Len Deighton
MAMista

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This paperback edition 2011

First published in Great Britain by Century in 1991

Copyright © Len Deighton 1991

Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2011

Cover designer’s note © Arnold Schwartzman 2011

Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

MAMISTA. Copyright © Len Deighton 1991. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780007385850

EPub Edition © JULY 2011 ISBN: 9780007450855

Version: 2017-08-10

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Cover designer’s note

Introduction

1

The smell of the rain forest came on the offshore…

2

The man’s name was buried in a Spanish Guiana file…

3

Ralph Lucas was forty-five years old and every year of…

4

Ralph Lucas did not much like flying and he detested…

5

From the top floor of the American embassy building on…

6

Despite his US passport, Angel Paz had not been permitted…

7

The glass doors of Tepilo’s police headquarters were tinted bronze.

8

‘Speedy Gonzales’ – Thorburn’s twin-engined Beech – might have been…

9

‘It’s not unlike Florida.’ When Jack Charrington closed his desk,…

10

The jeep’s engine was not running smoothly, and that worried…

11

A photograph of Rosario, artfully soft-focused and with some red…

12

By the time that Rosario was fully awake, the MAMista…

13

It was called ‘la residencia’: a grand country mansion in…

14

Ralph Lucas, sitting at his bench looking out of the…

15

The Roosevelt Room was the most elegant of all the…

16

It was called ‘the winter camp’ even now, when no…

17

In the first light of morning no landscape beckons the…

18

Where else in all the world, thought John Curl, could…

19

There is always mist on a jungle dawn. It sits…

20

Angel Paz’s father was five feet six inches tall. He…

21

The river was very wide. The far bank was shiny…

22

It had been a fiercely hot summer. The sprinklers could…

23

‘Do you believe in life after death?’ Singer asked. They’d…

24

It was not an ambush. The two parties had blundered…

25

No one was immune to the torments of the jungle.

26

There was a time when the President of the United…

About the Author

Other Books by Len Deighton

About the Publisher

Cover designer’s note

Prompted by seeing the renderings of my two murals for Cunard’s new ship, Queen Elizabeth, Len Deighton suggested that I illustrate some of the covers of this next quartet of re-issues. I am delighted to be given the opportunity to draw once again, as it has been well over thirty years since my days as a regular illustrator for the Sunday Times.

MAMista is in many ways a remarkable work and it contains some complex and conflicted characters, who are all profoundly affected by the events in the story. I chose the idealistic young Marxist, Angel Paz, as an exemplar of this. By depicting this young man’s visage prematurely aged and hollowed out by experience, giving him that thousand-yard stare seen so often in photos by the likes of Robert Capa, James Nachtwey or Tim Page, I could best capture the heart of the book. It also allowed me to put him in the battered uniform of a MAMista rebel. Angel stands in front of the South American jungle, an actual and metaphorical character in the book representing entropy and decay, and here it pushes against the flimsy walls of the revolutionaries’ camp.

A trip to an army surplus store on Hollywood Boulevard provided me with the camouflage cap and an AK40 rifle pin for the back cover. I usually photograph the objects that decorate the back covers on our kitchen table, as the window’s translucent white curtains provide a very nice soft light, contrasting California’s hard shadows so much favoured by artist David Hockney.

For the book’s spine I purchased a pair of custom-made dog tags stamped with the name of another of the book’s characters, Ramon, a service number and ‘C’ for his religion. (Given Ramon is revolutionary leader of the MAMista, it might also stand for ‘comrade’.) Observant readers will notice that each of the spines in this latest quartet of reissues features a metallic object; a subtle visual link that draws together four books written and set in very different times and places.

I have taken the photograph for this book’s back cover with my Canon 5D camera, and my illustration was drawn with a HB Staedtler pencil.

Arnold Schwartzman OBE RDI

Hollywood 2011

Introduction

The jungle is hot, dark and humid, and for people like me it is claustrophobic too. But the worst torment of squelching through dense vegetation for hour after hour is the pervasive and incomparable smell. Never mind the pretty jungle flowers, vivid in colour and menacing in size, and the hanging creepers that try to throttle you, or the wet air that makes breathing laboured, it is the powerful stink of rotting plants that even the most hardened veteran suffers and never forgets.

MAMista started far away from any jungle. It began with a meeting at a stall in an antique market in Islington, London. A chance remark about a small overpriced bronze ornament led to a conversation in a coffee shop nearby and a friendship. This stranger was a small man, about forty years old at that time, with a short haircut, outdoor complexion and steel-rim spectacles. His voice was low and I could not place his accent but he told me that he had been born in a seaside village in Tasmania and I had no reason to disbelieve him. He was wearing a well-worn Harris Tweed jacket with corduroy trousers. His open-necked khaki shirt was of the military sort with button-down pockets. I later discovered that he had been a doctor with the Australian Regiment in Vietnam. He had been with the first of the advisory teams in 1962 and stayed with the Regiment until he was ordered home; ‘Weary not wounded’ he explained when he finally talked about that time. ‘They fought through rain forest, grasslands and rubber,’ he said. ‘They were all good boys.’ An army doctor soon learns to be an untrained and unqualified surgeon, dentist and psychiatrist, he told me. At the time I met him he had given up both the army and medicine to become an auctioneer in a small country town in Cornwall. It was his experience with antiques that led to his remark about the bronze ornament I was admiring in the market. After a few more meetings in London I lost touch with him, and a year or so afterwards one of the market traders told me he had gone back to Australia. But my recollections of him remained vivid and the doctor in MAMista is not unlike him in physique and in that admirable Australian fortitude.

Other physicians influenced my story. When I was a student, living in south London, the tiny apartment block in which I lived was otherwise entirely occupied by doctors from nearby Guy’s Hospital. I made friends with several of them and the whole block was on some sort of priority list with the GPO telephone service. I treasured this service for at this time telephones were a government monopoly and a reliable telephone was a rare facility in England. In addition to the friendships I made with my medically trained neighbours, my local doctor was a man who had spent his military service as an army doctor and, most unusually for a conscript, had risen to the rank of Lt-Col. He became a close friend as well as a reliable source of medical advice and treatment. Initially I toyed with the idea of making the central figure of MAMista a priest or a missionary but I soon modified the character into a combination of my Australian veteran and my doctor friend. There were other doctors to whom I remain indebted. My old friend Dr Maurice Lessof read the typescript and explained medical and surgical realities. Although the result was a fictional character that none of these doctors would have recognized, he was a hero for what I conceived as a love story.

With a doctor as the main character the medical aspect was important. I have no medical training but I became acquainted with physical injury at an early age. As a teenager I had served as a wartime messenger at a First Aid Post in Marylebone Road in Central London. Along with all the other inhabitants of London I lost friends and neighbours in the bombing that came every night from September 1940 until May. And flying bombs and rockets continued to fall during the following years. I had seen what high explosives did to the human body. During my service in the RAF I had been a medical photographer working with surgical teams in the operating theatres. These ideas and experiences helped to provide the background to the story of MAMista.

I am not a political person. I have never been able to accept the stated ideas of any political organization, which is why I have never joined one. But I am not bored by politics: like economics, it paints a revealing picture of people and their fears and aspirations both real and unreal. Starting with my days as an art student I met many communists: Marxists, Trotskyites and other sub divisions of the Left. Many of them had genuine wishes to do good and some were self-denying in their lifestyle to a point of self-destruction. Later when for historical research my family and I lived in Berlin and Munich I met many Nazis, some of whom had held senior military or Party ranks. I have found that most people with strong political beliefs are guided by emotion rather than logic and are apt to be tolerant of ugly repressive measures taken in the name of the poor or of patriotism. My experience over many years has left me with the firm belief that anyone given regulatory power is very likely to abuse it. Few politicians are brave enough to deregulate but the fewer the regulations the better and happier and more prosperous does any society become.

So I had no great difficulty in creating MAMista the South American political movement that gave its name to this book. And when I had any doubts about political theories a cup of coffee with one of my political friends quickly ironed them out. My first decision had been the jungle and I was never tempted to change that. Most stories benefit from an enclosed setting – submarine, hospital, boardroom – and the jungle provided a claustrophobic and menacing one. It was also mysterious. The jungle dominates the story and I intended that it should be so.

The freedom that comes with writing books is a responsibility and test. The best stories, like the best movies, are ones with plots that are impossible to move to a different setting. The story should be unique to the environment so that the setting grips the characters. All of these strictures were in my mind during the planning stage of MAMista. It was to be a story of incompatible people surmounting their differences and mutual dislike in order to survive. Describing the changing attitude of my characters remained the basic idea; a hostile environment would be the driving force of that change. There was no question of making it a first-person narrative; the scenes in Los Angeles and in the White House were important to the structure. And getting the White House right was not easy! It was not going to be a simple task and you must decide to what extent I succeeded.

Len Deighton, 2011

‘Hegel says somewhere that all great events and personalities in world history reappear in one fashion or another. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.’

Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon

1

TEPILO, SPANISH GUIANA.

‘It’s the greenhouse effect.’

The smell of the rain forest came on the offshore breeze, long before they were in sight of land. It was a sour smell of putrefaction. Next morning they awoke to see the coast, and the rusty old Pelicano followed it for two more days. The brooding presence of the vast jungle had had a profound effect upon everyone aboard. South America. Even the crew seemed to move more quietly and passengers spent hours on the confined space they called the ‘promenade deck’. They stared for hours at the mysterious dark green snake of land, and the distant mountains, that all regularly disappeared behind grey mist. For the most part it was flat coastal land: swamps where the mangrove flourished. At twilight flocks of birds – favouring the brackish water – came flying so low that their beaks were scooping up some sort of tiny fish.

The Atlantic water grew ever more ochre-coloured as they went east. It was silt from the Amazon. The prevailing currents make the water brown all the way to the Caribbean. The steward, obsequious now that the passengers were nearing their destination, passed his battered old binoculars around. He pointed out the sheer-sided stone fortress which now housed political prisoners. It was built on a rocky promontory. He said the guards put meat in the sea to be sure the water was never free of sharks.

On that last day of the voyage, the Pelicano drew closer to the land and they saw men, isolated huts and a fishing village or two. Then the sweep of Tepilo Bay came into view and then the incongruous collection of buildings that makes the Tepilo waterfront. Dominating it was the wonderful old customs house with its gold dome. Alongside ornate Victorian blocks, and stone warehouses, stood clapboard buildings, their peeling white paint gone as grey as the stonework. They’d no doubt be snatched away by the next flood or hurricane and then be rebuilt as they had been so many times before.

Here and there window shutters were being opened, as office workers resumed work after siesta. Four rusty dock cranes hung over the jetty where two ancient freighters were tied up. From a castellate tower children were jumping into the water for tourists’ pennies. Beyond that flowed the appropriately named ‘stinking creek’, which vomited hardwood trees when the up-country logging camps were working.

There were two wooden huts used by the soldiers and next to them a customs shed. Painted red it had been bleached pale pink by the scorching sun. Tall white letters – ADUANA – on the wall which faced out to sea were almost indiscernible. Scruffy, grey-uniformed soldiers, with old Lee Enfield rifles slung over their shoulders, stood along the waterfront watching the Pelicano approaching. An officer with a sabre at his belt and shiny top-boots strode up and down importantly. Not so long ago there had been passengers arriving by sea every day. Now only freighters came, and few of them carried visitors. A radio message that the Pelicano had ten passengers aboard had caused great excitement. It set a record for the month. The chief customs officer got a ride on a truck from the airport in order to be present.

The national flag – a green, yellow and red tricolour – fluttered from several buildings, and from a flag-pole near the customs hut. It was a pretty flag. Perhaps that was why no one had wanted to remove the royal coat of arms from it when, almost eighty years before, Spanish Guiana became a republic. Also such a change would have meant spending money. By government decree the royal arms were embodied into the national colours.

Angel Paz watched from the ship’s rail, where the passengers had been told to line up with their baggage. Paz was Hispanic in appearance, Panamanian by birth, American by passport and rootless by nature. He was twenty years old. He’d grown up in California and no matter what he did to hide it he looked like a rich man’s son. He was slim and wiry with patrician features and intelligent quick brown eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses. He felt in his pocket to be sure his passport was there. His fluent Spanish should have put him at ease but he couldn’t entirely dismiss a feeling of foreboding. He told himself it was due to the weather.

The rain had stopped – it had been no more than a shower – and the siesta had ended. Indian dockworkers were lined up on the steamy wet cobblestones waiting to unload the Pelicano. They were small impassive men with heavy eyelids and shiny brown skin. Their T-shirts – dirty and torn – were emblazoned with incongruous advertising messages.

During the sea voyage, passengers had been expected to keep out of the way of the crew, and not keep asking for the steward. But today they would disembark. Today was the day of the ‘servicio’. The baggage had been brought up to the deck. The cunning little steward – his Galician accent sounding almost like Portuguese – was actually singing, while the bent old man who swabbed the passenger deck, cleaned the cabins and made the beds, was smiling and nodding in a contrived manner. Paz waited patiently behind a couple of passengers with whom he’d played bridge several times. They were from Falkenberg, East Germany – or eastern Germany now that it was reunited – and they were hoping to start a new life in Spanish Guiana. The man – a skilled engineer – had been offered a job in a factory where trucks and buses were assembled and repaired. His pretty wife was wearing her best clothes. They were an affectionate couple, the man attentive and adoring, so that Paz had decided they were runaway lovers. Now they both stared at their new home town, faces tense and hands linked.

Behind them were four priests, pale youngsters with cropped heads. They had spent much of the voyage looking at maps and reading their Bibles and passing between them a dog-eared paperback called South America on Ten Dollars a Day. Now everyone was watching the delicate process of docking.

The Pelicano had turned laboriously until she faced upriver. There was a rattle of chain and a splash as the offshore anchor was dropped. The engines roared and whined, churning the muddy water white. All the while the fast current pressed the tired old ship towards the jetty, like a dog on its lead, as the anchor line was paid out. Gently the ship slid sideways until only a thin river of water separated hull from dockside. Ashore, Indian labourers came running forward to retrieve the heaving lines as they came snaking down through the air. The sisal mooring ropes came next, their eyes slipped over the bollards in that experienced way that looks so effortless. As she settled snug against the jetty, with three ropes secured and the backspring in place, the accommodation ladder went sliding down into place with a loud crash.

‘Home again,’ said the steward to no one in particular. A steam crane trundled along the narrow-gauge dockside rail to where it could reach the cargo hold. It made a lot of smoke, and a clatter of sound.

Paz sniffed the air as he picked up his cheap canvas bag to move along the deck. He could smell rotting fruit and the discharged fuel oil that lapped against the hull. He did not like his first taste of Tepilo, but it was better than living on the charity of his stepmother. He hadn’t come here for a vacation. He’d come here to fight in the revolution: the Marxist revolution.

As he waited his turn on the narrow accommodation ladder, he looked again at the town. Against the skyline stood a monument surmounted by a gigantic crucifix. He was reminded of the tortured Christ who, with gaping wounds and varnished blood, had haunted his dimly lit nursery. This humid town suggested the same stillness, mystery and pain.

There was nothing to be done about it now. Angel Paz had burned his boats. He’d deliberately ignored the travel arrangements that his uncle Arturo had made for him. He’d cashed in the airline ticket and routed himself so that the last leg could be done by ship. He’d never work for Don Arturo in any capacity. No doubt Arturo would be furious, but to hell with him. Paz had found people in Los Angeles who could put him in contact with the MAMista army in the south. Not even one of Don Arturo’s thugs would be able to find him there.

The steward approached him, picked up his bag and accompanied him down the gangway. Paz was the only passenger with whom he could talk real Spanish: ‘Put fifty pesetas into your passport and give it to the little guy in the dirty white suit. He’ll keep ten and give forty to the customs and immigration. That’s the way it’s done here. Don’t offer the money direct to anyone in uniform or they are likely to give you a bad time.’

‘So I heard,’ said Paz.

The steward smiled. The kid wanted to be a toughguy; then so be it. He still wasn’t sure whether the big tip he had given him was an error. But that was last night and he’d not asked for any of it to be returned. ‘Plenty of cabs at the dock gates. Ten pesetas is the regular fare to anywhere in town. Call a cop if they start arguing. There are plenty of cops everywhere.’

‘I’m being met,’ Paz said and then regretted such indiscretion. It was by such careless disclosures that whole networks had been lost in the past.

‘They don’t let visitors inside the customs area unless they have a lot of pull.’

‘I see.’

‘It’s these guerrilleros,’ said the steward. ‘They are blowing up the whole town piece by piece. Stupid bastards! Here you are; give fifty to this sweaty little guy.’

The man thus introduced wore a white Panama hat with a floral band and a white tropical-weight suit that was patched with the damp of nervous sweat. With quick jerky movements he took the US passport and snapped his fingers to tell an Indian porter to carry Paz’s bag. The man dashed away. Paz and the Indian followed him. The huge galvanized-iron customs shed was deserted except for four sleeping blacks. The white-suited man danced along, sometimes twisting round and walking backwards to hurry him along. ‘Hurry Hurry!’ His voice and his footsteps echoed inside the shed. The man kept looking back towards the ship. The four priests had lost a piece of baggage and he was anxious that they should not find it, and get through the formalities without his aid and intervention. Some of the officials were inclined to let priests through without the customary payment. This was not a practice the white-suited man wished to encourage, even by default.

With only a nod to two uniformed officials, the man went to the wrought-iron gates of the yard. He waited to be sure that the policeman let Paz out and followed him to the street. ‘Another twenty pesetas,’ said the man at the last minute. ‘For the porter.’ The Indian looked at Paz mournfully.

‘Scram!’ Paz said. The Indian withdrew silently.

The white-suited man returned his passport with a big smile. It was a try-on. If it didn’t work no hard feelings. He tried again: ‘You’ll want a cab. Girls? A show? Something very special?’

