Brief Encounters with Che Guevara Page 3

  Why didn’t you tell me? Blair almost screamed. A Tele-Nacional crew was filming the ceremony; photographers scuttled around like dogs chasing table scraps. What about me? he wanted to shriek, say something about me! He tried in vain to make eye contact with the Americans, who’d arranged themselves into distinct pairs. The two middle-aged men stood farthest from the action, robust, toned, country-club types; the other two Americans stood close to the center, a tall, older gentleman with a shrinking hairline and sharp Adam’s apple, then the sturdy young woman who was glued to his side, short of stature, hyperalert, firecracker cute. The international community’s show of support, said the speaker. A message of hope from U.S. financial circles. Blair felt one of his dizzy spells coming on, his eyes clouding over in a spangly haze. He slumped and let the crowd hold him up; Hernan had vanished somewhere along the trail. When the delegation began to move inside, Blair watched them disappearing as if in a dream, then roused himself at the last moment.

  “Hey!” he yelped in English, “I’m American! Hey you guys, I’m an American!”

  Only the woman seemed to hear, flashing a quick, startled look over her shoulder, then continuing inside. Blair started to follow but a guard blocked his way.

  “Alto, Joan Blair. Only the big shots go in there.”

  “Who are those people?” Blair asked, craning for a look through the door. Which abruptly shut.

  “Well,” the guard said, assuming the manner of someone schooling a particularly dense child, “there is Señor Rocamora, the Peace Commissioner, and there is Señor Gonzalo, the Finance Minister—”

  “But the Americans, who are they?”

  “How the hell should I know? Peces gordos, I guess.”

  Blair didn’t dare leave, not for a second, though he could feel the sun baking all the juices out of him. The crowd in the compound absently shuffled about, disappointed without really knowing why. Fritanguera ladies set up their grills and started frying dough; a King Vulture scraped lazy circles in the sky. After a while the American woman stepped outside and walked down the gallery to speak to the reporters. Blair brushed past the guard and was up in a second, intercepting the woman as she walked back to the door. Out of instinct she started to dodge him; he looked like a wild man with his castaway’s beard and grimy jungle fatigues, but his blue eyes beaming through the wreckage brought her up short.

  “Oh! You must be John Blair!”

  He could have wept with gratitude. “Yes, I’m John Blair! You know who I am!”

  “Of course, State briefed us on your situation. I’m Kara Coleman, with the—” A scissoring blast of syllables shot off her lips. “Wow,” she continued, eyeing him up and down, “you look like”—hell, she barely avoided saying—“you’ve been here awhile.”

  “Fifteen months and six days,” Blair instantly replied. “You’re with the State Department?”

  “No, I’m with the—” She made that scissoring sound again. “I’m Thomas Spasso’s assistant, he’s leading our group. Thomas Spasso,” she repeated in a firm voice, and Blair realized that he was supposed to know the name. “Chairman of the Nisex,” she continued, almost irritated, but still Blair didn’t have a clue. “The Nisex,” she said as if speaking to a dunce, “the New York Stock Exchange.”

  Blair was confused, but quite as capable as anyone of rationalizing his confusion—he knew that fifteen months in the Andes might have turned his American frame of reference to mush. So maybe it wasn’t so strange that the king of Wall Street would turn up here, in the jungly heart of MURC territory. Blair’s impression of the stock market, admittedly vague, was of a quasi-governmental institution anyway.

  “Right,” he said, straining to put it all together. The unfamiliar English felt like paste on his tongue. “Sure, I understand. But who, I mean, what, uh—why exactly are you here?”

  “We’re here to deliver a message from the financial community of its support for the current peace initiative. Foreign investment could do so much for this country, we felt the MURC might be more flexible if they knew the opportunities we could offer them. And Mr. Spasso has a special interest in Colombia. You know he’s close personal friends with Ambassador Moreno.”

  Blair shut his eyes and wondered if he’d lost his mind. “You mean,” he said in a shattered whisper, “this doesn’t have anything to do with me?”

  “Well, no, we came chiefly with the peace process in mind. I’m sorry”—she realized the effect she was having—“I’m truly sorry, I can see how insensitive that must seem to you right now.”

