Philippe Sands: A plea against the impunity of Pinochet and a Nazi genocidaire

Books with a function, a purpose: to file a complaint, to appear with proof and evidence. That is to say, however much he may have been inspired by Bruce Chatwin and Roberto Bolaño, Philippe Sands places himself outside of literature, exploiting—for good reason—the sinister prestige and editorial momentum implied by an investigation into a long-shadowed tyrant and Nazi genocidaire: former de facto president Augusto Pinochet, and the military man, spy, and businessman Walther Rauff , a fugitive and protected in Chile by the sinister Chilean general. Silent partners in vileness, perversity, and atrocity.

Sands spares the reader not a single bloody historical irony. At the center of the story is the one that gives the book its title: 38 Calle Londres in Santiago, Chile , was the headquarters of the Socialist Party until September 11, 1973; after the coup d'état against Salvador Allende, it was expropriated and converted into a torture center for the DINA, the military dictatorship's secret police, responsible for thousands of kidnappings and murders.

As in East-West Street and Escape Route , in 38 London Street Sands stages and maps the tension between Good and Evil, betrayal and loyalty, personal memory and collective and historical memory, as if he were investigating all its variants and scopes, its ambiguous or murky meanings, convinced that they can only be revealed under extreme circumstances.

No name circulates that isn't touched by arms or praised. With the rigor of his model, writer and legal commentator Sybille Bedford, the tireless international jurist Sands—almost informal in his person, completely honest, cordial, and relaxed—achieves in his pages the right distance, in every sense of the word.

–It seems that a double biography, of two monsters, was necessary to truly grasp the limitless possibilities of evil.

–Like my other books, in a certain sense this one was accidental. It started with a letter in the Wächter family archive, during my research for Escape Route. Who is this man named Walther Rauff who lives in Damascus? I Google him, and it ends up in Punta Arenas, Chile. I immediately wonder if there's a connection to Pinochet, because I was involved in the Pinochet case in London. Writing it was difficult, because apparently they are two different stories, and yet there are many interconnections. The Libyan writer Hisham Matar gave me Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat , which helped me think about how to tell two different stories that are beginning to intersect. Structurally, it was very complex, but it turned out to be the book I was most satisfied with.

–It's remarkable how it sheds light on such dark paths.

–As I progressed, the points of contact between one man and the other became stronger and stronger. No one knew they had met in Ecuador. People had no idea it was Pinochet who suggested Rauff go to Chile. A lot of it is about how small details reinforce your assessment of one individual and then the other. I didn't stop to ruminate on evil. My thing was very concrete: Is there a connection? In Chile, people said there was a connection and that Rauff had worked for Pinochet, but there was no evidence, nothing. I was driven by Roberto Bolaño and Bruce Chatwin and their allusions to Rauff in Nocturne de Chile and In Patagonia, respectively. It's very interesting how literature creates these myths. In 1965, Pablo Neruda wrote an article attacking the Chilean judges for refusing Rauff's extradition. These were the clues that spurred me on.

–One of the things that connects Rauff and Pinochet, which isn't on the surface of the book but rather between the lines, is that one can perceive the completely rarefied, indulgent, and mistaken sense of self that both had.

–They were two Nazis, with that sense of self they had, one can imagine them together, giving each other a hard time, rubbing their egos, inflating their own sense of greatness and significance. There was no shortage of literary aspirations: Pinochet with his library, and Rauff, at the end of his life, wanted to write his memoirs, although he only managed to write a few pages.

–Beyond the fact that these were historical cases, is there anything specific that fascinates you about people who escape?

–It's not so much the issue of people escaping, but rather the issue of injustice. In fact, you could read Escape Route as a trial, the trial that man never went through. And with respect to this book, none of them were tried. None of them escaped completely, either, because what happened to Pinochet in London mattered to him and offended him. If you read his last letter, he's accused, under house arrest, and can't walk the streets of his own city.

–In Escape Route, you quote Javier Cercas: “It’s more important to understand the murderer than the victim.” But in Calle Londres 38, you give a lot of space to the voices of the victims and their descendants. On the other hand, perhaps the word “understand” isn’t the right one.

–I couldn't have written this book without involving people like Laura Soria and Erika Hennings, and it's no coincidence that they're women. Yesterday I gave a talk at Londres 38, in Santiago, and it was basically a room full of women, and they're the ones who kept the flame alive, without a doubt. All terrible people are men.

–And your wife saved you from shame, as you confess in the book.

–Can you imagine if I had done it, defended Pinochet? I would have done it, I have to be very honest. I would have been uncomfortable, but I would have done it for reasons of male ego. The biggest international criminal case since Nuremberg... and I'm going to say no? But very often my wife Natalia saves me from myself. And she's the first reader of everything I write.

–In your books, you seem very tempted to place yourself behind enemy lines, as close as possible to despicable beings and those who defended them.

