The journalist nodded. She swung her camera around and caught him in its eye. He froze. Click.
Abel looked down, away from the eye. He shrugged. “There are more painful ways to kill a man. It’s not for punishment. It’s for the children. To educate them.”
“Did you do this?”
“My group had different methods,” Abel said.
The journalist stared at him. Her eyes were gentle, soft, but fixed on him, as if she were waiting for him to say more. When the silence began to feel uncomfortable, he added, “When I demobilized, I confessed all my crimes.”
He stepped onto the ground where Chepe’s bar had been. Where his parents and sisters had died. This was their grave, if they had one.
“Yes. But I hear the man you committed crimes for is back in La Vigia.”
“Yes.”
He knelt and scooped out some earth, making a small hole. He put one hand to his pocket, where he had the pouch with the toad.
“You see over there,” he said, pointing across the road. “That is where they came from.” The students and the journalist turned and looked, and he slipped the toad into the earth unseen.
“Did Jefferson help you . . . with justice for what happened here?”
Abel smiled. Osmin had thought he’d wanted revenge, too. He pushed the earth on top of the toad, covering the hole. Now he only had to say the name.
“Jefferson,” he whispered. He looked up at the gringa journalist. “No. Jefferson did not help me get justice.”
—
The checkpoint wasn’t manned by the Jesúses, but by men in uniforms that, as they drew closer, appeared to be those of the FARC. They were maybe four hundred meters in front of them, the road heading in a straight line up to a slight elevation, with a stream on one side and heavy vegetation on the other, where there was no real room for cars to maneuver.
“This is strange?” Lisette said to Agudelo, who was slowing the van and looking back at Abel, who seemed tense, his jaw clenched.
“Turn around,” he said in a level voice. “Turn around.”
As Agudelo brought the van to a crawl, Sara, who’d been filming Abel’s tour of his ruined hometown, took the camera she’d been using, a Canon 5D, and put it in her lap, facing upward at the windows of the van. Lisette watched her press the button to record, and Lisette smiled. Good.
Two men cradling rifles emerged from the side of the road, about a hundred yards away, and waved at the van to keep going. The checkpoint was past those two by about four hundred yards. There were three vehicles waiting to be inspected. The first, a gray sedan, moved forward, past the checkpoint; the next one, a truck loaded with scrap metal, came forward.
“Just a shakedown?” Agudelo said, looking back at Abel.
Lisette looked up at the men closest to them, one of whom had placed the buttstock of his rifle to his shoulder. It was still pointed down, but Lisette figured he could be up and firing accurately in under a second. If that was an AK, the max effective range was four hundred meters. Even if it was poorly maintained, even if the men up ahead didn’t know what they were doing, it’d be capable of shooting through the engine block of the van at two hundred meters.
“Go,” Lisette said, motioning up to the checkpoint. “They are . . . close.”
“They are not FARC,” Abel said. “They are not . . .”
Agudelo shifted gears and the van stuttered forward.
“Turn around,” Abel said.
Lisette pointed to the men with rifles, who were now less than a hundred meters away.
“It’s not safe,” Abel said.
“Who are they?” Agudelo asked.
And then they were passing the men with rifles, who smiled and waved and it calmed Lisette a little. A bribe, that would be all. She removed the memory card, slipped it into her pocket, and shoved her camera into her bag. No need to give them reason to loot anything.
Agudelo checked his rearview mirror, the van still moving forward, closing the distance to the checkpoint, which was now about two hundred meters away. Lisette looked back at the students. They’d been unusually cold to Abel, to the point of rudeness, but now they were all looking at him as if he might have some kind of answer. Clearly there was something about this guy that everybody knew except her.
“They’re looking for someone,” Agudelo said.
“Do you still work for Jefferson?” Lisette asked.
They came to the line of cars just as the fighters were waving the truck with scrap metal forward, and the final vehicle, a motorcycle, moved in between the fighters as Agudelo brought the van to a stop. Lisette heard laughter. The motorcyclist was making some kind of joke. She turned and smiled at Abel, as if to assure him it would be all right, then turned back and saw one of the fighters slap the motorcyclist on the back. It was an oddly comforting sight. Normal. Friendly.
“No bribe,” Agudelo said, puzzled. And he, too, looked at Abel. “They’re not asking for money.”
Perhaps they were looking for someone. And then the motorcyclist was speeding away, and the fighters were motioning to Agudelo, and the van was moving forward, and there were rifles pointing at the car, and the passenger side door was opening, and hands were reaching in, and Lisette was gripping the seat, and someone was shouting, and it was Agudelo who was shouting, and the rifles pointed at the car, and the hands tore at Lisette’s seat belt, and Agudelo gripped Lisette’s hand, and Lisette gripped back, and she felt a blow in her side, and the blow registered dully in the sudden charge of fear and adrenaline, and Agudelo was pleading, and Abel was shouting, and
