The White Vixen (25 page)

“That would be too late,” she said.

“Quite. By then, they will have consolidated their hold on the islands, and the cost of retaking them might be too high for some in London to stomach.”

“Your Prime Minister wouldn’t allow that, would she?”

He shook his head. “She wouldn’t want to. She’s full of brass, she is, but she might have little choice. Given three or four months to fortify the islands, the Argentines might be judged too entrenched to move them out without a large assault. Very large and very costly. Some in the House of Commons will certainly argue against doing anything.”

Jo the woman was now transformed into Jo the warrior. “Why don’t you just reinforce the islands now?” she asked. “Make it too costly for them to invade.”

“Logical, but not very practical, considering the logistics and the politics,” he said. “No, this will be a situation where we will react, rather than act. If we have time, that is.” He lay back down again, hands behind his head. “That means my lads and I will be going back down there.”

The woman came back, and she lay down next to him, holding him close. “Ian, I’m worried for you,” she said.

“I have a job to do,” he said. “I’m a marine in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. I will go where I’m ordered and do what they tell me to do.” He looked at her. “Just like you would if your president ordered your wing into action somewhere. Just like you did on Fonglan Island.”

“That was before we met,” she said. “That was different, somehow…”

He stroked her hair. “You know that’s not true,” he said gently. “We’re soldiers, Jo, you and me. It’s what we do.”

She took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said softly. “It’s what we do.” She tried to imagine what her own reaction would be if some foreign power took over, say, Guam, or some of the Marianas, far-away American-held islands that few Americans on the mainland ever thought about, if they even knew of their existence. Well, it had pretty much happened once, hadn’t it? Jo’s father had answered the call then.

They lay together quietly for a while, lost in their own thoughts. Finally, he stirred. “What say we get back, get ready for dinner?”

“Okay,” she said. Wordlessly, they gathered up their things, and she put her bra back on. But she knew that when they got back to the room, she would be taking it off again, and she would be making love to this man with a passion that she’d never known before.

Jo awoke the next morning to the sound of the surf coming through their partially opened balcony door. She stretched herself out gloriously, still feeling the glow from last night—the wine, the dinner, and the sex. Did anyone have a right to feel this good? The thought occurred to her just as she became aware that Ian wasn’t next to her. Then came an urgent message from somewhere inside, telling her it was time to take care of essential business.

The clock on the nightstand said 7:45, and there was a note from Ian. Out for a quick run. Jo had always joined him for morning P.T., keeping with her routine from back home, but he’d let her sleep in today. Well, that was fine, anything he wanted was fine with her. She decided to hit the shower after answering nature’s call.

Ten minutes later, she was out on the balcony, taking in the ocean view, wearing only the terrycloth robe provided by the hotel, and toweling the last of the water from her hair when she heard the door sliding open behind her. It was Ian, clad in his Royal Marines tank top and shorts. She turned to embrace him, but his expression stopped her.

“What is it?” she asked, fearing the answer.

He held up a yellow sheet of paper. “A wire from my base,” he said, his voice flat. “I have to get back. Today.”

“Oh, no…” They had planned to leave the next day. “Does this mean…?”

He nodded grimly. “He closes with the word ‘Tallyho’. That’s a war signal. It can only mean the Argentines are ready to move.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Buenos Aires

March 1982

The students gathered slowly, tentatively, some of them laughing at jokes that weren’t very funny, but they needed a way to release the tension. Theresa Gasparini felt it, too, and not for the first time she asked herself why she was here on this mild fall day, a day when she should be in her international economics class at the university, or at the very least at home with her bambinos. Why was she here, in the Plaza de Mayo, with the intimidating façade of the Casa Rosada staring down at her, a squad of policemen protecting its front entrance, all staring right at her?

She saw reason entering the plaza now, drawn to him by the applause, even a few harried cheers from the knot of students gathered around the makeshift speakers’ platform. Flashing his dazzling smile, Hector Guzmán shook hands as he made his way toward them. He looked younger in person than his newspaper photographs or the film she’d seen on television. Longish brown hair, a thin mustache, moving smoothly toward them in his pinstriped blue suit, Guzmán did not appear to be the leftist rabble-rouser so often denounced by the right-wing, government-approved newspapers. This close, he looked more like the graduate student in political science that he actually was—or had been, until he’d dropped out of school two months ago to devote all his time to the infant anti-war movement.

“Impressive, isn’t he?” Beside her, the tall man with the goatee and studious round eyeglasses gave her a smile and then turned his attention back to Guzman. Franco Caciagli, Ph.D., professor of political science at the university, was as much responsible for Theresa’s presence here as anything else. Since beginning his class in January, she had been spellbound by his lectures, inspiring thoughts she never had before, questions she had never considered asking. Professor Caciagli asked her personally to attend this rally. Theresa the woman knew that his interest in her was not entirely academic, but Theresa the student, exploring a world that was opening up more and more to her every day, accepted his invitation. Antonio, watching a report of Guzmán on television just last weekend, had denounced him as a dangerous threat to the country’s stability. Perhaps, she thought with an illicit thrill, her husband’s disapproval was part of her reason for coming here as well.

Guzmán’s movement had stalled in the aftermath of the so-called “great triumph” over the English on the Island of the Penguins, but in recent weeks he’d picked up some steam. The same newspapers that trumpeted praises of the junta were also alarming many people with their incessant drumbeat over the Malvinas. Even novice political science students could see what was coming. War over the Malvinas would be a catastrophe, Professor Caciagli said in class. What if the English refused to back down? The Argentine military was not strong enough to capture and hold the islands against a determined, battle-tested enemy. What if the Americans intervened on behalf of their English allies? What if the Chileans or the Brazilians seized the moment to strike at their old enemy? Theresa’s mind whirled with the possibilities as the debate raged around her in class.

