Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

Dieu le veut

As Teresa woke up the next morning she saw a glow through the thin tent fabric. Marcelo was already up and faint sounds were heard outside. The woman dressed in warm clothes for as soon as she left the sleeping bag she felt the intense cold.

“ Good morning.” Greeted with an exhilaration that immediately seemed out of place given the tensions and uncertainties with which they had gone to bed the night before.

As Teresa strolled her eyes by the natural scene she understood the cause of brightness. The sun was radiant in a nearly cloud- free sky and the rays reflected in the white landscape. The snowy layer was thin however, and under the solar heat it was beginning to melt.

“ Hello!” Said Marcelo. “Come and have breakfast, so you can warm up.”

They took their snack slowly, using the heat of the fire to warm up their bodies. Then overcoming the drowsiness produced by the cold they put out the fire and raised the camp.

“ Today it took only twelve minutes.” said Marcelo smiling. “ We are acquiring practice.”

“ It can come in handy if we ever have to leave in a hurry.” said Emil.

“ Well, but I would not like to live in a barracks.” interjected Teresa, who in general took her time for everything.

As an answer her husband helped her mount her horse, while Emil finished fixing his load.

They resumed the journey on horseback following always the stream from varying distances. Teresa turned her eyes to the right, i.e. Northbound and asked.

“ What's that mountain on the horizon, which protrudes from the others?”

“ Is Mount Tronador, 3480 meters above sea level. It is the highest peak of these places. This is what the shaman called it Ten TenMahuida. What we are seeing is one of three peaks, called Pico Argentino. It is rare to see the summit without clouds; what happens is that the nighttime snow left a clear sky.”

After an hour of walking, Marcelo thought he saw something in the thicket of cypresses, coihues and coligüe reeds. He dismounted and went on foot with caution; beyond some thick bushes the ground appeared clearer. A precarious wooden fence appeared among the trees.

“What is this? Seems a corral.” said.

Emil, who had dismounted and approached too replied.

“ It is indeed a corral, probably for sheep or goats, and despite its poor condition is still in use.” Added pointing to several piles of excrement.

“ This makes me nervous. I feel we were intruders and someone was watching us.” Teresa said with a thin voice.

“ I do not rule out that this may be true to some extent.” Tschudin said with a worried face. “Maybe they are not watching us not right now, but some residents might already be aware that we are here.”

“ What is this? They look like ax marks on this trunk.” said Marcelo.

“ Yes, and tree sap is still flowing. This is relatively recent.”

“ It could well be just a resident.” Marcelo added, with a hint of skepticism.

“ The ranger told us that there are very few stable people.” Said Emil. “But an old corral still in use speaks precisely of permanent population.”

They found no other traces that would give them clues about the possible corral owners so they continued their march for a couple of hours. When making a stop for lunch, the Swiss spoke with his wife by the satellite phone. As he hung the man looked relieved.

“ Well, Raquel flew from Bariloche to the Buenos Aires Aeroparque, where she is now waiting for a connection to Bahia Blanca, where my children are waiting her.”

“ I guess they are waiting her not overjoyed.” Said slyly Marcelo. “Mom arrives and fun is over.”

“ No, they have very good relationship with Raquel and love her more than anyone else. When they learn the reason of her unexpected travel they will take good care of their mother.”

The march took the travelers to the small Lake Felipe. There Emil explained:

“In the right season this area is a fisherman's paradise, this particular lake has a permanent fishing ban, as it is a natural breeding and spawning spot, and the fish fauna of most of the lakes in the area depends on it.“

The density of the Andean Patagonian forest was gradually increasing as they advanced, and rain turned almost constant testing the patience of the travelers.

“We're entering the so called Valdivian jungle.” Explained Emil” a region of thick vegetation that covers areas of southern Chile, and enter Argentine territory through the lower parts of the Andes. It is exposed to the moisture carried by the Pacific winds and rainfall is usually more than four thousand millimeters per year. So rainy weather will be very frequent from now on.”

Indeed, the vegetation was so compact that advancing was painful or impossible. Emil finally said:

“ I think we will not make progress in this direction; also we have lost sight of the stream, so now we do not have a clear direction.”

“ It looks that we will not find villages in an area of vegetation as dense as this.” added Marcelo.

The three travelers dismounted from their horses and gathered around the map. Emil had determined their position with GPS. The discussion was initiated by him.

“ I estimate that we are now very close to the border with Chile, if we are not already stepping on Chilean territory. No sign of populated areas on my map. I think we should go south and arrive at a lake belonging half and half to Chile and Argentina. Then we should explore its shores, and return later by the southern hillsides of Mounts Pelado and Cuadrado, along the streams that will take us back to Lake Roca. If as we return to this point we have not found anything, we must abandon our purpose, at least until we obtain more data.”

