Part 21

Hall watched Rivas drink his Scotch in one greedy, hysterical gulp. He quietly filled the man's glass, shoved the bottle toward him. Rivas downed the second Scotch, reached for the bottle, then changed his mind as his hand was in mid-air.

"Paper," Rivas said. "The desk. I must draw a floor plan of the Embassy."

* * * * *

At eleven o'clock, Rivas let Santiago and his three friends into the Spanish Embassy through the rear door.

At ten-thirty, a large but unscheduled military parade started winding through the streets of Old Havana. No one seemed to know what the parade was about, but the soldiers in the ranks thought that it had something to do with a surprise party being given to General Jaime Lobo to celebrate his promotion in rank. It was his old regiment which had been called out at nine that night and ordered into parade formation.

At ten forty-five, the paraders were halted for some reason, and the General's runners motorcycled down along the line of march and told the bandmasters to keep on playing the liveliest of tunes. The order reached the second band in the line just as it stopped in front of the Spanish Embassy.

A crowd gathered to listen to the band and watch the parade. Santiago, Hall, Rafael and Eduardo casually detached themselves from this crowd at precisely eleven.

Rivas led them quietly up the back stairs. The blare of the brasses, the booming of the drums, the crashing of the cymbals penetrated every corner of the Embassy. "God is with us," he said. "The noise is wonderful."

Hall bit his tongue. A fat lot God had to do with it! He was crawling behind Santiago, the Swiss automatic in the right hand cocked at his hip. Eduardo was behind him, and ahead of Rafael. "Third floor," he whispered. "We turn left at the head of the stairs and climb three steps."

Santiago pulled out his gun as they approached the third-floor landing. He allowed Rivas to get a few steps ahead of him, to take the three steps which led to the library. "Go in with Rivas," he whispered to Hall. "You too, Eduardo."

They followed Rivas into the dark room. He was standing near a draped wall, motioning to them to follow him quietly. "Behind the drape," he said. Eduardo closed in next to him. He frisked him for hidden knives or guns. "Don't move," he said.

Santiago joined Eduardo and Hall. "Rafael is covering the door," he said. He motioned to Rivas to approach the drape. Eduardo remained at the traitor's heels, the gun in Rivas's back. Hall knew what to do. He waited until Santiago flattened himself out against the wall which paralleled the drape, then he quickly drew the cloth to one side. He found himself facing a large steel cabinet built into the wall.

"Open." Santiago's fingers twirled an imaginary dial before his nose. "Open it, Rivas."

The frightened man who was both host and hostage raised his hand slowly, fingered the dial, dropped his hand in disgust. He dried his sopping fingers against the front of his jacket, tried again. The tumblers of the lock rose and fell; the lock remained closed. Santiago slowly released the safety catch of his pistol. "What passes?" he asked.

"Ssh," Rivas pleaded. "I'll try it again."

"Wait." Hall held a small bottle of brandy up to Rivas's face. "Take a drink. It will steady your hands."

"Many thanks."

"Open it."

"It's coming, Colonel."

Santiago looked at the luminous dial of his wrist watch; eight minutes gone. The band would not be under the window all night. He beckoned to Hall. "That white door near the window, Mateo. He says you will find the _Arribas_ in there perhaps."

"I'll try it."

"He's opened the steel door," Eduardo said.

"Keep him covered." Santiago stepped in front of Rivas, opened the door as wide as it would swing. He faced a multitude of locked steel drawers.

"Let me," Eduardo said. He changed places with Santiago. He was good at picking such picayune locks; the concentration camp on the Isle of Pines was full of native fascists whose careers ended when Eduardo jimmied open the locks that protected their secrets. He could crack them open swiftly, almost noiselessly.

"There's one," he whispered. "Two."

"He has a talent," Santiago said to Rivas.

Hall glided over to the white door of the closet. Like the others, he wore soft-soled rubber shoes. He took a small oil can from his pocket, saturated the hinges and the handle of the white door. Slowly, he opened the wooden door. A book balanced precariously on an upper shelf behind the door started to fall. He grabbed it with his left hand. A rash of invisible pimples spread over his scalp. Too much noise that time, even though the book didn't fall. He held his breath, counted to twenty. The band was still blaring, the drums pounding away. Good old God!