–I want to know. I want to know what really happened. I was greatly influenced by a British historian, Lisa Jardine, the daughter of Jacob Bronowski, so she had a very strong historical sense. Her work was based on the belief that if you really want to understand why people do certain things, you shouldn't look in official archives but in private ones: letters, diaries... In that sense, Wächter's archive was a paradise. But with Rauff, there are anecdotes, grandchildren, relatives, and that requires long and repeated conversations, because at first, people don't tell you certain things; trust develops gradually. And certain people I respect greatly criticized me for being too indulgent, with Miguel Schweitzer, for example, who was involved in so many things. I want the reader to form their own opinion.

–Your books are also about the relationships between parents and children, and the weight and guilt of certain inheritances.

–Absolutely. The problem with this book, or the challenge, unlike the others, is that many are still alive. Then they read it and say, “That's not right.” The reactions become interesting, because people focus on and worry about tiny details. Sons and daughters. Carmen Soria thought I was too soft on Schweitzer.

–It's understandable that you see it that way...

–Completely. I was furious.

–Were they surprised in Chile by the information revealed in the book?

–They were in shock. Because of all the connections: that Pinochet and Rauff met in 1956 and that it was Pinochet who suggested that Rauff go to Chile. Everyone knew what had happened, of course, but when you see it in print, it's a different story. Or that certain people were talking. No one knew the details. That Pinochet pretended to be gaga to get away with it in London, for example. In Chile, the publication became more dramatic because it deepened the division on the left between those who wanted him to return and those who didn't. And the book was seized upon by those who didn't want Pinochet to return from London, those who say "you lied to us," because they knew that in Chile he would never be tried or punished.

–The reconstruction of the entrance on the scene of the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón is very interesting.

–The only chance was for Pinochet to be tried in Spain. That opened up another dilemma, because there were people who would question Spain's legitimacy in trying a dictator when it had never dealt with its own. Judging the crimes of another country is very problematic. And the three Spaniards behind this affair, including Garzón, told me that, ultimately, it wasn't about Pinochet, but about Franco...

–And those who criticized you for being too soft on these terrible people, did they suggest that simply recounting the facts would soften the crimes, simply turning them into a story, so to speak?

–Not at all. They were excited. I entered the room at 38 Londres Street, packed with relatives, feeling the full weight of it and worried about whether I had done things right. And they were very pleased, because the book brought the crimes into focus at a time when people are going through a period of trying to forget them, and because the book will be published in many languages, and they hope that 38 Londres Street will become a symbol of impunity as a place. Curiously, a young Chilean journalist told me that simply by reporting on the book, he received more hate mail than ever, from people who bombarded him with things like, “This happened a long time ago.” People who don’t want to emphasize such things. Something probably related to the rise of the right. For the first time in history, there are movements to name streets after Augusto Pinochet. Things triggered by events happening elsewhere, like the United States. At the same time, for the first time in 50 years, they are investigating the whereabouts of the disappeared in Chile, as part of the National Search Plan.

–The book reads like a sinister pinball machine of surnames, dates, and places. How did you manage to manage such a vast amount of information and navigate the back and forth in time?

–The person who influenced me the most was my neighbor of 25 years, John le Carré. Every one of his novels has a horrible lawyer, and for 20 years he asked me if the lines attributed to the lawyer were accurate. We had the most phenomenal conversations about how lawyers speak. Reading his manuscripts was how I learned how to structure a narrative, because he was brilliant at that, in addition to the little tricks, which I copied from him, to keep someone reading. Sprinkle in clues, allusions. The premise is to trust the reader's intelligence, to make them believe they're smarter than the author. The one who tries to figure out what the big revelation will be before the writer tells them... A year and a half ago, I had a wonderful conversation with the German writer Bernhard Schlink. And I asked him if he thinks about the reader when he writes, and he replied, "Never." And I confessed that I always think about the reader. And he added, "That's because I'm a judge and you're a lawyer." I thought it was a brilliant observation.

–It's as if he wanted to show all the evidence. It seems like there was a lot of editing but few cuts.

–Before the International Court, you never tell a judge what to do. You arrange the material in a way that guides him in a particular direction. And along the way, you try to create the impression that he was the one who made the great discovery. It's based on respect for the judges and the readers. The legal mind has a great respect for words. The order in which they are arranged is decisive.

–But he feels compelled by his profession to show all the evidence he can, to the point of saturation.

–My greatest fear was always that a judge would say, “What is your evidence, Mr. Sands?” and I wouldn’t have the answer. In a trial, that would be a disaster. Perhaps the book becomes a bit overwhelming because I include, as an editor at Knopf suggested, all the behind-the-scenes information, because people are not only interested in what you found, but how.

–It's above all a book about immunity and impunity, but in the current context, with Putin and Trump, and the presidents of China and North Korea, among others, the scope for exercising them is increasing and international laws are weakening.

–Absolutely true. And it's sad that it is. That's why my literary agent told my editor that the word "impunity" should be in the subtitle. In England, it sounds a bit technical, but not here, or in Chile, or Spain. It's remarkable how the publication resonates more in the present context. But I never planned it. I can't claim to have foreseen this global scenario when I started the book ten years ago.

38 London Street , Philippe Sands. Trans. by Francisco J. Ramos Mena, Juan Manuel Salmerón Arjona. Anagrama, 584 pp.