I was shocked. I asked her name. She told me. Beatriz Bradford. I stared at her. I had fully reconstructed Operation Itatí and I had no record of any militant with that name. That wasn’t the disappeared girl’s last name either. She was Adela Álvarez. I remembered it now, even after years of not thinking of her.

“It’s right for you to question it,” she said. Her voice was thick, and I noticed she had marks on her neck and arms. Little scars from fine, superficial cuts. As if she had scratched herself too much with long fingernails. “My nom de guerre was Liliana Falco. Only my husband knew my true identity, and our leader, because part of our plan, which failed, was to kidnap a member of my family to finance our operation. My family, you must know, is immensely rich. They’re also some terrible sons of bitches, complicit in the dictatorship. They used their means and their influence to help bodies disappear. That’s why I don’t mix with the people who come here. My family was complicit in the murders of many of their loved ones. Eduardo wanted to save me from them, but he never knew what he was up against. I didn’t fully know, either.”

I felt dizzy. If she had used the name Liliana Falco as a fighter, then she really was the mother of the baby who was possibly murdered or stolen to give to another family. And if she really was a member of the Bradford family, I was looking at a monumental story. And a believable one, because the family’s legendary house was only ten kilometers upriver. How could she also be the mother of the girl with the missing arm who disappeared in Caballito?

I tried to formulate my question just right. I was afraid she would run away. There was something elusive about her. Already in that first conversation I realized she was unbalanced, that her family and her history had wreaked havoc on her psyche.

“Comrades of yours told me you had a daughter in Zañartú. They were wondering about the girl’s fate.”

“Adela isn’t in the pit. Maybe Eduardo is there. I don’t know why they take so long with the identifications. Eduardo’s mother already donated blood. She has no love for me, but she told me she did it. I tell Eduardo every night, I tell him how I tried to save the child. The ones who come here don’t know how to get close to the pit because they don’t study the terrain. You have to study the terrain.”

I had turned on the recorder without asking her, and it was vibrating in my hand under the book I was reading. She said:

“Don’t hide it. You can record me if you want. I have nothing to lose. Plus, if they don’t want this conversation to be published, it won’t be. They play by other rules. They’re not so skittish anymore. You know that my aunt’s house is near here. Mercedes Bradford. She’s my aunt, make sure you get that, I don’t want anyone thinking I’m that monster’s daughter. My mother and father are different from her, in spite of everything.”