He ran the slim beam of the dime-store flashlight over the shelves. _Informaciones, A.B.C._, ah, here, _Arriba_! He turned to signal to Santiago that he had found it, but the colonel had again changed places with Eduardo, was now emptying documents from the little steel drawers to the inside of his shirt.

Rafael, standing guard at the doorway, wildly signaled Hall to get to work on the files. He pointed vigorously to the non-existent watch on his narrow wrist.

Hall dug into the _Arriba_ pile. He pulled the top of the 1938 batch to the floor, sat down in front of them. April. May. June. Not here. Impossible! He sneaked the remainder of the brandy into his throat. Once again. April. He looked at Santiago, working calmly; light flickering over the papers in the drawers, eyes selecting the wheat from the chaff. The problem is April. It happened in April, 1938. Easy does it. April One. April Two. Three. Four. Seven. Nine. No. No. Not yet.

Santiago was in the middle of the room, his hands crammed with papers. He beckoned to Rafael, stuffed batches of papers into the major's shirt.

"Got the bastard!" Hall said. He forgot to whisper. He climbed to his feet, a yellowing newspaper in his hands. "Got it!"

A door opened on the floor above. "Rivas?" someone on the fourth-floor landing called.

Rafael was still in the room. Santiago held his shoulder, shook his head. Stay here, he motioned. He signaled for Rivas, handed him his own gun. He pointed to the third-floor landing, smiled at the man.

The four men in the room covered the back of Fernando Rivas as he advanced toward the landing, the warm gun gripped firmly in his sweaty hand. They watched him stick his head out of the door, say, hoarsely, "Yes. It's all right," the gun hidden behind his thigh.

"What's all the noise?" Fourth Floor again.

"Parade."

"What are you doing there?" No suspicion--just conversation. Anyone could see Fourth Floor only meant conversation. Anyone but Rivas. To a man, the four behind Rivas prayed he would stall off the man above him with a polite nothing.

"None of your business, you fascist pig!"

Over and above all the noises of the city, of the band on the corner, of the hearts thumping in the breasts of the four men in the room there fell a whining silence which was both hours long and seconds short. Then the silence was shattered by the crashing explosions of two heavy pistols.

"Let me." Rafael ran to the doorway, flattened out against the wall. His eyes took in the prone body of Rivas at the landing and the heap of man sprawled on the stairs. Rivas was dead. His gun lay near his head. The man on the stairs still held onto his gun. Rafael reached behind him for the silent weapon, the weapon you used on lone forays into enemy territory, on guards in concentration camps.

The knife flashed over his head, pinned the hand with the pistol to the wooden stairs. Behind the knife flew Rafael. Once again the blade was raised, this time with a hand still on it as it descended.

Eduardo pulled Hall's sleeve. "Quick," he said. "The stairs. Follow me."

"All right," Rafael said to the dead Rivas, "now you're a Republican."

The watch on Santiago's wrist read 11.29 when Rafael, the last man to leave, melted into the crowd around the band. People on the sidewalk could hear feet pounding heavily through the large empty rooms of the Embassy. Lights were going on in all the dark windows. Yells. A woman's scream.

At the head of the parade, a baton twirled. The uniforms started to move forward. The crowd on the sidelines followed the band.

* * * * *

Later, sitting in Lobo's office, the mass of documents from the shirts of Santiago and Eduardo and Rafael on the desk before the general, Hall remembered his outcry when he found the picture of Ansaldo and the Axis officers giving the fascist salute. My "got it!" got poor Rivas, he thought. I'm still an amateur at it. Santiago was good; found dynamite, but he kept his mouth shut. Eduardo was good; cracked the locks and kept his mouth shut. Rafael was good; finished off the bastard from the Fourth Floor in seconds, and remembered to use a knife, and kept his mouth shut until it was all over. Funny the way he stood over what remained of Rivas and said, "All right, now you're a Republican." Mocking, yet respectful. It was good; no forgiveness for the dead man's treachery but respect for his insane courage.

"It was a nice band concert, yes?" Lobo said. "Plenty of bim bam boom in the drums. Tsing! Tsing! Cymbals. Tarantara, tarantara."

"Sure."

"I'm a one-man band, eh, keed?"

"Colossal."

"What's eating you, Matt? That little slob who killed himself with his big mouth?"

"It was my fault, Jaime. It was my big mouth."

