Chapter 26: No Going Back

AN IMAGE OF THE OWNER of the country’s largest natural gas distribution company, a man who was the confidante of the current prime minister and a likely candidate for a cabinet position in a future government, being led out of his house in handcuffs by masked officers from the country’s top police unit was irresistible to every newspaper and magazine editor in the country, the larger and bolder the image the better.

The headlines were as dramatic as the editor could make them and left no doubt about the arrest and why. Several parallel articles on inside pages described a massive sweep in this country and in three or four cities in the U.S. At least two dozen girls who were preparing to travel were released to family members, for that sadly tiny number with families who were willing to take them back, or to social service and church welfare agencies for counseling and care. They were treated as the victims they were.

“Oh my god,” Alejandra kept repeating as she turned the pages. “Oh my god.” I stood with my arm around her waist as she read. We eventually ended up at a small place for what turned out to be lunch, before we loaded the car and headed back to the capital.

Later José María and Jacob gave me a readout on the operation in the capital and the U.S. The authorities had not only identified the principals of the operation here as well as most of their organization, down to the enforcers and recruiters, but they had located and seized the “hotel” property used by local clients, including our ambassador, and the taping system and the tape archives.

“It’s been a pretty clean sweep here and in the U.S., Michael,” said José María. “We may have misssed some small fry, that always happens, but not very many of them. ‘Nannies International’ is permanently out of business, and some of the operators in the U.S. are singing interesting tunes about who on the local level, city and county officials mostly, facilitated their operation.

“One of the biggest single links in this was the stuff from Monsieur M’s computer you got on the hard drive, Michael. It was critical.” José María paused for a moment. “And just so you know, we didn’t find any concrete evidence that his wife was involved, at least not actively, and we found nothing to indicate Alejandra was part of this in any fashion.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“Oh, and one last note, Michael. Carlos, the driver? You know him, right?”

I nodded.

“He’s a candidate for witness protection if he wants it. Our best inside source. We don’t think Monsieur M or anyone in his organization knows about him, but it’s probably better for Carlos and his family to disappear. With some suitable cover story, of course.”

A week or so after the arrests the ambassador let it be known his wife needed him back home in Sacramento. He resigned his ambassadorship and left post a few days later. Tootsie supervised the packing of his household effects. She left post herself a couple of weeks after that. A card from her, postmarked Maui, with a beach scene and a big hand-drawn smiley face on it turned up in my mail one morning after a month or six weeks. I heard later she’d resettled in Colorado where she had family and a job offer from someone she’d met years earlier.

On our return that day from the beach house, once past the cordon of police officers at the gate I pulled up in the parking circle at Alejandra’s front door. I got out of the car and came around to help her with her bag. Alejandra climbed out slowly, her exhaustion manifest in the sudden lines around her eyes. We looked at each other for a moment, a very long moment, with rueful affection and the knowledge there was no going back for us.

She stepped close and kissed me on the cheek.

“Thank you, Michael, for everything.”

I knew her farewell kiss on my cheek severed our intimacy as surely as if she had used a knife. There would be no going forward for us, either.

Late in the fall Alejandra Marie Dubois Bernard and Bruno Germán Castellote Martin announced their engagement. The brief note in the society pages that accompanied the announcement tactfully omitted any mention of the fiancée’s father.

I never saw Natalia again. I heard she’d traveled to the U.S. days after her husband’s arrest and extradition to the U.S. She planned to stay there for several months, people said, although I doubted she attended her husband’s subsequent trial in Federal court and well-deserved conviction.