‘You can’t be sure,’ said Croiset, over the telephone from the Netherlands.
‘Listen,’ said Rafael. ‘There’s no one here who’s related to any of the boys, so tell me frankly what you think has happened to them.’
There was a pause. Only the whistling and crackling came from the wire. Then Croiset said, ‘I think, personally … now … that they are dead.’
This was the end of their contact with Gerard Croiset, Jr, yet those who had at last lost faith in his clairvoyance had not lost faith in the survival of their sons. They turned increasingly to their God and their church. Rosina and Sarah Strauch continued their fervent supplications to the Virgin of Garabandal, and every afternoon, in her house in Carrasco, Madelon would kneel with her mother and her two daughters to pray the rosary. Often they would be joined by Susana Sartori, Rosina Machitelli and Inés Clerc, three of the novias who believed in the return of their future husbands.
Yet parallel to their invocation of the supernatural to help them was their search for a natural explanation of what might have happened to the plane, and it was Roberto’s mother, Mecha Canessa, who came up with the idea that the plane might have been hijacked by the Tupamaros and now lay concealed in some secret airstrip in southern Chile, waiting for the right moment for a ransom demand. In the atmosphere of political uncertainty which existed in both Uruguay and Chile at that time, the idea seemed plausible, and inquiries were made into the political background of the pilots. It emerged that they were both men of the Right. Since the idea that any of the boys might have hi-jacked the plane was discounted, they were left with Señora Mariani. Much was made of the fact that she had been on her way to Chile for the marriage of her daughter to a political exile, but then the absurdity of the idea that this fat middle-aged lady should have commandeered a plane grew to be greater, even, than the need for a new theory.
On December 1 a report appeared in a Montevidean newspaper that the Uruguayan Air Force was about to send a plane to Chile to search for the Fairchild around the Tinguiririca volcano. The story was not officially confirmed. The mothers in Montevideo, encouraged by the story, turned to their husbands and asked why a Uruguayan plane could not be sent at once to do now what the SAR planned to do in two months’ time?
On December 5 Zerbino, Canessa and Surraco, together with Fernández, Echavarren, Nicolich, Eduardo Strauch and Rodríguez Escalada, met the commander in chief of the Uruguayan Air Force, Brigadier Pérez Caldas. They showed him a full report of what they had done themselves in Chile in the area around Talca but told the brigadier that they no longer had faith in Croiset’s visions. The search, they said, must be concentrated in the Tinguiririca area, and as private individuals they had not the means to conduct it.
Pérez Caldas sent for a subordinate officer who had that day returned from Santiago, where, he had been working with the SAR on a technical investigation of the accident. He delivered a report confirming that nothing could be done before February. That winter had seen the heaviest falls of snow in the Andes for the past thirty years. The plane would be completely buried and there was no possibility of survival.
Pérez Caldas turned to the eight men who faced him, expecting them to accept this assessment of the situation, but though in their hearts they all agreed that a search would be fruitless, they insisted that it must take place. They explained the state of mind of the mothers and the novias, and the resolve of Pérez Caldas began to weaken. Finally he rose to his feet. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘You have made your request and I have made my decision. The Uruguayan Air Force will arrange for a plane to be at your disposal.’
The final search was on its way.
2
A new spirit of optimism was generated among the parents by the news that a specially equipped C-47 of the Uruguayan Air Force was to be sent to search for the Fairchild, and there were many volunteers from among the fathers to join the expedition. Páez Vilaró was still in Brazil, but although the Air Force would only allow five passengers to fly with the crew, it was clear that he would want to be one of them. Ramón Sabella was to have been another, but he was advised against going by his doctor. The four others who were chosen to accompany Páez Vilaró were Rodríguez Escalada and the fathers of Roberto Canessa, Roy Harley and Gustavo Nicolich. But it was not just these men who were involved in the operation; the families of Methol, Maquirriain, Abal, Parrado, Valeta and many others contributed money and advice, while Rafael Ponce de León kept in touch with the radio hams in Chile.
On December 8 a group of parents, including those who were to go on the expedition, went to Base No. 1 of the Air Force to confer with the pilot of the C-47, Major Ruben Terra, and draw up plans for the search. On the same day Páez Vilaró returned from Brazil and confirmed that, much as he mistrusted the planes of the Uruguayan Air Force, he would fly with the expedition.
They continued throughout the next day to make arrangements for their departure, and at midday on December 10 there was a final meeting of all the parents, relatives and novias with their expeditionaries in the spacious Moorish bungalow of the Nicolichs. Two expert Uruguayan pilots were invited to this meeting and all the material that had been assembled by the Chilean SAR, the Uruguayan Air Force, and the parents themselves was laid out on the table for all to see. Dr Surraco produced maps and explained why he and others were now convinced that the plane must have crashed between the Tinguiririca and Sosneado mountains. No one disputed their judgment. The mountains around Talca and Vilches had been forgotten; reason had triumphed over parapsychology.