‘Get lost,’ Paz said.

‘Cocaine: really top quality. Wonderful. A voyage to heaven.’ Seeing that he was totally ignored, the man spilled abuse in the soft litany of a prayer. He didn’t mind really. It was better that he got back to the ship, and retrieved that suitcase he’d hidden, before the priests found it.

Once through the gate, Paz put his bag down in the shade. A cab rolled forward to where he was standing. It was, like all the rest of the line, a battered American model at least fifteen years old. Once they’d been painted bright yellow but the hot sun and heavy rains had bleached them all to pale shades – some almost white – except in those places where the bodywork had been crudely repaired. The cab stopped and the driver – a bare-headed man in patched khakis – got out, grabbed his bag and opened the door for him. In the back seat Paz saw a passenger: a woman. ‘No … I’m waiting,’ said Paz, trying to get his bag back from the driver. He didn’t want to ride with someone else.

The woman leaned forward and said, ‘Get in. Get in! What are you making such a fuss about?’

He saw a middle-aged woman with her face clenched in anger. He got in. For ever after, Paz remembered her contempt and was humiliated by the memory.

In fact Inez Cassidy was only thirty – ten years older than Paz – and considered very pretty, if not to say beautiful, by most of those who met her. But first encounters create lasting attitudes, and this one marred their relationship.

‘Your name is Paz?’ she said. He nodded. The cab pulled away. She gave him a moment to settle back in his seat. Paz took off his glasses and polished them on his handkerchief. It was a nervous mannerism and she recognized it as such. So this was the ‘explosives expert’ so warmly recommended by the front organization in Los Angeles. ‘You are not carrying a gun?’ she asked.

‘There was a man in a white suit. He took me straight through. I wasn’t stopped.’

It annoyed her that he had not answered her question. She said, ‘There is a metal detector built into the door of the shed. It’s for gold but if sometimes …’ Her voice trailed off as if the complexities of the situation were too much to explain. ‘If they suspect, they follow … for days sometimes.’ She gave him a tired smile.

Paz turned to look out of the car’s rear window. They were not following the signs for ‘Centro’; the driver had turned on to the coastal road. ‘There is no car following us,’ said Paz.

She looked at him and nodded. So this was the crusader who wanted to devote his life to the revolution.

Paz looked at her with the same withering contempt. He’d expected a communist: a dockworker, a veteran of the workers’ armed struggle. Instead they’d sent a woman to meet him; a bourgeois woman! She was a perfect example of what the revolution must eliminate. He looked at her expensive clothes, her carefully done hair and manicured hands. This was Latin America: a society ruled by men. Was such a reception a calculated insult?

He looked out of the car at the sea and at the countryside. The road surface was comparatively good but the thatched tin huts set back in the trees were ramshackle. Filthy children were lost amongst herds of goats, some pigs and the occasional donkey. It was not always easy to tell which were children and which were animals. Sometimes they wandered into the road and the driver sounded the horn to clear the way. Hand-painted signs advertised fruit for sale, astrology, dress-making and dentista. Sometimes men or women stepped out into the road and offered edibles for sale: a fly-covered piece of goat meat, a hand of bananas or a dead lizard. Always it was held as high in the air as possible, the vendor on tiptoe sometimes. They shouted loudly in a sibilant dialect that he found difficult to comprehend.

‘Checkpoint,’ said the driver calmly.

‘Don’t speak unless they ask you something,’ Inez ordered Paz. The taxi stopped at the place where the entire width of the road was barred by pointed steel stakes driven deep into it. The driver got out with the car papers in his hand. A blockhouse made from tree trunks had become overgrown with greenery so that it was difficult to distinguish from its surrounding bush and trees. Grey-uniformed Federalistas, their old American helmets painted white, manned the obstacle. One of them went to the rear of the car and watched while the driver opened the trunk. The other held a Rexim machine gun across his body as if ready to fire it. Paz looked at it with interest. He had seen them before in Spain. In the Fifties a Spanish manufacturer sold the gun as ‘La Coruña’, but it was too heavy, too cumbersome and the price was wrong. They went out of business.

Two more soldiers were sitting on a log, smoking and steadying ancient Lee Enfield rifles in their outstretched hands. Standing back in the shade was another man. Dressed in a white shirt and dark trousers, he wore fancy Polaroid sun-glasses. On his belt he had an equally fancy automatic pistol with imitation pearl grips. He did nothing but watch the man and woman in the car. Paz had seen such men at the docks. They were the PSS, the political police.

The taxi’s boot slammed closed with enough force to rock the car on its springs. Then the driver and the soldier collected the identity papers which Inez offered through the lowered window. The papers were taken to the man in the white shirt but he didn’t deign to look at them. He waved them away. The papers were returned to Inez and the driver started the car.

It was not easy to get the wide Pontiac around the metal stakes. It meant going up on to the muddy shoulder. The soldiers watched but did not help. Paz offered to get out and direct the driver but the woman told him to sit still. ‘It is all part of the game,’ she said.

When the driver had negotiated the obstacle the blank-faced man in the white shirt gave them a mocking salute as they pulled away. ‘It is all part of their stupid game,’ she repeated bitterly. She felt shamed in a way that only Latins understand. She gave him his passport and put her own papers back into a smart tote bag. ‘Most of them can’t read,’ she said. ‘But you can’t depend on that.’ She clipped the bag shut and said, ‘A friend of mine – a nurse – broke curfew almost every night using a liquor permit to get through the patrols.’

‘And got away with it?’

‘Until last month. Then she ran into one of the courtesy squads that patrol the tourist section where the hotels are. The lieutenant was at school with her.’

‘She was lucky.’

‘They took her to the police station and raped her.’

Paz said nothing. Her quiet answer had been spoken with a feminist fervour; she wanted to make him feel guilty for being a man. He looked out of the window. They were passing through a shanty-town. It was unreal, like sitting at home watching a video. Children, naked and rickety, played among wrecked cars and open sewage. A big crucifix guarded the entrance to the camp. At its base stood an array of tin cans holding flowers and little plants. One of them was a cactus. The sun beat down upon the rain-soaked sheets of corrugated metal and the draped plastic that made the walls and roofs. It produced a steamy haze. Through it Paz saw the distant buildings of downtown Tepilo. They shivered in the rising air like a miraged oasis.

After another mile of jungle they came to an elaborate stone wall. They followed it until there was a gateway. There they turned off, to find a comfortable house set in five acres of garden. ‘Is this a hotel?’ Paz asked.

Once it had been a magnificent mansion but now the grandiose stone steps, and the balcony to which they led, were crumbling and overgrown with weeds.

‘Sometimes,’ said Inez. She got out. He picked up his bag and followed her up the steps and into the house. A grand carved staircase led to the upper floor. She showed him to his room. Everything was grandiose, old and slightly broken like the servant who followed them into it. He opened the shutters and pulled the curtains aside. ‘You offered your services to the movement,’ she said after the servant had left.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know anything about explosives?’

‘I am an expert.’

She smiled. ‘Well, Mr Expert, I need you. Come with me.’ She took him to an attic room where a kitchen table was littered with bomb-making equipment. ‘Teach me to make a bomb.’

He looked at the way the things were laid out on the scrubbed table: scissors, insulation tape and string. There were some steel ball-bearings in a tray that might have been made as a crude triggering device, also a sharpened pencil and a notebook. Only a woman would have arranged it all so neatly. ‘You are mad,’ he said.

‘Teach me!’

‘With this junk?’ He extended a hand but did not touch anything.

‘I’ll get anything else you need,’ she said.

‘What are you trying to blow up?’ he asked. She hesitated. He turned to look at her. ‘You’ll have to tell me.’

‘A safe. A steel safe in the Ministry of Pensions.’ He studied her to see if she was serious. ‘Three times we have tried. None of the bombs exploded. This is our last chance while we still have a way of getting into the building.’

He looked at the equipment but did not touch it. He said, ‘We must wear coveralls and gloves. Just handling this stuff will leave enough smell on you to alert a sniffer dog. They use sniffer dogs in Tepilo, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’ She went to a huge closet in the corridor. From one of the shelves she took freshly laundered coveralls and cotton gloves. ‘We are not complete amateurs,’ she said, and held the coveralls up to see that they would fit him.

When he was dressed, with his hair tucked into a pirate-style scarf, he picked up the wrapped sticks of explosive and looked at them closely. ‘Oshokuyaku, probably picric acid.’ He sniffed at it cautiously as if the smell alone was lethal.

‘It cost a lot of money,’ she said. She had expected an explosives expert to be bolder with the tools of his trade. Was he afraid, she wondered.

‘Then you were taken, honey! That stuff was obsolete twenty years ago. The only good news is that it looks like it’s been stored properly.’ He put the explosive down gently and sorted through a cardboard box that contained a jumble of odds and ends: rusty screws, wires, detonators, a tube of glue and more sticky tape. ‘You’ve got the rough idea,’ he said grudgingly.

She opened a drawer and produced some brand-new batteries. ‘They are fresh and tested,’ she said.

‘How are you going to set it off?’

From the closet she fetched a wind-up alarm clock, still in a cardboard box. She put it on the table in front of him. ‘I need two clocks,’ he said. ‘Give me another.’

She got a second one. ‘Why two?’

‘In case one doesn’t work properly,’ he said. He tore the boxes open. They were an old-fashioned style: circular with a bell on top and Mickey Mouse on the face.

He placed the clocks side by side on the table and looked at it all. ‘Have you got any other explosive?’

She shook her head.

‘No American stuff? No Semtex? Russian Hexogen?’

‘This is all we have, until the next consignment comes. We had gelignite but it was oozing some sort of chemical.’

‘It’s not still around here is it? That was nitro running out of it.’

‘They buried it.’

‘You people are loco,’ he said again. ‘You need proper explosive.’

‘What’s wrong with that explosive?’

‘You’ll never make a bomb with that Japanese shit.’

‘They said it was fresh from the factory. It came in last month.’ She sounded desperate. Her face was white and drawn. He thought she was going to burst into tears. ‘This task is important.’

Paz looked at her thoughtfully, and then back to the bomb. ‘It just won’t explode,’ he said. ‘These American detonators won’t fire Jap explosive. You might as well connect it to a bundle of tortillas.’ He expected her to try to laugh, or at least to speak, but she was devastated by the disappointment. He said, ‘American explosive is high-quality and very sensitive. American caps will blow American explosive but they won’t make this stuff move.’

‘You must fix it,’ she insisted. ‘You are Mr Expert.’ She said it bitterly and he resented that. Why should this spoiled bitch hold him responsible for not performing miracles with her collection of rubbish?

‘We’d need a booster to put between the caps and the charge,’ he explained patiently. ‘Then we might make it explode.’

‘You could do it?’

‘Could you get sugar?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Sodium chlorate?’

‘Do they use it to make matches?’

‘Yes.’

‘We raided a match factory to get some once. Someone said it was for bombs. I could get some.’

‘How long would it take?’

‘I’ll speak on the phone right away.’

‘Careful what you say. A whole lot of people know what sodium chlorate can do.’

‘Go downstairs and tell one of the servants to cook a steak for you. There is plenty of food here. Suppose everything you need is brought to the Ministry of Pensions? Could you do it on the spot?’

‘Who said I was going to plant the bomb?’

She looked at him with unconcealed derision. This was the showdown; the time when he was forced to come to terms with the true situation. He had placed himself under the orders of the MAMista. That meant under the orders of this woman, and of anyone else to whom the Movimiento de Acción Marxista gave authority.

He spoke slowly. ‘We must have coveralls and gloves and kerosene to wash with. And good soap to get rid of the smell of the kerosene.’

‘I will arrange all that.’ She showed no sign of triumph but they both knew that their relationship had been established. It was not a relationship that Paz was going to enjoy.

He picked through the box to select some pieces of wire and a screwdriver and pliers and so on. He put these things alongside the explosive and the clocks. ‘I will need all those things. And a tape measure at least a metre in length.’

‘Estupendo!’ she said, but her tone revealed relief rather than joy.

He didn’t respond. He didn’t like her. She looked too much like his stepmother and he hated his stepmother. She’d sent him away to school and stolen his father from him. Nothing had gone right after that.

The Spanish day takes place so late. Tarde means both ‘afternoon’ and ‘evening’. The word for ‘morning’ means ‘tomorrow’. Seated outside a café in Tepilo’s Plaza de Armas, the young man was reminded of the Spanish life-style. The Plaza was crowded: mulattos and mestizos, aristocrats and beggars, priests, nuns, blacks and Indians. Here and there even a tourist or two could be spotted. There were sweating soldiers in ill-fitting coarse grey serge and officers in nipped-waist tunics with high collars, polished boots, sabres and spurs. Paz watched a group of officers talking together: the subalterns stood at attention with white-gloved hands suspended at the permanent salute. Their seniors did not spare them a glance.

Behind the officers, a stone Francisco Pizarro, on a galloping stone steed, assailed the night with uplifted sword. On the far side of the Plaza rose the dark shape of the Archbishop’s Palace. It was an amazing confusion of scrolls, angels, demons, flowers and gargoyles: the collected excesses of the baroque. On this side of the square the paseo had begun. Past the flower-beds and the ornamental fountains, young men of the town marched and counter-marched. Girls – chaperoned by hawk-eyed old crones – girls, smiling and whispering together, paraded past them in their newest clothes.

From inside the café there drifted the music of a string trio playing ‘Moonlight and Roses’. Across the table was the woman – Inez Cassidy – wearing a mousy wig and fashionably large tinted glasses. She was watching Paz with unconcealed interest and amusement.

‘They are not bad, those nylon wigs,’ he said in an attempt to ruffle her. He had not drunk his chocolate. It was too thick and cloying for him. He was nervous enough for his stomach to rebel at just the smell of it.

She was not put out. ‘They are good enough for a job like this. You’ll wear your dark glasses too, if you take my advice. The new law requires only one eye-witness to ensure conviction for acts of terrorism.’ She did not use the word ‘terrorism’ sardonically. She had no quarrel with it as a description of what they were about to do.

She looked at Paz. His skin was light but he was heavily pigmented. She could see he was of Hispanic origin. His hair was dark and coarse. Parted in the middle, it often fell across his eyes, causing him to shake his head like some young flirtatious girl. He had that nervous confidence that comes to rich college boys who feel they still have to prove themselves. Such boys were not unknown here in Tepilo. They flaunted their cars, and sometimes their yachts and planes. One heard their perfect Spanish, full of fashionable slang from Madrid, at some of the clubs and waterfront restaurants beyond the town. Neither was it unknown for one of them to join the MAMista. At the beginning of the violencia such men had enjoyed the thrills of the bank hold-ups and pay-roll robberies that brought money the movement needed so desperately. But such men did not have the stamina, nor the political will, that long-term political activity demanded. This fellow Paz had arrived with all sorts of recommendations from the movement’s supporters in Los Angeles, but Inez had already decided that he was not going to be an exception to that rule.

In the local style, Angel Paz struck his cup with the spoon to produce a sound that summoned a waiter. She watched him as he counted out the notes. Rich young men handle money with contempt; it betrays them. The waiter eyed him coldly and took the tip without a thank you.

They got up from the table and moved off into the crowd. Their target – the Ministry of Pensions – was a massive stone building of that classical style that governments everywhere choose as a symbol of state power. Inez went up the steps and tapped at the intimidating wooden doors. Nothing happened. Some people strolled past but, seeing a man and a girl in the shadows of the doorway, spared them no more than a glance. ‘The janitor is one of us,’ she explained to Paz. Then, like a sinner at the screen of a confessional, she pressed her face close to the door, and called softly, ‘Chori! Chori!’

In response came the sound of bolts being shifted and the lock being turned. One of the doors opened just far enough to allow them inside.

Paz looked back. Along the street, through a gap between the buildings he could see the lights of the cafés in the Plaza. He could even hear the trio playing ‘Thanks for the Memory’.

‘You said it would be open, Chori,’ Inez said disapprovingly.

‘The lock sticks,’ said the man who had let them in, but Paz suspected that he had waited until hearing the woman’s voice. In his hand Chori held a plastic shopping bag.

‘Is there anyone else here?’ Inez asked. They were in a grand hall with a marble floor. A little of the mauvish evening light filtered through an ornate glass dome four storeys above. It was enough to reveal an imposing staircase which led to a first-floor balcony that surrounded them on all sides.

‘There is no need to worry,’ said the man without answering her question. He led them up the stairs.

‘Did you get the sodium chlorate?’ Paz asked.

‘The booster is all ready,’ Chori said. He was a big man, a kindly gorilla, thought Paz, but he’d be a dangerous one to quarrel with. ‘And here are the coveralls.’ He held up the bulging plastic shopping bag. ‘First we must put them on.’ He said it in the manner of a child repeating the lessons it had been taught.

He took them to a small office. Chori made sure the wooden shutters were closed tightly, then switched on the light. The fluorescent tube went ping as it ignited and then the room was illuminated with intense pink light. Two venerable typewriters had been put on the floor in a corner. A china washbowl and jug had been set out on an office desk, together with bars of soap and a pile of clean towels. On the next desk sat an enamel jug of hot water, and alongside it a can of kerosene. ‘Is it as you wanted?’ Chori asked Inez. She looked at Paz: he nodded.

Paz was able to see Chori in more detail. He had a wrestler’s build, a tough specimen with dark skin, a scarred face, and clumsy hands the fingers of which had all been broken and badly reset. He was wearing a blue blazer, striped shirt and white trousers: the sort of outfit suited to a fancy yacht. He saw Paz looking at him and, interpreting his thoughts, said, ‘You don’t think I’m staying on, after this thing explodes, do you?’

‘I could tie you up and gag you,’ said Paz.