The General picked up a fistful of the documents which had cost the life of Fernando Rivas. "What the hell is his life worth compared to the lives of the hundreds of American seamen who now won't be sent to the bottom by Nazi torpedoes in the South Atlantic? I'll say it again, Matt, and if you'd stick around long enough, I could prove it. By tomorrow morning I'll have at least twenty mucking bastards in the calabozo thanks to what's in these papers; twenty fascist snakes who are the eyes and the ears and the oil and the water of the Nazi subs in this part of the ocean. You did it--and at the cost of only one second-rate life. Isn't it worth it?"

Hall was going through the documents on the desk. Bombshells, most of them.

_Mandato # 36: 1940. From: Inspector-General Delegacion Nacional, del Servicio Exterior, de Falange Espanola Tradicionalista de las J.O.N.S. To: Jefe Supremo, Falange de San Hermano._ In Re: A.T.N. Effective immediately you will form Accion Tradicionalista Nacional, to replace organization of Falange ordered dissolved by the Jew-Communist betrayer, Tabio. You will replace Yoke and Arrows with new symbol of Cross and Sword. Until further orders, you will not enter Spanish Embassy or consulates. _Camarada_ Portada will arrive with detailed orders within thirty days. _Saluda a_ Franco! _Arriba_ Espana!

_Mandato # 74: 1941, Servicio Exterior. Confidential_: Enrique Gamburdo entered Tabio government with permission and approval of the National Delegation of the Falange. _Camarada_ Gamburdo is to be given the support and unquestioning loyalty due an Old Shirt. There will be no exceptions to this order. Signed ...

_Orden # 107: 1941. Confidential_: Our heroic Japanese Allies have today destroyed the Jew-Protestant-Marxist American fleet in Honolulu. _Camaradas_ of the Cross and Sword must be prepared to defend the wise peace policies of _Camarada_ Gamburdo against the Jewish war mongers who will now try to make the Kahal the government in San Hermano. El Caudillo has shown how the Motherland can frustrate the war mongers. Do not falter and delay the glorious hour of our final victory. _Camarada_ Marcelino Gassau will soon arrive in San Hermano with instructions on how to help the victory. Signed ...

"Photograph these, will you, Jaime?"

Lobo was sorting out the documents in rough piles. Sabotage. Espionage. Undersea warfare. Guantanamo. Cuban politics. "The works," he grinned. "In a week, this haul will have crammed our prisons with fascist rats. If we didn't have to avoid treading on the toes of your State Department these documents would be enough to put the Spanish Ambassador in the calabozo and bring about a break with Franco. But even if it happens, you won't be around to see it, Matt. You're leaving in exactly four hours."

"Four hours?"

"Just a minute. That's my private phone. Yes, General Lobo speaking." He put his hand over the mouthpiece. "Pick up the other phone. It's the Spanish Ambassador."

"O.K."

"Yes, Mr. Ambassador?"

"General! Something terrible has happened."

"Terrible?"

"There's been a murder in the Embassy. Someone broke into the Embassy and shot one of our attaches. Communists, I think."

"Is he dead? When did this all happen?"

"Five minutes ago."

Hall and Lobo looked at the wall clock. The hands showed ten minutes after one.

"Five minutes or hours, Mr. Ambassador?"

"Minutes, General. It just happened."

"Where did it happen?"

"On the stairs. The back stairs, between the third and fourth floors. It is terrible."

"Who is the man?"

"Elicio Portada, General Lobo. Poor Portada!"

"Just a minute." He put his hand over the mouthpiece. "Listen to those lies, will you? Only one body. Three hours to dispose of the Rivas carcass and search the files. Did you leave them in much of a mess, Matt?"

"I don't remember."

"It doesn't matter." The hand came away from the phone. "Hello. Yes, this is still General Lobo. Mr. Ambassador, I have very serious news for you. As the representative of a friendly neutral, I am sure we can count on your co-operation."

"What is it, General?"

"We happen to have incontrovertible evidence that the late Elicio Portada was connected with a Nazi-Falange ring in direct contact with German submarine fleets in these waters. My immediate deduction is that he was killed by members of this ring to keep him from confessing to us. He was on the verge of making a complete confession."

"What? It is preposterous! I shall protest to the Foreign Minister!"

