Part 23

He and Hall sat in silence as the convoy cut across a meadow on the slope and turned toward the outlines of a larger village in the valley. They jogged toward the dim yellow lights of Puente Bajo, the shepherd piercing the night quiet with the curses he flung at the heads of the donkeys every time they balked.

At the outskirts of the town, Bustamente the Notary ordered a halt. "I have been thinking," he said. "It is my feeling that if the two on the donkeys are of the Republic and innocent, then we will have committed an offense against their sacred dignity if we lead them into Puente Bajo fettered on mangy donkeys. I have therefore come to the conclusion that perhaps it would be better for me to ride on alone to the school and bring the teacher back to meet us here, by the road."

"I can agree," the shepherd said. "But wait until I tether their donkeys." He dismounted, led the donkeys to the side of the road and tied their forefeet to lengths of rope he fastened to a strong tree.

"Would you want one of your own cigarettes?" he asked Hall.

"Yes. Many thanks. And one for Major Segador, too. And please take one for yourself."

The shepherd declined with a serious face. "First," he said, "I must hear what the school teacher has to say about you. He is wiser, even, than Bustamente the Notary."

Bustamente the Notary and the man who was acknowledged to be even of more wisdom than he returned out of breath; the school teacher from trotting after the short horse and the Notary from talking incessantly to the pedagogue. The teacher was a compact mestizo in his early twenties, a short youth with a furrowed sloping Indian forehead and bright beady black eyes. He was wearing a pair of brown-cotton trousers, a blue shirt without a tie, and rope-soled slippers.

"Are you truly Major Segador?" he asked. And then, without waiting for the answer, he turned to the shepherd and began to berate him. "You fool," he shouted, "untie his bonds at once. Do you know that he sat in El Moro with Don Anibal?"

"I am without learning," the shepherd said.

"It is all right, teacher," Segador said. "The _companero_ did his duty--and he did it properly. Undo my hand, Juan Antonio, so that I may shake your hand."

"I am sorry, _companero_," the school teacher said to the shepherd. "I spoke to you without thinking."

"What is your name, teacher?"

"I am called Pablo Artigas." He helped Hall and Segador get off the donkeys. "I regret that you have had so much grief in our province."

"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 passed 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 documents 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 documents."

"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 ashore, a mug from the Spanish Embassy 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 Embassy. 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 Embassy. Is it fantastic, Mateo?"

"For God's sake stop telling me that!"

"But it is fantastic! He makes them drive him to the Mexican Embassy, 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 Ambassador 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 Ambassador 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 Ambassador 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 Institute 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 documents. 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 hell 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."

"Three days ago, Mateo. There was a meeting of the Student Council to Aid the United Nations at the University. The hall was packed. Then the Cross and Sword gunmen stormed the entrances and fired point blank into the crowd. There were over fifteen deaths, and so many injured that the University authorities established an emergency hospital in five lecture rooms. Your Jerry has been there since. The commanding general of this area is loyal to the Republic; he called up the reserves."

"What about Jerry? I've been trying to reach her all morning."

"She is wonderful. All the patients are trying to teach her Spanish."

"What are we waiting for? Let's go to the University."

"Not me. I've got to go back to the Embassy. Lobo says he can meet us both for lunch at the Embassy."

"I'll make it. Let's go. Oh, one more thing. I put through some calls to New York. And some are coming in. I gave your office as one of the places I could be reached."

"Don't be late."

* * * * *

Jerry could spend only a few minutes with Hall on the University steps. "Gonzales told me that you were safe," she said. "And also what you accomplished. I'm proud of you, Matt."

"I worried about you," he said. "Were you scared when you found yourself in a war zone?"

"No. Just angry. Maria Luisa was at the meeting when the shooting started. She wasn't hurt, thank God, but she was a bloody mess when she got home. Gonzales and I left for the University at once. I've been here, since. We've had four deaths to date."

"When can you get away?"

"Not till dinner time. But things are easing up. We've been able to transfer more than half of our cases to the hospitals."

"The Bolivar at eight."

He took a cab to the Mexican Embassy. The driver was beaming as he shut the door. He told Hall that the early returns were overwhelmingly in favor of Lavandero. "Yes, senor," he laughed, "the fascists are on the run today. The lines formed outside of the polling places three and even four hours before they opened. Did you see what fell from the planes yesterday? Did you see the papers? Those dirty fascists!"

Duarte had figures to back up the cab driver's story when Hall reached the Mexican Embassy. "It is a wonderful victory, Mateo," he said. "The tide is running so strongly that Gamburdo is expected to concede the election before the polls close at five."

"The bastard! Where's Lobo?"