Chori laughed grimly and held up his fingers. ‘With this badge of articulate dissent, the cops won’t come in here and sit me down with a questionnaire,’ he said. ‘And anyway they know the MAMista don’t go to such trouble to spare the life of a security guard. No, I’ll run when you run and I won’t be back.’ His stylish clothes were well suited to the Plaza at this time of evening.

Paz was already getting into his coveralls and gloves. Chori did the same. Inez put on a black long-sleeved cotton garment that was the normal attire of government workers who handled dusty old documents. She would be the one to go to the door if some emergency arose.

‘You made the booster?’ Paz asked.

‘Yes,’ said Chori.

‘Did you …’

‘I was making bombs before you were born.’

Paz looked at him. The big fellow was no fool and there was an edge to his voice. ‘Show me the target,’ said Paz.

Chori took him along the corridor to the Minister’s personal office. It was a large room with a cut-glass chandelier, antique furniture and a good carpet. On the wall hung a coloured lithograph of President Benz, serene and benevolent, wearing an admiral’s uniform complete with medals and yellow sash. The window shutters were closed but Chori went and checked them carefully. Then he switched on the desk light. It was an ancient brass contraption. Its glass shade made a pool of yellow light on the table while colouring their faces green. Chori returned to the steel safe and tapped on it with his battered fingers. Now it could be seen that three of his fingernails had been roughly torn out. ‘You understand,’ he said, ‘this baby must go. There must be enough explosive to destroy the papers inside. If we just loosen the door it will all be a waste of time.’ Chori was bringing from a cardboard box all the things that Paz wanted: the explosive and the wires and the clocks. ‘We found a little plastic,’ said Chori proudly.

‘What’s inside the safe?’

‘They don’t tell me things like that, señor.’ He looked up to be quite certain that the woman was not in the room. ‘Now, your comrade Inez Cassidy, she is told things like that. But I am just a comrade, comrade.’

Paz watched him arranging the slab of explosive, and the Mickey Mouse clocks, on the Minister’s polished mahogany desk.

Emboldened by Paz’s silence, Chori said, ‘Inez Cassidy is a big shot. Her father was an official in the Indian Service: big house, big garden, lots of servants – vacations in Spain.’ There was no need for further description. Trips to Spain put her into a social milieu remote from security guards and night-watchmen. ‘When the revolution is successful the workers will go on working: the labourers will still be digging the fields. My brother who is a bus driver will continue to get up at four in the morning to drive his bus. But your friend Inez Cassidy will be Minister of State Security.’ He smiled. ‘Or maybe Minister of Pensions. Sitting right here, working out ways to prevent people like me from blowing her safe to pieces.’

Paz used the tape measure and wrote the dimensions of the safe on a piece of paper. Chori looked over his shoulder and read aloud what was written. ‘Sixteen R three, KC. What does it mean?’ Chori asked.

‘R equals the breaching radius in metres, K is the strength of the material and C is the tamping factor.’

‘Holy Jesus!’

‘It’s a simple way of designing the explosion we need.’

‘Designer explosions! And all this time I’ve just been making bangs,’ said Chori.

Paz slapped the safe. ‘Make a big bang under this fat old bastard and all we will do is shift him into the next room with a headache.’ He took the polish tins and arranged the explosive in them: first the Japanese TNP, then the orange-coloured plastic and finally the grey home-made booster. Then he took a knife and started to carve the plastic, cutting a deep cone from it and arranging the charge so that none was wasted.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Relax, Daddy.’

‘Tell me.’

‘I’m going to focus the rays of the explosion. About forty-five degrees is best. I want it real narrow: like a spotlight. Here, hold this.’ To demonstrate he held the tins to the sides of the safe. He moved them until the tins were exactly opposite each other. ‘The explosions will meet in the middle of the safe, like two express trains in a head-on collision. That will devastate anything inside the safe without wasting energy on the steel safe itself.’

‘Will it make a hole?’

‘Two tiny holes; and the frame will be hardly bent.’

‘I’ve never seen anything like that.’

Paz looked at him. ‘The man who showed me how, would have put tiny charges in a line all round, focusing them at the centre. But he was an artist. We’d be up all night trying to do that.’

‘It’s great.’

‘It’s not done yet,’ said Paz modestly, but he glowed with pleasure. This man was a real comrade. From the desk Paz got a handful of wooden pencils and fixed them round a tin, holding them with a strong rubber band. ‘The charge has to stand-off at least the distance of the cone diameter. That gives the charge a chance to get going before it hits the metal of the safe.’

‘How would you like to write down everything you know? An instruction manual. Or make a demonstration video? We’d use it to instruct our men.’

Paz looked at him and, seeing he was serious, said, ‘How would you like one hundred grams of Semtex up your ass?’

Chori laughed grimly. ‘I’ll do this one,’ he said.

‘Okay. I’ll wire the timers.’ Paz took a Mickey Mouse clock and bent the hour-hand backwards and forwards until he tore it off. Then he jammed a brass screw into the soft metal face of the clock. Around the screw he twisted a wire. Then he moved the minute-hand as far counter-clockwise as it would go from the brass screw. He wound up the clock and listened to it ticking.

‘It’s a reliable brand,’ said Chori.

‘It has only to work for forty-five minutes,’ said Paz. He fixed the other clock in the same way and then connected it.

‘Two clocks?’

‘In case one stops.’

‘It’s a waste.’ A soft patter of footsteps sounded in the corridor and Inez put her head round the door. ‘There is a police car stopped outside,’ she said. ‘You’re not going to use a radio?’

‘No,’ said Paz.

‘I’ll go downstairs again. I’ll set off the fire alarm if …’

‘Stay here,’ said Chori. ‘We are nearly finished.’

Paz said nothing. Taking his time he went to look at the way Chori had fixed the stand-off charges to the safe. He prodded them to make sure the sticky tape would hold. Then he connected the caps and twisted the wires around the terminals of the dry batteries. Finally Paz connected the clocks to the charges. He looked up and smiled at Chori. ‘Fingers in the ears, Daddy.’ He looked round. Inez was still in the doorway. He smiled at her; he’d shown her that he was a man who mattered.

Without hurrying the three of them left the minister’s office. Inez returned to the darkened room to resume her watch from the window. The two men started to remove all traces of explosive. They stripped off the coveralls and cotton gloves and stuffed them into the shopping bag. Then they methodically washed their hands and faces: first in kerosene and then in scented soap and water.

Inez returned. She looked at her watch and then at the two men. She could not hide her impatience but was determined not to rush them. When the men were dressed, the three of them went down the main staircase. They walked through the building to the back entrance, to which Chori had a key. Once outside they were in a cobbled yard. There were big bins of rubbish there and Chori took the bag containing the soiled coveralls and stuffed it deep down under some garbage. The police would find it but it would tell them nothing they didn’t already know. It took only five minutes for them to get to the Plaza de Armas and be back at the café again.

‘There is plenty of time,’ said Paz.

Everything looked the same: the strollers and the soldiers and the fashionably dressed people drinking wine and flirting and arguing and whispering of love. The fountains were still sprouting and splashing, to make streams where the mosaics shone underfoot. Only Angel Paz was different: his heart was beating frantically and he could hardly maintain his calm demeanour.

The café music greeted them. The table they’d had was now occupied – all the outdoor tables were crowded – but the trio found a table inside. The less fashionable interior part was more or less empty. The waiter brought them coffee, powerful black portions in tiny cups. Glasses of local brandy came too, accompanied by tiny almond cakes, shaped and coloured to resemble fruit. ‘Twenty-two minutes to go,’ said Chori.

‘This one had better go back with you tonight, Chori,’ said Inez, a movement of her head indicating Paz.

She leaned forward to take one of the little marzipan cakes. Paz could smell her perfume and admired her figure. He could understand that for many men she would be very desirable. She sensed him studying her and looked up as she chewed on the sweet little cake. They all ate them greedily. It was the excitement that made the body crave sugar in that urgent way. ‘The car is late,’ she said to Chori. She stood up in order to see the street. It was crowded now, and even the inside tables were being occupied by flamboyantly dressed revellers.

‘It will be all right,’ he said. ‘He is caught in the traffic.’

They drank brandy and tried to look unconcerned. A group came in and sat at the next table. One of the women waved to Inez, recognizing her despite her wig and dark glasses. The waiter asked if they wanted anything more. ‘No,’ said Chori. The waiter cleared their table and fussed about, to show them that he needed the table.

The curfew had actually increased business in this part of town. Many of the cars parked in the plaza bore special yellow certificates. They were signed by the police authority to give the owners immunity to curfew. Some said the curfew was intended only for Indians, blacks and the poor. Well-dressed people were unlikely to be asked for their papers by the specially chosen army squads that patrolled the town centre.

The car that collected them from the café arrived fifteen minutes late. As they went to the kerb Paz saw the four crop-headed priests who’d been with him on the ship. One of them bowed to him: he nodded.

When the three of them were inside the car they breathed a sigh of relief. The driver was a trusted co-worker. He asked no questions. He drove carefully to attract no attention, and kept to the quiet streets. They encountered no policemen except a single patrolman keeping guard in the quiet side-street where the tourist buses parked for the night.

The traffic lights at the cathedral intersection were red. They stopped. Through the great door Paz could see the chapel and the desiccated remains of the first bishop displayed inside a fly-specked glass case. A thousand candles flickered in the dark nave.

Some worshippers were coming out of the cathedral, passing the old wooden kiosks with their polished brass fittings. From them were sold foreign newspapers and souvenirs and holy relics.

As the traffic lights changed to green Paz heard a muffled thump. It was not loud. He heard it only because he was listening for it. ‘Did you hear that?’ Paz asked proudly.

‘Thunder,’ said Chori. ‘The rains will begin early this year. They say it’s the greenhouse effect.’

2

WASHINGTON, DC. ‘A trap,’ said the President.

The man’s name was buried in a Spanish Guiana file under the arm of John Curl, the US President’s National Security Adviser. In fact he was not a name. He was just an eight-digit computer number with a CIA prefix.

John Curl was on his way to see the President. He had come from the Old Executive Building a few hundred yards from the West Wing. Under his arm he carried a soft leather case with important papers that he’d just collected from Room 208 (sometimes called the Crisis Management Center). John Curl had no formal powers. His role and duties were not mentioned in the 1947 National Security Act which set up post-war US foreign policy offices. Curl was just one of many assistants to the President. As a go-between for the President and the National Security Council, he had coveted ‘walk-in privileges’ that gave him access to the President. That made him one of the most influential men in the land. Lately he had been permitted to give orders on his own signature – ‘for the President: John Curl’. It made him feel very proud to do that.

After dinner with his family, the President had spent two or three hours reading official papers. Then, at about ten-thirty, he liked to ride the elevator down from the residence to see the latest news. One of the NSA staff was always standing by with up-to-date backup material, such as maps, graphics and satellite photos. Curl was there too: only sickness or duty could keep him away. Often in the evening the President was approachable in a way he wasn’t at the 9.30 am security briefing held in a room filled with people.

The West Wing changed character at night. The fluorescent lighting seemed especially hard when unmixed with daylight. The voices that echoed in the corridors were hushed and respectful. The ceremonial rooms and library, the Press rooms and the barber shop were closed and dark. The night-duty offices were quiet except for the intestinal noises made by the computers, and the sound of laser printers periodically rotating the fuser rollers. The only signs of life were made by the night duty staff at the end of the corridor. A secretary could occasionally be seen there using the coffee machine, or exchanging banalities with a guard.

In the corridor leading to the Lincoln sitting-room, Curl was buttonholed by the Air Force aide who asked, ‘Did you read “Air Bus to Battle”, John?’

Curl stopped, sneaking a quick look at his watch as he did so. The Air Force aide was a man of influence. He controlled the planes of the Presidential Flight. When an extra seat on Air Force One was needed, the general knew how to fix it for the ones he favoured.

Curl said, ‘Halfway through.’ The document he referred to was a 100-page report on a new military transport plane demonstrated the previous week. They both knew that ‘halfway through’ meant Curl had not even glanced at it.

‘I just came from the chief,’ said the general. He said it casually, but minutes with the President were added up proudly, like high school credits. He tapped the Air Force promotion lists to show what the President had signed.

‘Is he alone?’

‘Waiting for the eleven o’clock TV news.’

Curl looked again at his watch. It was 10.58 pm. He was already turning away as he said, ‘Thank you, General. Can I tell you how much we all enjoyed Monday?’

All enjoyed Monday was a far cry from how impressed we all were on Monday. But the general smiled. He liked John Curl. He was not one of those peaceniks who were yelling for more, and still more, military cutbacks every time they saw a newspaper picture of happy smiling Russians.

Right now the Air Force needed every sympathetic voice it could get here in the White House. The poll-watchers were shouting for mega-dollars to be switched to education and fighting crime and drugs. They were saying that it was the only way to avoid the President getting severely clobbered when the mid-term elections came. ‘It was a pleasure, John,’ he called after him. ‘The Air Force is hosting one hundred and fifty Senators and guests for the same demonstration on the twenty-first. If you want tickets for anyone …’

‘Great. I’ll be in touch,’ said Curl, turning to wave. Then he smoothed his wrinkled sleeve. The silk-mixture suit, custom-made shirt and manicured hands were part of Curl’s public image. Even when this handsome man was summoned from bed to an emergency conference in the Crisis Management Center he cut the same dashing and impeccable figure.

Curl had already forgotten the general. His mind was on the newscast that the chief was waiting for. The news he was bringing might be made public and that would change the whole picture. Curl worried that he might need more figures, dates and projections but it was too late now.

Curl stopped and took a silk handkerchief from his top pocket. He carefully wiped his brow. More than once he’d heard the President refer slightingly to aides who arrived ‘hot and sweaty’. Curl nodded to the elderly warrant officer outside the sitting-room door. On the floor at his side rested a metal case. (When the staff photographers were around he kept it on his knees.) It held sealed packets signed by the Joint Chiefs. These were the codes that could order a nuclear strike. And the Doomsday Books that, in comic-strip style, illustrated projections in megadeaths for each of the target towns. The Russians, drowning in a sea of economic disaster, were clutching at the straws of capitalist revival. The East European satellite nations were offering their desolate industrial landscapes to any bidder. But anyone with access to the intelligence pouring in to Room 208, from the Gulf, as well as from Africa and the Far East, knew that America’s enemies had not gone out of business. So ‘the bagman’ followed the President everywhere he went.

Curl knocked at the door softly but waited only a moment before entering. His chief was sitting in his favoured wing armchair, reading from a fat tome and sipping at his favourite evening drink: cognac and ginger.

Curl stood there a moment reflecting upon the baffling way in which this room seemed to change when the President was in it. It was bigger, lighter and more imposing when the chief was here. He’d stood here alone sometimes and marvelled at the difference.

The President made a movement of his hand to acknowledge Curl’s presence. The public saw only the President a make-up team and TV producer created for public display. They would have been shocked to see this wizened little man in his spotted bow tie, baggy slacks, hand-knitted sweater and red velvet slippers. This was the way the President liked to dress when the White House staff photographers were not around, but it was verboten at all other times. The bow tie was ‘arty’, the slippers ‘faggy’, the sweater ‘too homespun’ and US Presidents didn’t drink fancy foreign booze. Most important, US Presidents looked young and fit. They didn’t wear granny glasses and sit hunched over books: they rode and roped and piloted their own choppers. It wasn’t always easy to reconcile this carefully conjured outdoor figure with the emphasis the Administration was now putting upon formal education and the need for scientists and scholars, but votes must always come first.

The President had aged greatly in two years of office, aged by a decade. He continued to read and didn’t look up as Curl entered. ‘Fix yourself a drink, John. The news is coming now.’

Curl didn’t fix himself a drink. He wasn’t fond of alcohol and liked to present a picture of abstemiousness when with the President. Curl stood behind the President looking at the TV but also noticing the small bald patch on the crown of the chief’s head. Curl envied him that: his own baldness was reaching up from his temples to a little promontory of hair that would soon become an island and disappear altogether. From the front the President showed no hair loss at all.

Still thinking about this, Curl seated himself demurely on the sofa with his leather case beside him. He arranged a handful of small pink prompt cards in sequence, shuffling them like a professional gambler with a deck of marked cards. Upon each one a topic of discussion was typed in large orator type. ‘Spanish Guiana – guerrilla contact’ read the topmost card. Curl kept them in his hand, holding them out of sight like a conjuror.

The Pizza Hut ad ended. The President closed his book. This newscaster was a man they both knew, a man to whom they both owed a favour or two. The first item was edited coverage of the protest march in Los Angeles. The subsequent demonstration had continued through the early evening. The tone of the commentary was glum: ‘An LAPD spokesman estimated close on one hundred thousand angry demonstrators packed into MacArthur Park today … Young and old, men and women: protesting the announced cutbacks in the aerospace industry that could make a quarter of a million workers jobless by Christmas.’

There were hand-held TV camera shots of angry demonstrators shouting and struggling with the police at several places on the route. Their big banners were easy to read, and easy to chant: ‘Save your sorrow: Your turn tomorrow’; ‘Cut-backs today will kill L.A.’ One home-made sign, scrawled on a sheet of brown cardboard, said, ‘Where is Joe Stalin now that we need him?’

The time difference between Washington and the West Coast did not prevent the news from airing a few vox-pop interviews with demonstrators as the speeches ended and the people began to disperse. Articulate union leaders, and cautious middle management, agreed that America should not dismantle its defences just because the USSR was adopting a less belligerent posture.

The following news item was about the US Coast Guard’s latest haul of drugs. ‘Five million dollars street value,’ said the commentary. The President pushed the button on his control. The picture went dark. ‘I wish these half-witted TV people would stop glamorizing that poison: “Five million dollars street value.” Holy cow! It’s like a recruiting campaign for pushers.’

Curl stood up and fidgeted with his file cards.