  Blair was sagging; all of a sudden he felt very, very tired. “Isn’t there something you can do for me?” he softly wailed. “Anything?” Kara touched his arm and gave him a mournful look; she wasn’t heartless, Blair could see, but rather the kind of person who might cry at movies, or toss bites of her bagel to stray dogs.

  “Mr. Spasso might have some ideas,” she said. “Come inside, I’ll try to get you a few minutes with him.”

  She led Blair through the door, down a short hallway, and into the big concrete room where the comandantes mediated peasant disputes every Tuesday and Thursday. The delegates were sitting in the center of the room, their chairs drawn in a circle as if for a group therapy session. Thomas Spasso was speaking through an interpreter, and in seconds Blair formed an impression of the chairman as a ticky, nervous guy, the kind of intractable motormouth who said the exact same thing no matter where he was. “Peace will bring you huge benefits from global investors,” the chairman told the comandantes. “The capital markets are lining up for you, they want to be your partner in making Colombia an integral part of the Americas’ economic bloc.” He rattled on about markets and foreign investment, the importance of strong ratings from Moody’s bond-risk service. The rebels sat there in their combat fatigues and Castro-style hats smiling and nodding at the chairman’s words, but Blair saw they could barely hold their laughter in. They didn’t dare look at each other—one glance, and they’d lose it—but the supreme challenge came when the chairman invited them to visit Wall Street. “I personally extend to each and every one of you an invitation to walk the floor of the exchange with me,” Spasso said, his voice thrumming with heartfelt vibrato. He clearly thought he was offering them the thrill of their lives, but Blair could picture the rebels howling on the steps tonight—Oooo, that we should have this big honor, to walk the floor of the bourgeois exchange with him! Even now the comandantes’ eyes were bugging out, quivering with the strain of holding it in, and it was only by virtue of supreme discipline that they didn’t fall out of their chairs laughing.

  Spasso, ingratiating yet oblivious, talked on. “He’s very passionate,” Kara whispered to Blair, who was thinking how certain systems functioned best when they denied the existence of adverse realities. After a while the Peace Commissioner got to say some words, then the Finance Minister, and then Alberto, who limited his comments to an acknowledgment of the usefulness of market mechanisms, “so long as social justice for the masses is achieved.” Then some aides circulated a proposed joint statement, and the meeting dissolved into eddies and swirls as each group reviewed the language.

  Kara waited until Spasso stood to stretch his legs. “Mr. Spasso,” she called, hustling Blair over, “this is John Blair.”

  Spasso turned, saw Blair, and seemed to lose his power of speech.

  “The hostage,” Kara said helpfully, “he’s in your briefing kit. The guy from Duke.”

  “Oh yes, yes of course, the gentleman from Duke. How are you, so very nice to see you.”

  Nice to see you? Fifteen months in hell and nice to see you? For Blair it was like a curtain coming down.

  “Sir, John and I were discussing his situation, and while he understands the limited scope of our visit, he was wondering if we could do anything with regard to, ah, facilitating his return home. At some possible future point.”

  “Well,” Spasso said, “as you know we’re here in the spirit of a private sector exchange. Though your name did com
e up at the embassy this morning.” He paused as one of the other Americans approached, a fellow with silver blond hair and a keen, confident look. “Working the final numbers,” he told Spasso, waving a legal pad at the chairman, “then we’re good to go. Thanks so much for setting this up, Tom.”

  Spasso nodded and glanced at his watch as the American moved off. People were milling about the big room, talking and bumping shoulders.

  “Uhhh—”

  “John Blair,” Kara prompted.

  “Mr. Blair, absolutely. I’m afraid your situation is rather problematic. There are laws”—he looked to Kara for confirmation—“apparently there are laws here in Colombia which prohibit private citizens from engaging in kidnap negotiations. Am I correct on that, Kara?”

  “Unfortunately yes, sir.”

  “‘Aiding and abetting a kidnap negotiation,’ I believe those are the words. We’re to avoid any action that could be construed as aiding and abetting a kidnap negotiation, those are our strict instructions from the State Department. Which I know must seem rather harsh to you—”

  Blair had groaned.

  “—but I’m sure you can appreciate the bind this puts us in. Much as we’d like to help you, our hands are tied.”

  Blair wanted to hit this fool, or at least shake him hard enough that some air got to his brain. “Look,” he said in his most determined voice, “they keep threatening to kill me, they say I’m a spy. They could take me out and shoot me as soon as you leave.”

