Not even tonight, ostensibly a social occasion, can Barrientos restrain himself from rebuking his guest’s nation for strangling the economy of his own.
Once more, Diaz sighs. It is tiresome, having to tolerate this monotonous gripe time and again. He knows the whining is just a crowd-pleaser, even tonight. It has been the same all along the conga line of Barrientos’s predecessors, ever since Chile’s glorious victory in La Guerra del Pacífico in 1883. Name just one Bolivian administration in the eighty-odd years since, he ponders, that has not sought to smokescreen its own economic bungling by agitating against Chile’s seizure of the Atacama coastal corridor.
Diaz dares to yawn, secure that Barrientos’s own jingoistic arrogance will not interpret it as the disrespect he so unquestionably intends; Bolivians have a saying that if La Paz itself won’t take a foreigner’s breath away, the altitude will. There is truth in this.
Diaz also blames the thin air for his brainless decision to marry Maria Rosa, but he will not share that regret with these Bolivianos.
“Se?or Presidente,” says Diaz eventually, without looking at Barrientos as would be the custom, “your hospitality is, as always, magnificent. But I have an early meeting with the yanqui, Se?or Smith.”
All present are well-acquainted with the sharp, green-eyed Smith, a CIA operative whose real name has been the subject of continued speculation. Barrientos owes Smith and his colleagues big-time for providing the intelligence that enabled his US-trained battalion of Bolivian Rangers to track down and kill Guevara, ending Castro’s efforts to spread his leftist revolution to Bolivia. Between Chile and Cuba, Barrientos had previously had his hands full; now it is just Chile he needs to worry about.
Diaz also owes Smith. Kindly—too kindly?—Smith had procured a US visa for Diaz’s wife Maria Rosa, no questions asked. Why Smith was so helpful still isn’t clear to Diaz. Perhaps Smith has eyes for Maria Rosa. But with the escalating troubles, there was no way Diaz could let pregnant Maria Rosa stay here in La Paz. He couldn’t pack her off to Chile; his diplomatic career would not survive long if he let a woman like her loose in his country. It was the best way. He would probably have had to find another, regrettably uncivilised, method if Smith had not been so cooperative.
“Please remember me to him,” says one of the other guests, though he needn’t have bothered. He is Mario Vargas Salinas, a member of the nocturnal detail that secretly buried Che’s body in a grave outside the mountain town of Vallegrande. “We must thank Smith for ensuring the good doctor didn’t stay under our skin for too long, eh?” Salinas laughs.
At first Dr Diaz takes this as a personal insult till he appreciates the joke: Salinas isn’t referring to Diaz, but to Che Guevara’s professional training as a dermatologist. Yet, in the carefully worded world of diplomacy, Diaz can’t discount it as a double entendre.
“Maybe you should take Smith to the Mercado de los Brujos, the Witch Doctors’ Market, and buy him some dried llama fetuses,” suggests Salinas.
“A waste of time,” says Alfredo. “Smith worships power, not Pachamama, the goddess Mother Earth.”
“Unlike the six of us,” Barrientos laughs, though it is a little hollow. Barrientos—always pragmatic—certainly worships Pachamama… why cut off options unnecessarily?
DIAZ wants to chew over the night’s events with a clear head, so he instructs his chauffeur, Felipe, to drive him along the road towards Coroico. Felipe raises his eyebrow but Diaz waves him on. Hardly a road, more a one-lane track, it is cut into the side of a mountain and twists almost continuously with blind hairpins often with dripping wet rock overhangs that obliterate the stars. For good reason it is known locally as El Camino del Muerte, the Death Road, and is possibly the most dangerous road anywhere. Diaz detests having a driver, even more so on an exhilarating and challenging run like this, but both his position and the times dictate it. Felipe is also a crack shot.