Death in the Afternoon

March 25th 1977
10.30am

Clandestino took slow, measured steps along the dirt track which led from his modest home to the local train station in San Vincente, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. The area was growing in sporadic bursts which left dispersed dwellings dotted loosely across the landscape, still undecided on whether to join the metropolis or declare themselves part of the surrounding countryside.

The stooped figure of Clandestino could have been taken for a retired schoolteacher, enjoying his well-earned leisure time. He wore a beige shirt which hung loosely over brown, corduroy trousers, while a straw hat covered his balding crown, shielding him from the intense glare of the morning sun. His pale face wore an expression of puzzled intelligence, a riddle waiting to be solved; his sharp features were concealed by a pencil-thin moustache and golden wire-framed glasses, their thick lenses suggesting myopia.

Clandestino was accompanied by a young woman, pretty and petite, with big round eyes and full lips, a certain shyness in her gaze, which never stayed longer than a split second on approaching strangers. The “old man” had just turned fifty years of age, his collection of disguises a constant source of amusement to his friends, who had difficulty identifying him at their regular meeting places. He took great pleasure in walking by other compañeros then finding some excuse to tap them rudely with his walking stick before a sharp hiss of suppressed laughter broke the spell.

Only the Sobreviviente managed to turn the tables on Clandestino, surprising him one day as he got off the metro. In his pocket Clandestino carried the same false ID which he had used twenty years previously, when the implacable hunt first began.

The couple arrived at the local train station where they bumped into the former owner of their house, who handed over the property deeds. The couple had been renting for several months but the Organisation had finally found money to purchase the property. In a rare breach of his own obsessive security, Clandestino pocketed the documents and proceeded into town. If he missed the arriving train he would miss the appointments set up for later that afternoon and it could take weeks to set them up again. The property deeds were hidden in the false compartment of his briefcase but the precaution would only delay discovery by minutes should a professional happen upon it.

The couple boarded the half-empty train at San Vincente and sat in silence until they reached Constitución station in the heart of the city, a seedy market area. Outside the station hawkers touted fruit and clothes and dozens of dodgy hotels rented rooms by the hour.
He took the cyanide pill from his pocket and handed it to his compañera whose own pill had turned to dust inside her shirt. The only thing worse than sudden death in Argentina in 1977 was endless death on the torture table where electric prods and medical instruments achieved maximum torment. The Organisation prescribed cyanide pills for all their members, which they should swallow to avoid capture. The assassins responded by bringing medical teams out on their operations, with doctors injecting their prey with a powerful antidote before the pill could complete its fatal course.

12 noon
When the couple emerged from the train station Clandestino went to a telephone booth and called the Organisation’s central telephone message system, where a receptionist confirmed the meeting planned for that afternoon.
He was relieved. “The meeting is on,” he said, turning to his compañera, a smile on his face. He reminded her to buy meat for an asado planned that weekend and added one final request: “Don’t forget to water the lettuces.” The couple had planted vegetables in their garden, part of a drive toward self-sufficiency, to lessen the need for dangerous trips into the city centre which had become occupied territory, as gangs of government assassins roamed the streets, disappearing people at will. He waved a final goodbye and melted into the crowd.

It was a long time since Clandestino had lived anything approaching a normal life. A week earlier he watched as neighbours prepared their own noisy asado, relatives pulling up the driveway to share the feast, unloading children squealing with excitement. The men gathered around the smoke and gristle as slabs of meat and sausage cooked slowly, accompanied by the inevitable jugs of cheap and tasty wine. He sorely missed the sense of celebration surrounding the asado, a reminder of carefree evenings when friends gathered to shoot the breeze.

The enforced isolation of life on the run had a huge impact on Organisation members, blurring the ability of activists to interpret the desires of ordinary people in whose name they struggled. “Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart,” he said to himself, quoting his favourite Irish poet, WB Yeats.

Sobreviviente, a senior member of the Organisation, had instructions to send Clandestino out of the country. After two fruitless and dangerous weeks searching, a one-way ticket to Rome in his hand, a persuasive argument in mind, Sobreviviente finally abandoned the task.
The situation had become impossible. Every day brought news of fresh captures and unspeakable torture, of broken bodies revealing further information, which provoked further captures and further torture. Uprooted militants often rode the buses all night, lacking money or personal documents, unwilling to risk contact with relatives or friends, who faced certain death if they were even remotely suspected of helping the Subversives.
If that wasn’t enough, dozens of broken compañeros collaborated with their captors, proving their loyalty by cruising the city streets “marking” former compañeros and revealing the location and time of regular meeting points.

“I was told I’d never recognise him, that he was disguised as an Irish priest,” recalled the Sobreviviente, who had earned his moniker after three close brushes with death on his rounds of meetings with fellow fugitives, desperately trying to hold the Organisation together long enough to find militants a safe refuge.

12.30pm
The Assassins moved into place along Avenido San Juan, between Entre Rios and Sarandí streets. San Juan is a long busy avenue running north-south towards the city centre, lined with opthalmologists’ and cafés, crowded with people in the early afternoon. On Friday 25th March 1977, elderly couples strolled to nearby homes, while mothers wheeled children to the park or chatted with neighbours under the shade of apartment buildings. One of the killers idled at a newsstand, another pretended to read a newspaper and leaned against the bonnet of a car, weapons concealed. It would take a trained eye to notice anything amiss and all eyes were trained to look the other way. It was safer thus.

1.30pm
When he reached the corner of Calle Carlos Calvo, still two blocks away from his rendezvous, the trap was set and the Assassins were ready for their prey. Their boss had been emphatic – no unnecessary use of force. “Bring that fucking bastard back alive, he’s mine,” said the Admiral.

Clandestino walked past the Assassins, immediately sensing something amiss. No one knows for sure what happened next, the precise sequence of events blurred by the momentary adrenaline charge, the passage of time and the deliberate manipulation of events to diminish future responsibility. Someone may have shouted “Stop, police”, for no apparent reason, giving Clandestino several crucial seconds to take out the pistol he kept hidden in his waistband. The Assassins opened fire but the first shots went wide of the mark. The cornered man ran into the street, hid behind a parked car and emptied his small Walther PKK calibre pistol at his would-be kidnappers. He managed to injure one of the Assassins, who was subsequently awarded a medal for bravery.

Seconds later Clandestino lay mortally wounded, his straw hat coming to rest under the heel of a car while pedestrians hurriedly left the scene. “I fired at him, I fired again and again but he didn’t fall,” said one of the Assassins, years later, “he didn’t fall, he still didn’t fall. Blood poured out of him, more blood and I kept shooting and blood flowed, more blood and the guy didn’t fall.”

1.50pm
The bloody, bullet-ridden body was dragged by the Assassins to a waiting car and dumped in the boot. They returned to their offices, preparing a credible story to justify the botched operation to their superiors. The corpse was left in a corridor of the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada, ESMA for twenty-four hours before it was set on fire and dumped on waste land near the River Plate.

Later that day
The Assassins found their way to Clandestino’s home. They raided, looted and wrecked. A month later, the house had a new owner, a police chief who eliminated all traces of the previous occupants.