‘MacArthur Park,’ said the President. ‘They would choose skid row! As if the demonstrations aren’t losing me enough votes, I have to have cameras panning across derelict houses and drunken bums.’

Curl said, ‘No real violence, Mr President. We have to be pleased the demonstrators were so disciplined and well-behaved.’

The two men sat looking at the blank screen for a moment. They both knew that this was just the tip of the iceberg. The cuts had started on a small scale. They were to be far more extensive than had yet been made public. Aerospace meant California, and California had become a vital centre of political support. California now had a bigger proportion of the House of Representatives than any state had had since the 1860s. The President’s visit there, and the one thousand dollars per plate dinner, was only a month away. ‘The aerospace boys – the management – are using these demonstrators to shaft us, do you see that?’

‘Management thought it was all over,’ said Curl. ‘We let them think that last year. They thought they had taken the bloodletting. They were breathing a sigh of relief when this hit them.’

‘The opposition will make the most of it,’ said the President dolefully. ‘You can bet every liberal pinko, every half-baked anarchist and every rabble-rouser in the land will schlepp across there to the land of fruits and nuts. They’ll all be there to join in the reception for me when I arrive.’

Curl would not permit such paranoid illusions. He was always ready to step out of line: that’s why he was so valuable. ‘These are all middle-class people, Mr President. Skilled workers, not hippies. That’s why there were no clashes with the cops. They are frightened family men. Frightened family men.’

The President nodded. He hadn’t missed the implication that he too was a frightened family man sometimes. Curl was right. ‘Did you see what the rumours have already done to the stock market?’

‘Yes, I saw that.’

There was a silence. Then: ‘So what do you have, John?’ The President looked up at him, keeping his finger in place in the 500-page unedited draft of the Congressional Joint Economics Committee report. He had reached the page that had sobering projections about what job losses the changes would bring in the coming four years. Now he let go of his place in the report and put it on the floor. He would have his morning call advanced an hour. In the morning he would be able to glean enough from it to be ready for the men from the Government Accounting Office. But already he got up at six. The President closed his eyes as if to sample sleep for a moment. Curl hesitated to continue but, with his eyes still closed, the President said, ‘Shoot, John.’

‘Spanish Guiana. A US prospecting team has struck oil. A lot of oil.’

‘A lot of oil?’

‘It was a personal off-the-record call from Steve Steinbeck – it’s Steve’s company of course – and he wouldn’t talk numbers. Presently it’s on their computer at Houston.’

‘He called you?’

‘He wouldn’t have called unless it was big.’

‘Why you?’ he persisted.

‘We had a kind of line to the prospecting team,’ admitted Curl. ‘I left a message for him to call. Steve guessed what was on my mind.’

The President still hadn’t opened his eyes. ‘I worked in oil when I was young. I’ve seen it all before: a million or more times. These field workers are just telling Steve that they have found the right conditions. Maybe an anticline, a fold in the strata with a sealing formation that would capture oil or gas, if there was any.’

‘They seem pretty certain. I cross-checked with Steve’s head of Latin America exploration.’

‘Some graduate palaeontologist has gathered a basket of fossils, and they’ve fired a few shots, and got a sexy little seismogram for the head office.’

Curl unzipped his leather case. From a pocket inside it, he unclipped a long strip of paper. Six timer lines went the length of it. At each explosion the pen had fluttered wildly according to how far the tremor had reached before bouncing off the reflecting beds deep in the earth. The President took the strip of paper and studied it as if he could make sense of it. It was like an electrocardiogram from an agitated heart. The President stroked the paper and smelled it. ‘This is the real thing, John.’

‘I told Steve you wouldn’t find any kind of photocopy convincing.’

‘Well maybe …’

‘They have seepage, Mr President.’

‘Seepage? Are they sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s different, John.’ He looked at the paper and his mind went back to his youth. A seismogram like this was then the height of his ambition. He’d wanted to be an explorer but his Dad had kept him in that lousy office. ‘Funny to think a piece of paper like this could change the world, John. Seepage! That’s the piece of pork they used to put in the can of beans. That’s what every oil man dreams of: seepage. So Steinbeck got lucky again.’

‘They’ve been renewing licences to prospect down there for ten years or more.’ Discreetly Curl produced a map of South America. He wanted to refresh the President’s memory about exactly where Spanish Guiana was situated. ‘But if it’s really big, Royal Dutch Shell are sure to want a piece of it … and maybe Exxon too.’

‘The word is out?’

‘Not yet. But Steve is screaming for exploratory drilling. When he moves in a lightweight rig, it will raise some eyebrows.’

‘Without drilling there’s no proof it’s anything but a dry hole.’

‘And after the drilling it’s too late,’ said Curl.

‘Too late for what?’

John Curl shrugged.

‘Tell me how you see it, John.’

‘The Benz government has been a good and reliable friend to America. But the real truth is that he’ll only stay in power as long as there is a literacy test for voters.’ He waited for that to sink in.

‘A literacy test for voters,’ said the President. ‘If only we had a literacy test for voters, John.’

John Curl was not to be deflected from his explanation by bad jokes. ‘Remove the literacy qualification and the Indian population would vote Benz into obscurity overnight. The sort of landslide that even a South American election can’t fix. Even as it stands, he sits uneasy on the throne. The guerrilla units in the south are highly organized, well disciplined and well equipped. There are districts of the capital – not half a mile from the Palace – where police and army can only go in armoured cars.’

It sounds not unlike Washington, DC, the President was about to say, but after seeing the earnest look on Curl’s face said, ‘Conclusion?’

‘Conclusions are your prerogative, Mr President. But Admiral Benz has had a long uphill struggle to bring democratic government to a primitive country that is essentially feudal. Money from oil could give him the chance to build schools and roads and hospitals and make his country into a show-case.’

‘Is this a plea to do nothing?’

‘Steve says the Japanese would do a deal with him … or maybe buy his whole South American outfit. Japan needs energy sources.’

The President thought about that and didn’t like the sound of it. ‘Should this go on the Security Council agenda, John?’

‘Leave it for a few days, Mr President. The fewer who are party to this the better.’

‘And if Steve starts talks with his Japanese buddies?’

‘If Steve talks to his mother we’ll put him into Leavenworth. I told him that, Mr President.’

The President stabbed the TV control and produced fleeting glimpses of an old British war film, ‘The Odd Couple’, a Honda commercial and then a blank screen again. ‘It would be best if Steinbeck held exclusive mineral rights.’

‘Yes,’ said Curl.

‘Let the British in there and they will start building a refinery; they can’t afford to ship crude across the water. We must keep it as crude, brought Stateside for refining. That way if the government there falls, we have a breathing space before anyone can raise the money and get a refinery built.’

Curl nodded.

‘I’m damned if I can remember who we have out there.’

‘Junk-bond Joey.’

‘Junk-bond Joey,’ said the President. The two men looked at each other. They were remembering the flamboyant entrepreneur who had purchased his backwoods embassy for untold millions in campaign funds. This was the man who had almost gone to prison for insider trading, a man who had recently created a minor diplomatic crisis by offering a punch in the head to an Algerian diplomat at a Washington cocktail party.

‘Tepilo is not Washington,’ said Curl reassuringly. ‘Tepilo is Latin America; very much Latin America.’

‘But does Joey know that?’

‘There’s a lot to do,’ said Curl. ‘We must tell Benz that he’s got an oilfield, and make sure he knows what will happen if he steps out of line. Most importantly, we must appoint a tough someone we can trust, to sit in on the meetings between Steve’s people and the Benz government. A tough someone! Benz won’t be easy to deal with.’

‘A trap,’ said the President. Curl raised an eyebrow. ‘An oil trap, until it starts producing, and then it’s an oilfield.’ He sipped his cognac and ginger. ‘We must be very careful … Article Fifteen, remember.’

Article Fifteen of the Charter of the Organization of American States declares that: ‘… no state, or group of states, has the right to intervene, directly or in-directly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other state.’ Past Presidents had sometimes ignored that dictum, but lately political opponents had used a literal interpretation of Article Fifteen to beat the incumbent over the head. ‘Whatever it is,’ said Curl, ‘Benz has got one.’

‘Is Benz right for us?’ the President asked.

‘Who else is there?’ asked Curl. The President stared right through him as he drew upon his prodigious memory. He could quote long passages from documents that Curl had watched him skim through, seemingly without much interest. Curl waited.

‘There is Doctor Guizot,’ said the President.

‘At present under house arrest,’ said Curl without hesitation.

The President didn’t respond to that item of information. Curl bit his lip. He knew that his over-prompt reply had been noted as evidence that Curl – like the CIA and the Pentagon too – were prejudiced against Doctor Guizot’s liberal policies. The President’s next remark confirmed this: ‘We always back the Admiral Benzes don’t we?’

‘Mr President?’

‘America always puts its resources behind these anachronistic strong-arm men. And we are always dismayed when they are toppled, and we get spattered with the crap. Korea, Vietnam … Marcos, Noriega. Why do our “experts” in State fall in love with these bastards?’

‘Because there are sometimes no alternatives,’ said Curl calmly. ‘Could we support communist revolution, however pure its motives?’ It was a rhetorical question.

‘Sometimes, John, I wonder how it happened that in 1945 the State Department didn’t offer military aid to the Nazis.’

‘I’ve heard people say communism might have collapsed more quickly if we had.’

The President did not hear him. ‘Doctor Guizot. Not that bastard Benz. Not after that slavery business and the human rights investigation.’

Curl wanted to point out that the slavery allegations referred to peóns allowed a strip of land on the big haciendas in return for labour. But the President had paused only to clear his throat and, in his present state of mind, such remarks would not help.

The President continued: ‘Yes, the liberal press would make Benz into some kind of Hitler. Better Guizot. Guizot has a chance of reconciling the liberal middle-class element with the Indians, peasants and workers.’

‘Guizot is committed to removing the literacy qualification for voters.’

‘And that makes him sound like a dangerous radical, eh John?’

Curl didn’t smile. ‘A split vote could mean a victory for the Marxists.’ When no response came he added, ‘Karl Marx didn’t die in Eastern Europe; he sailed to South America and is alive and well and flourishing there.’

‘Just like all those Nazi war criminals, eh John?’ He scratched his head. ‘I recall there are other – rival – guerrilla outfits down there.’

‘Several,’ said Curl, who’d spent the previous couple of hours reading up on the subject. ‘But none that we could cosy up to.’

‘Are you quite sure? What about the Indians?’

‘The Indian farmers have a Marxist leader who calls himself Big Jorge. But Big Jorge rules in the coca-growing regions and lets the drug barons go unmolested in exchange for a piece of the action.’

‘Ummm. I see what you mean,’ said the President.

‘The revenues from oil will bring prosperity enough to establish someone in political power for at least a decade. Whatever creed the government preaches, the oil money will make their politics seem worth copying elsewhere in Latin America. Give it to the Marxists and we will be perpetuating the myth of Marxist economics. We will live to regret it.’

The President’s face didn’t change but there was a rough edge to his voice: ‘Sit in my chair and you worry less about the teachings of Karl Marx. My supporters are inclined to think crime here at home is the number one issue on the ticket, John. Crime and drug abuse. Stop the drugs and we reduce violent crime. That’s the way the voters see it.’

‘It’s too simplistic.’

‘I don’t care what you call it,’ said the President with a harshness one seldom heard from him. ‘I don’t even care if it’s right. Opinion poll after opinion poll shows that drug abuse has become the number one public concern, and we’ve got an election coming up.’ He scowled and sipped his drink. ‘Did you see those figures Drug Enforcement came up with? … How many of my own White House staff are sniffing their goddamned heads off?’

Gently Curl corrected him. ‘It was just an assessment based upon national figures, Mr President. Your staff do not reflect that wide spectrum. And those figures would have included anyone who took one experimental puff of marijuana at any time in the past five years.’ Curl had learned never to use any of the more colourful names for addictive substances when talking to the President.

‘Well, let’s not get side-tracked,’ said the President, who sometimes needed that sort of reassurance. Self-consciously he sipped his cognac and ginger. Curl could smell it. ‘The Benz government is too closely identified with the drug barons. I don’t want him in power for ten more years.’

‘But that’s just it, Mr President. The drug dimension hasn’t been overlooked, believe me. Oil moneys could wean Benz away from the drug revenues. It would give him legitimate revenue. And the oil would give us a lever. He’d have to lean on his drug growers, or we could turn off the oil-money tap.’

‘Do we have any contact with the Marxist guerrillas?’

‘Yes, sir. More than one. We are siphoning a little medical aid to them through a British Foundation. We want a report on their true strength. Medical aid – shots and pills and so on – will provide us with a reliable headcount. We also plan to start some friendly talks with their leader. It would be as well to have someone down there negotiating, if only as a counter-weight to Benz. Or a counter-weight to Doctor Guizot,’ Curl added hurriedly.

‘Yes, we don’t want it to be a one-horse race. I hope you’ve chosen your “someone” carefully, John.’ The President picked up the heavy report from the floor and opened it. He never needed bookmarks; he could always remember the number of the page at which he stopped reading.

At this cue Curl stood up. ‘I’ll say goodnight, Mr President.’ He put the prompt cards into his pocket. There were many more things to say but this was not a good time to get the President’s assent to anything at all. Curl was disturbed by the way the meeting had gone. It had almost come to an argument. Until tonight he’d not realized how deeply disturbed the President was by the polls that showed his steadily decreasing popularity. In that state of mind, the chief might make a very bad error of judgement. It was Curl’s job to make sure the right things were done, even at times like this when the chief was unable to think straight. When happy times were here again, Curl would get his rightful share of praise. The old man was very fair about giving credit where credit was due. Sometimes he’d even admit to being wrong. That was one of the reasons why they all liked him so much.

‘Nothing else, was there, John?’

‘Nothing that can’t wait, Mr President.’ As Curl walked to the door there came a sound like a pistol shot. It was the President cracking the binding as he squashed the opened report flat to read it. He treated books roughly, as if taking revenge upon them.

3

LINCOLN’S INN, LONDON.

‘I knew you’d be crossing the water.’

Ralph Lucas was forty-five years old and every year of his active life had left a mark on him. His hair was grey, his eyes slightly misaligned. This gave his face a rakish look, as does the tilted hat of a boulevardier. He was short, with a straight spine, keen blue eyes and that sort of square-ended moustache – also grey – that had enabled generations of British officers to be distinguished as such in mufti.

Most of his native Australian vowels had been replaced by the hard classless articulation of men whose shouted orders have to be understood. His attitude to the world was derisive, like that of a conjuror welcoming to the stage some innocent from the audience.

Ralph grew up in Brisbane, Queensland. He was a bright child who, together with his sister Serena, responded well to the coaching their ambitious mother provided. In 1945 his father had come home from the war a young staff sergeant. Confident and energetic, he’d found a job in the construction business. He’d done well from the post-war boom. But Ralph Lucas’ family did not grow up in one of the new houses that his father had built. They bought an old house with a view across the bay to Mud Island. From his bedroom, on a clear day; young Ralph could see South Passage out there between the islands, where sometimes he went sailing with his cousins. When Ralph scored high marks in his exams his mother went back to school-teaching and so provided enough money for Ralph to study and eventually become a physician. But if his parents thought they’d see their son married and settled, with a general practice in some prosperous suburb, they were to be disappointed. His years as a student had left him restless and frustrated. His admiration for his father was deeply rooted. As soon as his training ended, Ralph joined the Australian army in time to go to the Vietnam war with an infantry regiment.

His mother felt betrayed. She’d given her husband to the army for five long years and then lost her son to it too. She was bitter about what that jungle war did to him. Her husband had remained comparatively untouched by whatever he experienced in the European campaign, but Vietnam was different. Her son suffered. She said a cheerful young man went to war and an old one returned on that first leave. She never said that to her son of course. Ralph’s mother believed in positive thinking.

Ralph’s time in Vietnam was something he seldom spoke about. His parents knew only that he ended up as a front-line doctor with a special unit that fought through the tunnels. It was a dirty remorseless war but he was never injured. Neither did he ever suffer the psychological horrors that came to so many of the men who spent twelve or fifteen hours a day trying to patch and pull together the shattered bodies of young men. Major Ralph Lucas got a commendation and a US medal. A few weeks before his service was up, he was made a colonel. But anyone who expected this decorated warrior and physician to be a conventional supporter of the establishment was in for a shock.

It was in the bars and officers’ clubs of Saigon that Lucas suffered the wounds from which he never recovered. He began to think that the vicious war that so appalled him was no more than a slugging match to occupy the innocents, while crooks of every rank and colour wallowed in a multi-billion-dollar trough of profits and corruption. Asked to comment afterwards he liked to describe himself as ‘a political eunuch’. But within Lucas there remained a terrible anger and a cynical bitterness that could border on despair.

His time in Vietnam was not without benefit to him and to others. While treating combat casualties he improvised his ‘Lucas bag’. A plastic ration container, ingeniously glued together, became a bag with which transfusions could be made without exposing blood to the open air, and thus to bacterial infection. It was cheap, unbreakable and expendable. Lucas was amazed that no one had thought of it before.

After Vietnam he spent his discharge leave with his family. By that time his mother was dead, and his father was sick and being nursed by his sister Serena. Lucas felt bad about deserting them but he needed the wider horizons that a job in England would provide. Once there he fell in love with a pretty Scottish nurse and got married. He got a job in the Webley–Hockley research laboratory in London. The Director of Research engaged him. He thought a Vietnam veteran would know about tropical medicine. But that medical experience had been almost entirely of trauma and of attendant traumatic neuroses. ‘Men, not test-tubes,’ as he said in one outburst. He was hopeless at laboratory work and his unhappiness showed in eruptions of bad temper. Under other circumstances his marriage might have held together, but the cramped apartment, and small salary, became too much for him when the baby came. It was a miserable time. His wife took their tiny daughter to live with her mother in Edinburgh. Two days after she left, Lucas got the phone call from his sister. Dad had died.

