Part 13

And then in Paris, Hall thought, listening to Orville Smith, your young Third Secretary naturally gravitates to his French equivalents, the young bluebloods who were reared in French cellophane and got the same ideas, only in French, in their own versions of Princeton and Groton. The better element meets the better element, and he makes factual, intelligent reports. The Popular Front falling into hands of the bolos. This he learns at a week-end party on Flandin's yacht. The Croix de Feu and the Cagoulards are fine, conservative forces. Only the pinkos call them fascists, but Bertrand de Juvenal, the fledgling ambassador's pal, knows otherwise. Sit-down strikes, forty-hour week, vacations with pay--he puts them all down in his reports; communist, of course. Got the lowdown on the beach at Cannes just the other day. Daladier is the man to watch. Yes, he is in the Popular Front. But Daladier's different. He's like Monsieur Laval, the French Calvin Coolidge. Fine force for sensible government. There will be no war, Munich has settled that. Got the lowdown from Flandin himself. Germany will be defeated. Spent a most fascinating week-end with General Weygand. Marechal Petain is man of the hour. Marechal Petain will make France another Verdun. Vichy wants to be friends with Washington. The Marechal indignantly denies, in private, that that was a Nazi salute you saw in the newsreels, sir, he says he was just waving at the cameramen. But Bertrand de Juvenal does not deny, and Laval does not deny, and Daladier weeps in his collapsed house of cards. And then comes the transfer to San Hermano at a better rating.

Smith pointed to the suburbs of San Hermano ahead of them. "We made good time," he said. "We'll be in the Embassy in ten minutes."

"Good going. You can drop me at the Bolivar, if you don't mind."

"Not at all, old man. But say, why don't you drop by for a spot of lunch with the old man and the boys at the Embassy? We'd love to have you with us and, besides, the old man will probably want to see for himself that you're in one piece."

Hall looked at his watch. "What time do you have lunch?"

"About one."

"Good. I'd like to join you. But I'll still have time to stop off at the Bolivar to change and pick up my mail. I'm expecting a letter from my sweetheart."

* * * * *

Pepe was waiting in his cab in front of the Bolivar. He was contrite and subdued. "I nearly killed you with my stupidity, Mateo," he said. "I should have known that cafe was owned by Falangistas."

"It's nothing, Pepe. I had it coming to me. I'm all over it now, anyway. What's new?"

"I have the complete list of where the passengers from the _Marques de Avillar_ are staying. Their names, too. Except the names of the two men who are at the Gamburdo ranch. But they are still there."

"Did you recognize any of the names?"

"My friends are examining the lists now. I'll have them back for you in the evening."

"Have you seen Duarte?"

"I told him about you. He wants you to call him at the Mexican Embassy."

"I will, later. I have to go to my room for a minute, and then I want you to take me to the American Embassy. I'm having lunch there." He entered the hotel and asked for his mail at the desk. There was a message from Jerry, a short gossipy note from his publisher, and another love letter from Havana.

The note from Jerry was very short. "I missed you, you dog," it said. "Phone me when you return to town. Jerry."

The letter from Havana, mailed the day after the first letter, was almost a duplicate of the first. Again it protested its love, but this time it said, "How many times must I tell you that the man you think is your rival is unworthy of all human decencies? Far from being a rival in my eyes, I look upon him as a creature worse than an assassin. You must believe me; I detest the man." Hall put the letter in his wallet.

He examined his room carefully. It had not been searched, the stethoscope was still in its hiding place, his clothes were just as he had left them. Everything was as it had been. Hall took out his portable typewriter, copied the _El Imparcial_ story which had been killed, and sealed the copy in an envelope. He went downstairs, got into the cab, and slipped the envelope into Pepe's pocket.

"Give the envelope to Dr. Gonzales," he said. "And tell him to get the information to Major Segador right away."

"I'll drive right out to the doctor as soon as I leave you. Shall I wait for you outside of the American Embassy after I see the doctor?"

"I think you'd better."

Ambassador Skidmore seemed pleased to see Hall. "You gave us quite a scare, young fellow," he said, his ruddy face beaming, white hair bobbing as Skidmore shook his head from side to side in mock anxiety. "Ah, you newspaper boys," he laughed. "Always going off on a tear when you are least expected to! And here poor Joe Fernandez was so sure that the Reds had made hamburger out of you, Hall."