"He'll be here in a minute. Let me show you some of the leaflets. I'll bet you haven't seen one yet."

The leaflet was the size of a standard newspaper page, printed on both sides. There was the large picture of Gamburdo embracing Ansaldo smack up against the shot of Ansaldo, in fascist uniform, giving the fascist salute along with the Nazi and the Italian officers. Most of the Falange documents proving the Axis ties of Gamburdo and the Cross and Sword were also reproduced on the single sheet.

"It turned the election," Duarte said. "Until yesterday, the fascists were spreading the story that Lavandero had kept Ansaldo from operating in time. Gamburdo was so anxious to grab the credit for Ansaldo that he dug his own grave."

"He's not in the grave, yet."

"Be patient."

Lobo walked into the office. He was wearing his regulation tan uniform. "Mateo," he shouted, "you're a fraud! I heard you were wearing a Cuban officer's uniform."

"It's in shreds, Jaime."

Lobo eased his long frame into Duarte's favorite chair. "I thought you'd never gotten through," he said. "After the second day of silence I was sure the fascists had clipped your wings. Don't bother to tell me about your hardships, though. I've already seen Segador."

"Everyone has seen Segador," Hall laughed. "Everyone but me. When the hell do I see him?"

"He's very busy, my friend. He's responsible to a government, you know, not to himself, like you."

"_Mierda!_"

"That reminds me. There's an American officer in town. From Miami."

"Intelligence?"

"Naturally. He's a very nice guy, Mateo. The American Ambassador's daughter here told him that you are an agent of the Comintern. He told me that he knew she was crazy. He asked me to tell you that he's a straight-shooter and he wants to speak to you. In a friendly way, of course. Name's Barrows. A lieutenant-colonel. Know him?"

"No. What about Androtten?"

"What about Barrows, first? If I were you, I'd give him a ring. He's at the American Embassy."

"All right. Shall I ask him to lunch with us?"

Barrows was not free for lunch. He arranged to meet Hall at Duarte's office at three. "He sounds human," Hall admitted.

During their luncheon, Lobo told Hall and Duarte what he had learned about Androtten from the American Government. The man was a German named Schmidt or Wincklemann (he had used passports in both names) who had a record as a German agent which went back to 1915. He had spent some time in Java, some years in Spanish Morocco, and the year of 1935 living in a villa at Estoril, the beach resort outside of Lisbon. "The record doesn't say what he was doing in Portugal," Lobo said. "My guess is that he was working with Sanjurjo."

"I'd back you on that," Hall said. "The old rumhound needed someone to hold his hand before the war."

"There are blank spaces in the record after that," Lobo said. "The next entry is the spring of 1938, when your Androtten was known as Wincklemann. He turned up in Rome as an art dealer specializing in Spanish masterpieces. He sold two Goyas and a Velasquez to three rich ladies in the British colony; told them the paintings were from the private collections of Spanish noblemen who had been ruined by the _rojos_. He was lying, of course--the paintings had all been taken from Spanish museums by the Nazis. Wincklemann disappeared, and the ladies finally sold the paintings back to the Franco government in 1940 for the same price. The last mention of Wincklemann or Schmidt is a paragraph from a letter mailed to Washington from Mexico in July, 1941. The letter was from the junta of Dominican opposition leaders and mentioned a Gunther Wincklemann as one of four Nazi agents who had been guests of Trujillo in the Dominican capital that month."

* * * * *

Hall borrowed an empty office in the Mexican Embassy for his appointment with the American officer. It went off well. Barrows was a plain-speaking man in his early forties, with the handshake of a young and vigorous boiler maker. He had a nice, unhurried way about him, his frosty blue eyes surveying Hall with good humor while he fussed with his thick-walled pipe. "I'd heard all sorts of conflicting stories about you," he said, smiling at the conflicts.

"I can imagine," Hall said.

"I wish I could tell you half of them."

"I know the Ambassador's half. Heard it in Havana."

Barrows snorted. "Have you a match that lights?" he asked. "I've been trying to get this pipe started for days." He refused a cigar. It was a match that he wanted. Hall had a lighter whose flame burned long enough to light the pipe. "There now," he said, "now we can talk. I know that you heard about the Ambassador's report. If it will make you feel any better, Skidmore got his tail singed for it." He was highly amused.

"Good." Hall was warming up to Barrows. "I hate stuffed shirts."

"So do I. But frankly, Hall, I'd like to drop the subject. I--I need your advice. Unofficially, of course. But I need it. It's about the reports that the late Roger Fielding made to the British Embassy. You saw them, I understand."

"Only once. A few nights before he was killed."