Lucas would have gone back to Australia except for the occasional visits to see his daughter, and the friendship he struck up with an elderly laboratory assistant named Fred Dunstable. Fred was a natural engineer, a widower who spent his spare time repairing broken household machines brought to him by his neighbours. It was in Fred’s garage workshop that the two men perfected the design of the Lucas bag, and designed the aseptic assembly process that was needed for bulk manufacture.

Armed with a prototype Lucas bag, and that fluent Aussie charm to which even the most sceptical Pom is vulnerable, Lucas persuaded the board of the Webley–Hockley Medical Foundation to provide enough cash to manufacture a trial run of one thousand bags. They sent them to hospital casualty departments. The device came at a time when traumatic wounds and emergency outdoor transfusions were on the rise. Plane crashes, earthquakes and wars brought the Lucas bag into use throughout the world. The Foundation got their investment back and more. The tiny royalty he split with his partner soon provided Fred with a comfortable retirement and Lucas with enough money to bring his sister over from Australia, and send his daughter to a good private school.

His daughter had done a lot to encourage the wonderful reconciliation. With his ex-wife, Lucas found happiness he’d never before known. He did all those things they’d talked about so long ago. They bought an old house and a new car and went to Kashmir on a second honeymoon. It was in the Vale of Kashmir that she died. A motor accident brought seven wonderful months to a ghastly end. He’d never stopped reproaching himself; not only for the accident but also for all those wasted years.

It was during that first terrible time of grieving that Ralph Lucas was invited to advise the Webley–Hockley Foundation. During almost eighty years of charitable work it had fed the tropical starving, housed the tropical homeless and financed a body of tropical research. The research achievements were outshone by other bodies, such as the Wellcome, but the Webley–Hockley had done more than any other European charity for ‘preventive medicine in tropical regions’.

Ralph’s invention and the nominal contribution it made to the Foundation’s funds did not make him eligible for full membership of the Board. He was described as its ‘medical adviser’ but he’d been told to speak at parity with the august board. It was a privilege of which he availed himself to the utmost. ‘Find just one,’ he said in response to a careless remark by a board member. ‘Find just one completely healthy native in the whole of Spanish Guiana and then come back and argue.’

Through the window he could see the afternoon sunlight on the trees of Lincoln’s Inn. London provided the gentlest of climates; it was difficult to recall Vietnam and the sort of tropical jungle of which they spoke. His words had been chosen to annoy. Now he felt the ripple of irritation from everyone round the polished table. It never ceased to amaze Lucas that such eminent men became children at these meetings.

A socialist peer – iconoclast, guru and TV panel game celebrity – rose to the bait. He tapped his coffee spoon against his cup before heaping two large spoons of Barbados sugar into it. ‘That’s just balls, Lucas old boy, if you don’t mind me saying so.’ He was a plump fleshy fellow with a plummy voice too deep and considered to be natural. ‘Balls!’ He prided himself that his kind of plain speaking was the hallmark of a great mind. He fixed the chairman with his eyes to demand support.

‘Yes,’ said the chairman, although it came out as not much more than a clearing of the throat.

They all looked at Lucas, who took his time in drinking a little coffee. ‘Filthy coffee,’ he said reasonably. ‘Remarkable china but filthy coffee. Could a complaint about the coffee go into the minutes?’ He turned to his opponent. ‘But I do mind, my dear fellow. I mind very much.’ He fixed his opponent with a hard stare and a blank expression.

‘Well,’ said the peer, uncertain how to continue. He made a movement of his hand to encourage the investments man to say something. When investments decided to drink coffee, the peer’s objections shifted: ‘I’d like to know who this anonymous donor is.’

‘You saw the letter from the bank,’ said the chairman.

‘I mean exactly who it is. Not the name of some bank acting for a client.’ He looked around, but when it seemed that no one had understood, added, ‘Suppose it was some communist organization. The Pentagon or the CIA. Or some big business conglomerate with South American interests.’ It was a list of what most horrified the socialist peer.

‘My God,’ said the chairman softly. Lucas looked at him, not sure whether he was being flippant or devout.

The peer nodded and drank his coffee. He shuddered at the taste of the sugar. He hated the taste of sugar in coffee; especially when he knew it was Barbados sugar.

The secretary looked up from the rough projections of the accountant and said, ‘Communists, fascists, Uncle Tom Cobbleigh: does it matter? I don’t have to tell you that the fluctuations of both currency and markets have played havoc with our investments. We shall be lucky to end the year with our capital intact.’

‘Umm,’ said the peer and wrote on his notepad.

The lawyer, a bird-like old man with heavily starched collar and regimental tie, felt the reputation of the legal profession was in jeopardy. ‘The donor is anonymous but I would have thought it enough that the letter comes from the most reputable firm of solicitors in England.’

‘Really,’ said Lucas. ‘I thought that yours was the most reputable.’

The lawyer gave him a prim smile to show that he refused to be provoked. ‘What we need to know is how badly the money is needed in Spanish Guiana. That means a reliable on-the-spot report.’ He had suggested this at the very beginning.

The industrialist polished his glasses and fretted. He had to go home to Birmingham. He put on his glasses and looked at the skeleton clock on the mantelpiece. Three-forty, and they were only halfway through the agenda. His role was to advise the board on technical matters and production, but he couldn’t remember the last time that such a question arose. It wasn’t as if the people on the board were paid a fee. Even the fares were not reimbursed. Sometimes he was ready to believe that paying substantial fees and expenses might provide people who were more competent than these illustrious time-wasters.

The peer pushed his coffee away and, remembering Lucas’ remark said, ‘Not one healthy native? None of us would last twenty-four hours in the jungle, Colonel, and you know it. Are we healthy?’

‘You are talking about adaptation,’ said Lucas.

‘I agree with Colonel Lucas,’ said the lawyer. ‘During my time in Malaya I saw young soldiers from industrial cities like Leeds adapt to hellish conditions.’

The research trustee groaned. There were too many people with war experiences on this damned board. If the lawyer started talking about the way he’d won his Military Cross in ‘the Malayan emergency’ they would never get away. He coughed. ‘Can we get back to the question again …?’

The peer would not tolerate such interruptions. ‘The real question is: one …’ he raised a finger. ‘… Is this board indifferent to the political implications that might later arise …’

Lucas did not wait for two. ‘Surely the question is entirely medical …’

The lawyer held up his gold pencil in a cautionary gesture. It irritated him that Lucas should come here in tweed sports jacket, and canary-coloured sweater, when everyone else wore dark suits. ‘It is not entirely medical. We could lay this board open to charges of financing a highly organized and disciplined army that has the declared aim of overthrowing by force the legal government of Spanish Guiana.’

There was a shocked silence as they digested this. Then the investments man stopped doodling on his notepad to wave a hand. His voice was toneless and bored. ‘If, on the other hand, we refuse to send medical supplies to these starving people in the south, we could be described as suppressing that popular movement by means of disease.’

‘I’m going to ask you to withdraw that,’ said the peer, losing his studied calm. ‘I won’t allow that to go on the minutes of this meeting.’

Without looking up from his doodling the investment man calmly said, ‘Well, I don’t withdraw it and you can go to hell and take the minutes with you.’

‘If the army in the south have money enough for guns and bombs, they have money enough for medical supplies,’ said the man from Birmingham.

‘Ten divisions complete with tanks and aircraft,’ said the secretary.

‘Who told you that?’ asked Lucas.

‘It was a documentary on BBC Television,’ said the secretary.

‘What about all the money they are getting from growing drugs?’ said the man from Birmingham.

‘I saw the same TV programme,’ said the lawyer. ‘Are you sure that was Spanish Guiana? I thought that was Peru.’

‘You can’t believe all that BBC propaganda,’ said the investments man. ‘That TV programme was a repeat. If my memory serves me, it was originally shown back in the Eighties before the Wall came down.’

The chairman watched them but said nothing.

What a circus! If it was always like this, thought Lucas, it would be worth the journey up to town every month.

‘Gentlemen,’ said the lawyer in a tone he normally reserved for consulting counsel. ‘While I wouldn’t agree with Colonel Lucas that this is entirely a medical question, I believe we are all beginning to see that we need more medical information before we can make a decision. After all’ – he looked at them and smiled archly before reminding them how important they were – ‘we are dealing with a great deal of money.’

Clever the way he can do that, thought Lucas. They were clucking away happily now, like a lot of contented hens.

‘What’s the form then?’ said the man from Birmingham in an effort to move things along.

‘An on-the-spot report,’ said the lawyer. He had the infinite patience that the law’s bounty and unhurried pace provide. He gave no sign that this was the fourth time he’d said it.

‘In any case, we all agreed that the antibiotics should be sent,’ said the investments man, although no one had agreed to it, and someone had specifically advised against that course of action. ‘Let’s send that immediately, shall we?’

The lawyer did not respond to the suggestion, knowing that putting it to the vote would start new arguments. Thankful that the dispute about the anonymous donor now seemed to have faded, he picked up a pile of paper and tapped it on the table to align the edges. He did it to attract their attention: it was a trick he’d learned from his partner. As they looked round he said, ‘Getting someone to Guiana and back shouldn’t delay us more than a week or two. Then, if we decide to go ahead, we can airfreight the urgent supplies.’

‘If we decide to go ahead,’ said the peer. The lawyer smiled and nodded.

The secretary said, ‘I think I might be able to arrange the air freight at cost or even free through one of our benefactors.’

‘Excellent,’ said the research man.

Bloody fool, thought Lucas, but he modified the thought: ‘Much better to buy locally whenever possible. Cash transfer. Ship it from Florida perhaps.’

The lawyer gave an audible exhalation. ‘We must be careful. Graft is second nature in these countries.’

‘Easier to protect money than stop pilfering of drugs and medicines,’ said Lucas. ‘In fact we should look at the idea of flying it right down to the southern provinces where it’s needed.’

‘And of course there will be customs and duty and tariffs,’ said the lawyer. It would be a nightmare and he was determined to dump it into someone else’s lap if he could.

‘That should be arranged in advance,’ said Lucas. ‘World Health Organization people must put the pressure on the central government. It would be absurd to pay duty on medical supplies that are a gift to their own people.’

‘Well, that will be your problem,’ said the lawyer.

Lucas looked at him and eventually nodded.

The chairman picked up the agenda and said, ‘Item four …’

‘Hold on. I don’t understand exactly what we have decided,’ said the investments man.

The lawyer said, ‘Colonel Lucas will fly out to Spanish Guiana to decide what medical aid should be given to people in the southern provinces.’

‘The Marxist guerrillas,’ said the man from Birmingham.

‘The people in the southern provinces,’ repeated the chairman firmly. He didn’t say much but he knew what he wanted the minutes to record.

The lawyer said, ‘The donor has offered to arrange for a guide, interpreter and all expenses.’

They looked at Lucas and it amused him to see in their faces how pleased they were to be rid of him. It was not true to say that Lucas nodded without thinking about it. He had no great desire to visit Spanish Guiana, but the medical implications of a large organized community living isolated deep in the jungle could be far-reaching. There was no telling what he might learn: and Lucas loved to learn. More immediately; he was the medical adviser to the board. They’d expect him to go. It would give him a change of scenery and he had no family responsibilities to consider. And there was the unarguable fact that he could report on the situation better than any man round this table. In fact better than any man they could get hold of at short notice.

Lucas nodded.

‘Bravo, Colonel,’ said the man from Birmingham.

The peer smiled. The jungle was the best place for the little Australian peasant.

‘Item four then,’ said the chairman. ‘This is the grant for the inoculation scheme in Zambia. We now have the estimates for the serum …’

Lucas remembered that he was supposed to meet his daughter next week. Perhaps his sister would meet her instead. He’d drop in on her as soon as this meeting ended. She’d question him about his trip to South America and then claim to have divined it in the stars. Oh well. Perhaps it would have been better if she had got married, but she’d chosen instead to look after his ailing parents. He felt guilty about that. He’d never given any of the family anything to compare with the love and devotion they had given him. Too late now: he’d take his guilt to the grave.

He’d tell her what he knew himself and that wasn’t much. He looked down at the pad in front of him. He’d drawn a jungle of prehensile trees, each leaf an open hand. On second thoughts he’d tell her little or nothing. He’d only be away three weeks, a month at the most.

Serena Lucas, his unmarried sister, lived in a smart little house in Marylebone. Ralph could never enter it without feeling self-conscious. The polished brass plate on the railings was as discreet as any lawyer’s shingle. Only the symbol beneath her name told the initiated that here lived a clairvoyant.

A disembodied voice came in response to the bellpush. ‘It’s Ralph,’ he said into the microphone. A buzzer sounded and he opened the door.

The short narrow hall immediately gave on to a staircase. These houses were damned small: he would not like to live in one. But it was immaculately kept. The carpeting and the furnishings were good quality and carefully chosen. On the wall he saw a new lithograph: a seascape by a fashionable artist. He guessed it had been payment for some shrewd piece of advice. She encouraged her clients to give her such gifts and usually got generously overpaid. The old witch was clever, there was no doubt about that, whatever one thought about the supernatural.

‘That’s a fine print,’ said Ralph as his sister came out of her study to greet him.

They kissed as they always did. She offered each cheek in turn and he avoided disturbing her make-up. Madame Serena was an attractive woman four years younger than Ralph. She was slim and dark with a pale complexion and wonderful luminous eyes that were both penetrating and sympathetic. Perhaps such colouring fulfilled her clients’ expectations of Bohemian blood, but the tailored suit, gold earrings and expensive shoes were another dimension of her personality. The fringed handbag with its beadwork was the only hint of the Gypsy.

‘What a lovely surprise to see you, Ralph.’ She pronounced it ‘Rafe’ as one of her well-bred clients had once done. Her voice had no trace of the Queensland twang.

‘I was passing. I hope you’re not too busy.’

‘The day before yesterday I had a senior Cabinet minister here,’ she said. She had to tell him the moment he got inside the door. She was still the little sister wanting his approval and admiration.

‘Not the Home Secretary trying to find a way out of that hospital scandal?’

She didn’t acknowledge his joke. ‘Ralph. You know I never gossip about clients.’ And yet in her manner she was able to imply that she had been consulted on some vital matter of government policy.

‘I’m sent to South America, Serena. Just a week or so. I wonder if you would meet Jennifer next Wednesday afternoon? If not, I will see if I can contact her and change the arrangements.’

She did not reply immediately. She led him into the drawing-room and they both sat down. ‘Would you like tea, Ralph?’

‘Have you caught this appalling English habit of drinking tea all day?’

‘Clients expect it.’

‘And you read the tea-leaves.’

‘You know perfectly well that I do not. Tea relaxes them. The English become far more human when they have a hot cup of tea in their hand.’

‘Do they? I shall bear that in mind,’ said Ralph. ‘You’ll meet Jennifer then?’

His sister and daughter did not enjoy a warm relationship but he knew Serena would not refuse. They had grown up in a warm congenial family atmosphere where they did things for one another. She took a tiny notebook from her handbag and turned it to the appropriate page. ‘I have nothing I cannot rearrange. What time is the plane arriving?’

‘London–Heathrow at five.’

‘Wednesday is not an auspicious day for travelling, Ralph,’ she said.

‘Perhaps not, but we can’t consult you every time anyone wants to go somewhere.’

She sighed.

Ralph said, ‘I wish Jennifer had chosen a college somewhere in the south.’

‘You fuss over her too much, Ralph. She is nineteen. Some women have a family and a job too at that age.’ Serena took a small antique silver case from her handbag and produced a cigarette. She lit it with a series of rapid movements and breathed out the smoke with a sigh of exasperation. ‘You should think of yourself more. You are still young. You should meet people and think about getting married again. Instead you bury yourself in that wretched house in the country and finance every whim your daughter thinks up.’ She extended a hand above her head and flapped it in a curious gesture. Ralph decided that it was an attempt to wave away the smoke.

‘That’s not true, Serena. She never asks for extra money. If I bury myself in the country it’s because I’m in the workshop finishing the portable high-voltage electrophoresis machine. It could save a lot of lives eventually.’ He smiled. ‘And I thought you liked my house.’

‘I do, Ralph.’ He’d discovered the ramshackle clapboard cottage on the Suffolk coast, and purchased it against the advice of everyone, from his sister to his bank manager. It was now a welcoming and attractive home. Ralph had done most of the building work with his own hands.

Sitting here with his sister – so far from the home in which they’d grown up – Ralph Lucas wondered at the way both of them had changed. They had both become English. His sister had embraced the English ways enthusiastically, but for Ralph Lucas change had come slowly. Yet even his resistance and objections to English things had been in the manner that the English themselves rebelled. Nowadays he found himself saying ‘old boy’ and ‘old chap’ and wearing the clothes and doing all kinds of things done by the sort of upper-class English twit he’d once despised. England did this to its admirers and to its enemies.

‘South America,’ said Ralph to break the silence.

‘I knew you’d be crossing the water, Ralph,’ she said.

‘Do you make it three weeks or a month?’ he asked with raised eyebrow.

‘Oh, I know you’ve never believed in me.’

‘Now that’s not true, Serena. I admit you’ve surprised me more than once.’

Encouraged she added, ‘And you will meet someone …’

‘A certain someone? Miss Right?’ He chuckled. She never gave up on arranging a wife for him: a semi-retired tennis champion from California, an Australian stockbroker and a widow with a flashy country club that needed a manager. Her ideas never worked out.

She leaned forward and took his hand. She’d never done anything like that before. For a moment he thought she was going to read his palm but she just held his hand as a lover – or a loving sister – might. He recognized this as a sign of one of her premonitions.

‘Chin up! I’m only teasing, old girl. Don’t be upset. I didn’t mean anything by it.’

