Part 14

"I have fought that fight to this very moment. But more important than anything I have done has been the magnificent unity of our peoples in their determination to struggle against fascism in all of its black forms. It has not been the President who has led the people in this great crusade. No, my countrymen. It has been the people who have created and given their mandate to the President, to the Congress."

Tabio had never learned a single orator's trick. As a statesman, he retained all the speaking habits he had originally formed during his early years as a young professor of history at the university. Teaching, he once explained, was the process of thinking aloud. And at this moment, in what he guessed would be his last speech to the nation, Anibal Tabio returned to the concepts which had gone into his great book on the relationships of people to government in modern democracy. For the better part of thirty minutes, he explored these relationships again. After all these years, the professor was back in class, patiently expounding his ideas to a new set of faces.

"Well, that is the state and the people. I have not told you anything new. You have heard this all before from me." Tabio was laughing softly, and at himself. "But that is what happens when the people elect a pedantic professor as their President. Instead of a speech, they get a long, dry lecture."

Tabio paused, frowned at the people who sat hushed in the hall. "Have you forgotten how to laugh?" he asked. A few loyal followers tried to laugh. "Good," Tabio said.

"But I am not finished, my countrymen. I have spoken of the ideal democratic state. Many of us like to feel that we have achieved this state. That perfection is ours. This is dangerous thinking. Of course, we are not as imperfect as a certain newspaper in San Hermano and a certain organization which has usurped the symbol of brotherly love as its emblem"--this time he drew some real laughter--"we are not as imperfect as they would have you believe.

"But even if we were the most perfect state in the world, today this would mean very little. Our chances of surviving, of progressing until the Republic of Man became even more attractive than the Kingdom of God, our chances of surviving at all would still be obscured. If our nation were some remote island in the skies, whirling on its own axis, remote from all other lands, perhaps then I would have no fears for our future.

"We are not this remote planet unto ourselves. We share a world with a hundred nations, a thousand races. I do not regret that we are part of this world. I think we should rejoice in our membership in the world's family of races. But we must not lose sight of the fact that our nation, no less than any other nation, be it free or fascist, is part of this strange family.

"We must never forget that the great war which started in unhappy Spain in July, 1936, was not a war between good and evil in Spain alone. It was a war not of two Spanish ideas but of two fundamental world ideas. It was the start of the universal death struggle between the slave-world ideas of fascism and the free-world ideas of political and economic democracy. It was the start of the fascist war against freedom that has now spread all over the world."

Tabio glanced at his two sons. He accepted a glass of water, smiling at the legislators in the front rows as he drank. "Freedom," he said, "is there a man who does not know the meaning of the word?" Before he returned to the theme of the world war which had started in Spain, he explored the full meaning of freedom in modern times. It was only after he had delivered a profound essay on freedom which shook Matthew Hall until the American felt a lump rising in his throat that Tabio picked up the earlier threads.

"In Spain, then, the forces of freedom suffered a heavy loss. But what of those small men with narrow little minds who held the reins of so much of the world's power while Spain bled? What of these tiny statesmen, these sleek somnambulists who held lace handkerchiefs before their narrow mouths and laughed while fascism marched in Spain? What of these wretches who, through the immoral instrument called non-intervention, sought to end freedom in Spain in the criminal conviction that the blood of Spain alone would satisfy the fascist beast?

"History was not long in giving the lie to these gentry. The beast who had whetted his insatiable appetite in Spain now started almost immediately to claw at the world. It was in April of 1939 that Madrid fell. By September the beast belched and turned on the very creatures who had covertly and overtly helped him subdue Spain."

That Tabio had not raised his voice at this point, that he in fact spoke more softly, accentuated all the more the scorn and the anger in his heart.

"Nations have fallen to the beast," he continued. "Nations of meager freedom, like Poland. Nations of great and traditional freedom, like France. The war has spread over the world like a Biblical plague. Russia could not escape it. Nor could our great sister Republic, the United States.

"Yes, North Americans now have felt the pain, the anguish, the power of Axis treachery. No nation can escape this war.