She tried discussing the war threat with Antonio, who scoffed at her fears. The junta leaders may be a bit reckless, he said, but they are not idiots. The Malvinas would be theirs eventually, but through negotiation, not open conflict. The trend in the world was away from colonialism; the old European powers were retreating all over the world. It would be no different here. Eventually the U.N. would pressure the English to give the islands back.

Theresa remained concerned, though. If war came, Antonio might have to fight, especially if their untrustworthy neighbors attacked Argentina. Although she didn’t know a lot about what was going on at Pilcaniyeu—Antonio had only told her the work was top secret—it was obviously a military project of some kind, and so she sensed the facility would be high on the target list for Chilean or Brazilian bombers, or even American missiles, if it came to that. Her fear for her husband made her agree more and more with Professor Caciagli, and with Hector Guzmán. Something had to be done to help common sense prevail.

Guzmán jumped up the steps of the podium and held his hands up to quiet the applause. The microphone squeaked as he adjusted it. “My friends, fellow Argentines,” he began, in a surprisingly deep voice, “we come here today, in the shadow of the Pink House, to say two things to our leaders: No to war! Yes to peace!” Cheers rang out.

Theresa cheered with them. She looked around and saw that the crowd now numbered around a hundred people. More were wandering over from inside the park, and from the nearby streets. The police in front of the Pink House looked more numerous now, too.

“We are called traitors, but we are not,” Guzmán said. “Is it traitorous to want peace for your country? Is it treason to wish that the young men of Argentina never have to fire a shot in anger at the young men of another nation? I say it is not treason, but the highest form of patriotism!” The cheers were louder this time. Guzmán was an impressive speaker, naturally gifted. His looks entranced women, and some men, too, and the cameras loved him, it was said. He had what the Americans called charisma. No wonder the junta feared and hated him.

The thought made her shudder. She remembered very well what happened during the Dirty War not so long ago, when people the junta feared and hated tended to disappear. Her own second cousin vanished after helping organize a labor union at a paper mill. Rodolfo had left a wife and four children.

“Today we stand together for peace!” Guzmán shouted, holding his right hand aloft, displaying the V-sign borrowed from the Americans. “Today we stand together and call upon our leaders to renounce war, to seek peace. Peace with England, peace with Brazil, peace with Chile!”

Amidst the cheers, Theresa heard a shriek of fear, then another. She looked toward the Pink House, and there were the police, a long line of helmeted men, some carrying shields, some truncheons. They were advancing through the plaza, toward the crowd. Guzmán saw them, too. “Stand together, my friends! Are we not free Argentines? Do we not have the freedom to assemble, to speak our minds?”

“Not really,” Professor Caciagli muttered. “This isn’t America.”

“Will the police attack?” Theresa asked.

“I don’t know,” the professor said. Suddenly, the university seemed very far away to Theresa. Inside Caciagli’s classroom, it was all theory. This was reality, in the form of determined, armed men coming their way. No doubt there were more uniformed men watching it all through the windows of the Pink House, and to them the people in the park would appear very small indeed.

“We should go,” she said. “I’m frightened, Professor.”

“Stand fast!” Guzmán shouted. “Stand together for peace!” Many in the crowd echoed him, facing the police, shaking their fists.

One of the policemen raised a megaphone. “You are assembling illegally,” came the amplified voice. “You are ordered to disperse. Go back to your homes. This is your only warning.” The line of policemen halted about fifty meters from the protestors.

“We have a legal permit!” Guzmán shouted back at them. “We are peaceful! You have no right to order us around!” The crowd began to draw strength from Guzmán, and from the seeming hesitation of the police. Guzmán began a chant, quickly picked up by the crowd: “Yes to peace, no to war! Yes to peace, no to war!”

Theresa saw one of the policemen, perhaps the commander, holding a radio to his ear, listening to something, and then he shouted an order. The line began to move toward the protestors. Some on the outer fringes of the crowd lost their nerve and started running, but one young man took two steps toward the advancing line and threw something. Theresa gasped as the stone struck a policeman in the face, cracking his visor, knocking him down. The officer yelled an order, and his men charged.

“Run!” Caciagli shouted. He grabbed Theresa’s hand and pulled her along. She needed no encouragement. They made it past the podium as the first wave of policemen collided with the edge of the protestors, truncheons rising and falling, bringing screams of pain.

Caciagli was heading for the center of the plaza. Theresa could see the Pyramide de Mayo, an obelisk built over an earlier monument to the Revolution of 1810. Somehow it occurred to her that the very next day, the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo would be holding their weekly Thursday afternoon march, calling once more for a full accounting of the Dirty War atrocities. That would be tomorrow; today, protestors were running for their lives. Past the pyramid, Theresa saw something that gave her hope. “The cathedral!” she yelled, and Caciagli saw it, too: the tall edifice of the Catedral Metropolitana. If they could make it inside, the police would surely not follow, not into the shrine that held the remains of the legendary patriot Jose de San Martín, who had liberated Argentina from the Spanish.

But they wouldn’t make it that far. A flying squadron of policemen, anticipating the crowd’s rush toward the safety of the cathedral, outflanked the protestors from the eastern part of the plaza. Pedestrians and bystanders, even those who’d ignored the assembly, ran from the police in panic or fell to their clubs. Caciagli and Theresa tried to double back toward the obelisk, but they were fighting against the tide of fleeing civilians. Screams and shouts filled the air. Cars and trucks on the nearby streets blared their horns. The peaceful afternoon of the plaza had descended into chaos.