‘You must take care of yourself, Ralph. You are all I have.’

He didn’t quite know how to respond to her in this kind of mood. ‘Now! Now! Remember when I came back from Vietnam? Remember admitting the countless times you had seen a vision of me lying dead in the jungle, a gun in my hand and a comrade at my side?’

She nodded but continued to stare down at their clasped hands for a long time, as if imprinting something on to her memory. Then she looked up and smiled at him. It was better to say no more.

4

TEPILO, SPANISH GUIANA. ‘A Yankee newspaper.’

Ralph Lucas did not much like flying and he detested airlines and everything connected with them. He dreaded the plastic smiles and reheated food, their ghastly blurred movies, their condescending manner and second-rate service. He had not enjoyed his ‘first-class’ transatlantic flight from London to Caracas via New York. Waiting at Caracas, he was not pleased to hear that the connecting flight to Tepilo was going to be even more uncomfortable. After a long delay he flew onwards in a ten-seater Fokker which had República Internacional painted shakily on the side. He shared the passenger compartment with six old men in deep mourning and six huge wreaths.

The flight was long and tedious. He looked down at the fever-racked coastal plain and the shark-infested ocean and remembered the joke about President de Gaulle choosing France’s missile launching site in nearby French Guiana. It was not sited there because at the Equator the spinning earth would provide extra thrust, but because ‘If you are a missile there, you’d go anywhere.’

Neither the runway nor the electronics at Tepilo airport were suited to big jets. A Boeing 707 with a bold pilot could get in on a clear day; and out provided it was judiciously loaded for take-off. Such an aviator had brought in an ancient Portuguese 707 that Lucas saw unloading cases of champagne and brandy into the bonded warehouse as he landed. There were other planes there: some privately owned Moranes, Cessnas and a beautifully painted Learjet Longhorn 55 that was owned by the American ambassador. There was a hut with ‘Aereo-Club’ on its tin roof so that visiting pilots would see it. Now alas, windows broken, it was strangled under weeds.

The main airport building – like the sole remaining steel-framed hangar – provided nostalgic recognition to passengers who had encountered the US Army Air Forces in World War Two. Little changed, these were the temporary buildings that the Americans had erected here, alongside this same runway, and the subterranean fuel store. Tepilo (or Clarence Johnson field as it was then named) was built as an emergency landing field for bombers being ferried to Europe by the southern route.

Upon emerging from immigration, Lucas looked round. The mourners with whom he’d travelled were being greeted by a dozen equally doleful men clutching orchids. All of them were dressed in three-piece black suits and shiny boots. Stoically enduring the stifling heat was an aspect of their tribute. All the airport benches – and the floor around them – were occupied by families of Indians in carefully laundered shirts and pants, and colourful cotton dresses. Their wide-eyed faces, and their hands, revealed that they were agricultural workers on a rare visit to the big city. Most of them were guarding their shopping: some pairs of shoes, a tyre, a doll and, for one excited little boy, a battery-powered toy bulldozer.

‘Mr Lucas?’

‘Yes, that’s me.’

She smiled at his obvious discomposure. ‘My name is Inez Cassidy. I am directed to take care of you.’

Lucas couldn’t conceal his surprise. It wasn’t just that the MAMista contact proved to be female that disconcerted him, it was that she was not at all the type he expected. She was slim and dark, her complexion set off by the shade of her brown shirt-style dress, whose simplicity belied its price. She wore pearls at her throat, a gold wristwatch and Paris shoes. Her make-up was slight and subtle. Anywhere in the world she would have attracted looks of admiration; here in this squalid backwater she was nothing short of radiant.

Her face was not only calm but impassive, held so to counter the insolent stares and whispered provocations that women endure in public places in Latin America. She touched her hair. That it was a nervous mannerism did not escape Lucas, and he saw in her eyes a fleeting glimpse of the vulnerability that she took such pains to conceal.

‘Will I fly south directly?’ Lucas asked, hoping that the answer would be no. He too was something of a surprise, wearing an old Madras cotton jacket, its pattern faded to pastel shades, and lightweight trousers that had become very wrinkled from his journey. He had a brimmed hat made from striped cotton; the sort of hat that could be rolled up and stuffed into a pocket. His shoes were expensive thin-soled leather moccasins. She wondered if he intended wearing this very unsuitable footwear in the south. It suddenly struck her that such a middle-aged visitor from Europe would have to be cosseted if they were to get him home in one piece.

‘May I see your papers?’ She took them from him and passed his baggage tags to a porter who had been standing waiting for them. She also gave him some money and told him to collect the bags and meet them at the door. The porter moved off. Then she read the written instructions and the vague ‘to whom it may concern’ letter of introduction that the Foundation had given him in London. It made no mention of Marxist guerrilla movements. ‘Tomorrow or Thursday,’ she said. ‘Sometimes there are problems.’

‘I understand.’

She smiled sadly to tell him that he did not understand: no foreigner could. She had met such people before. They liked to call themselves liberals because they sympathized with the armed struggle and tossed a few tax-deductible dollars into some charity front. Then they came here to see what was happening to their money. Even the best-intentioned ones could never be trusted. It was not always their fault. They came from another world, one that was comfortable and logical. More importantly they knew they would return to it.

She read the letter again and then passed it back to him. ‘I have a car for you. The driver is not one of our people. Be careful what you say to him. The cab drivers are all police informers, or they do not keep their licences. You have a British passport?’

‘Australian.’ She looked at him. ‘It’s an island in the Pacific.’

‘I have arranged accommodation in town,’ she said. ‘Nothing luxurious.’

‘I’m sure it will be just fine.’ Lucas smiled at her. For the first time she looked at him with something approaching personal interest. He was not tall, only a few inches taller than her, but the build of his chest and shoulders indicated considerable strength. His face was weather-beaten, his eyes bright blue and his expression quizzical.

She reached for his arm and pulled him close to her. If he was surprised at this sudden intimacy he gave no sign of it. ‘Look over my shoulder,’ she said softly.

He immediately understood what was expected of him. ‘A horde of policemen coming through a door marked “Parking”,’ he told her. He could see the porter, waiting at the exit holding his bags. Beyond him, through the open doors, police vans were being parked. Their back doors were open and he could see their bench seats and barred windows.

Head bent close to his she said, ‘Probably a bomb scare. They’ll check the papers of everyone as they leave the ticket hall.’

‘Will you be all right?’

Keeping her head bowed so as not to expose her face she said, ‘There is no danger but it is better that they do not see us together.’

Policemen passed them leading two sniffer dogs. She lifted Lucas’ hand and kissed it. Then, as she turned her body, he put his arm round her waist to keep up the pretence of intimacy. ‘I will be all right,’ she said. ‘I have a Venezuelan passport. Walk me away from the policemen at the enquiry desk: they will recognize me.’

In that affectionate manner that is a part of saying farewell, Lucas walked holding her close, with her head lolling on his shoulder. They went to the news-stand, his arm still holding her resolutely. When they stopped she turned to him and looked into his eyes.

‘You must remember the address. Don’t write it down.’ She glanced across to where two policemen had taken control of the enquiry desk. Then she made sure that the porter was still waiting with Lucas’ bag. She leaned even closer and said, ‘Fifty-eight, Callejón del Mercado. Ask the driver for the President Ramírez statue. He’ll think you are going to the silver market.’

As they stood together, half embracing and with her lips brushing his chin, he felt a demented desire to say ‘I love you’ – it seemed an appropriately heady reaction. There were police at every door now. They had cleared the far side of the concourse. Two policemen with pass keys were systematically opening the baggage lockers one by one. The one and only departure desk had been closed down and a police team, led by a white-shirted civilian, was questioning a line of ticket-holders. Some had been handcuffed and taken out to the vans.

Lucas didn’t say ‘I love you’ but he did crush her close. She let her body go limp and put both arms round him to play the part she’d chosen.

‘The porter is paid already.’

‘I don’t like leaving you.’

‘Don’t pay more than the amount on the meter,’ she advised, gently breaking from the embrace. ‘They are all thieves.’

‘Will I see you again?’

‘Yes, later. And I will be on the plane when you go south,’ she promised.

He held her tight and murmured, ‘I love you.’

They say it’s the proximity of the Equator that does it.

The policeman at the door glanced at him, his ticket and his passport and then nodded him through. The porter opened the door of an old Chevrolet cab and put the bags alongside the driver. ‘Take me to the statue of President Ramírez,’ said Lucas. His Spanish was entirely adequate but the cab driver was more at home in the patois. It took two more attempts before he was understood. Lucas was determined to master the curious mixed tongue. He said, ‘Is the traffic bad?’

‘Are you Italian?’

‘Australian.’

It meant nothing to the driver but he nodded and said, ‘Yes, I recognized your accent.’ He sighed. ‘Yes: police blocks all round the Plaza. Checking papers, looking in the trunk, asking questions. I will avoid the Plaza. Traffic is backed up all the way to the cathedral.’

‘What is happening?’

‘Those MAMista bastards,’ said the driver. ‘They put a bomb in the Ministry of Pensions last night. They say people in the street outside were wounded. I hope they catch the swines.’

‘Your politics here are very complicated,’ said Lucas tentatively.

‘Nothing complicated about tourist figures being down sixty-eight per cent on last year. And last year was terrible! That’s what those mad bastards have done for working men like me. Visitors down by sixty-eight per cent! And that’s the official statistic, so you can double that.’

The taxi was making a long detour. Cabs did not usually bring tourists along this part of the waterfront. Here the militant residents of sprawling slums had declared them to be independent guerrilla townships. Painted warnings and defiant Marxist proclamations marked the ‘frontier’. Beyond that the police armoured carriers closed their hatches and, at night, watched out for home-made petrol bombs.

The Benz government refused to admit that there were any of these spots that foreign reporters called ‘rebel fortresses’. Regularly they proved their point by sending in the army to do a ‘house-to-house’. Soldiers in full battle order brought tanks, water cannon and searchlights. They closed off a selected section and searched it for arms, fugitives and subversive literature. Sometimes the army took reporters along to show them how it was done. The last such demonstration had encountered a rain of nail bombs and Molotov cocktails: two soldiers and a Swedish journalist had been severely burned.

But for many people in Tepilo the slums – and their rebel townships – did not exist. That side of town was not on the route to any of the good beaches or the swanky nightclubs. Even the people who had to drive that way used the elevated freeway that took them high above the barriada. Providing they kept the window closed, they didn’t even notice the stench that arose from it.

But Lucas didn’t keep his window closed. He looked down and saw the beggars and the diseased, the cripples and the starving. There were hollow-faced skeletons wrapped in rags and hungry babies that never stopped crying. Sprayed on the rusty iron sheets, and broken pieces of dockyard crates, were revolutionary slogans. Here and there flew a home-made flag, spared from precious cloth to signal their anger. It was too bewildering. Lucas looked away. On each side of him Cadillacs and Bentleys, Fords and Fiats raced past, no one sparing a glance for that netherworld.

When they reached the water the people strolling along Ocean Boulevard did not seem to worry about the people of the barriada. Neither did the shopkeepers in the cramped little alleys of Esmeralda where ramshackle slum tenements had been artfully transformed into a chic shopping district. Here the latest in Japanese video cameras, genuine furs of almost extinct carnivores and gold and enamel bracelets – ‘replicas of pre-historic Indian designs’ – could be bought tax-free for US dollars, Marks or Yen.

The cab stopped and Lucas got out at the statue of President Ramírez, ‘indomitable founder of Spanish Guiana’s freedom’. There was a smell of damaged fruit and vegetables. The market square was empty except for men rolling up the sun-blinds and stacking away the market stalls, and a couple of nuns picking through a heap of discarded produce.

The address he wanted was a callejón crowded with shoppers and tourists. Some had been taking photographs of the vegetable market. Some were coming and going between the much photographed statue and Tepilo’s notorious ‘sailor’s alley’, a dark little sidestreet of tiny bars, loud music and bright neon signs that had become a place where prostitutes plied their trade. Here were men, women and small children catering to all tastes. Other tourists were looking for the ‘silver alley’ where it was said noble families offered priceless antiques for discreet and immediate cash sale. Some wanted to see the military checkpoint that marked the extreme edge of the villa miseria that the guerrilleros were said to control.

Lucas made his way along the crowded alley, pushing through the pimps, beggars and salesmen who grabbed at his sleeve and jacket. The archway at number fifty-eight bore a painted sign, Gran Hotel Madrid. Lucas stepped over the outstretched legs of a sleeping doorkeeper. On the wall a sign made from shiny stick-on letters said ‘privado’. Lucas went past the sign and into a cobbled courtyard at the rear of an old three-storeyed building.

The sunlight in the courtyard was coloured green by a tree that reached higher than the roof. Around the courtyard fretwork wooden balconies jutted out at each level. Numbered doors indicated a collection of small dwellings. Everywhere there were big pots from which rubbery plants and glossy flowers came crawling up the rainwater pipes and hanging over the balconies. One would think a town perched on the edge of the jungle would have enough greenery without potted plants, thought Lucas. At ground level a black woman was emptying a pail of soapy water into the open drain. She stared at Lucas. This was not a hotel, nor a whorehouse, she told him. Lucas nodded amiably and she told him it was forbidden to take photographs here. He smiled. She stood arms akimbo and watched him ascend the narrow staircase to the third floor. She was still looking at him after he’d rung the doorbell and looked down over the balcony. He raised his hat.

From inside came the sound of a heavy bolt being drawn. The door opened a little and a man’s face appeared in the gap. It was not welcoming.

‘My name is Ralph Lucas.’

The man said nothing. Without haste he opened the door to allow Lucas inside, where Lucas noted the smell of cooking and, from somewhere nearby, the sound of a radio tuned to Spanish pop music. When the door was closed and bolted again, the hall became dark. Now the only light came from the dim bulb in a tiny plastic conch shell fixed to the ceiling.

The man pushed past Lucas, opened another door, and led the way into a room that faced the front of the building. It was bright and sunny, its window providing a view of the rooftops and the cathedral. The room was furnished like a study. There were shelves of books and a desk upon which pens, inks, pencils and a large sheet of pink blotting paper were neatly arranged. In the corner a small refrigerator whirred loudly. Propped in the corner alongside it stood a folding canvas bed. Lucas regarded the bed with interest and decided it was where he would probably sleep that night.

Another man was there: a slim tanned fellow, about twenty, with long wavy hair and steel-rimmed glasses. He wore jeans and scuffed tennis shoes. He seemed ill at ease and was toying with a glass of beer. Lucas guessed him to be another foreign visitor.

The man who had let him in was powerfully built, dark-skinned and about forty years old. He was wearing white trousers, now somewhat wrinkled, and a red-checked shirt. His face was marked with the sort of scars that prize fighters – and street fighters – sometimes flaunt. Such men often had the same large lumpy hands that this man had, but they seldom had fingernails missing.

Lucas guessed that he was a communist of the old style. The party liked men like this: battered Goliaths, diligent, humourless men who would provide bed and board to mysterious foreigners because some local party secretary – the girl no doubt – said it was for the cause.

While rummaging in the refrigerator, the elder man said his name was Chori and, still without turning, introduced the younger man as Angel Paz. Angel of Peace: it sounded an unlikely name to Lucas, but some parents liked weird names. So Lucas nodded to Angel Paz and gladly accepted the cold beer that Chori poured.

There was an awkward silence. The arrival of Lucas had interrupted them. Lucas could see that some sort of relationship existed between these two incongruous individuals. They were not homosexuals, he decided: perhaps it was a political secret. Communists needed secret conspiracy as fish need water.

‘Here we have no middle-class intelligentsia,’ said Chori, as if taking up a conversation that had been interrupted. ‘Or at least, very few.’ He waved his hands impatiently. ‘We are a workers’ movement. It is the workers who bring the revolution to the Indians and farmers in the south.’ He looked at Lucas as if inviting him to join the conversation.

Angel said, ‘Historically that is bad. Marx said there must be a middle-class intelligentsia to theorize and support the instinctive revolutionary movement that the workers initiate.’

‘Huh!’ said Chori.

Angel Paz did not continue with his lecture. He decided that it was too earnest, and too intellectual, for comrades such as Chori. But he thought none the less of him for that. Nothing could upset Angel Paz today. He couldn’t remember ever being so happy. Today Tepilo was his home. This smelly broken-down little town was the place he’d been looking for all his life. Here were simple people who needed help if they were ever to throw off the shackles of the fascists who ruled them.

The successful planting of the bomb, and more specially the impression he’d made on Chori with his technical abilities, gave Angel Paz a glow of contentment. What did it matter that Chori seemed to have no interest in political theory? When they got to the south, where the MAMista army leaders were by now planning an assault upon the northern towns, Angel Paz would have a chance to make known his strategic views. Thanks to his uncle Arturo – and his sleazy drug-dealing in Los Angeles – Paz had arrived here at exactly the right moment. So Arturo thought Karl Marx was dead. Well, Karl Marx and Lenin too would rise from the grave and smite all such capitalist racketeers with a terrible fury.

Lucas – who was not in the mood for any sort of intense political discussion – took off his Madras jacket. It was limp with the wet heat. He hung it over a chair. Then he stood at the open window and concentrated upon his beer. The sun was sinking but the heat had not dropped much. These tiny apartments, without air-conditioning or even electric fans, trapped the humid air and held it even after the evening breeze was cooling the streets.

‘This is good American beer,’ said Chori, seemingly relieved to escape from Angel’s earnest political discussion. ‘There will be no more, if the rumours about devaluing the peseta turn out true.’

Angel said, ‘Benz has sent his finance minister to Washington.’

‘Trying to get beer?’ said Lucas.

Angel did not smile.

Chori said, ‘Trying to buy armoured personnel carriers and helicopters to suppress the revolution. But the Yankees don’t want our lousy pesetas.’