"Suit yourself, senor. Our evidence is incontrovertible. In the meanwhile, thanks to your attitude as you now express it. I must remind you that while the crime was committed on what is legally Spanish territory, if you move the body one inch out of the Embassy grounds you will be moving it on to Cuban national territory. Do you understand me? Not one body is to be moved out of the Embassy without my consent. Not one body, do you understand?"

"My government shall protest your interference, General Lobo."

"Let them. I'm sending two men over to the Embassy. Tell them what happened. And make up a list of all of Portada's friends. We'll find the murderer on that list, I'll warrant." He hung up the telephone with a slam.

"Let him sleep that off," he laughed. "My super-dooper crime laboratory will prove that the Ambassador lied about the time of the shooting. My super-sleuths will find bloodstains on the third-floor landing--and I hope to Christ Rivas has a different blood type than Portada. My super-sleuths will keep a straight face when the fascists hand them the gun of the missing murderer. Then my colossal courtesy-of-the-F.B.I. crime laboratory will find Rivas's fingerprints on the gun. Mystery: where is Rivas?"

"Have you got his fingerprints?"

"Teniente," Lobo shouted into the inter-phone, "send those Einsteins of crime to the home of Fernando Rivas of the Spanish Embassy. Bring back fingerprints: best place to find them is liquor bottle, razor, hair brush--and do it fast."

"Good going."

"I'll teach that fascist bastard to tell me nursery tales on the telephone at one in the morning." Lobo was growing genuinely indignant. "God, how I wish you didn't have to leave town, Matt. I'm going to be running a circus for the next two weeks!"

"I'll take a rain check on it, Jaime. Maybe I can come back in time for the closing day."

"Who knows?" Lobo sent for his aide, ordered microfilm copies of the documents to be ready in four hours. "And bring me the special belts and harnesses, Teniente."

"Did you get me a seat on a Panair plane? I thought Figueroa would take care of that."

"Better than that, my boy." Lobo crossed the room, opened a panel in the wall. It revealed a closet filled with uniforms. "Get into one that fits, Mateo. I have a seat for you on a Flying Fortress headed for Caracas."

"_Yanqui?_"

"_Yanqui._ You're traveling as Major Angel Blanco of my confidential staff. You are going south for me on a most delicate mission. You speak very little English, and you stink from pomade. Besides, you wear these thick glasses and you've been out on such a night of wild Latin debauchery that you sleep most of the time. In short, you are the Anglo-Saxon's dream of the stupid, conceited, lecherous Latin officer who can't hold his liquor."

"_Claro._ I'm repulsive."

"Yes, but you are also a walking microfilm file, only no one knows it. Your belt, your Sam Browne harness, the lining of your short boots, the inside of the visor of your cap are filled with identical sets of microfilms. Your pouch carries a letter from me to a General XYZ in code--and God preserve the sanity of anyone who attempts to uncode it. It will add up to precisely three tons of _mierda de caballo_."

Hall found a uniform that fit him. He got into it, smeared the proffered pomade into his black hair. "Do I carry any baggage?"

"We'll pack you a bag. Two extra uniforms, pictures of your wife, your mistress, and your mother, a pound of pomade, a few copies of the _Infantry Journal_--it will be all right."

"I can imagine. But before I go, Jaime, there's something I don't quite get. Why did the Spanish Embassy crowd have to hide Rivas's body? Why couldn't they admit that he did it?"

Lobo adjusted Hall's tunic. "Elementary, my dear Watson," he said. "The Portada blighter was sleeping with the Rivas bloke's wife. It's the Ambassador's job to avoid scandals within the happy family. Admitting Rivas killed Portada over a rag, a bone, and a hank o' hair would be a confession the Ambassador couldn't run his own show. Elementary?"

"No. You're improvising, and the notes sound all wrong. Let me know about it when you really find out, Sherlock."

"Come back in two weeks." General Lobo yawned, stretched his long frame. "I'll take you to the American air base myself," he said. "I'll introduce you and act as your interpreter. And after you take off, you'll be on your own. Who's meeting you in Caracas, by the way?"

"Major Diego Segador. Know him?"

Lobo smiled. "You'll get through," he said. "Segador has nine lives, each of them tougher than the side of a battleship. Ask him to tell you what we did to those three Nazi heavyweights in San Souci in '39. _Madre de Dios_, Mateo, it was carnage!"