The meeting went on until evening. After it had broken up the two Strauch couples went to the Harleys’ house, where they talked long into, the night about the expedition which they hoped so much would find their sons. At the end of it Walter Harley turned to Rosina Strauch and said, ‘Listen. I’m going to chew up the Andes. I’m going to search them foot by foot until I find the boys. But I’m going to ask you to do something too. If we fail this time, you must accept that there’s no more hope. When we come back from the expedition, we must give up all false expectation.’
At six o’clock the next morning, December 11, the C-47 took off for Santiago. Aboard were the pilot, Major Ruben Terra, a crew of four, and Páez Vilaró, Canessa, Harley, Nicolich and Rodríguez Escalada. Even at that early hour, many parents had come to the airport to see them off.
The plane was a military transport. There were no comfortable seats inside, and the five middle-aged men had to sit on benches along the side. It was noisy too, but they were all quite content because for the first time since the Fairchild had disappeared they had at their disposal the means to search among the highest peaks of the Andes. According to the Uruguayan press, the C-47 had been specially equipped for this expedition; at any rate, it had the oxygen and pressurization required for high-altitude flying. As they flew over the estuary of the River Plate, Páez Vilaró picked up a newspaper that he found in the plane and read an article on the expedition. He looked up, every now and then, to see if he could see the ‘special equipment of exceptional precision’ that the newspaper talked about, and when he came to a passage which talked of the skill and magnificence of the Uruguayan Air Force he became a little irritated. This was, after all, almost the first thing they had done since the disappearance of the Fairchild to look for five of their own men.
He wondered what the pilot thought of the article and went forward into his cabin. He could see, as he entered, that they had reached the Argentinian shore of the estuary and were about to fly over Buenos Aires.
‘Have you seen this?’ he shouted to Ruben Terra, holding up the newspaper with the article he had just read.
‘Yes,’ said the major.
‘What do you think of it?’
‘Very fair.’
Páez Vilaró gave a slight shrug of his huge shoulders.
The pilot seemed to notice, for he went on, ‘For instance, once one of these engines died and I was able to land the plane on one—’
At the
very moment he spoke the plane gave a sudden lurch and began to vibrate. Páez Vilaró looked back at the wing and saw what the major had just described; the propeller of the starboard engine was coming to a stop.
He turned back to the pilot. ‘Well, it’s happened again,’ he said.
They made an emergency landing at the military airport of El Palomar, where Ruben Terra cabled to Montevideo for a new engine, but his passengers were not willing to wait until it came and was fitted to the C-47. They hired a light aircraft to fly them to Ezeiza airport and there caught a scheduled LAN Chile flight to Santiago. They arrived around seven in the evening and drove straight to the headquarters of the SAR at Los Cerrillos.
‘What?’ said Commander Massa when he saw Páez Vilaró and his companions. ‘You here again? This certainly isn’t the right moment to start looking. We told you we’d let you know when it came.’
The commander had good reason to be confused. It was not uncommon for an aircraft to disappear in the Andes, but it was most unusual for anyone to search for it nearly two months later. Even when a DC-3 of the United States Air Force had crashed in 1968 they had not gone on looking for so long, yet here was a group of Uruguayan civilians who moved into his office and refused to be put off.
‘Tell me, commander,’ said Walter Harley. ‘What are the chances that the plane became trapped in the mountains and made an emergency landing in the snow?’
‘With a bit of luck,’ said Massa, ‘two in a thousand.’
‘One is enough for us,’ said Harley.
The Uruguayans now started to bargain for the use of the SAR’S helicopters, but Massa, though he listened politely to what they proposed, could not accept their suggestion. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘It’s extremely dangerous flying helicopters in the cordillera. I can’t risk the lives of my pilots unless there’s some concrete evidence that the wreck is in a specific place. If you have any evidence, give it to me and I’ll act upon it, but until then … I’m sorry.’
The five men returned to their hotel with nothing but half-hearted assurances from Massa, but they were not discouraged. Though tired from their hectic journey, they immediately sat down to plan. They would divide themselves into groups. One would explore the area of the Palomo and Tinguiririca mountains by land, another would cover the same area from the air as soon as the C-47 reached Santiago, while a third would try to find the copper miner Camilo Figueroa, who claimed to have seen the plane fall from the sky. These were to be the three prongs of their assault upon the Andes. They named it Operation Christmas.
Seven
1
November 23 was Bobby Francois’s twenty-first birthday. He received as a present from his sixteen companions an extra packet of cigarettes. Meanwhile, Canessa and Parrado set about the task of removing the radio from the panel of instruments which remained half buried in the pilot’s chest.
The earphones and the microphone were connected to a black metal box about the size of a portable typewriter which came out quite easily with the removal of a few screws. They realized, however, that it had no dial and so could only be part of the VHF radio; it also had sixty-seven wires coming out of the back, which they thought must connect it to the missing half. The plane was so full of instruments that it was not easy to decide what might be part of the radio and what might not, but eventually, behind a plastic panel in the wall of the luggage compartment, they found the transmitter. This was much more difficult to get at and separate from all the other instruments – especially as their was no light to work by. Their only tools were a screwdriver, a knife and a pair of pliers, and with these, after several days of effort, they eventually extracted it.