‘It’s an ill wind,’ said Lucas.

‘You are English?’ asked Angel.

‘Australian,’ said Lucas. He looked at the two men – as different as chalk and cheese – and was still curious about the relationship between them. Lucas’ time in the army had made him a good judge of character. He decided that no relationship between these two would endure. They would clash and the result would be messy.

No one had invited Lucas to sit down but he sat down anyway. The chair he’d chosen faced the TV. Chori politely switched it on for him. For want of something else to do, they watched a few minutes of a film about pollution. The camera dwelt upon unusually clean factories, very sincere scientists and happy Latin American workers wearing upon their white coats the badge of an international chemical company. The programme was followed by commercials: an American soft drink, an American car rental company and an American airline. The news bulletin came immediately afterwards. The police searches at the airport got first priority. ‘Anti-Drugs Squad crack-down at airport’ said the commentary. There followed shots of the police questioning the agricultural workers, and their families, the people Lucas had noticed at the airport. The news item ended with pictures of police vans taking away people wanted for further questioning.

The next news item dealt with the previous night’s bomb explosion at the Ministry of Pensions. The flashing lights of police cars and ambulances made pretty pictures with a fashionable amount of lens flare. Then came a flick-zoom to the Ministry’s spokesman. He was a carefully coiffured man in the elaborate uniform of a police colonel. He said, ‘Six MAMista terrorists murdered two night-watchmen in order to place explosives in the central safe. Four passers-by were seriously injured by broken glass and were taken to the hospital of Santa Teresa de Avila.’

‘With what purpose were the bombs set off?’ asked the interviewer.

The police colonel looked directly into the lens and said, ‘To destroy the microfilm records. To interrupt and delay payments to government workers and pension payments to retirees.’

‘Do the police have any leads?’

‘The police laboratory believe they have identified the explosives and the probable source of them. The Union of Government Servants has asked their members to cooperate fully against this new campaign of murder. Even the PEKINista high command has protested. In a statement this afternoon, they say they are opposed to the bombing campaign of the MAMistas.’

‘Can we expect arrests?’

Chori switched off the TV. The police colonel wobbled and expired. ‘You can see what they are trying to do,’ Chori told the world at large. ‘Trying to lever the Pekinista guerrillas apart from us. If you went to the hospital you’d find a couple of people with scratches.’

Paz nodded, but the chances that his explosion had blown the windows out, and injured someone in the street below, were not to be dismissed.

Chori picked up Lucas’ can of beer, shook it to be sure it was empty, then raised an enquiring eyebrow.

‘Yes, if you can spare it,’ said Lucas. He was being stuffy and British. He felt he should make an effort to be cordial.

Chori said, ‘The airport shakedown was just a stunt to push the bomb into second place on the news.’

‘I was there,’ said Lucas. ‘The police seemed to be concentrating upon the Indian families.’

‘That’s the joke,’ said Chori, handing Lucas his beer. ‘You saw them, did you? They are the cocaleros. Those Indian farmers are the people who are growing that shit. They take their crops to the jungle laboratories that are owned by Benz and his government cronies. What a joke.’

‘Are they rich?’ Lucas asked.

‘The cocaleros? No. You saw them. Poor bastards scrape together a few pesetas to have a cheap plane trip here to buy shoes twice a year. But they are making more than they’d make from growing coffee.’

Lucas got up and walked back to the window, as if a view across the rooftops would help him understand what was going on here. At the intersection he saw curious curved marks on the road. They were familiar and yet he couldn’t place them. It was only when he noticed that the cop on traffic duty had a machine gun over his shoulder that he recognized the marks as the damage done when a tank turns a corner. Tanks. Despite so many outward appearances of normalcy, this was a damned dangerous town.

‘It’s hot,’ said Angel Paz.

‘It will be hotter in the south,’ Chori said.

So the young man was going south too. ‘And cold nights until the rains begin,’ Lucas added.

The foreigners looked at each other as they realized that both of them would be going to the MAMista permanent base. No newspaper people were ever allowed there and those who’d gone without permission had not returned to tell the story. Angel Paz said, ‘How long will you be there?’

‘I am not political,’ Lucas said. He wanted to get that straight before they shared any of their wretched secrets with him. ‘Strictly business. I am doing a health check. In and out: a week or ten days.’

Paz said, ‘Uncommitted. In this part of the world the uncommitted get caught in the cross-fire.’

‘You should get your hair cut before we leave,’ Lucas said. ‘Right, Chori?’

‘You’ll be running with lice otherwise,’ said Chori.

‘We’ll see,’ said Angel Paz, running a hand back through his wavy locks. His hair had taken a long time to grow this long, and it looked good this way.

Lucas was getting hungry and there was no sign that food would be coming. ‘Can I buy you a meal?’ he said.

Chori said, ‘There is a party at The Daily American. There will be plenty to eat and drink.’

‘What is it?’ asked Lucas.

Chori said, ‘A Yankee newspaper. In English. They invite liberals and left-wingers for hamburgers and wine. You know the kind of thing. There will be plenty of everything. If you are still hungry, the San Giorgio across the street does a decent plate of spaghetti.’

‘That will do,’ said Lucas.

Chori said, ‘You are both sleeping here tonight. Make sure you know the address. I’ll have to be back before curfew but your foreign passports will get you past the patrols. And for God’s sake don’t run away from them.’

The office of The Daily American had that comforting sign of over-capitalization that is the hallmark of all American enterprises from fast-food counters to orthodontists. It was on the fifth floor of one of the few buildings in Tepilo built to withstand earthquake tremors and incorporating such safety equipment as sprinklers. When he got out of the elevator Lucas was greeted by the distant sounds of recorded music and noisy chatter.

He went down a corridor to a large reception hall that had comfortable sofas and a glass-topped desk with an elaborate telephone system. It was this area, and the room where the morning conference was held, that was made available for the party. The doors to the offices with the desks, word processors and other equipment, were locked. A hi-fi played Latin American music: cumbia, salsa and the occasional samba.

The fluorescent lights had been replaced by paper lanterns and the rooms were decorated with palm fronds and artfully folded pieces of aluminium kitchen foil. The air-conditioning was fully on. The guests were noisy and jovial, and in that slightly hysterical state that free food and drink brings.

Upon the conference table were paper plates and plastic knives and forks. Platters of sliced sausage, square slices of processed cheese and slices of rectangular ham were decorated with olives and sprigs of herb. Also upon the long table were electric hotplates with frankfurters and chilli. There was American coffee too and, on a bench under the window, Chilean white wine stood in buckets of ice.

In keeping with the liberal persuasion of the newspaper proprietor, there were no servants. Lucas accepted a glass of cold wine and briefly conversed with a man who wanted to display his familiarity with London. He talked with a couple of other guests before catching sight of Inez. He picked up a bottle of wine and took a clean glass. He’d poured two glasses of wine as he felt a tap on his shoulder. ‘Inez,’ he said. He had been about to use the wine in order to interrupt the conversation he’d seen her having with a handsome man in unmistakably American clothes.

‘You have been here for ages, and did not come across to speak,’ she said. It was such a coy opening that she could hardly believe that she was using it.

He gave her a glass of wine and looked at her. She was wearing a simple black dress with a gold brooch. A patent-leather purse hung on a chain over her shoulder.

She sipped and, for a moment, they stood in silence. Then she said, ‘You were deep in conversation?’

‘Yes,’ Lucas said. ‘An American from the embassy. He used to live in London.’

‘O’Brien. Mike O’Brien.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Lucas said.

‘CIA station head for Spanish Guiana, and maybe all the Guianas.’

‘You don’t mean it?’

She smiled.

He turned so that they could both see the mêlée. ‘Well, he seemed a decent enough chap. You think he was sounding me out?’ When she didn’t answer he said, ‘Well, yes, you’re right. We should assume that he heard someone like me was coming.’

As if aware that they were talking about him, Mike O’Brien smiled at Inez from across the room.

‘He knows you,’ said Lucas.

‘My name is Cassidy. It goes back many generations here in Guiana. My great-grandfather Cassidy was the first judge. But O’Brien likes to joke that we are both Irish.’

‘Does he know …?’

She turned to him. ‘It’s difficult for a foreigner to understand but many of the people in this room know that I am one of the people who handle statements for the MAMista command.’

‘The MAMista is an illegal organization.’

‘Yes, it is. But the Benz government officials tolerate me and others like me.’

‘And you get invited to drink with the Americans and the CIA chief smiles at you. I don’t get it.’

‘It is expedient. Channels of communication remain open between all parties. Sometimes we give warnings about … things we do.’ She didn’t want to say ‘bombs we plant’. Neither did she want to tell him of the hostages that were sometimes taken: government officials that they held for ransom. Inez Cassidy had handled such matters. It was not a way to make yourself popular. She finished her wine, drinking it too quickly. She put the glass down.

‘How do you know the secret police are not biding their time and collecting evidence against you?’

‘Our secret police don’t bide their time. They send a murder squad to gun you down without witnesses.’

‘But the Americans? Do they know what you do?’

‘The American government is not wedded to the Benz regime,’ she said simply.

‘That sort of expedience,’ said Lucas. He could see she did not want to say more.

The music was switched off as five chairs were placed in position at the end of the room. Five musicians climbed up on to the chairs. They produced a chord or two on the electric guitar and a rattle of maracas. A sigh of disappointment went up from those guests who had been hoping that the Americans would produce a pop group or some American-style music.

‘Mother of God,’ said Inez, regretfully noting it and adding it to her total of blasphemies that would have to be confessed. ‘I really can’t endure another evening of that.’

‘Are you here with anyone?’ Lucas asked.

‘Spare me a sip of wine,’ she said, taking his glass from him and drinking some. The gesture was enough to answer his question. She was not here with anyone she could not say goodbye to.

‘Shall we have dinner?’

‘Yes, I’m starved.’ It was the sort of archness she despised in other women. It ill suited a politically committed woman of thirty. She looked at the people dancing. The man who had brought her was dancing close with the editor’s daughter who’d just left college in California. It was a modern lambada: danced to the rhythm of the samba. She was a good dancer but she was pressing close and smiling too much. The man would be a good catch: a young and handsome coffee broker. He’d inherit plantations too when his father died.

‘Italian food?’ He’d noted the neon sign for the San Giorgio restaurant as he was arriving here, so he knew exactly where it was.

‘Wonderful,’ said Inez. She looked again at the dancers. Inez had been in her twenties before the plumpness and spots of youth had disappeared. The sudden transformation had been intoxicating but she’d never completely adjusted to the idea of being a beautiful woman. It must be much easier for pretty young girls like that one; they grow up learning how to deal with men. For Inez the prospect of another relación was not only daunting but funny.

‘What are you smiling at?’

‘I’ll tell you later,’ she said. ‘You leave now. Don’t say goodbye to anyone. Drift out slowly. I will be downstairs in ten minutes’ time.’

He nodded. It was better that they were not seen leaving together. The music changed to a habanera, a very old Cuban rhythm in which gringos often detected the very essence of Lat in American amor. Over the fast tempo, words were sung very slowly.

Lucas knew that listening carefully to trite lyrics was one of the symptoms of falling in love, but the words – a tryst under a star-studded sky – seemed curiously apt. He avoided Angel Paz and Chori, who were drinking, eating and talking and seemed oblivious to the music. He edged out into the corridor.

As he got there he saw Mike O’Brien leaving, preceded by a short dark man who was frowning and looking at his watch. Lucas did not want to see O’Brien. He stopped and pretended to study the notice board. There were small ‘For Sale’ notices: microwave ovens, cars and TV sets being disposed of by Americans on their way home. In one corner of the cork board the front page of tomorrow’s edition of The Daily American had been posted.

‘Benz Representative at White House Meeting’ shouted the headline over a story about the Benz government’s young Finance Minister who was in Washington asking for money, tanks, planes and military aid and anything he could get. The reporter thought the US President would demand a crack-down on Spanish Guiana’s drug barons as a condition for aid.

Lower down on the page under the headline ‘State of Emergency Laws to be Renewed’, an editorial said that the ‘Orders in Council’ by means of which the Benz government ruled were expected to be renewed when the current term expired in two weeks’ time. Meanwhile the Prime Minister controlled the Council of Ministers, Council of State, Religious Affairs, Public Service Commission, Audit and Privy Council. The Minister of Finance controlled the Customs, Tax Department, Investment Agency, Economic Development and Planning and the Department of Computers and Statistics. And ‘Papa’ Cisneros, the Minister of Home Affairs, from the fifteen-storey building that dominated the skyline, controlled the National Police, Municipal Police, the Federalistas, the Prisons and Places of Detention, Immigration, Labour, Municipal and Central Security, Weights and Measures and the Fire Service.

In effect, said the editor, the country was in the hands of three men, all of them close to the President, Admiral Benz. The Constitution forbids legislation without the approval of democratically elected representatives, the editor reminded his readers. He added that the elected council had not met for almost ten years. It was as near to open rebellion as anyone could get away with in Spanish Guiana, tolerated only because it was printed in English for a small number of foreigners who would tut-tut and do nothing.

Having given O’Brien time enough, Lucas followed him down the corridor, opened the door and went out on to the dark landing. He could see the illuminated red buttons of the elevator and he sniffed tobacco smoke. There was too much smoke for it to be from one man waiting there. Lucas looked round. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a movement. As he turned he saw a figure rushing at him with hands upraised to strike. Had the man known Lucas he would not have raised both arms while approaching him with hostile intentions.

Lucas kicked. He hit the exact spot he wanted on his assailant’s knee, aiming his blow to knock the man in the direction of the staircase. Now Lucas brought his hand down sharply. The pain that burned the attacker’s leg was equalled by that of the sudden blow that Lucas delivered to his kidneys. Bent over and off-balance, the man toppled and went crashing down a long flight of concrete steps emitting a shrill scream of agony. More shouting came as he hit four men who were standing at the bottom step. They all fell down.

From the dark staircase above Lucas, voices shouted, ‘Federalista! Stay where you are! Federalista!’ and men came rushing down and swept him back into the newspaper offices. Lucas ran with them, pushing back through the crowded room as if he was one of the policemen. The music stopped in a discordant sequence of notes and all the lights went on to flood the room in the glare of blue office lighting. A woman screamed and everyone was talking and shouting at once.

A police captain with gold leaves on his hat climbed up on to one of the chairs that the musicians had vacated. He shouted for silence and then he made a short announcement in Spanish. Then a bearded interpreter got up and repeated the same announcement in English. While all this was going on, Lucas edged his way further into the room to get as many innocent people as he could between himself and the man he had injured. Soon they would start trying to find out who had kicked one of their officers down the staircase.

Lucas stood on tiptoe and saw Inez across the room looking for him. She made a face of resignation. He nodded. The police captain – through the interpreter – said that everyone would be taken to Police Headquarters and questioned. Those who wished it would be permitted to make a phone call from there. No calls could be made from this office. The reactions were mixed. Local residents had seen it all before and stood sullen and resigned. A young woman began to sob in that dedicated way that goes on for a long time. The man with her began to argue with a policeman in German-accented Spanish.

The interpreter got on the chair again and said, ‘American nationals who have their passports with them will be permitted to leave the building after being searched. They must deposit their passports with the police clerk standing at the door. He will issue an official receipt.’

Lucas saw Inez. She no longer had her handbag. He supposed she had dumped it somewhere lest it incriminate her in some way. She saw him looking her way but gave no sign of recognition.

Chori was at the buffet table. He’d found a bottle of whisky and was pouring himself a big measure of it.

5

EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, TEPILO.

‘No one’s perfect, kid.’

From the top floor of the American embassy building on the Plaza de la Constitución you might have seen the fifteen-storey building of shining bronze glass that housed the police headquarters. But one could not see the skyline of Tepilo from the top floor of the embassy because the window glass was frosted ever since rooftop spies had been seen with telescopes peering into it.

The top floor was the CIA floor. Even the ambassador asked permission before going there, although all concerned insisted that this was a mere formality.

Michael Sean O’Brien was a well-proportioned man of thirty-four. His unruly hair, once red, had become almost brown, but together with his pale complexion it marked him as of Celtic blood. So did his boundless conviviality and short-lived bouts of anger. His career through the Office of Naval Intelligence, the US War Academy and then as a State Department analyst had brought him to be CIA station head in Tepilo. ‘Next time, I make sure I get a post much farther east,’ he said wearily. Still holding an unopened can of Sprite, he used his finger to flick through the latest batch of messages to have come off the fax machine. It had been a trying morning as he sorted out the flood of questions that poured in from all quarters following the previous night’s raid on The Daily American. ‘Much farther east,’ he said.

His assistant didn’t respond except to smile. Even the smile was not too committal. When O’Brien was angry it was better to remain silent.

‘This place is too close to the Washington time zone,’ said O’Brien. ‘John Curl and his merry men snap at your heels all day long. In Moscow our guys can work all day knowing that Washington is asleep.’ He sighed, knowing that Latin American experts like him were unlikely to get very far from the Washington time zone. It was one of the many penalties of that specialization. Sometimes he regretted that he hadn’t worked harder at German verbs.

‘Can I get you a fresh cup of coffee?’ said his assistant, who that morning had taken quite a lot of the wrath that O’Brien would have liked to expend upon his superiors.

‘No,’ said O’Brien. He sat down behind his desk, snapped open his can of Sprite. He drank it, savouring it with the relish that Europeans reserve for vintage wine. Then he chuckled. ‘But you’ve got to hand it to these bastards. They’ve got the State Department jumping through hoops of fire for them, Pablo.’

‘Yes,’ said his assistant. His name was not Pablo, it was Paul: Paul Cohen. He was a scholarly graduate of Harvard whose difficulties with the Spanish language had made him a butt of O’Brien’s jokes. Calling him Pablo was one of them.