"That's what I was told. Commander New in the British Embassy told me. He's not exactly up on the San Hermano scene yet, you know. He thinks that after the job you and Lobo did in Havana that he ought to turn the originals of the Fielding reports over to the government. What he doesn't know is who to hand them to. He wants to know who will use them and who will burn them. He thought that since you were an American, he'd ask me to get your slant on it."

"I get it," Hall said. "You want one guy who is certain to be an anti-fascist. Someone who will know just how to use the information."

"Exactly. I don't suppose I have to tell you, Hall, that the enemy has been sinking our shipping in the South Atlantic and the Caribbean at a rate that spells one hell of a long war. I know, as you do, that Falangist Spaniards on shore are working with the Nazi undersea raiders. But even if we wanted to, we couldn't send enough Marines to South America to root 'em out. We've got to rely on the local governments to do the job."

"Yeah." Hall was bitter. "We want this Republic to root out the Falangists, so we send an Ambassador who plays footy with the Falangists in public and calls the anti-Falangist President a dirty Red."

"You're carping, Hall."

"All right. I'm carping. I'm a taxpayer, it's my prerogative to carp. We want the Latin American Republics to get tough with the Franquists who are helping the Nazis sink our ships, so we sell the Spanish fascists the oil they transfer to the Nazi subs, and we send an Ambassador to Madrid whose only exercise is kissing Franco's foot in public every Sunday morning, and when any of our sister Republics want to break with Franco we dispatch a sanctimonious buzzard in striped pants from the State Department and he tells them to lay off Franco, Spain's Saviour from Atheism and Communism. How in the hell can we expect the Latin Republics to crack down on Franco's stooges at home when we ourselves play up to Franco in Madrid?"

"Let's have that lighter again." Barrows was cool and unruffled, the smile that danced across the smooth lines of his face never wavered. "I'm a soldier," he said, pleasantly. "I can't discuss policy. I can only talk tactics. You know that, Hall. Tactics is the art of working with an existent situation and licking it--not waiting for the millennium. You think our policy toward Franco Spain should be changed. Maybe you're right. Maybe it will be changed. But, in the meanwhile, Franquists in Latin America, in this country specifically, are putting the finger on our ships. Fielding's reports might be accurate. If we are to act on them, we need the help of pro-Allied members of this government. Who is our man?"

"There is one man in these parts who can be trusted completely to do the right things with those reports," Hall answered. "Give him the reports, and after the polls close he'll be in a position to round up every fascist Fielding listed and put them on ice for the duration. He's an army man--Major Diego Segador."

"And you think he's our man, eh? Would you mind writing his name in my book, and the best place to reach him?"

Hall carefully printed the information Barrows wanted and then, as he returned the book, he said, deliberately, "But there's one thing you should know about Segador. He's everything I said he is, and more. But he's also a leftist. He's very close to the Communist Party."

"So what?" Barrows said, casually. "The Russians are killing plenty of Germans, and I understand their chief is a member of the party, too. Man named Stalin, or something like that."

"Do you mind if I call you unique?"

"Not at all. But let me ask one. What are you planning to do for the duration? Ever think of G-2?"

"Yeah. I applied before Pearl Harbor. They turned me down so hard I thought I was hit by a truck. I applied again on December 8th, 1941. It was still no soap. I was for the Loyalists in Spain, you know. That made me what the brass hats term a 'premature anti-fascist' and definitely not officer material."

"I didn't know about that," Barrows said. "What would you do if the door was opened for you now? Understand, I'm not making an offer. I'm just asking."

"I don't know," Hall said. "I don't think the door would be opened. If it was--I'd have to think about it."

"May I have your lighter again?"

Hall watched Barrows make a major operation of relighting his pipe, and recognized it as the officer's neat device for creating a break in a conversation that needed breaking. Barrows had a way of making the ritual of lighting his pipe serve as the curtain that falls on a given scene of a play.

"The Ambassador," Barrows smiled. "He's been tearing his nice white hair since you got back from Havana. You put him on an awful spot, you know."

"It'll do him good, the old bastard. Do you know what Tabio told me about him a few days before he died? He said that he was with Skidmore at a dinner a few days after Germany invaded Russia and that Skidmore said he was glad that now the Russians would get what was coming to them."

"Not really?"

"Lavandero was there. He'll back me up." Hall stopped. "Say, I have an idea," he said. "There's one thing I can do for G-2. I can write a report on Skidmore. I'll do it right after the elections."

"Oh-oh! It'll mean trouble with the Spats Department."

"Spats?"

"State. But you make your report, and give it to me. I'll turn it in with the rest of my stuff when I get back. Why not? You're a civilian. The worst that can happen to you after you write the report is that you'll have trouble getting passports and visas."