Twenty steps down the corridor, a Negro technician was focusing a sharp lens on page three of _Arriba_ for April 27, 1938. The picture which spread across four columns of the top of the page was remarkably like the picture Hall had carried in his mind since that day with Jerry in San Hermano. The fans in the negative dryer were whirring over twenty-odd other negatives. Lobo was right, Hall realized. They were worth the life of one Rivas, they might yet take the life of a Hall. The stakes were worth the risk. Kill the beast in San Hermano, drive a knife into its arteries, keep it from crawling north and its foul breath beginning to stink up the clean air. Kill, so you can live again, kill, so you can go back to Ohio when the beast was dead, and have children and not worry that some day they'd have to kill or be killed too. Kill for the same reasons the Rafaels and the Santiagos and the Lobos kill and you'll never have to lose a night's sleep.

"What are you thinking, Mateo?"

"I'm thinking of the girl I'm going to marry in two weeks."

"_Hijo de la gran puta!_ He's in love, too! Let's go to the laboratory. We've got a lot to do before you go."

_Chapter seventeen_

The American Army plane banked sharply over the blacked-out Caracas field. Three times the four-motored ship circled the airport, breaking its speed, rousing the men who controlled the lights along the correct runways. During the second time around, Hall thought he saw a Douglas with the bright green-and-white flag on its wings. He was not so sure the third time.

The pilot brought his ship in gently. It rolled down the new concrete strip, a silver juggernaut in a cloud of red dust. Hall climbed out, gave the captain a silver cigarette case as a souvenir of the trip. The plane was not through for the night; it was to take on more fuel and proceed to a base farther south.

Hall went to the small operations building. He showed his papers to a sleepy official, had his passport stamped. "That Douglas on the other end of the field," he said to the official, "is that the plane from San Hermano?"

The official didn't know. He offered to find out. "It is not of importance," Hall said. He left his bag with the official. "I will be ready to go to the city as soon as the American plane takes off. Is that car for me?"

He went out to the field, stood chatting with the American flying officers as they stretched their legs and smoked while their plane was readied for the next leg of their flight. The boys were an agreeable surprise, or they had a C. O. with brains; each of them spoke some degree of Spanish, and to a man they were polite to the "Cuban officer" who had made the trip with them. It was a decent, non-condescending politeness.

"I am going to ask General Lobo to thank you all for your kindness," he said. "You are, as they say in English, _damn regular guys_!"

The young captain, who had given Hall his life history and his Seattle home address, was touched. "Aw," he said, "we're just ordinary Yanks, Major Blanco. Don't forget to look me up if you ever get to Seattle after the war. Then I'll show you some real hospitality. _Entiende?_"

"Oh, I understand perfectly, Captain. And you must visit me, too. You can always reach me through General Lobo." Hall, who had calmly appropriated the story of Lobo's boyhood and palmed it off on the captain as his own during the flight, began to laugh. "Oh, yes, Captain," he said, "we will have the most amazing reunion after the war."

"Well," the American pilot said, "we're shoving off now."

Hall exchanged salutes and handshakes with the Fortress crew. "_Hasta pronto_," he shouted, as the last man climbed aboard. He remained where he stood, waving at the Americans, when he saw the outlines of Segador's thick shoulders emerging from the lighted doorway of the administration building. Segador was walking toward the Douglas.

He approached Hall, glanced at the Cuban uniform for a second, and continued on his way to the parked plane. There was no hint of recognition.

"Pardon me," Hall said to Segador, "have you a match, please?"

"Of course."

"Ah, Major, I see the stamp of the government match monopoly. Would you be from San Hermano, by any chance?"

In the darkness, Segador's hand crept toward the huge pistol in his holster. Hall held the unlighted match in his fingers. It was unbelievable; he was still unrecognized. He had been speaking to Segador in a disguised voice. "It is a very black night," he said in his normal voice.

"Yes--Colonel."

"Thank you, but it's major. Major Angel Blanco of the Cuban Army, senor." Then he struck the match, held it close to the cigar in his mouth.

"_Madre de Dios!_ It's you!"

"Who the hell did you think it was, Diego? Wilhelm Androtten?"

"I am a fool. But the uniform, the glasses--this confounded blackness...."

"Is that the plane?"

"Yes. We can't take off until morning. I can't trust the night flying instruments. Was it worth the trip?"

"_In spades_," he said, in English.

"It was successful?"