"I'm sorry I spoiled a good story," Hall said. "I'd better call Fernandez on the phone before he sends out another alarm."

"No need to, my boy," the Ambassador said. "Joe Fernandez is joining us at lunch."

Fernandez showed up with a former Senator, a dignified old dandy named Rios, who sported a silver-headed cane, a waxed, dyed mustache, and a Cross and Sword emblem in his lapel. They shared the table in the Ambassador's small private dining room with Hall, Orville Smith and the Ambassador.

The publisher fawned over Hall like a long-lost brother. "You are safe," he exclaimed. "Thanks be to the Virgin Mother! What happened? Was it very bad?"

"I got drunk," Hall said. "That's all that happened."

"Ridiculous, Senor Hall! You are a man who can take his drink. You were drugged. Mark my words, senor, you were drugged. You don't know these Reds."

Orville Smith winked broadly at Hall. "The main thing is," he said to Fernandez, "that Hall is safe now. I'm sure he appreciates your concern, Don Jose." In deference to the Ambassador's three-word Spanish vocabulary, Smith and the others spoke English. Rios, who spoke only Spanish, sat between Skidmore and Smith, who acted as their interpreter.

"What province did you represent in the Senate?" Hall asked the former Senator.

"San Martin, in the north."

"Don Joaquin is a great statesman," Fernandez interrupted. "But when El Tovarich prepared his gangsters for the elections two years ago, he armed the Red miners and they held their guns in the ribs of Don Joaquin's majority."

Hall listened to Smith translate this account of Rios' defeat at the polls before he spoke. "And do you plan to run again, Senor Rios?" he asked.

Fernandez answered for the dandy. "He will run again," he shouted, "and he will be elected. Fire can fight fire. Guns can fight guns."

"I have _pantalones_," Rios said. "I am a man of honor."

"Don Joaquin's constituents demand that he runs again," Fernandez said. He turned to the Ambassador, became his own translator. The ex-Senator nodded happily at every word Fernandez addressed to the Ambassador, as if by nodding he could bolster the words whose meaning he had to guess.

"How do you think things will go in Congress today?" Hall asked Fernandez.

"The same as every year, Senor Hall. Ceremonials, the speech, and then--_quien sabe_?"

Rumors rose from the table. Everyone had a choice rumor to air. Rios had it on good authority that Tabio's illness was merely a pretext; the President was afraid to face the Congress lest they force him to justify his wild socialistic measures which had put the national budget in such dire peril. Orville Smith informed the men at the table that Tabio's illness had taken a more serious turn. "In fact, I understand that Dr. Ansaldo has informed the government that he will refuse to operate on Tabio without the written permission of the Cabinet." Fernandez spoke of Ansaldo's skill as a surgeon.

"How about Gamburdo's speech, Joe?" the Ambassador said. "You promised to bring me an advance copy."

"I told my secretary to bring it to you as soon as it arrived," Fernandez answered. "It is very late in arriving today."

"Have you any idea of what he is going to say, Joe?"

"He is a very sound man," Fernandez said. "I am sure that the speech will be satisfactory."

"It won't call for the nationalization of the mines, at any rate," Smith added.

He made the mistake of translating his remark for Joaquin Rios. He might just as well have dropped a match into a keg of gunpowder. The wax mustaches under the purpling nose of ex-Senator Rios began quivering even before he unleashed an avalanche of ringing livid paragraphs on the subject. His eyes blind to the cold stares of Jose Fernandez, he unlimbered his heaviest verbal artillery, pounded the table until the glasses rattled, pointed accusing fingers at every corner of the room, and otherwise managed rather effectively to end the luncheon. Fernandez fairly had to drag him out of the Embassy to cool him down.

"Fine fellows," Skidmore said to Hall when they were gone. "Best of the lot down here."

"Sure," Hall said. "I've known all about Fernandez for years."

"He's a great guy, Hall. Publishes one of the best newspapers on the continent. As a matter of cold fact, old man, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he won the--well, he might be in for a rather high honor."

"I know. The Cabot Prize."

"Who told you?"

Hall looked at Smith, who was growing uncomfortable. "I can't remember," he said. "But it's hard to keep such a secret in San Hermano."

