Chapter 12
It was playtime ...
Ray Kinsella lazily scratched the side of his jaw. He was in his element; his broad Irish accent, soothingly monotone, was marinated with menace. “February 25th. You leave Sao Paulo, Brazil, travelling on a tourist card in the name of Laura Gutierrez Bauer.” Tania’s eyes dilated with fear and beseeched me to stop the madness. “April 13th: you arrive in Mexico.” He prodded Tania’s temple with the snout of his 9mm and went on. “That’s sixteen days. Sixteen days of postcard writing and sight-seeing. First question, who did you meet in Sao Paulo? And remember ...” He lowered his voice, “lie and my friend will taste it on your breath.” Tania’s lips quivered, childlike, her answer barely audible. “Speak up, Miss Bauer. I’m deaf in one eye.”
“Werner Metzel.”
Kinsella let out a long low whistle. “A Russian national, promoted to major in the KGB six months ago, now acting as Moscow’s front line sandbag in Brazil. Precarious choice of playmate, wouldn’t you say? Why?”
“Why ...? Why what? I ... I don’t understand.”
“That’s because us Irish are the most misunderstood race on the planet. Sixteen days. It didn’t take sixteen days to sabotage Ché’s guerrilla movement in the interests of Moscow. In fact, it wouldn’t have taken you sixteen minutes.”
Kinsella reached for a cigarette and borrowed mine to light it. “Did you?” he asked.
“What?”
“Play one way conversation with Metzel.”
“Is that question two?”
“Why do I get the feeling my arse is about to choke?”
“No comprendo.”
“Don’t give me any blarney. You understand all right. Now answer the question before I give your eardrum lead poisoning”
“Metzel passed on the information about Zone Red.”
“And in return, you gave away the location of Ché’s guerrilla camp.”
“That was Marcos.”
“Forget Marcos. You severed communications between Nancahuazú and La Paz and gave away the location of the guerrilla camp.”
“That’s not true.”
“I’ll be the judge of what’s true and what isn’t, Ms. Bauer. Question two. Compared to the men in Ché’s group, the men you befriended, you’d enjoyed a sophisticated existence of which they knew nothing. You treated them like ignorant savages and tantalized them with your superior knowledge of the world. In turn, they entrusted you and you betrayed them—transmitted everything that happened, every move Ché made. Again, why?”
“Metzel promised money, arms ... the help we needed to succeed.”
Kinsella fell silent. It was a lengthy silence, the sort that conceives and gives birth; the sort that gives the victim hope. In my book, skilled interrogators never fall silent, because once they do they lose command, their psychological edge is blunted. There was a script. A script we’d gone over and over. Suddenly his jaw moved, and a pole of ash fell from his cigarette and disintegrated on his sleeve. “Does that answer taste right to you, Rick?” he asked. It was an admission he was stumbling.
“If I was a snake, Ray,” I said. “My tongue wouldn’t bother flicking out a second time.”
“Okay then, ask why she risked using her fake Argentinian passport to gain entry into Mexico.” He was straying off beam, losing thrust. Tania was no fool; she would pick up on it and use it to her advantage. Of course, it was important to know why she’d risked travelling on false Argentinian papers when she had genuine documents of Bolivian citizenship and a Bolivian passport in the name of Alvarez, both obtained through a hasty marriage of convenience, dissolved within weeks. I let things rest a moment. Tania’s mind would be racing in circles, searching for tell-tale signs of a bluff, a way out, a finger hold she could convert to an eight lane highway. I took the spotlight off her, placed her firmly in the stalls, and went into an Amos and Andy routine.
