Evita's Revenge

The man next to the car reached into his pocket and pulled out his own watch. After glancing at it briefly, he put it away. He continued to shuffle his feet and rub his hands together even more vigorously, a sign of nervousness. How much longer would he wait? If the other man didn’t show up, would they be able to arrange another meeting? Maybe one of them had gotten wind of the trap?

“Emilio” resisted the temptation to check the time again. He took deep breaths and tried to remain calm. If this plan failed he consoled himself with the thought that they could always try something else. But just then, a new set of headlights appeared and another automobile made its way up the winding road. It stopped about five meters behind the parked vehicle. Turning off the motor and extinguishing the lights, the driver got out and approached the other man.

“Emilio” felt a surge of excitement, his pulse racing. It was going to work! But he had to move quickly. Once the men met and started to talk, they would quickly realize that the clandestine meeting was a set-up. They would waste little time in beating a hasty retreat.

As he emerged from his hiding place and advanced toward the two men, he saw them greet each other with handshakes and an abrazo. Before they could begin a conversation, he was only a few meters away. Absorbed in their meeting, they had not heard him approach. He called out their names, startling them. They broke their abrazo and turned in his direction. In the dark, even close by, all they saw was a shapeless form. He raised his hands and like a gunslinger in a western movie fired shots from two pistols into their chests. The two men were hurled backward by the force of the bullets, bouncing off the car behind them and crumpling to the ground, blood already seeping from their bodies onto the pavement.

It had only taken a split second. The blast of the gunshots echoed in his ears. He took a moment for the reverberations to clear. When they did, he listened carefully before advancing toward the bodies. He could detect no signs of alarm. The site chosen for the ambush was far enough away from any residences it was unlikely the sounds of gunshots would carry to them. Besides, most Santiaguenos were fast asleep at this time of night. Still, he had been trained to expect the unexpected. He knew he had to move quickly in the unlikely event that the shots had been heard and someone contacted the police.

He bent over the two bodies, checking to make sure they were no longer breathing. They weren’t.

Now, it was important to determine who was who. Putting his pistols down next to the two corpses, he lit a match to provide illumination and identified the foreign ministry official. He did the same with the other body, making sure that it was indeed the dissident leader he had targeted. It was.

Then he checked their hands. Neither wore gloves. Good. He kept his own gloves on so as not to leave any fingerprints. He placed the pistol he had used to shoot the exile leader in the left hand of the foreign ministry official. He carefully wrapped the fingers of the dead official around the handle of the pistol, placing the forefinger on the trigger. He repeated the procedure with the corpse of the dissident, this time placing the pistol in the right hand.

The attention to detail was important. Through surveillance, he and his embassy allies had determined the foreign ministry official was left-handed, the exile leader right-handed. For the plan to work there could be no slip-ups on something so basic.

After placing the pistols he had used to kill the two men in the victims’ hands, his next step was to rearrange the bodies where they would lie if they had shot each other. This didn’t take long. Both corpses were already on their backs. He simply moved them apart and placed them with their feet pointing at each other. Fortunately, the bullets he had fired had not gone all the way through the victims’ bodies. There were no bullet holes in the car to arouse suspicion.

Even though it was chilly he could feel sweat on his forehead. He paused for a moment to catch his breath and to listen again to his surroundings. There was still nothing beyond the chatter of some night birds and the distant rumble of the Mapocho.

He was satisfied with how things looked. When the police arrived on the scene, all the physical evidence pointed to the two men having shot one another. There was, of course, the question of how they had managed to fire at one another simultaneously to such deadly effect. He and his superiors had considered the possibility that the police would have doubts about the likelihood of this happening. Perhaps it could be arranged so that one man died and the other survived. But that scenario produced its own complications. Ultimately, they decided the success of the plan hinged on having both men dead. As they saying went, Dead Men Tell No Tales. They had to hope the investigators could come up with no other plausible explanation and ascribe the simultaneous shooting to fate.

The next question the police would ask involved motive. Why had they shot each other? This question, too, had been much discussed in the embassy. Why, indeed, would two men who were of the same mind when it came to Chilean foreign policy toward Argentina, end up shooting one another? The answer he and his colleagues came up with was a simple one: jealousy. As soon as word reached the foreign ministry that the high-ranking official had been found dead in the company of the dissident, their paid spy would circulate the rumor that the official was involved in a passionate affair with the exile leader’s wife. It would be implied, as well, that the alleged affair was the reason the official had urged a change in Chile’s stance toward Argentina – not, as was really the case, because of his personal convictions.

To add substance to the charge, the embassy team had composed a series of love letters from the official to the exile leader’s wife. Standing over the dissidents body, “Emilio” removed these letters from the inside pocket of his jacket and transferred them to the same pocket of his victim. To add a dramatic touch, he made sure the envelopes containing the forged letters were stained with the victim’s blood.

It wouldn’t take long for the police to discover the letters. Hopefully, they would draw the conclusion the embassy desired; that the opposition leader had discovered the letters and had come armed to confront his wife’s lover. The ministry official, in turn, fearing that the affair had been revealed, came armed as well. But, as with the simultaneous shooting, there was the chance that further investigation might throw this conclusion into question. The foreign ministry official was married, with two children, and was known for his rectitude and strong religious beliefs. Would such a man stray? Moreover, the dissident’s widow would adamantly and legitimately deny such an affair. Working in their favor, however, was the fact that the official’s wife was decidedly unattractive while the exile’s wife was a stunning beauty. In the last analysis, he and his colleagues reasoned, the Chilean police detectives who interrogated the widow could easily believe that even the most faithful of men might stray if tempted by such a looker. And there was the undeniable fact that the official had met with the dissident couple on many occasions.