"My countrymen, we are not an island in the skies. We are a sovereign nation in the same world, on the same earth, in the same waters, sharing the same era as the United States, England, Russia and China. It is not for us to choose whether or not we can stay out of this war. That choice the world does not permit us. Our only choice is the determination of what our role must be in this war.

"There has been strange talk in our land lately. There has been strange and deceitful talk of neutrality. Has it not occurred to any of you that those in our midst who howl the loudest for neutrality, who show such a sudden concern for the lives and safety of the humblest Indian peasant, that these pious seekers after neutrality have never before worn the white dove on their family escutcheons? Who are these peaceful gentlemen who grow pale in the presence of bloodshed? Are they not the same persons who as young men were proud to be officers in the armies of Segura, who laughed and drank as they ruthlessly shot down defenseless miners in the northern provinces?

"Who are these sudden pacifists in our Republic? Are they not the very devout gentlemen who sent money and rum and cigars to the fascists in Spain during the Spanish phase of this war? Are they not the very men who sent cables of homage to Hitler and Mussolini after the shame of Munich? Are they not the very men who even now wear the medals of Nazi Germany, of Blackshirt Italy, of Falangist Spain--who wear these medals proudly while they chortle over the blood of dying Russians on the Eastern Front, of dying Americans on the Bataan peninsula?"

Tabio stopped. His eyes searched the press gallery, then fixed on Jose Fernandez. He pointed a graceful hand at the publisher of _El Imparcial_.

"I ask you," he said, "are they not the very men who write in their papers that Adolf Hitler, whatever be his alleged faults, is waging a holy crusade on behalf of Christian civilization against Marxist atheism?"

Tabio continued looking at Fernandez, but Lavandero shot a fierce scowl at Ambassador Skidmore, who seemed bewildered and unhappy as Smith translated Tabio's questions. The Ambassador, too, had seen the object of Tabio's shaft. Angry, uneasy laughter broke out on the floor. A cry of "Long live the United Nations!" from one of the Popular Front deputies was immediately answered with the shout "Long live Christ the King" from the public gallery.

The President, who had heard both shouts, turned to the gallery. "Who are these neutrals?" he asked. "Are they not the same fascists who hope to fool God by casting their fascist swords in the image of the Cross of Jesus? Are they not the fanatics who, rather than see the Axis beast destroyed, would first destroy the freedom and the dignity of their own land?

"They lie. There can be no neutrals in this world war. He who calls himself a neutral is either a fool or a fascist. And the fine gentlemen who prate of neutrality are very clever men."

The Popular Front Congressmen rose to their feet, applauding and adding to the din with their shouts of agreement. They were joined by a few of the independents. The delegates of the rightist coalition remained in their seats, their arms folded across their chests. But they were not quiet. As the ovation for Tabio continued, loud cries came from the ranks of the men who kept their seats. "Down with atheism!" shouted one rightist Senator. "We have no quarrel with any other nation!" another yelled. "We will not die for Godless Russia!"

"Long live democracy!" a Popular Front deputy answered. "Long live the anti-fascist United Nations!"

Esteban Lavandero pleaded with the Congress for silence.

"My countrymen," Tabio said, "there can be no neutrality in this war. There is one official neutral in Europe. His name is Francisco Franco. We all know what this hypocritical neutrality really is; how it shields the vile aid that fascist Spain is lending to the Axis. But this is as it should be. Franco is a fascist, and today fascism must triumph all over the world or be crushed forever.

"But what of our own nation, what of the twenty nations of Hispanic America in this war? What is our stake in this world struggle?

"If the Axis wins this war, we, like all other nations, must of necessity lose our political freedom. And if we once lose our political democracy, we must begin again the long, bitter struggle to win it once more before we can even begin to dream of creating an era of economic democracy.

"If the United Nations win, if world fascism is crushed forever, a new world era of economic democracy must begin at once. It will not come easily. The defeat of the Axis will not immediately bring in its wake the millennium. It will, however, give the common people of the world the final realization of their great power. In this lies the inherent strength of political democracy. For democracy is not a static thing. It can grow and bring in the era of economic democracy, or it can falter and give way to fascism.

