MAMista

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‘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.