Brief Encounters With Che Guevara_ Stories - Ben Fountain [10]
Blair was sagging; all of a sudden he felt very, very tired. “Isn’t there something you can do for me?” he softly wailed. “Anything?” Kara touched his arm and gave him a mournful look; she wasn’t heartless, Blair could see, but rather the kind of person who might cry at movies, or toss bites of her bagel to stray dogs.
“Mr. Spasso might have some ideas,” she said. “Come inside, I’ll try to get you a few minutes with him.”
She led Blair through the door, down a short hallway, and into the big concrete room where the comandantes mediated peasant disputes every Tuesday and Thursday. The delegates were sitting in the center of the room, their chairs drawn in a circle as if for a group therapy session. Thomas Spasso was speaking through an interpreter, and in seconds Blair formed an impression of the chairman as a ticky, nervous guy, the kind of intractable motormouth who said the exact same thing no matter where he was. “Peace will bring you huge benefits from global investors,” the chairman told the comandantes. “The capital markets are lining up for you, they want to be your partner in making Colombia an integral part of the Americas’ economic bloc.” He rattled on about markets and foreign investment, the importance of strong ratings from Moody’s bond-risk service. The rebels sat there in their combat fatigues and Castro-style hats smiling and nodding at the chairman’s words, but Blair saw they could barely hold their laughter in. They didn’t dare look at each other—one glance, and they’d lose it—but the supreme challenge came when the chairman invited them to visit Wall Street. “I personally extend to each and every one of you an invitation to walk the floor of the exchange with me,” Spasso said, his voice thrumming with heartfelt vibrato. He clearly thought he was offering them the thrill of their lives, but Blair could picture the rebels howling on the steps tonight—Oooo, that we should have this big honor, to walk the floor of the bourgeois exchange with him! Even now the comandantes’ eyes were bugging out, quivering with the strain of holding it in, and it was only by virtue of supreme discipline that they didn’t fall out of their chairs laughing.
Spasso, ingratiating yet oblivious, talked on. “He’s very passionate,” Kara whispered to Blair, who was thinking how certain systems functioned best when they denied the existence of adverse realities. After a while the Peace Commissioner got to say some words, then the Finance Minister, and then Alberto, who limited his comments to an acknowledgment of the usefulness of market mechanisms, “so long as social justice for the masses is achieved.” Then some aides circulated a proposed joint statement, and the meeting dissolved into eddies and swirls as each group reviewed the language.
Kara waited until Spasso stood to stretch his legs. “Mr. Spasso,” she called, hustling Blair over, “this is John Blair.”
Spasso turned, saw Blair, and seemed to lose his power of speech.
“The hostage,” Kara said helpfully, “he’s in your briefing kit. The guy from Duke.”
“Oh yes, yes of course, the gentleman from Duke. How are you, so very nice to see you.”
Nice to see you? Fifteen months in hell and nice to see you? For Blair it was like a curtain coming down.
“Sir, John and I were discussing his situation, and while he understands the limited scope of our visit, he was wondering if we could do anything with regard to, ah, facilitating his return home. At some possible future point.”
“Well,” Spasso said, “as you know we’re here in the spirit of a private sector exchange. Though your name did come up at the embassy this morning.” He paused as one of the other Americans approached, a fellow with silver blond hair and a keen, confident look. “Working the final numbers,” he told Spasso, waving a legal pad at the chairman, “then we’re good to go. Thanks so much for setting this up, Tom.”
Spasso nodded and glanced at his watch as the American moved off. People