  “I’m certainly aware of the seriousness of your situation.” Señor Spasso, someone called from across the room. “Believe me, I am most sympathetic. But any goodwill we foster here today will redound to your future benefit, I’m sure.”

  Señor Spasso, we’re ready.

  “Be right there! People are working for your release, I can assure you. Top people, extremely capable people. So hang in there, and God bless.”

  Spasso joined the general push of people toward the door. “I am so, so sorry,” Kara said. She reached into her satchel and pulled out a handful of Power Bars. “Here, take these,” she said, thrusting them at Blair. “I’ll talk to you before we leave.”

  Kara melted into the crowd. Blair allowed the flow to carry him out to the gallery, where he leaned against a column and closed his eyes. He could not comprehend what was happening to him, but it had something to do with the casual cruelty of people who’d never missed a meal or had a gun stuck to their heads. Out in the yard the press was forming ranks for another photo op. Spasso and company gathered around the microphone; while they made the same speeches as two hours ago Blair ate his Power Bars and discreetly wept, though after a few minutes he pulled himself together and resolved to make one last plea for help. He scanned the yard and gallery for Kara, then entered the building, where he found her in the big concrete room. She and the other two Americans were sitting with Alberto and one of the senior comandantes. They were speaking in quiet, reasoned tones, their chairs so close that their knees almost touched. Blair was struck by their visible ease with each other, the intimate air which enclosed the little group.

  “Oh, John!” Kara cried. “Maybe John can help,” she said to the others, waving Blair over. “John, we’re having some trouble with the language here, maybe you can help us out.”

  The blond American stood with his legal pad. “All those years of high school Spanish,” he chuckled, “and I don’t remember a thing.”

  “John’s American,” said Kara. “He’s in graduate school at Duke.”

  “Super!” The man pulled Blair close. “Listen, we’re trying to finalize the numbers here and we can’t seem to get on the same page. I’m offering thirty-five hundred per fifty unit, fifty thousand board feet in other words. Think you could put that into Spanish for me?”

  Blair eyed the scribble of numbers on the pad. “Thirty-five hundred…”

  “Dollars, U.S.”

  Blair kept scanning the pad, the numbers teasing him; it seemed important to make sense of the mess. “Board feet…”

  “It’s the standard unit in the industry. One square foot by one inch thick.”

  “Of board,” Blair said. “You’re talking about lumber.”

  “You bet.”

  “Who are you?”

  The man stuck out his hand. “Rick Hunley, Weyerhauser precious woods division.”

  “You’re going to log this area?”

  “That’s the plan, if we can close this thing.”

  Blair turned to Alberto, who gave him a squirrelly, sullen look. The honks and woofs of the press conference drifted through the door, and that, Blair realized, was simply a show, a soufflé of airy smiles and empty words. Whereas the deal was happening right here in this room.

  “Alberto,” he cried in bitter, lancing Spanish, “how could you? How could you even think of doing such a thing?”

  Alberto shrugged, then turned away as if he smelled something bad. “Running an army is expensive, Joan Blair. The Revolution doesn’t survive on air, you know.”

  “Christ, look at all the coca out there, how much more money could you possibly need? You’re going to wipe out the parrots if you log up here.”

  “We have to save the country, Joan Blair.”

  “What, so you can turn it over to these guys?”

  “Enough.”

  “You think there’ll be anything left to save when they’re done with it?”

  “Enough, Joan Blair, I mean it.” Alberto flicked his hand as if shooing a fly. “Get out of here, I’m tired of listening to you. Beat it. Where are those son of a whore guards—”

  But Blair had rounded on Hunley. “There’s a parrot up here,” he said in very fast English, “an extremely rare species, these are probably the last birds of their kind in the world. If you guys log up here it’s a pretty sure thing you’re going to wipe them out.”

  “Whoa, that’s news to me.” Hunley and his partner exchanged dire looks; Hunley turned to Alberto. “Comandante, I can tell you right now if we get bogged down in any environmental issues then we’re outta here. We don’t have time to mess around with that stuff.”

  “Is not a problem,” Alberto said, emitting the gruff sort of English that a bear might speak.

  “Well according to your interpreter it is.”