‘You saw the transcript of that phone call Benz took from his man in Washington. The White House said these boys here have got to straighten up and fly right, if they want aid. That was yesterday morning, right?’

The assistant treated no direct question as rhetorical. ‘Ten thirty-four local time,’ he said.

‘So Benz phones Cisneros at the Ministry. Cisneros kicks ass and the Anti-Drugs Squad raid the Daily American offices and the airport. Notice that, Pablo: not just the Daily American offices. And to both places they take with them all five of those Drug Enforcement guys the Department of Justice sent here to teach the locals how to do it. And what do they find, Pablo? They find eight Americans carrying coke.’

‘Two carrying,’ said his pedantic assistant. ‘The other six only had traces of it on their clothing.’

‘Tell the judge,’ said O’Brien, who didn’t like his stories to be dismantled. ‘The fact is that Uncle Sam reels back with egg on his face, while Benz and his boys are laughing fit to be tied.’ He finished his drink and then bent the can flat and tossed it into the bin. ‘The whole raid was a fiasco. I was there at The Daily American. I could see it was just a show. The cops told me some yarn about their guys being beaten up and tossed down the stairs. But we’ve heard that story a hundred times before.’

‘Yes, we have,’ his assistant said. ‘They didn’t try to detain you?’

‘Cisneros sent someone to get me out of there before the cops went in.’

His assistant looked at him sympathetically and nodded.

‘They didn’t even detain that Cassidy woman,’ O’Brien said bitterly. ‘I saw her getting a cab in the street outside. I told her, “I thought they were only releasing people depositing a US passport.” She said, “That’s what I did.” I said, “You’re not American.” She smiled and got in the cab and said, “That’s why I didn’t need it.” A cool nerve she’s got, Pablo. That was who that phoney US passport belonged to.’ He picked up the forged passport that had come from the police that morning for verification of authenticity. He flicked it open. Only the cover was genuine, the inside pages were forged. ‘She didn’t even bother to put her own photo into it. The woman doesn’t look anything like her,’ he said disgustedly. ‘A cool nerve. I love her.’

‘She’s a terrorist,’ Paul said.

‘No one’s perfect, kid. And what a figure!’

‘Something else came up,’ his assistant told him gently.

‘Oh yes?’ O’Brien allowed his voice to show that his exasperation was almost at breaking-point. He’d begun to hope that his troubles were over for one morning.

‘That Britisher. The one John Curl’s office asked us to make sure was free and on his way south.’

O’Brien, chin propped on his hand, said nothing.

‘The one we hoped they would forget about,’ said his assistant. Actually O’Brien had screamed something about Brits not being his damn problem, screwed-up the fax and thrown it into his burn bag. ‘Curl’s office sent three follow-ups.’

‘Three?’ O’Brien looked at the clock on the wall. He’d only been out of his office for about an hour.

‘Yes, three,’ said his assistant. ‘I thought it was rather unusual. Sounds like Washington is getting into a flap. He’s got to be important. Did you see the priority code?’

‘Look Pablo. I know you say these dopey things just to set me up, but you know that code is no more than a priority. This guy might just be doing something we’re interested in. He might not even know we exist.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Sure. I’ve seen random selected tourists get higher ratings back in the bad old days when we put things into their baggage so it would get to East Berlin or Havana.’

‘I see.’

‘It doesn’t mean a thing,’ O’Brien said. That was the end of that. ‘So how is the Spanish coming along?’ It was a standard question and usually indicated that O’Brien was in a good mood.

‘What a language. In my dictionary it defines “político” as politician but it also means an in-law.’

O’Brien laughed. ‘You’re getting the idea, Pablo.’

His phone buzzed. It was his secretary. ‘Professor Cisneros is returning your call, Mr O’Brien.’

‘At last,’ said O’Brien while keeping the mouthpiece covered with his hand. He’d been trying to talk to the Minister of Home Affairs ever since early morning. ‘Pick up your extension. I want you to hear this guy wriggle.’

‘My dear Mike,’ said the Minister of Home Affairs. His English was perfect and fluent but he had the attractive foreign accent that certain Hollywood film stars of the Forties cultivated. Slang does not always go with such accents, so when Cisneros said, ‘We have one of your buddies here,’ it sounded arch.

‘Is that right?’

‘You don’t know, Mike?’

‘We don’t have anyone missing from roll-call,’ O’Brien said sarcastically.

‘Mike, my friend. I am talking about this delightful Englishman, Lucas.’

‘Englishman Lucas?’

‘Don’t prevaricate, Mike. You were talking with him last night. And this morning someone in your ambassador’s private office has sent him a delicious breakfast and an airmail copy of the New York Times.’

Mike O’Brien capped the phone. ‘Jesus suffering Christ.’ He’d gone red with anger. To his assistant he said, ‘How can Junk-bond do these things without checking first with me?’ He hit his desk with the flat of his hand to emphasize the last word. With a superhuman effort of will, O’Brien recovered his composure and uncapped the phone to talk. ‘You’re not making sense to me, Professor.’

‘Don’t hedge, Mike, we are both busy men. And I know you only call me Professor when you are put out. If he really is not one of yours, I’ll tell my boys to lose him in the Número Uno Presidio.’

He was talking about a primitive labour camp for political prisoners. The inmates worked at clearing jungle. The climate, the conditions, and the lack of medical services and hygiene ensured that not many prisoners returned from it. ‘Anything but that, Papá,’ O’Brien said in mock terror that was easily contrived.

‘One of yours then?’

‘One of ours, Papá.’

‘You’re not a good loser, Mike. Now you owe me one, remember that.’

‘Did he really have a breakfast sent over?’

Papá laughed and hung up the phone. That’s what he liked about dealing with the norteamericanos: who but a Yankee would take a joke like that seriously?

Everyone called Cisneros ‘Papá’, even the prison trusty who came into his office each day to polish his impeccable shoes. This sort of informality in the burocracia, like the computer filing system, legal aid and the shirt and tie uniforms that he’d given to the municipales, were pet ideas of Cisneros. He’d been talking about reform ever since he was one of the most vocal elements in the opposition.

Papá Cisneros was at heart an academic. He only went into the lawcourts when there was a subtle point of law to argue. The first signs of political ambition came when he made headlines as defence counsel at the treason trials. That was long before Benz came to power. In those far-off days Cisneros had been a real professor: a law professor at the university. Protected to some extent by the privilege of the courtroom, he’d denounced the use of the Federalistas against the coffee growers who wouldn’t – or couldn’t – pay taxes. He convinced everyone, except perhaps the Tax Department officials, that the farmers were hungry. He’d criticized the way that internment without trial had been used as a political device, and the fact that rightwing groups seemed to be immune to it. At the time Papá was the spokesman for middle-class liberals who wanted to believe that there could be an end to violence without the inconvenience of reform. Or reform without higher taxes.

Papá Cisneros had become the darling of the coffee farmers. He still was. But nowadays the coffee farmers were growing coca, and Papá was not doing much to stop them. Three years before, the Municipal and Federal police had been brought together with the Political Police and Tax Police, directly under Cisneros. The figures indicated that cocaine traffic had increased sharply in that three-year period. All the changes had been announced as necessary reform. Cynics had other theories, the least defamatory being that it was simply a way of using the nice new fifteen-storey building.

In any case the present situation seemed to be the worst of all worlds. The large conscript army was ‘exercising in the provinces’ but never mustered strength enough to tackle the MAMista communists in the south. Neither did the army move against the Pekinista communist forces who had established a state within a state in the fertile Valley of the Tears of Christ where the coca and the coffee bushes flourished. In the panelled gentlemen’s clubs of Tepilo’s business district, it was said that as long as Papá Cisneros – the farmer’s friend – had control of the police, the drug barons could sleep without troubled dreams. This was said with a smile, for there was no one in such Tepilo clubs who didn’t in some way benefit from the wealth that came from the export of coca paste.

‘Bring him in,’ called Cisneros.

Lucas came into the room that Cisneros used as an office. Papá extended a hand towards the chair. Papá was dressed in an expensive dark suit with stiff collar and silver-coloured silk tie. There were four inches of starched linen, with solid gold cufflinks, around the wrist of the extended arm. The stiffness of the low bow, the full chest and slim hips betrayed the tight corset that vanity demanded. Papá was an inappropriate name for a man who looked like an Italian film star or a fashionable gynaecologist.

Somewhere nearby a door banged. It was a resonant sound, as one would expect from a building composed of prefabricated pressed steel units with glass and plastic facings. The monolithic fortress that had occupied this site in the days of the monarchy had been replaced by this tin and glass box. Yet the oppressive atmosphere remained unchanged. Lucas recalled his father’s description of the premises the Gestapo had used in Rome. It was part of a pre-war apartment block. Some carpenter must have worked overtime to convert the rooms and kitchen into cramped solitary-size cells. The interrogation room wallpaper had shown outlines of the bed-head and wardrobe. In one cell his father said there was a shelf that still smelled of Parmesan. But those domestic traces had not lessened the terror of the men brought to that SS office in Rome. And the modern fittings and office equipment did nothing to lessen the anxieties of men in this building.

Lucas brushed the cement dust off his jacket. In Spanish Guiana there were as many grades of cell as there were grades of hotel room. Lucas had spent the night in a cell equipped with heating and a shower bath. He’d been given a blanket and his bunk had a primitive mattress. It was by no means like the comfortable quarters provided for deposed Cabinet Ministers, but neither was it comparable to the stinking bare-earth underground dungeons.

Lucas had not slept well. He lowered himself into the soft armchair that Papá Cisneros indicated and felt the pain of his stiff joints. Cisneros closed the slatted blinds as if concerned not to dazzle his visitor. The sunlight still came through the lower part of the window and made a golden parallelogram upon the brown carpet.

The office was being prepared for a visit by a party of American Senators. Cisneros’ honorary doctorate from Yale, a group photo taken at the International Law Conference in Boston and the framed certificate given to those privileged few who’d flown as passengers in Air Force One had been stacked against the wall prior to being hung in a prominent position behind his desk. A large oil of a Spanish galleon anchored in Tepilo Bay, and an engraving of Saint Peter healing the sick, were to be put in the storeroom. An idealized portrait of Admiral Benz was to be moved to another wall. Papá kept changing things. Next week a large group of freeloaders from the European Community was coming to see him. It would all be changed again.

‘Gracias,’ said Cisneros, dismissing the warder with a careless wave. But it would have been a reckless visitor who believed that his ornamental mirror was anything but an observation panel or that the wardrobe was anything but a door behind which an armed guard sat.

‘This American boy: Angel Paz,’ said Cisneros very casually as he looked at the papers on his desk. ‘You say he is with you?’

‘Yes, he is with me,’ said Lucas.

Cisneros smiled. Greying hair curled over his ears, his eyes were large and heavily lidded. His nose was curved and beak-like. Papagayo! thought Lucas suddenly. Parrot, dandy, or tailor’s dummy, in whichever sense one used the word, it was a perfect description of Cisneros.

‘I wish you would not lie to me, Colonel Lucas.’

Lucas stared back at him without speaking.

‘If you would simply admit the truth: that you met him at that party for the first time, then I could probably release you quite soon.’

Lucas still said nothing.

Cisneros said, ‘Do you know what sort of people you will be dealing with, if you travel south?’

‘Am I to travel south?’ Lucas said.

‘Many young men have the same spirit of aggression, but they do not explode bombs in places where innocent people get killed and maimed. You British have had a taste of this same insanity: in Palestine, in Malaya, in Kenya, in Cyprus, in Aden and in Ireland. Tell me what I should do.’ There was a buzzer and Cisneros reached under his desk. The door opened and a man came in carrying a small tray with coffee. The man was dressed in a coarsely woven work-suit with a red stripe down the trousers and a red patch on the back between the shoulders. Papá liked to have prison trusties working here as evidence of the Ministry’s concern with rehabilitation. Only those people coming here regularly over the years were likely to notice that the trusties were always the same men. And the sort of visitors who might remark on this shortcoming of the rehabilitation policy were not the ones likely to be served coffee.

‘Thank you,’ Cisneros told the servant. Then he poured jet-black coffee into thimble-sized cups and passed one of them to Lucas.

‘Thank you, Minister,’ Lucas said.

For a moment Papá’s face relaxed enough for Lucas to get a glimpse of a tired disillusioned man trying too hard. The same dusting of talc that hid his faint shadow of beard lodged in the wrinkles round his eyes, so that they were drawn white upon his tanned face. Lucas drank the fierce coffee and was grateful for the boost it gave him.

‘Look at the view,’ said Cisneros. He moved the blind. He didn’t mean the new marina, where the yachts and power boats were crowded, nor the sprawling shanty-towns and the tiled roofs amid which this tall glass-fronted building stood like a spacecraft from another planet. He meant the hilly chaos of steamy vegetation. It startled Lucas to be reminded that some parts of the jungle reached so near to the town. From this high building it was an amazing sight. The trees held the mist so that the valleys were pure white, the ridges emerald, and hundreds of hilltops made islands of the sort which cartoonists draw. The same wind that howled against the windows disturbed the endless oceans of cloud. Sometimes it created phantom breakers so fearsome they swamped the treetops, submerging an island so completely that it never reappeared.

Both men watched the awe-inspiring landscape for a moment or two, but the glare of the sun caused them both to turn away at the same time. Papá Cisneros poured more of the potent coffee to which he was addicted. ‘You are not guerrilla material. You have nothing in common with those maniacs. What are you doing here, Colonel?’ He did not give the words great importance. He said them conversationally while selecting a cheroot from a silver box on his desk. They were made specially for him and he savoured the aroma of the fermented leaf almost as much as he enjoyed smoking them.

‘From what I have seen of your Federalistas I’ve nothing in common with them either,’ said Lucas.

Cisneros managed a slight laugh and waved his unlit cheroot as if signalling a hit on the rifle range. ‘My Federalistas are peasants – fit youngsters, ambitious and ruthless. They are exactly the same profile as your guerrillas.’ He sniffed at the cheroot.

The way he said ‘Your guerrillas’ provided Lucas with an opportunity to disassociate himself from them but he did not do so.

Cisneros picked up a cigarette lighter in his free hand and held it tight in his fist like a talisman. ‘Exactly the same profile.’ He moved the unlit cheroot closer to his mouth but spoke before he could put it there. ‘There is attraction between opposing forces. Your guerrillas want to be soldiers. They dress in makeshift uniforms, and drill with much shouting and stamping of feet. They give themselves military rank. Men in charge of platoons are called battalion commanders; men who command companies are called generals.’ He smiled and again brought the cheroot near to his mouth. ‘No longer do I hear about “revolutionary committees”; nowadays this riff-raff have meetings of their “General Staff”. They don’t murder their rivals and praise their accomplices; they shoot “deserters” and award “citations”. Don’t tell me these men are trying to overturn a military dictatorship.’ This time the cheroot reached his mouth. He lit it, inhaled, snapped the lighter closed, gestured with the cheroot and exhaled all in one continuous balletic movement. Snatching the cheroot away from his mouth he said urgently, ‘No, they want to replace this government with a real dictatorship. Make no mistake about what your friends intend, Colonel, should they ever shoot and bomb their way to power.’

‘What would they do?’ asked Lucas.

‘Did my fellows tear your jacket like that?’ Cisneros asked as if seeing Lucas for the first time. ‘I’ll have someone repair it for you … What would they do …’ He placed the cheroot in a brass ashtray that was close at hand next to the photo of his wife. ‘Admiral Benz pushed through the Crop Substitution Bill last winter. Many hundreds of hectares that were growing coca have planted coffee. Loud screams from the coffee farmers because they think their coffee bean prices will tumble.’ He paused. The bitterness in his voice was evident. It was hard to swallow criticism from the coffeegrowers after being their champion for so long. Whatever his motives he was sincere about this part of it. ‘Your guerrillas immediately promised support to the coffee farmers and started a bombing campaign here in the city.’

He paused as if inviting Lucas to speak but Lucas said nothing. Cisneros said, ‘Certain of my liberal middle-class friends say I should not take Yankee money, but the Crop Substitution Bill would falter without Yankee money; maybe collapse. What would the guerrillas do if they took power, you ask? The communists can’t exist without rural support: they need the farmers. The farmers want the money the coca brings them. Your communist friends certainly won’t take Yankee money, and the Americans wouldn’t give it to them. So the communists can do nothing other than build an economy based upon the drug traffic.’

A dozen questions came into Lucas’ mind but he knew better than to ask them. Cisneros was a very tough man and none of this smooth talk could hide it. Lucas wondered what was behind this special treatment and wondered if by some magic the Webley–Hockley had got word of his arrest and told the British ambassador to intercede. He did not entertain this idea for long. The Webley–Hockley could not possibly have heard of his arrest. If they had, there was no way that the collection of superannuated half-wits that comprised the board would have taken any action. And lastly this was not a part of the world where the British ambassador wielded much influence. ‘You make a powerful case, Minister,’ said Lucas deferentially.

‘Then tell me about this fellow, Paz. Is he American?’ He pushed a button on his desk.

‘I don’t know, Minister.’

‘He’s rich. It is not difficult to spot these rich college revolutionaries.’

‘I suppose not,’ said Lucas, hoping that he wasn’t giving away a secret Angel Paz cherished.

‘Bring Paz in now,’ Cisneros told the box on his desk. ‘Let me take a look at him.’

6

TEPILO POLICE HEADQUARTERS.

‘And difficult to get out of the carpet.’

Despite his US passport, Angel Paz had not been permitted to go free from the party at The Daily American. Angel Paz had pushed one of the policemen. He had refused to answer any questions. He had argued, shouted and told the police exactly what he thought of them. This had not worked out to his advantage. He’d been punched to the ground, kicked, strip-searched and ‘processed’. Hair cut, fingerprints taken, he’d been thrown under an icy-cold shower and then photographed for the criminal files.

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