Chapter Text
Unfortunately, we all already know how this story ends.
The hot sun shining in the Mexican sky, illuminating the scene of horror that was taking place inside Don Eladio's estate.
Gustavo's terrified face against the blue water of the pool, the blood dripping down his skin, blood that also stained his formal clothes, the tiled floor. Blood that finally dripped from Max's burst head directly into the clear water, mixing with the chlorine.
Hector's gun still smoking.
We can't assume everyone knows how it started, though.
Well, in 1976 the sky was as clear as it would be in '98, when the aforementioned tragedy befell the companions.
Everyone around Gustavo was wearing black, however.
Men from the youngest to the oldest with expressions of seriousness, some who even looked a little sad, all in complete silence while a priest talked, talked and talked and his speech didn't seem to be coming to an end soon.
Etchepare’s father had everything he was entitled to, his fellow officers carrying him to the cemetery, shots fired, the Chilean flag on top of his coffin. It could even be considered beautiful to watch, for someone who wasn't used to seeing so many of those every month. It could be considered sad if Gustavo wasn't already so used to his father's absence.
And with death.
He hadn't been a bad father, at least not to Gustavo. However, his brothers and mother were not present. To be honest, they hadn't left the house much since the early 70s.
Exactly on September 11, 1973.
The doors of the Etchepare family matriarch's house slammed shut. And Gus wouldn't have left if it hadn't been for his father, so he owed it to him.
His gaze then turned to the flag-covered coffin.
Even with that in mind, yeah, he didn't feel anything yet.
He understood, though, the fear that gripped people. He worked with it. He could talk about his days of service on Dawson Island, where, between torture sessions, he could sit and analyze those people who called themselves revolutionaries being enslaved. The blood of the tortured prisoners still on his fingers, staining his cigarette.
Or about his collaboration in the National Stadium Massacre. Victor Jara's legacy didn't seem as easy to exterminate as his own, Gustavo would discover years later that it would never die. Not like all those other people who only sought justice.
As for his travels in the Caravans of Death, he could swear that he had killed people in every state of his country. Communists, trade unionists, Allende supporters. A trail of destruction along Chilean roads, the army left behind.
The loud sound of helicopters mixed with desperate screams would never leave his memory.
Then, when he reached DINA, his work became more methodical, almost robotic.
That's who Gustavo was, after all. That surgical precision when choosing his targets, the corporatism drawing such real lines among the population that it was impossible to see the world any other way, even outside his working hours.
The world Pinochet built for his army was an authoritarian's paradise.
Those present at that funeral had everything in their hands. Even the dead, like Gustavo's father, had honor. That ceremony was proof of that.The commotion, the flowers, the military cemetery. The expensive, well-tailored suits with their pocket handkerchiefs, as if those eyes, which had seen torture houses worse than anything in hell, were capable of shedding a single tear for a merciless four-star dead general. Gustavo had never received so many calls as he had that week. His battalion mates and superiors with their condolences.
He wasn't impressed.
About two weeks ago he had been able to work with his father on a case. He was undercover in a town near the center of Santiago. It was morning so the streets were a little busier than usual. He had this thing about stopping to smoke a cigarette while watching people walk by, sitting at a bus stop in ordinary clothes, as if waiting to meet someone. He saw a middle-aged man pass by, dressed for work. Suitcase, suit and hair combed back. A woman with market bags. Bread, milk and eggs. A young man in uniform, looking too nervous on his way home from school. He stopped at a newsstand just ahead, exchanged a few words with the seller, handed him some coins, took his newspaper and made a point of putting it in his backpack before hurrying back to the next corner.
Suspicious movement. He took one last drag of his cigarette.
Gustavo followed the young man's footsteps, not to the corner, but only to the newsagent. He had bright eyes, despite his age and circumstances. The sparkle in the eye of someone who has hope.
As he crossed the street, he signaled to the white car stopped on the corner opposite the one the boy had entered.
He was sure.
”Buenos dias!” That was all the hopeful newspaperman could say before the car pulled up alongside the two and the older man was forced into the vehicle.
It was only a matter of a few punches before the newsagent passed out.
He couldn't stand more than three days of torture and gave up the scheme. There was no physical evidence. He met with this group of trade unionists once a month, all the information was passed on by word of mouth, nothing could even be written down. When he sold the newspaper, this information was passed on again, now to the population, through that telephone-without-wire game that had been recruiting people for the resistance, plotting and sabotaging the state.
Planning attacks like the one that killed his father.
His father, the torturer of the hopeful newspaperman. Still holding a pair of bloody pliers as he ordered Gustavo to get that dead weight out of his room.
The newspaperman was still alive when he was taken out of the room.
The resistance lived longer and could blow the older Etchepare's head off.
That's why the closed coffin.
Covered with the Chilean flag.
That's why there were expressions of seriousness and calls of "my condolences".
He died in combat, everyone said. He deserves a dignified burial, he deserves to leave knowing that he honored his country.
Gunshots as an homage. Who thought of that?
Gustavo took the newspaperman to an open field, far from Santiago and any civilization. He put the man on his knees and removed the cloth bag from his head just so he could see the glow disappear. Hope was dying in the newsagent's eyes.
”Por la razón!” The man had time to shout before Etchepare pulled the trigger.
No homages. Just blood and brains.
”O la fuerza.” Gus added, pushing with his left foot on the back of the body so that it fell perfectly into the open ditch.
The smell was unbearable. Dozens of bodies shared a single hole in the ground. There were no flowers or priests talking. There were no Chilean flags or molded tombstones with engraved names sharing space with affirmations of how dear all those people had once been to someone.
What there was was a silent signal, just Gustavo's hand indicating to the men working in that field that they could close that ditch and open another one.
His father's coffin, now positioned in its proper grave, began to be buried.
And the fabric of the flag being stained by the earth reminded him that since that day he killed the newspaperman, he hadn't washed and shined his boots.
And when he looked down, he noticed that there was, embedded in the black of the leather, a thick layer of dried blood and dirt.
His father would be furious if he knew that Gus had attended his funeral in dirty boots.
The newsagent didn't seem to mind so much.