Part 6

"Oh, I am. Anxious as hell, Mr. Androtten." He explained to Big Pepe what had happened to the little man. Pepe's face instantly reflected his deep sorrow.

"I hate to break up this nice party," Jerry said, "but I have to go to work."

"Can we take you back to the Bolivar, Mr. Androtten?"

"Not just yet. I have a damn appointment here at seven."

Hall put some money on the table and followed Jerry to the car. "I forgot to tell you," he said. "There'll be a government car waiting to pick you up at ten to seven."

"The poor man," Pepe sighed. "The cruel Japanese!"

"It's been a wonderful day, Matt."

"When do we repeat it?"

"Can't tell. I'll leave a message for you tonight when I get back."

Hall ate alone after Jerry went to the laboratory, and then wandered around the dark streets of the waterfront, thinking how he could organize his work. That was the damned job, always. Planning your moves. Deciding exactly what it is you're after and then organizing a method of getting it. The letter to Santiago. That was a good start. With luck, there would be an answer in a week. But was a week too far away? How sick was Tabio, and could he hold out for another week? And anyway, was Ansaldo a fascist?

The face of Varela Ansaldo would not leave Hall's mind. Maybe Fielding could find out something, anything. At this moment, Fielding was probably eating a little crow with his dinner at the British Embassy. But would they tell Fielding anything? Did they know anything? And who the hell was Fielding and how in hell did he get the dope in his reports? _No, my fine impertinent friend, I am not a British agent._ He was the father of Sergeant Harold Fielding who hopped out of the wicker pony cart and picked up one of those thin rifles and died at Jarama.

Santiago's answer. There was the best bet. If the boys in Havana had no dope, at least they would tell him who to contact in San Hermano, and it was a safe bet that when Pedro de Aragon (or would it be a love letter from Maria de Aragon?) wrote, the letter would lead him to someone who would know Souza and Pepe Delgado. They were O.K., but just a little cautious, and this business of squiring Ansaldo's nurse would not set too well with them unless Ansaldo was not Gamburdo's man at all.

Hall was turning a corner when he first noticed the little man walking in the shadows of the opposite sidewalk. A little man in a black suit and a dirty stiff straw hat. Hall slowed his steps, waited for the man in the straw hat to walk closer to the yellowed street light. The man slowed down, too. Hall kept walking. He headed for an avenue, found a cab, told the driver to take him to La Perrichola. He looked around to see the little man get into the other cab at the stand.

"I changed my mind," Hall told the driver. "Take me to the Ritz instead."

He walked slowly into the lobby of the Ritz. It was one of the more modern hotels in New San Hermano. He found a phone booth and called Souza. "Where's Pepe?" he asked.

"Right outside. Do you need him?"

"Very much. Tell him to pick me up near the back entrance of the Ritz. I'm too drunk to trust a strange driver."

Souza laughed. "You Americans," he said. "Pepe will be there in five minutes."

Hall went to the bar, had a short brandy. The little man was sitting behind a potted palm near the street doorway, his face buried in a magazine. Hall looked at his watch and walked to the elevator. "Sixth floor," he said.

He walked through the sixth-floor hall, took the back stairs to the fourth floor, and then looked out of the window at the landing. Big Pepe's LaSalle was parked near the servants' door. Hall listened for the sound of footsteps on the stairs above him. Quietly, he walked to the basement, nodded at a waiter relaxing on a bench near the door, and walked slowly to the LaSalle.

"_Que pasa?_"

"Trouble. Drive a few blocks down and then come back slowly toward the front of the hotel."

"Sit with me," Pepe said. He tapped the pistol in his pocket.

"No." Hall got down on the floor of the back part of the car. "And take your white hat off."

The car shot down three streets, then Pepe turned the corner, rode a block, and started to crawl along the street on which the main entrance of the Ritz opened. "Souza said you were in trouble," Pepe said. "He says you are not a _borracho_."

"I was followed. Watch for a little man in a black suit and a stiff straw hat. Park a block from the entrance to the Ritz and keep your motor running."

"_Claro._"

"I think he tried to sell me perfume this afternoon when I was walking with that nurse."

"She needs no perfume," Pepe said.

"She is not my woman," Hall said.

