The dinner was in the ballroom of the hotel; there was a big display for the foreigners. A roast calf was carried in on a spit by two men dressed as gauchos; the waiters set to work carving it up. There were eight of us at the table, but the four of us who had worked on transport stayed talking together. Several times during the dinner I caught Donald’s eye across the room, and he half-smiled at me as though we were involved in some small but lucrative conspiracy. Afterward, people wandered from table to table; there was plenty of wine and brandy as well as cigars and Scotch whisky. I went to the toilet and then down to the lobby to check a flight reservation for one of the Americans. When I came back I expected that our group would have broken up or someone would have joined us, but the American, the Irishman, and Francisco were still talking. As I sat down I heard the Irishman say that he had been that afternoon to the Plaza de Mayo and he had seen the mothers of the disappeared in their white scarves. Was that still an issue here, he asked. What did we think about it? I hesitated and said that I did not really know. I said it seemed strange to me that after all these years I had never seen a list of the names of those who had disappeared, that I myself knew no one who had disappeared. I am not suggesting, I said, that it did not happen. But, for some reason, I realized, I was suggesting that.

I did not tell the story of the night I saw the driverless cars revving outside the police station. I said again that I didn’t really know about it, and I thought that most people were more worried about inflation and unemployment. I noticed the American nodding.

Francisco had said nothing. The Irishman looked at him, but still he did not speak. He asked him what he thought. Francisco shook his head and looked pained for a moment before he smiled. He wondered whether the Plaza de Mayo would become a tourist trap, and if you would be able to buy postcards of the mothers with their white scarves. He seemed reticent as he drank some water. But the Irishman would not give up. He looked at him directly and asked again what he thought about the disappearances.

It’s hard for me, the economist said, to talk about what happened. I was away for the worst time. He stopped and turned to me as though he needed help. He cleared his throat a few times. I was at Harvard, he said, when my girlfriend was taken. I suppose if I’d been there that night they would have taken me as well. Or instead. I don’t know.

And what happened to her, the Irishman asked.

She disappeared. They murdered her. Ask him. He pointed at me. He knows about it.