"Well, I'll be damned," the Ambassador laughed. "It was nice to see you again, old man. Drop in any time when you have a problem."

"Problems in San Hermano? Things seem to be pretty much under control, I'd say."

"Yes," the Ambassador admitted. "Things are pretty quiet."

"Will it be as quiet when Tabio dies? I heard talk that the Gamburdo crowd is pretty close to the fascists."

"Gamburdo?" Skidmore grew both amused and indignant. "What kind of communistic nonsense have you been hearing? I know Eduardo Gamburdo intimately. I've entertained him at the Embassy, and I've week-ended at his estate. He's a fine conservative influence on this government and, damn it all, young man, Gamburdo is a thorough gentleman."

"Yeah," Hall said. "Thorough." For a few seconds, during the luncheon, he had toyed with the idea of telling the Ambassador all that he knew about Gamburdo and Ansaldo and the role of the Falange. Now he cursed himself for a fool. Skidmore, he saw, was Orville Smith at sixty, but with the power to make trouble for any visiting American who rubbed against his deep-set prejudices. "Well, thanks for everything," he said. "I guess you're pretty busy today."

Hall rushed out of the Embassy, his face twitching crazily as he charged down the marble walk to the curb. He had broken into a heavy sweat which drenched him from head to toe. "Get me out of here," he roared at Pepe. "Get going before I kill someone."

"What happened?" Pepe asked.

"Nothing. Where are we going?"

"Nowhere. What's the matter with your face?"

"Nothing." He put his hand against his right cheek. "Nothing. Did you see Gonzales?"

"I gave him the letter. He said you should go to the opening of Congress today. He says you might be surprised."

"Thanks. I had my surprise for the day already."

"Gonzales was serious. He says you should go. It starts at four o'clock."

"All right. I'll go. Better take me to Gobernacion. I'll need a pass from the Press Bureau. No, wait, let's go to Duarte's place. He takes his siesta at this time. I'll call that Vardieno bitch from his place."

Hall opened his tie. "Have we time to stop for a beer?" he asked. "I'm dying for a drink."

"No. We might miss Duarte. He'll have beer for you."

Pepe was right. Duarte did have beer, and had they stopped on the way, they would have missed him. He was about to leave the house when they arrived. Duarte was wearing the green dress uniform of a Mexican lieutenant-colonel, to which he had pinned his Spanish medals and insignia.

"Going to war?" Hall asked.

"No. To the opening of Congress."

"You've got time."

"Hall is dying," Pepe said. "He needs cold beer."

The Mexican brought out five bottles of beer. "I've got more in the ice box," he said. "What's the matter?"

"He wants to kill someone," Pepe said.

"Me too. What of it?"

Hall put the mouth of the opened bottle to his lips, tilted his head back. "God," he said, "Pepe is right. Let me make one phone call, and then I'll spill it. I've got to get it off my chest before I blow the top."

He reached the Vardieno girl on the phone. She was so sorry. The lists had all gone down to the Hall of Congress. Anyway, all requests for foreign writers had to come through their embassies. That was the Press Chief's new ruling.

"That's fine. That settles it," Hall said when he put the phone away. "Now I must ask the Ambassador to approve me for the press gallery."

"Sit down, Mateo," Duarte said. "I can wait a full hour if necessary." He put a bottle of cold beer into Hall's hand. "Tell us about it."

"I'll wait outside," Pepe said.

"No. Stay with us, Pepe. I want you to know the facts. Do you both remember that I was waiting for a letter from Havana? Well, I got it. Two letters, in fact. They told me what I wanted to know about Ansaldo." He drained the second bottle and then told them what had happened to him at the Embassy.

"Don't bother with him," Duarte said. "You don't need his permission. I'll give you my diplomatic invitation and my carnet. The uniform is all I need to get through the gates. You'll sit in the diplomatic gallery with me."

"Great."

"You can even act as Skidmore's interpreter."

"_Con mucho gusto!_"

* * * * *

Riding to the Hall of Congress, Duarte drew Hall's attention to the loud speakers fastened to the poles in every plaza. "The government has bought over a hundred speakers in the past two weeks," he said. "I know, because most of them were bought in California and I had to O.K. their transit duty-free through Mexico. I think our friend Gamburdo is up to something today."