"The common people of the world, today fighting and dying behind the banners of the United Nations, have served notice on history that they will not rest until fascism has been swept from the face of this earth."

Tabio was now speaking with both arms raised, his hands reaching out to everyone. "My countrymen, I have said enough. I know that I have spoken the thoughts that are uppermost in the minds of that great majority of our citizens who have given their mandate to you and to me. In a week, you will have to frame the mandate for the delegation which will speak for our Republic at the forthcoming conference of the nations of the Americas. Speak out! Speak out honestly, speak out openly. Speak as the spokesmen of a democracy. Speak as the citizens of the embattled united democracies of the entire world must speak at this hour. Speak for the free men of the free world. Speak firmly, for you will be speaking not only for the future of our own Republic but for the future of all mankind."

The Cuban Ambassador, whose seat was nearest the podium, crossed the plush rail and rushed to Tabio's wheel chair. He fell to his knees, embraced the President. In a flash, Eduardo Gamburdo left his own place and copied the Cuban's gesture. The rostrum became crowded with dignitaries bent on paying the same homage to Anibal Tabio. The envoys of the Latin American democracies, the delegates of the Free French and the Spanish Republican juntas, the leaders of the trade unions and the chiefs of the Popular Front parties milled around the wheel chair as the pro-democrats in the hall added their voices to the cheers of the crowds in the Plaza. Duarte, his soft raspy words choked and unintelligible, embraced Hall.

Lavandero was pulling the wheel chair back toward the door of the Speaker's Chamber. The well-wishers of the President followed him into the room. For a moment, the people in the auditorium applauded the blank door through which Tabio had vanished. Then young Simon Tabio returned to pick up the flowers on the chair, and his father's supporters cheered louder, punctuating their cheers with cries of "Long live Don Anibal!" The youth streaked into the room behind the platform.

"Let's get out of here," Hall said.

"I've got to go to my office," Duarte said. "I have to prepare a report on the speech. Join me, and then we can talk."

"Pepe can drive us over."

"No one drives today," Duarte said when they reached the visitors' doorway.

The streets were jammed thick with people. Hall had never seen so many people in San Hermano before. It was as if every house, every building in the university, every shop, every wharf, every school had been turned inside out and its people poured out into the streets. Whole families in their best clothes, trolley drivers in their work uniforms, longshoremen in their dungarees, even peasants from the other side of Monte Azul in their brown-cotton trousers and their broad-brimmed straw hats milled along the sidewalks, the pavements, the Plaza, the trolley tracks. Cars, taxis, trucks, wagons, trolleys were parked crazily all over the place.

Pepe, like a hundred other drivers within a block of the Hall of Congress, was standing on top of his car, waving the flag of the Republic, shouting, "Long live the United Nations! Long live Don Anibal! Long live the Republic!"

Crowds formed around each parked vehicle, joined the cries of the drivers. The roofs of the trolleys were jammed with groups of students and motormen waving flags or the banners of their student societies and their unions. Thousands of Hermanitos, kids in overalls, housewives, lawyers, shopkeepers wandered through the crowds with framed portraits of Anibal Tabio which an hour ago had hung from the walls of their homes, their offices, their shops. The pictures of Tabio ranged from formal photographs and oil paintings to crude charcoal drawings and pictures torn from the daily press.

Hall and Duarte made their way to Pepe's sedan. When he saw them, he put the flag in his left hand and with his right hand he pointed to something on the ground on the opposite side of the car. "Look!" Pepe shouted. "Down here!"

A pile of torn Cross-and-Sword placards lay on the cobbles inside a ring of laughing young Hermanitos who were urinating on the signs. Some of the boys in this ring showed signs of having been in a fight.

"The fascists ran away," Pepe laughed. "Don Anibal's speech split their filthy ears."

"I'll see you later," Hall told Pepe.

"Wait!" Pepe shouted. He leaned over the side of his cab. "Boy," he said, "boy, where is that flag for the American _companero_? That's the one. Thank you, boy." He lay down on his belly, stretched a huge paw into the crowd around the remains of the Cross-and-Sword banners. When he stood up, he had a small American flag in his hand.