Their hunch that this was the part which matched the box they had taken from the instrument panel was confirmed by a cable which ran out the back with sixty-seven different wires. The difficulty which faced them was their ignorance of which wire on one piece of equipment matched which wire on the other. With sixty-seven wires on each, there were many million permutations. Then they discovered that the wires had faint markings on them which enabled them to make the correct connections.
Canessa was the most enthusiastic about the radio. He thought it insane for any of them to risk their lives by setting off over the mountains if there was any chance that they could make contact with the outside world. The majority agreed with him, though many were more or less sceptical about the outcome. Pedro Algorta did not think they would ever make it work, but he said nothing which might make the optimists despondent. Roy Harley himself, who was supposed to be their radio expert, was the most doubtful of all. He knew best the limits of his own expertness upon which they based their hopes – some odd afternoons fiddling around with the stereo set of a friend – and insisted repeatedly in a whining voice that this in no way qualified him to dismantle and then reassemble a VHF radio.
The other boys discounted his diffidence as the by-product of his physical and mental debility. His large face was fixed in a permanent expression of misery and despair, and his body, which had once been solid and strong, had shrunk to the wizened dimensions of an Indian fakir. The expeditionaries and the cousins therefore asked him to train for the journey to the tail by walking around the plane, but he was too weak. (They did not consider it appropriate to increase his ration of flesh.) The more insistent they became, the more Roy resisted the idea. He wept and pleaded and told them over and over again that he knew no more about radios than anyone else. Their authority, however, was difficult to resist, and he was under another kind of pressure from another source. ‘You must go,’ his friend Francois said to him, ‘because the radio may be our only chance. If we have to walk out of here – people like Coche, Moncho, Alvaro, you, and me – we just won’t make it.’
With enormous reluctance Roy gave in to this argument and agreed to go. Their departure, however, was not imminent because several of them were still struggling with the shark’s-fin antenna, riveted on the roof of the plane above the pilots’ cabin. They had to remove the rivets with only a screwdriver, and the task was made more difficult by twists in the metal caused by the fall of the plane.
Even when it was removed and lay on the snow beside the different parts of the radio, Canessa spent hour upon hour just staring at it and snapped at anyone who asked him what more there was to do and why he was not ready to go. The others became impatient, but they were all wary of Cariessa’s temper. If he had not been an expeditionary – and the most inventive of the three – they might not have put up with him; as it was, they did not wish to antagonize him. All the same, his procrastination seemed unreasonable, and they began to suspect that he was protracting the experiment with the radio to postpone the moment when he might have to set off in the snow.
At last the three Strauch cousins became exasperated. They told him that he must take the radio and go. Canessa could think of no further excuse for delay, and at eight o’clock the next morning a small column assembled for the descent to the tail. First came Vizintín loaded as usual like a packhorse; then Harley, with his hands in his pockets, and finally the two figures of Canessa and Parrado, with sticks and knapsacks like two winter sportsmen.
They set off down the mountain, and the thirteen they left behind were delighted to see them go. Not only were they spared the irritable and bullying presences of Canessa and Vizintín but also, with the four absent, they could sleep much more comfortably. Above all they could dream again that rescue was at hand.
They were in no position, however, to sit back and wait for their dreams to come true. For the first time since they had taken their decision to eat the flesh of the dead, they were running short of supplies. The problem was not that sufficient bodies did not exist but that they could not find them; those who had died in the accident and had been left outside the plane were now, as a result of the avalanche, buried deep beneath the snow. One or two still remained of those who had died in the avalanche, but they knew that quite soon they would have to find the earlier victims. It was also
a consideration that those who had died in the accident would be fatter and their livers better stocked with the vitamins they all needed to survive.
They therefore set about searching for bodies. Carlitos Páez and Pedro Algorta were in charge of this operation, but all the other boys joined in. Their method was to dig a shaft down into the snow on the spot where they remembered a body had lain, but these holes would often go deep without anything coming to light. On other occasions they would be more successful, but often with frustrating consequences. It was thought for instance, that a body lay somewhere around the entrance to the plane, and Algorta spent many days methodically digging a hole there, with steps going down into it. It was difficult work because the snow was hard and Pedro, like all the others, had grown increasingly weak, so it was something like finding gold when the piece of aluminium which acted as a shovel uncovered the fabric of what seemed to be a shirt. Pedro dug faster around the legs and feet of the body but suddenly saw, as he uncovered them, that the toenails were painted with red varnish. Instead of a boy’s body he had found Liliana Methol, and in deference to Javier’s feelings they had agreed not to eat her.
Another method of sinking an exploratory shaft was for all the boys to urinate onto a single spot. It was an effective method, if only they could contain themselves each morning for long enough to reach the appointed place. Alas, many of them awoke with bladders so taut that they were forced to relieve themselves as soon as they left the plane. Algorta often slept with his three pairs of trousers unbuttoned, and even then he sometimes did not make it out of the plane. It was a pity, because it was easier to piss into a hole than to dig one.