Hall looked at a knot of grim-faced _Hermanitos_ standing under one of the speakers. "I think the people suspect it too."

"We couldn't get an advance copy of the speech at the Embassy, Mateo. Usually, Tabio releases advance copies to the press and the diplomatic corps on the morning of the speech."

"I wonder why?"

"I can only suspect the worst. After the speech, can you come back to the house with me? I want to hear what happened to you. Commander New called me this morning and told me that he had asked the police to investigate Fielding's death."

"What? On the phone?"

"Yes."

"Oh, the damned idiot! Now even if the police are not fixed every damned fascist in South America knows that the Fielding thing went wrong!"

"It's too late for cursing now. Let's talk about the whole picture after the speech."

The plaza facing the Hall of Congress was filling up with citizens who had come to hear the speech over the public-address system. Scattered through the crowds were men carrying signs reading "_Viva_ Eduardo Gamburdo." Duarte pointed them out.

"Every one a Cross-and-Sword ruffian," he said. "I used to see the same faces while the Falange was legal. They then wore the blue shirt."

"I can't see their faces," Hall said.

"I've seen their faces. Three months ago Lombardo came to San Hermano to address the C.T.A.L. convention. The same gang showed up with their filthy signs, only this time the signs read: '_Viva_ Christ the King' and 'Go back to Bolshevik Mexico, you Dirty Jew' and 'Down with the Commune of the anti-Christ' and other lovely things. I know them."

"Something is happening," Duarte said when they were in the building. "Everyone is too quiet." They followed a military escort to the Mexican box.

The Mexican Ambassador was tense. "I don't like it," he said to Hall and Duarte. "Why is everyone so quiet on the rostrum?"

"They look as if they've seen a ghost," Hall said.

Duarte studied the faces of the officials on the flag-decked rostrum. "Where's Gamburdo?" he said. "Has anyone seen him?"

"I saw his car parked outside when I came in," the Ambassador said.

"What's that? Do you hear it, Mateo?"

"Sounds like distant thunder, Felipe."

"It's not thunder. It's the crowd. What have they got to cheer about?"

"Gamburdo's cheer leaders must have gone to work."

"I don't like it," the Mexican Ambassador said. "I don't like it."

A gavel fell on a block. At a signal from the President of the Senate, a military band hidden in one of the caucus rooms began to play the national anthem. The music was piped in to the great hall over the public-address system.

The gavel called the Congress to order. A clerk called the roll, the Senate head started the parliamentary ritual. Then the band started to play the national anthem again, this time without a signal. A door behind the rostrum opened.

In the doorway, flanked by his two young sons, Anibal Tabio sat in a wheel chair. His closest friend, Esteban Lavandero, the Minister of Education, stood behind him. Slowly, the chair was wheeled to the rostrum.

"Members of the Congress," the Senate Chief shouted, "The President of the nation has come to deliver his annual address."

_Chapter ten_

There were two shouts. On the floor, one of the Senators screamed "_Viva La Republica!_" At the same moment a young voice in the press gallery yelled, "_Viva_ Don Anibal Tabio!" and in the great hall every man sprang to his feet. The low distant thunder of the crowds in the Plaza had now swelled to a roar whose joyous overtones poured into the Hall of Congress through the doors, the windows, the steel and marble walls themselves. Senators and Deputies of the Popular Front Parties were the first in the hall to find their voices. "_Viva_ Don Anibal!" they shouted, applauding wildly, laughing, yelling, embracing one another, wondering if the tears in their eyes could be seen by their colleagues. The anti-Tabio Congressmen remained on their feet, their hands moving in the motions of applause, their hearts cold and sick. Somehow, Eduardo Gamburdo had found his former place on the rostrum, was now standing and applauding with the other people in the hall. The signals had been crossed. The dead President had come to life. Anibal Tabio was sitting before the chromium microphone, serene and unmoving, his paralyzed legs neatly covered with a light Indian blanket.

Outside, the crowd had begun to sing the national anthem. The legislators, the reporters, many of the Latin American diplomats in the visitors' gallery took up the words. Hall glanced at his neighbors. Tears flowed down the cheeks of Duarte and his chief. A few rows away, Skidmore and Orville Smith, correctly dressed in formal afternoon wear, stood stiffly at attention, their eyes firmly riveted to the strange tableau of Tabio and his entourage.