"Wonderful," Hall said, taking the flag. "I guess it's also the Yankee day to howl."

A crowd formed around Hall and Duarte. They saluted the American flag, saluted the Mexican uniform.

"Long live the United States! Long live Mexico!" the crowd shouted, and the two men answered, as one, "Long live Don Anibal!"

The crowd separated, let them through. They walked a few steps, and then another crowd formed around them. Again they listened to cheers for the United States and Mexico, again they responded with their cheer for Tabio.

"Jesus H. Christ," Hall said. "This is the first time I've carried an American flag in the streets since I was a Boy Scout in Ohio."

"It will do you good, Mateo."

"I like it. But try to make anyone believe it back home!"

At the fourth block Hall and Duarte started to detour around a trolley car which had stopped in the middle of a crossing. A dozen hands reached down from the crowded roof. "_Companeros!_ Take our hands! Climb up! Take our hands! We want a speech!"

"Long live Mexico! Homage to Colonel Felipe Duarte, Counselor of the Mexican Embassy and hero of the war against the fascists in Spain!"

Duarte had to join the crowd on the roof of the stalled train. He made a short speech about Mexico, Republican Spain, and the greatness of Anibal Tabio.

Two more blocks of happy, cheering Hermanitos. Vivas, salutes for the American flag and the Mexican uniform. Men in dungarees and heavy shoes saluting the flag and the uniform with clenched fists. Young women and old men who embraced Hall and Duarte. Even an ancient with a nicotine-yellowed white beard, who wiggled out of one crowd, tore the flag out of Hall's hand, kissed it, and then handed it back to the American with an embrace and a viva for Voodro Veelson.

* * * * *

They were relaxing over a beer in Duarte's office when the explosion came.

"What the hell...?" Hall cried.

There were two explosions. A little one, like the crack of a distant artillery piece in the mountains and then a louder, deep-toned whoosh of a noise. They had both heard such noises before.

"Remember that noise, Mateo?"

Hall was on his feet. "Do I! Only one thing makes a noise like that," he said. "Direct hit on a gasoline tank."

"Exactly."

While they were washing, the sun had begun to set. Now a new sun had risen in the skies of San Hermano, risen at a point about a mile north of the Embassy. A great sheet of flame had shot from the ground, stabbing at the purpling skies, straining to leap clear of the round heavy blobs of black smoke which rose from the same place and surged over and around the fires.

The streets were more crowded than they had been when Hall and Tabio left the Congress. New signs had been added to the placards and portraits of Tabio which the people carried. Tremendous sketches and blown-up photos of Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek, nailed to frames with handles for two men, bobbed over the heads of the crowds. Duarte, from the balcony, asked the people on the street what had happened. They thought it was a victory bonfire.

"The hell it is, Felipe. Let's see for ourselves."

"I must stay and write my cable. You go and then come back here."

"Can you lend me a car and a chauffeur?"

"You couldn't drive a car through these crowds. You'll have to walk. Leave through the back way. It opens on a narrow street leading to the Avenida de la Liberacion. You'll save time."

Hall found the narrow street deserted. He set out at a fast pace, his eyes on the flames and the increasingly heavy puffs of smoke. The shouts of the crowds on the broad avenues and the plazas followed him up the small street. Over the cries of the Hermanitos came the wail of the sirens, the clamor of the bells on the American fire engines the city had purchased a few years back.

The crowd half-pushed, half-guided Hall to the entrance of the Ritz. He ducked into the lobby to catch his breath, bought some cigars at the stand, lit one, and then decided to have a quick drink.

Margaret Skidmore was at the bar with Giselle Prescott and a young man Hall had met at the Embassy ball. The Prescott woman was wearing an immense wheel of a white hat. She was very drunk.

"What's up?" Hall asked.

"The Reds blew up a church," Margaret said. "How are you, Matt? I heard that you were out on a monumental bender. Too many women?"

