"Are you a member of the Union?" Segador asked.
"Naturally. For three years--since I am a teacher. Before that I belonged to the Union of Students."
"And you have your _carnet_?"
"Not with me, Major Segador. It is in my room at the school."
"We will look at it. May we go with you?"
"I will be honored."
"Please, Your Honors," said Bustamente the Notary, "I insist that you ride the horses. The teacher may have one of the donkeys. I shall walk."
The shepherd reached into his sheepskin cloak. "Here are your pistols,"
he said.
Hall pa.s.sed his cigarettes around. The shepherd accepted one with a shy smile. "I am glad that you are not angry, Senor Cuban Major," he said.
"I have never had a Cuban cigarette before."
_Chapter eighteen_
"Fantastic! Sheer fantasy on paper, but it"s all true. All roads lead to San Hermano. First, Lobo. Then, today, the man from Spain. Then ..."
Felipe Duarte could not sit still. He walked around Hall"s room at the Bolivar like a referee during a fast bout between flyweights.
"Ostensibly, Lobo came to represent Batista at the funeral yesterday.
Actually, he came to bring duplicates and even the originals of most of your negatives--as well as a report on Androtten. I don"t know what"s in the Androtten report yet; all I know is that the American Intelligence Service had something on it, and they gave it to Lobo."
"I tried to reach him on the phone."
"He"s busy, Mateo. He"s closeted with Lavandero. That"s not all ..."
"I know, the de Sola affidavit. I"ll have to tell you about Havana, Felipe. And about the all-night march to Cerrorico through the woods with Segador and the school teacher and the Notary"s mules." _Mateo, eh Mateo, what did you see in the shepherd"s hut? Tabio"s picture? All I could see was poverty, Mateo._
"Hey, you"re not listening? What are you thinking of?"
Hall put his shaving brush down, inserted a fresh blade in his razor. "A thousand things. Cerrorico. The mining stronghold. Segador said the communists had a good press and that they were reliable. He wasn"t kidding. They must have run off a million leaflets with reproductions of the Ansaldo pictures and the Havana doc.u.ments by the time I left."
Later, he would tell Duarte about the ride from Cerrorico in the engine cab of an ore train, and hopping off at dawn at the Monte Azul station, and being met by a Pepe Delgado who wore a freshly washed and ill-fitting reservist"s uniform and drove a small army lorry. Segador had gone ahead on an earlier train.
"You should have seen the leaflets yesterday, Mateo. Just as the funeral procession was at its greatest the army planes appeared overhead and started to drop the leaflets by the ton. And an hour after the leaflets fell from the skies, the pro-United Nations papers were all over the country with front-page reproductions of the pictures and the doc.u.ments."
"And all that time I was sleeping on an ore train. Who is this man from Spain you mentioned, Felipe?"
"It is fantastic! After Mogrado got my message, he rounded up two Spanish Army surgeons who knew Ansaldo. They made affidavits, too. That isn"t the half of what Mogrado did. He reached the Spanish underground in Spain via a cable to Lisbon. And this morning the Clipper came in from Lisbon, and what do you think?"
"I can"t think. But don"t tell me it"s fantastic, Felipe."
"But it is fantastic. There is a man on board the plane, a typical _senorito_. He has papers with him that say he is a Spanish diplomat.
The minute he steps ash.o.r.e, a mug from the Spanish Emba.s.sy recognizes him. "He is a fraud, a _rojo_, a defiler of nuns and an arsonist of cathedrals!" he shrieks. It"s fantastic! The man with the papers lifts a heavy fist and he lets fly with a blow that knocks out the fascist"s front teeth. "Baby killer!" he hollers, and then he turns around to the airport officials and he says he is a Mexican citizen who used fake papers to escape from Spain and he demands that they take him under guard to the Mexican Emba.s.sy. In the meanwhile he says they"ll have to kill him if they want to take his papers before he is delivered in person to the Mexican Emba.s.sy. Is it fantastic, Mateo?"
"For G.o.d"s sake stop telling me that!"
"But it is fantastic! He makes them drive him to the Mexican Emba.s.sy, and the Spanish official is screaming like a stuck pig that the man is a Spanish citizen and an agent of the Comintern."
"Who is he?"
"He is a Spaniard, of course. The underground sent him. They had cadres in the office of the Falange National Delegation. They took out the Falange party records of Ansaldo and Marina, put them under a camera, and sent the pictures to San Hermano with this agent. It was a farce. I was in the next room, listening to him as he told the Amba.s.sador that his name was Joaquin Bolivar. Then I walked in, the sweet light of recognition on my ugly face, shouting "Joaquin! My old University pal, Joaquin! Don"t you recognize your old Felipe Duarte?" The Amba.s.sador just watches me. The man"s papers are still in a sealed envelope before him.
"It is enough for him. He slams his hands down on the papers and says he claims them in the name of his government. "I will take the responsibility for Senor Bolivar," he says. "I have reason to believe he is a Mexican national." I ask you, Mateo--is it fantastic?"
"No. It"s just efficient. Where is he now?"
"The Amba.s.sador took him and his papers to see Lavandero. He"s giving a deposition and an interview to the press."
"I ought to take in the interview."
"No. Stay away. Segador thinks it will be wiser if you stay away. But that isn"t all. Do you remember the picture of Ansaldo that started you off on your wild-goose chase?"
"Vaguely. What about it?"
"There is a doctor in the Inst.i.tute of Tropical Medicine in Puerto Rico.
He is the head of the pro-Loyalist Spanish society on the island ..."
"Ramon Toro?"
"Toro. You know him? Well, he must be a man worth knowing. He has a collection of _Avance_--that was the Falange organ in San Juan, starting with issue number one. When he sees the picture of Gamburdo embracing Ansaldo--it was on the front page of _El Mundo_ in San Juan--a bell rings in his head. He starts going through his _Avances_, and what do you think? He finds the picture you were looking for in an August issue.
So he rips open his suitcase, pastes the whole issue of _Avance_ between the linings, and arrives at the San Hermano airport last night. He doesn"t stop. He takes his bag straight to the editor of _La Democracia_, empties it of his clothes, and pulls out the ..."
"Christ! Toro had it all the time!"
"It"s on the front page of _La Democracia_ this morning. I was in such a rush to get here that I left it in my office. I tell you, all roads lead to San Hermano. Every time I hear a plane overhead, I think, aha! more anonymous Republicans and underground agents and Cuban generals are coming in with more doc.u.ments. It"s fantastic!"
"Did anyone else turn up?" Hall was feeling better than he had in years.
He was one of many now, he knew, one of an army who marched in uniform, out of uniform, but an army which knew the enemy and knew how to fight him. Mogrado, Fielding, Duarte, Segador, Rafael, Pepe, Vicente, Iglesias, even poor Rivas for all his cringing and breast-beating--the army was strong, and it was growing stronger with the taste of victory.
That was all that mattered, now.
"I guess that"s the beginning of the end for the Falange," he said.
"The h.e.l.l it is, Mateo." Duarte was coming down to earth. "It will be a long row to hoe. Your State Department has been distributing judicious hints that a unilateral policy toward Franco will upset the apple cart.
They"re after an all-Hemisphere policy toward Spain. All that this means is that none of the countries, except my own, will dare to break with Franco until Washington takes the lead. Not even this one."
"You"re crazy."
"I"m a diplomat, Mateo. Mark my words."
"I hope you have to eat those words by the end of the week." Hall doused his face with bay rum, patted it with a towel. "When did they call the troops up? Pepe started to tell me about it when he drove me over last night, but I fell asleep as soon as he got started."