Someone thrust a huge bouquet of orange and blue mountain flowers at the invalid in the wheel chair. His son Diego accepted the flowers, laid them tenderly on an empty chair. Diego at fifteen was heavier than his father had ever been, darker, more like an Indian peasant than the son of Anibal Tabio. His brother Simon, who now accepted the second bouquet, was an eighteen-year-old replica of Don Anibal himself. Tall, lithe, he had the same fair brown hair, the same thin spiritual face as the father. Lavandero, standing behind Tabio's chair, had the dark, brooding face of a Moor. His shock of black hair started at the peak of a high, broad forehead; his large black mustache failed to dominate his thick, strong lips. He was rubbing a hairy fist in his eyes and talking softly to Tabio.

The President, at fifty-three, seemed to have aged ten years since Hall had last seen him. His hair had turned gray, and everything about him was thinner than ever before in his life. In Geneva, Hall had always wondered what would have happened to the thin, delicate frame of Anibal Tabio in a tropical hurricane. Now, even from the gallery, Hall could see that Tabio had grown so thin that the high cheek bones which had always marked his slender face now stuck out like two sharp points, almost burying the deep-set gray eyes. Tabio sat quietly in his wheel chair, smiling at friends on the floor, looking first to Diego then to Simon, gently patting the hand of his older son when the boy put his hand on the father's fragile shoulder.

The ovation continued when the singing of the national anthem was completed. Tabio turned to Lavandero, whispered a few words. The Minister of Education held his hands, palms out, toward the assemblage. "Please," he said. "Please."

Guests and legislators took their seats. In another room, a drummer dropped his cymbal on the floor. It rent the sudden silence of the great hall, and then its echoes were stilled.

Anibal Tabio squeezed the hands of his sons, drew a deep breath, and faced the microphone before him.

"My countrymen," he said, "this is the third year in which I have had the honor of addressing you at this solemn hour. A week ago, I would have said that my chances of preaching my own funeral sermon were better than my chances of opening this, the fifteenth free Congress of our beloved Republic.

"But since then ..." he leaned forward, his long chin jutting pugnaciously forward as he gasped for breath, "since then many things have come to my ears. I have heard rumors. Strange and disturbing rumors about what was going to happen today. I need not repeat these rumors to you. You have all heard them."

Hall looked at Skidmore's face as Smith translated Tabio's words.

"Yes, you have heard them. When they came to my ears," Tabio said, "I thought: What is happening? Who dares to challenge the mandate of the people? Who dares to speak of perverting the will of the people? It was then that I knew, as never before, that a President's place is with the people. If I could sit up in my bed and talk this way to my sons, to my dear friend Esteban Lavandero, then I could sit up in this chair before you, the chosen representatives of the people.

"My good friends, this may be the last time I will ever speak to you ..."

Shouts of "No!" rang all over the hall.

"Hear me, friends. Hear me and mark well what I say. Once this nation honored me with the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. As your Minister, I crossed the ocean. I went to Geneva. I went to Spain, from where we have derived so much of our culture, our language, so much of our personality as a people.

"We are today a free people, not the colonial vassals we were in the days of Imperial Spain. But Spain, too, had become a free nation in 1931. I saw the free Spain at the hour of her birth, when the hated Bourbon heard the voice of Spain's millions at the ballot and fled to the empty pleasures of a decaying society abroad. I also saw the free Spain in the hours of her agony. It was at that hour that I beheld for the first time the ugly bloodless face of fascism.

"It is a cold, metallic, impersonal face, my countrymen, the face of an Agusto Segura grown to superhuman power, the maniacal face of a mad killer who suddenly finds all the world's horrible instruments of destruction in his idiot hands. I saw this beast grow strong on the blood of free men, and I wept for a gallant people who, for a few brief moments, had presumed to control their own destinies.

"Yes," Tabio said, his hand pointing across an ocean, "yes, I wept for Spain, but through my tears I began to see my own native land, saw my own people enjoying this precious freedom. And at that moment I knew that I must dedicate whatever remained of my life to doing all that was in my power as a man and as a citizen to keep the beast of fascism from gorging on our young Republic.