"Too much alcohol." Then, to the man with the girls, "Didn't we meet at the Embassy party? My name is Hall."

"I'm the Marques de Runa."

"Spanish?"

Margaret answered for him. "No. Not exactly. The family had the title revalidated in 1930."

Giselle Prescott shuddered over an emptied glass. She whispered something about rum, romanism and rebellion.

"What's eating her?" Hall asked Margaret.

"Gin and communism. She's allergic to burning churches."

"My father phoned the governor of our province and demanded soldiers to protect the family estates," the young Marques said. "It is scandalous. We hear that they've already raped a nun and killed two priests. My father says that if El Tovarich ..."

"Who saw the church burning?" Hall interrupted.

"Everyone, senor."

"Any of you?"

Silence. "Any of you?" he repeated.

"It was anarchy," the Marques said. "When El Tovarich started to rant in Congress today the Reds swarmed into the city from the wharves. They tore a religious poster from my cousin's arms and beat him within an inch of his life."

"Is that a fact?" Hall was staring at the gold emblem of the Cross and Sword in the Marques' lapel. "That's too bad."

"You see what I meant," Margaret said. "Now you understand me, Matt."

"Sure. Now I understand. How about you, Giselle?"

"What about me? I'm filing for the WP today."

"Then you'd better come with me. I'm going to have a look at this burning church. Might be good color stuff."

"I don' wanna look," she said. "Gives me hives. Besides, I know all about it anyway."

Hall put his arm through Margaret's. "Let's you and me look, then," he said.

"Don't go!" the Marques cried. "You're both dressed too well. They'll kill you."

"I'd better not go with you, Matt."

"But I insist. I'm going and you're coming with me."

They watched de Runa stiffen. "Now don't be a child," she said. "Hall will bring me back intact."

"Don't go," the Marques said.

Hall freed his hands. For a moment he thought he would have to use them on the Marques. Then Margaret tugged his arm. "Let's go if we're going," she said. "You wait right here for me with Giselle, Freddie. I'll meet you here in half an hour."

The fire was five blocks from the Ritz. There was a half block heap of glowing brick and rubble. Behind the rubble stood an old church, one wall partially blown out. The firemen were playing streams of water into and around this hole.

"God!" Margaret said. "The stench!"

"Oil. My guess is that a thousand gallons of oil went up in smoke."

In the crowd standing at the rim of the fire lines, a taxi driver turned around and glanced at Hall. "Some fire," he said.

"What happened?"

"Garage. The Phoenix Garage went up in smoke. Blew a hole in the Cathedral when it exploded."

"The Phoenix Garage?"

"That's what it is, senor." The driver moved closer to the gutted rubble.

"You wait here, Margaret. I'm going to talk to the firemen." He crossed the fire lines, found his way to the engine captain near the main hydrant. When he returned to Margaret, he gave her a complete report. "The fire chiefs say that the Reds didn't blow up the church at all," he said. "Seems as if the gasoline tanks in the garage caught fire by themselves."

Margaret laughed. "Don't tell Gis," she said. "She's already cabled a story to the States that the Reds burned the church."

_Chapter eleven_

Duarte knew about the Phoenix Garage before Hall returned to the Mexican Embassy. "Commander New dropped in while you were at the fire," he explained. "He told me."

"Does he know anything else about it?"

"Not about the fire. But he does know a little more about Fielding. He says that Fielding's files have been cleaned out. There wasn't a single copy of any of Fielding's reports when the British officials opened the files."

"But the British have all the dope, Felipe. Fielding's reports--at least the ones he showed me--were all carbons of the reports he made to his Embassy."

"I know that. But if his reports are now in the hands of the Falange, the Axis knows it too. It will give them time to cover their traces. It will also put the finger on you. One of the things they did find in the office was a note Fielding had made reminding himself to prepare copies of certain reports for you, Mateo. That might explain what happened to you in that Falangist cafe on the waterfront the other day. Fielding had already been killed when you were drugged."

Hall lay down on the couch in Duarte's office, took his shoes off. "I'll be all right in a few minutes," he said. "I just need about ten minutes of this."