“Fine. Stay and die.”
Still she did not move. Behind the dark, frightened eyes, facts and suspicions were clicking into place. Victor could almost hear it, the sound of her world reconstituting itself.
“My name is not Perez,” he said at last. “Ignacio Perez is dead. He was shot a few days before you were taken to Puerto del Diablo.”
He had said it now. It could not be unsaid. He felt no sense of relief, only-once again-the sensation of stepping off a cliff. He tried to prepare himself to receive her hatred, the way a fighter prepares to receive blows. “My name is Victor Pena. I was a soldier. A soldier at the little school.”
Lorca remained staring up at him from her seat on the chair, one hand still gripping her shoe. Her face had gone pale. A terrible silence flowed from her, as if a knife had entered her ribs but the pain had not yet registered.
“These scars?” Victor showed her the knuckles of his right hand. “I got these scars when I punched you. It was me who punched you in the mouth and broke your tooth.”
From Lorca, a sharp intake of breath.
“The Captain was screaming, ‘Hit her, hit her, hit her.’ I had to obey. They would have killed me. Everyone had to take part-otherwise, how could they trust you? I should have refused. That would have been the right thing, but I could not refuse. I was too afraid. I was not brave like you.” The memory of her bravery brought tears to his eyes, but he repressed them. He had no right to tears.
“No,” Lorca said. “I don’t believe you. Why you are telling me these lies? It cannot be true. I won’t believe.”
“It’s true. It was my hand on the General when they questioned you. You remember they were instructing someone? ‘First you turn it no higher than two. Gradually you make it stronger.’ It was me they were instructing.”
She shook her head. “Why are you saying this? You are not capable of such things. All right, maybe you were in the room. Maybe they forced you to do some things …. Where are you going, Ignacio? Come back!”
Victor went down the hall to his room. He didn’t switch the light on, he didn’t have to. He reached under the mattress and found the two items he was looking for, one small and light, the other dark and heavy. He crossed to the window. The lights were out across the street, he could not make out any shadows on the balcony. They would be closer now.
Lorca was sitting as he had left her, except that one hand shaded her eyes now, as if from a terrible light.
“For the first three days, I threw cold water on you. I fed you a meal full of salt. A meal full of cockroaches. One day I watched you sucking water from your shirt.”
Lorca’s hand moved from her eyes to cover her mouth. Her eyes went dark as pits.
“Then they raped you.
“No,” she said behind her hand. “No.”
“I was the last one, that first day. The fourth one. I could not do anything because I was so sick and afraid. But I would have, Lorca. I would have. I am not like you.”
“No. No, please. It’s not true.”
“It is true. That’s how I recognize these soldiers, Lorca. I was one of them.”
“It’s not true. You were a prisoner.”
He took hold of her hand and opened the fingers like a child’s. He thrust into her palm the watch that had been ripped from her wrist. “This was my reward for hitting you that day. For breaking your tooth. Remember how they cheered? The Captain pulled this off your wrist and gave it to me.”
The watch lay ticking in her hand like a bomb. Lorca stared at it dumbly for a moment, then turned it over and looked at the inscription.
Suddenly exhausted, Victor sank to the edge of the bed and hung his head. He could no longer bear to look at her. He stared at the carpet as he spoke. “Your courage changed me, Lorca. Seeing how you bore your pain. Seeing how you cared not for yourself but only for others. Ever since we hurt you, I have wanted nothing but to make it up to you. To take back the wrongs I committed. Probably I wanted your forgiveness. Not probably, definitely. I wanted your forgiveness.”
“I hate you,” she said softly.
“So do I, Lorca.”
“I hate you more than I have ever hated anybody. I hate you more than the man who ran that stinking place. I hate you more than any of them.”
“Yes. I don’t blame you. But now you must run. You must run, before they come for you.” He was still on the edge of the bed, his head hanging down. There was a sudden movement, and then a white light exploded in his skull.
THIRTY
Victor was sprawled on the floor near the bed. Unconsciousness drained from his skull like dishwater. His tongue would not work: try as he might, he could not make it form the syllables of Lorca’s name. He pulled himself to a sitting position and promptly vomited on a lamp beside him on the floor. That would be what she had hit him with. He felt the back of his head. There was no blood, but a large lump was forming.
He crawled over to the window. There was no sign of activity in the room across the street. Placing his weight on the sill, leaning his forehead against the glass, he tried to focus on the swirl of traffic below. Beneath the first set of traffic lights, he could just see Lorca running across the road. Horns honked, and there was a squeal of brakes. The watchers would have seen her too.
The door was open a little. Leaning against the desk, the dresser, the back of a chair, Victor slowly made his way toward it. He was halfway across the room when the door swung wide, and Greg Wheat was there with Bob Wyatt and one of the security guards. The security guard had his gun drawn. He held it muzzle-up as he checked the closet, the bathroom. “Nobody else.”
“Where’s Lorca?” Wyatt asked. He looked frightened, and Victor was amazed that he could have ever seen anything bearlike in the fluffy beard and brows. Bob Wyatt was a stuffed animal, at best.
“I don’t know where she went. She ran away.”
“Well, we better find her, don’t you think?”
From the moment they had entered, Wheat had been staring at Victor, looking him up and down with a contempt he did not bother to conceal. He turned now to Wyatt. “Would you be kind enough to leave us alone for a few minutes, Mr. Wyatt? I want to ask your associate a few questions.”
Wyatt stood uncertainly in the doorway. “I don’t know. I think maybe I should stay.”
“I need you to give us some privacy, Mr. Wyatt. Just go and wait in your room, sir.”
Wheat would not be armed, Victor thought. He was too high up for that.
“I’ll be in our room,” Wyatt said to Victor, as if he had just thought of it. “If you need me.”
The security guard closed the door. By the time he turned around again, Victor had drawn his own weapon, the only thing he had taken with him from Fort Benning, and had it aimed at Greg Wheat’s head. “Hand over your gun,” Victor told the guard, “or I kill your boss. Don’t hesitate, because I won’t.”
The security guard hesitated. Victor shot him, he hoped not fatally. The man lay groaning on his stomach.
Greg Wheat was backing toward the door, hands raised. “Just calm down now,” he was saying. “Just take it easy.”
“You’re the one who told them,” Victor said. “The famous reciprocal relationship. You gave them the names of the witnesses, didn’t you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We help you with your security leaks in Salvador, you help us with our little problems up here. It’s only common sense. Or maybe you think of it as professional courtesy.”
“Listen. I’m a State staffer in charge of security. I look after visitors for State. Nothing else. Don’t cast me as
