza? Finally, Trujillo’s car moved to the right. It left them enough room to pass.
“Step on it, step on it,” Antonio de la Maza pleaded hysterically.
Tony Imbert accelerated and in a few seconds they were beside the Chevrolet Bel Air. The side curtains were also closed, so that Salvador did not see Trujillo, but he had a clear view, through the driver’s window, of the heavy, coarse face of the famous Zacarías de la Cruz at the moment his eardrums seemed to burst with the explosion of simultaneous shots from Antonio and Amadito. The cars were so close that when the back window of the other automobile shattered, pieces of glass hit them and Salvador felt tiny stings on his face. As if he were having a hallucination, he saw Zacarías’s head move in a strange way, and, a moment later, Salvador fired over Amadito’s shoulder.
It did not last very long, and now—the squeal of the tires made his skin crawl—a violent braking left Trujillo’s car behind them. Turning his head, he saw through the rear window that the Chevrolet Bel Air was swerving as if it would turn over before it came to a stop. It did not make a turn, it did not try to escape.
“Stop, stop!” Antonio de la Maza was shouting. “Put it in reverse, damn it!”
Tony knew what he was doing. He had braked at almost the same time as Trujillo’s bullet-ridden car, but he took his foot off the brake when the vehicle gave a violent jolt, as if it were about to overturn, and then he braked again until the Chevrolet Biscayne stopped. Without wasting a second he turned the car—no other vehicle was coming—in the opposite direction, and then drove toward Trujillo’s automobile, which had stopped, absurdly, with its headlights on, less than a hundred meters away, as if it were waiting for them. When they had driven half the distance, the lights of the parked car turned off, but Turk could still see it in Tony Imbert’s high beams.
“Heads down, get down,” said Amadito. “They’re going to shoot.”
The glass in the window on his left shattered. Salvador felt pinpricks on his face and neck, and was thrown forward by the car’s braking. The Biscayne screeched, swerved, drove off the road before it stopped. Imbert turned off the headlights. Everything was in darkness. Salvador heard shouts around him. When had he, Amadito, Tony, and Antonio jumped onto the highway? The four of them were out of the car, hiding behind the fenders and open doors, firing toward Trujillo’s car, toward where it ought to be. Who was shooting at them? Was someone else with the Goat besides the driver? Because, no doubt about it, somebody was firing, the bullets resonated all around, chinked as they pierced the metal of the car, and had just wounded one of his friends.