Yaroslav had just landed at the International Airport of Bariloche. He pulled his heavy backpack from the baggage belt, and sighed with relief as no one had detected its contents. He spotted a sallow man waiting with a sign hanging from his neck that read "Travel Maravilla" and walked toward him. When Yaroslav was informed of the name it seemed crazy to him, but finally accepted it. Wordlessly the Russian handed the backpack, which crushed the man with its weight.

“ What's your name?”

“ Francisco.”

“ Where are you from?”

“ From Honduras.”

This seemed to satisfy the information needs of Yaroslav because he did not speak another word. Francisco had a car in the airport parking lot and as soon as he left it he drove towards the road that borders the Lake Nahuel Huapi. Instead of heading to the city of Bariloche they took the opposite direction toward Dina Huapi, in the east. Yaroslav followed the route on a map that was on his legs.

After a long stretch of one hundred kilometers along a gravel road, Francisco stopped the car in front of a tent located beside the road, in the middle of nowhere. A man Yaroslav immediately recognized as Hernandez came out from it. He approached with his arms deployed in what was intended as a gesture of welcome; a grin on his face resembled a smile. A twinkle in Yaroslav´s eyes probably warned him of what would happen, but it was too late. The Russian pulled a gun from his clothes and immediately shot Hernandez and Francisco impacting their heads in both cases. The hitmen plummeted like empty bags in the place where they were. Yaroslav approached the bodies and checked the results of his shots; Hernandez had an impact between his eyes and Francisco in the middle of

the forehead. The Russian verified with a pair of binoculars that there was no one in sight, picked up the cartridges and loaded the two bodies in the car trunk, piled as trash bags. Then he pulled the tent where the men had been living, two rifles, ammunition and communications equipment. With the rest he made a package wrapping them in the tent fabric and put everything also in the trunk.

Then he glanced at the map and started back. Yaroslav had to find a suitable place to dump the bodies and remembered that as they were approaching the place with Francisco he had seen one spot that would serve his purpose. What he needed was that the corpses were not found for some time, after which he would already have left the country. On reaching the place he had chosen to dispose of the bodies he drove the car out of the way to the edge of a ravine; again he looked at the surroundings and checked that the solitude was complete. He threw the bodies and the bulk of the tent down to the bottom of the ravine, and then pulled from the car a can of gasoline Francisco had presumably put; he threw the entire contents of the container over the bodies and set them on fire. He remained at the top of the canyon to convince the flames would consume everything, and then returned to the trail. Nothing would remain as evidence of the miserable lives of the two gunmen.

On the way back, Yaroslav was humming an old Russian tune he remembered from his youth. He did not like killing but in this case it produced him no remorse. He had eliminated countless enemies in Afghanistan, Chechnya and his subsequent adventures in Latin America. They were men who did not deserve greater respect due to their deeds. Yaroslav was not racist. He was constantly surrounded by people of all ethnic origins, he led his men standing in front of them and rescuing the injured without regard to skin color. Only black women succeeded to satisfy its huge sexual appetite. In his cabin in the Peruvian Amazon he always had the company of some Brazilian mulatto girl. But it was his current girlfriend, Terezinha who had become the center of his attention. No more than eighteen years old, slender and petite, she disappeared under the huge body of the Russian when they were in bed; not only could she satisfy Yaroslav, she exhausted him. Amazing enough, the little squirrel extenuated the polar bear. Although he did not want to admit it, sexual desire was not the only reason that drew him to the young woman; some affection had begun

to grow into a man for whom all his actions were defined by violence. She was an additional reason to complete this work as soon as possible and return to her village, the only home Yaroslav had known since he left his parents' home in Belarus.

That night he planned to contact his local informant in Bariloche, who had warned him of the shaman´s killing and thus triggered all the later events. Yaroslav expected that he would have further data on the activities of Tschudin and his companions. What surprised him was that the Commander knew the couple, and wondered under what circumstances that had happened. Having served under him during ten years in various parts of Asia, Yaroslav had eventually lost touch with his boss. Those were probably the worst years of his life; aimless, unguided, not knowing what to do, he had acted as a mercenary in different groups, had become almost a drunkard and would eventually have fallen under the power of drugs. Finally a former fellow soldier brought the news that the Commander was alive and looking to recruit his old men. He had succeeded to gather them again, because he was loved by those he had led, as was the case of Yaroslav, much as was hated and feared by his enemies.

Later Yaroslav would call his boss, would then report the removal of the loose ends and expose the broad lines of a new plan he had conceived.