Macha asked me to go with them. I went in disguise, and carrying my service weapon, my 9mm CZ. He asked me, when we were already in the truck, to identify the “Prince of Wales”; the photo was blurry, he said, he didn’t want to make a mistake. It had happened before, more than once. When we were leaving, while we waited for the heavy door that led to Central’s lot to open, I saw Gato — his slow walk, tired and downcast, his hands in his coat pockets — on his way home.
I went with Macha, feeling a fascination that I reproached myself for; there was something in him that attracted and frightened me, moved and terrified me. His brusque sentences. His guttural voice. The innate authority with which he imposed his will. His lonely animal silence. His black eyes in which I saw death.
It was close to midnight when the white Toyota double cab 4×4 parked in Calle Juan Moya, behind a run-down Ford truck with no one in it. Iris was next to Macha. I was in the back seat with the binoculars. I saw them check their cartridges and stuff bits of cloth into their ears. I was pleased to feel my heart pounding again in anticipation of action. I was alive. It was an intense moment. I was consumed by a thirst for enemies and opposition and triumph.
The Spartan lived there as a lodger. The problem was that there were other lodgers, two students, and, of course, the widow who owned the house and who knew nothing about the clandestine activities of the “Prince of Wales.” That’s all they had managed to find out. We had to avoid innocent deaths, and we had to take him alive.
He came serenely around the corner. He was three blocks away from us and he was coming closer, wearing the same blue jacket, common and worn, as he had in the restaurant at the market. I recognized him right away: his physical solidity, the poise of a man who walks with confidence through the world. “That’s him!” I exclaimed. I passed the binoculars to Macha and he sat watching the Spartan as he walked closer to us. Then he gave them to Iris, and she watched him for a while, too. The Spartan stopped in the doorway of the house, inapprehensive, and took a key from his pants pocket; he looked mechanically to the right and left, and went in. He did not act like the professional I expected. He didn’t check his surroundings the way he should have. He did not attentively note the presence of the old Ford truck and the Toyota parked behind it. That carelessness kept him from sensing the threat.
Then we got out of the Toyota, walked to an alley and climbed up onto a roof that didn’t have a steep incline. The terrain had been studied. Iris and I went up. Macha helped us, but he stayed below. We crawled, Iris ahead of me, until we were on the house next to the Spartan’s. I don’t know how no one woke up. The zinc roof made noise. From our position we could see the yard, lit up by two street-lights, and a wing of the L-shaped house. We saw a light on at the back. Iris was very attentive. “The bathroom,” she told me in a tiny voice I could barely hear. “The pension’s shared bathroom,” she said.
Do you want another glass of raspberry juice? It’s good, go on, have another one. Now, as I tell you this, one thing stands out to me: the Spartan had to share a bathroom. And what did I feel at the moment? Nothing. Except I was nervous, except I was shaking. That light went out and another one came on next door. “The bedroom,” Iris told me. The second light went out. Iris looked at her watch. We waited for a long minute to go by. Iris stood up without making a sound and flashed a small flashlight to signal. She looked at her watch. And the wait continued. “Now, thirty minutes,” she whispered to me. “Until he’s asleep.” We couldn’t talk or move. In situations like that my back starts to itch, a leg will go to sleep, I yawn or start sneezing. All of that happened to me on that damned roof. Not to Iris, of course, who chastised me with the disdain in her oily eyes.
Suddenly, she checked the time, stretched out her neck, and slowly stood up, flexible and silent as a panther, until she was crouched behind the cornice. I imitated her. From her new position, she drew her CZ and removed the safety. At that same instant, a footstep scraped the sidewalk. After another silence, a slight metallic groan sounded. Iris didn’t take her eyes from the room with the light turned out. You couldn’t see anything. The house was silent. But any experienced ear could clearly hear the sound of a lock pick searching for the combination. Until the lock gave way and the door opened. Light, very soft steps barely sounded on the wooden floor. A single, small circle of intense light flickered, advancing through the interior of the house. It was getting closer to the room where the light had been extinguished minutes earlier. Iris stretched out her neck and took her weapon in both hands, her nose sniffing at the night, her eyes scrutinizing the movements of that solitary beam of light.
A thud, a kick to the door suddenly broke the calm of the night. Then we heard a revolver fire, a window was smashed to smithereens, shouts; the circle of light turned, searching, and there was another shot. There was a tense pause during which I heard only my heart reverberating in its cage. And then, machine-gun fire from an AKM.
“They fucked us!” Iris shouted without looking at me.
Another burst of fire.
THIRTY-NINE
Iris raised her arms unhurriedly, aiming her gun with both hands, and waited. I saw a shadow run through the yard toward the back. It knelt down and covered the others who were following, shooting. Then it was relieved by another shadow and it took off running. They weren’t just students, those two students. They knew how to fight. Iris calmly took aim. There, with her sharp face, she looked like a fox. I think I’ve told you she was an expert shot. The best of the team. When it reached the wall, one of the shadows seemed to take a wrong step, stopped short, faltering close to a streetlight, and slammed onto the pavement: Iris. I wanted to imitate her.
Just as we’d been taught, I didn’t put my sights on the precise spot of the other figure, but rather a little ahead; I fired, but my shadow kept running. I had missed. In the middle of the noise and confusion I recognized the Spartan from his way of moving. He had already climbed the wall and he was getting away over the roof of the house behind. It was him. I didn’t feel any guilt, none, not even when I pointed him out to Iris. My heart was pounding as I imagined what would happen next. The other shadow let itself fall, sliding down over the zinc roofing. And the Spartan kept going; unstable, taking hesitant steps, he kept moving over the treacherous roofs. I wanted to see how they got him alive. I laughed, a peal of uncontrollable laughter I couldn’t suppress. Then he disappeared, followed by a burst of gunfire. We slid down from the roof and took off running. A red Datsun passed us at full speed toward Avenida Dublé Almeyda. “I’m sure he stole that Datsun,” Iris told me. The Spartan had broken through the cordon.