  “Not a problem, no, for sure, no bird problems here. Forget the birds.”

  “I won’t stand for this,” Blair stated flatly. “I don’t accept it. You people can’t do this.”

  Alberto’s lips cramped inward, holding back a smile, though Blair could see it surface in his eyes well enough, the near-lethal mix of pity and contempt. “Okay, Joan Blair, why don’t you stop us,” he mocked, but something skittish and shamed began to leak into his eyes, a gray, mizzly vapor that snuffed out all the light. Alberto tried to stare him down but couldn’t, and at the moment the comandante turned away, Blair knew: the Revolution had reached that classic mature stage where it existed only for its own sake.

  “Okay,” Alberto said, reaching for Hunley’s legal pad, “I think we can make the deal.” He circled a number on the pad and handed it back to Hunley. “For that, okay? For this price we make the deal, but one more thing. You have to take this guy with you.”

  “No way,” Blair said, “forget it. You’re not getting rid of me.”

  “Yes, yes, you are going. We’re tired of feeding you, Joan, you have to go home now.”

  “Go to hell Alberto, I’m staying right here.”

  Alberto paused, then turned to the Americans. “This man,” he said stiffly, pointing to Blair, “is a spy. As a gesture of goodwill, for the peace process, I am giving him to you, you may please take him home. And if you don’t take him home, today, now, he will be shot. Because that is what we do to spies.”

  Kara gasped, but the worldly lumber executives just laughed. “Well, son,” Hunley said, turning to Blair, “I guess that means you’re coming with us.”

  Blair wouldn’t look at them, Spasso, Kara, the others, he wouldn
’t acknowledge the smiling people in the seats around him. He kept his face turned toward the helicopter’s open door, watching the dust explode as the engines powered up, the crowd waving through the storm of rotor wash. The chopper throbbed, shuddered, shyly wicked off the ground, and as it rose Blair glimpsed Hernan in the crowd, the kid dancing like a boxer as he waved good-bye. In the chaos of loading, he’d slipped through the muddled security cordon and shoved a plastic capsule into Blair’s hand—film, Blair had known without looking at it, a 35mm cartridge. The film was tucked into Blair’s pants pocket now, while he clutched to his lap the backpack with its bundles of data and artifacts: the first, and very likely the last, comprehensive study of the Crimson-capped Parrot. He hung on as the Huey accelerated, trapdooring his stomach into empty space as it slammed into a sheer vertical climb. The world fell away like a ball dropped overboard, the torque and coil of the jungle slopes diminishing to finely pebbled sweeps of green. The craft pivoted as it climbed, nose swinging to the east, the Crimsons’ valley with its fragile matchstick palms sliding past the door like a sealed tableau—from this height Blair could see how easy it would be, nothing at all to rub out the faint cilia of trees. Easy, the sheltering birds just so much incidental dust.

  How does it feel? Spasso was shouting in his ear. How does it feel to be free? They were rising, rising, they might never stop—Blair closed his eyes and let his head roll back, surrendering to the awful weightlessness. Like dying, he wanted to tell them, like death, and how grieved and utterly lost you’d feel as everything precious faded out. That ultimate grief which everyone saves for the end, Blair was spending it, burning through all his reserves as the helicopter bore him away.

  Rêve Haitien

  In the evenings, after he finished his rounds, Mason would often carry his chessboard down to the Champ de Mars and wait for a match on one of the concrete benches. As a gesture of solidarity he lived in Pacot, the scruffy middle-class neighborhood in the heart of Port-au-Prince, while most of his fellow O.A.S. observers had taken houses in the fashionable suburb of Pétionville. Out of sympathy for the people Mason insisted on Pacot, but as it turned out he grew to like the place, the jungly yards and wild creep of urban undergrowth, the crumbling gingerbread houses and cobbled streets. And it had strategic position as well, which was impor tant to Mason, who took his job as an observer seriously. From his house he could track the nightly gunfire, its volume and heft, the level of intent—whether it was a drizzle meant mainly for suggestive effect or something heavier, a message of a more direct nature. In the mornings he always knew where to look for bodies. And when war had erupted between two army gangs he’d been the first observer to know, lying in bed while what sounded like the long-rumored invasion raged nearby. Most of his colleagues had been clueless until the morning after, when they met the roadblocks on their way to work.