Macha was waiting for us in the Toyota with its motor running. He was dirty, his hair was disheveled, and he had a cut on his forehead. The traffic on Dublé Almeyda, though scarce at that hour, protected the Spartan. He was alone. We chased him southward down Vespucio. As he drove, blood dripped down from Macha’s eyebrow and into his eye. Iris tied a handkerchief around his head. The cars we passed seemed to be standing still. That’s how fast we were going. The Spartan seemed to be about to turn east, but then he broke fast to the west, tires squealing, and took off down Avenida Grecia. We couldn’t shoot at him because of the other cars. We couldn’t. I would have liked to get him with my still-virgin CZ. My heart was in my throat. I was someone else; I was unhinged, blinded. Before we reached Vicuña Mackenna, the Spartan threw a hand grenade out the window, and it exploded just a few yards from our Toyota. The splinters smashed our windshield. At the corner, he turned left, tires screeching, across four lanes of cars going in the opposite direction on Grecia, and he headed south on Vicuña Mackenna. He left a swarm of horns, brakes, and tangled cars behind him. Smoke and the smell of burnt rubber.
We lost him, and that’s where he made a mistake: he should have turned onto a different street. For some reason he kept going full speed down Vicuña Mackenna. As soon as we managed to get free of the tangle of cars, Macha floored the accelerator of that beefed-up 4×4 with its big pistons and augmented carburetor, and soon we saw the tail of the Datsun again. We were gaining ground. Iris drew her gun, looking for the right angle with half her body out the window. We got close to the Datsun, and on his second try, Macha managed to bump it close to the rear wheel. It was a technique they’d taught us at the training camp in La Rinconada, though I never thought it would be useful in action. But it worked.
The Datsun went up onto the sidewalk, sped a few yards farther, barely missing a tree, scraped loudly against a wall, veering side to side. Just then we heard a peremptory voice on the car’s radio that startled me: “You are under orders from your superiors to stop the Toyota immediately and cease the chase. Do you copy? You are under orders from your superiors. .” it repeated. The Spartan’s Datsun made it back onto the street and lost us, fleeing southward.
A silver Volvo pulled up in front of us. Macha got out and went over to it, his black leather jacket half open. Iris turned off the motor. Macha slammed the Volvo’s windshield with the butt of his CZ. The door opened very slowly and a slender, distinguished, serene form appeared — Flaco. I had recognized his voice, of course. Macha tucked his gun behind him, under his belt. We could hear his dark voice as he looked up at Flaco: “We’ve got some fucking scared shitless, fat-ass generals around here. And you, Flaco, you’re one of them now? Are you listening to me?” Flaco was looking over Macha’s head with a vague, indefinite expression and a cold, steady smile that I didn’t recognize. But his gestures had the same calm as always as he began explaining something to Macha.
“I’m telling you. .” Iris was saying to me. “Let’s see, how many times has this happened to us? Macha always does this shit. He goes off on his own, and then they de-authorize him from above. Why did we go in with so few people?. .”
Then the figure of Gato came into my mind, downcast, his hands in his coat pockets, dragging his feet while we waited for the heavy door to open.
FORTY
The Volvo left and the operation was considered terminated. Macha took out the first aid kit, cut a piece of gauze with his Swiss army knife, opened the bottle of peroxide, and, looking at himself in the Toyota’s mirror, cleaned his wound. It was a superficial cut, but there were little shards of glass in it. Iris helped him get them out with the tweezers on the same pocketknife. One splinter had gone in sideways and when it was forced out, it tore the flesh with its irregular rhombus shape. Iris, who was shining a flashlight on it, had trouble getting it out. Macha put a few drops of iodine on it, applied a bandage, straightened his clothes, combed his hair, and happily invited us for beers at a nearby dive that he knew would be open at that hour. It was on the same avenue to the south, near stop number 20 at Calle Santa Amalia, he told us, right across from a phone booth. He would have to go back to Central later on to file a report on what had happened. Then, Lisandro Pérez Olmedo would have to appear, like so many times before, in the appropriate police station, number 18, and make the required declaration: “In circumstances that the individual XX, identity number such-and-such, ignoring the order to freeze, fled through the back yard shooting an AKM, it was necessary to neutralize him, for which I used my service weapon. .” He started to laugh.
Lisandro Pérez Olmedo still had time for a beer. He didn’t seem worried about the declaration he would later stamp with his signature and that would then be archived in the case files in the Tenth Third Criminal Court of Santiago. Iris offered to go herself, since any ballistic study would show that the shot came from the roof and not the ground. Lisandro Pérez Olmedo rejected the argument with another laugh. “Who says I didn’t go up on the roof? You, off to bed after this,” he told her. “That’s an order,” he told her.
We were drinking a few beers, as I said, in a diner on Calle Santa Amalia. Through the window I could see a forsaken phone booth next to a broken streetlight that offered no light. When Iris asked him: why the order from above, and what had happened with Flaco? Macha made a disdainful gesture, wrinkling his brow, and took a long swallow of beer. “They’re going to put a citation on your service record,” Iris told him. “It’s really bad for your career.” Macha twisted his mouth in the same disdainful scowl. A drop of beer shone in his black moustache. The first round of beers was gone in no time, and I was in the middle of my second when Iris stood up to go to the bathroom. I got up to let her pass. In that exact second I recognized the Spartan. He was approaching the phone booth, his hair disheveled and his jacket dirty. Coincidences happen. Not always, of course, but sometimes, and they are decisive.
Could I keep quiet? My heart was in my throat. I realized that no one was paying any particular attention to me. Why did I do what I did? Squeezing my glass hard with both hands and looking at the table with its flowered plastic tablecloth, I said it in a voice that I remember as sounding terrified. “There’s the ‘Prince of Wales,”’ I said. “There, in the phone booth.” I expected Macha to go running out with guns blazing, but he didn’t. He didn’t bat an eye. We went right on drinking beer as if nothing was happening, until Iris came back. Then he handed her the keys to the Toyota and gave her the order to follow the Spartan.
“Don’t use the radio,” he told her. “Got it? Do not use Central’s radio. Call me from a public phone when you can. I’ll send you another car for support.” As soon as the Spartan hung up, she went out to follow him. Macha and I calmly finished our beers.
Only then did I dare to ask him if he had really thought he’d be able to take down the “Prince of Wales” alone at the pension and bring him out in cuffs. He nodded.
“But he wasn’t sleeping. He wasn’t even in bed,” Macha said. And looking at a distant, indefinite point: “The man was dressed, pacing in the dark with his gun in his hand. The others were dressed too, in their rooms, each one with his AKM at the ready. Strange, right?”