"Did you see that other woman who came with the doctor?" Big Pepe snorted violently. "I hate _maricones_," he said.

"I hate them too, Pepe. Did you know that Franco is also a homosexual?"

"They are all _maricones_. Hitler, Franco. They are all the same."

"_Putas y maricones_," Hall said. "_La Nueva Espana!_"

Big Pepe cleared his throat and spat out of the window. "Arriba Espana." Hall could feel the low, toneless laugh in the Asturian's throat.

"I think I see your dog," Pepe said. He described him for Hall. "He acts as if he lost something."

"Me."

"Falangista?"

"I don't know. Ever seen him before?"

"Who knows? _Mira!_"

"I can't look. What's he doing?"

"Hiring a car."

"Follow him. But ..."

"_Mira, chico_, that I can do with my eyes closed. And he won't know me for the offal on the streets."

"Don't lose him."

"I'd sooner lose my _cojones_." He started the car, slowly. "I am magnificent at this," he said.

"Good."

"During the war I did this all the time."

"When he stops, watch where he goes but don't stop yourself. Keep going after he stops."

"Don't worry," Pepe said. "I am not new at this."

"Very good."

"That girl with the nice hair, _companero_. Why don't you take her into your bed some night? I think she would be very good there."

"Forget the girl."

"That will be very hard."

"Where are we?"

"Still following the little dog. We're moving toward the Plaza."

"Pepe. The Englishman's son. Did you know him?"

"He was very young. I only saw him once. He was very brave, _companero_. The Centro Asturiano sent flowers to his father when the boy was killed. He died for the Republic, you know." Pepe slowed the car.

"What's the matter?"

"He's stopping. We're on the Calle de Virtudes. He's going into a cafe. I'll keep going."

The car covered another block. Pepe turned the corner and stopped. "You can sit up now," he said.

Hall saw where he was. "Which bar did he go to?" he asked.

"El Siglo. There's another cafe next door. You can sit behind a hedge at a table there and watch El Siglo. I have done it many times. I'll park the car across the street and watch for you."

"Do you think we can do this alone?"

"Why not?"

"What do we have to do?"

"Who knows? It is the little dog's next move."

"But could you get some friends now?"

"Yes. How many?"

"A few. I'll keep an eye on El Siglo."

"All right," Pepe said. "But we shouldn't lose the little dog."

"That is a chance we must take. If we lose him tonight, we will follow him tomorrow. He will be in my footsteps again."

"That is true," Big Pepe said. "I will be back soon." He drove off down the back street.

Like El Siglo, the cafe where Hall found a table near a boxed hedge on the sidewalk faced the entrance to the apartments of the Presidencia. The lights were on again in the fourth floor. Hall wondered if the doctors were poking poor Tabio at that moment.

He ordered a pot of coffee and sat back to watch the entrance to El Siglo. A newsboy sold him a late paper, but Hall gave up trying to read it after a few minutes. He bought a box of wax matches and some cigars, turning his back to El Siglo when the tip of his first match flared into flame.

Less than ten minutes after Hall started his vigil, the little man in the straw hat walked out of El Siglo and sat down behind the wheel of a Renault parked at the curb. He sat alone in the car, his face turned toward the Presidencia. Hall looked nervously up the street for a sign of Big Pepe. He jotted the license number of the Renault down on the margin of his newspaper.

There was still no sign of Big Pepe.

The man in the Renault pressed the squeaky rubber horn twice. Another man walked quickly out of El Siglo and got into the back seat of the Renault. Hall squirmed in his chair and looked vainly for Big Pepe. The passenger was Wilhelm Androtten.

Hall watched the Renault start to move up the Plaza. It rode around the entire Plaza, and, as it started to pass the cafes again, Hall saw that it was following a black limousine which had just left the Presidencia after picking up two passengers.

The black limousine was doing about thirty, picking its way out carefully in the half darkness of the old city. As it passed directly in front of Hall's table, one of the people sitting in the back seat lit a cigarette. In the light of the match, Hall could see that it was Varela Ansaldo.

He had to wait another ten minutes for Big Pepe, who returned with two young men. "We lost him, Pepe."

"_Hijo de puta!_ I told you."

"Relax. I know who he works for. We can find them on our own terms now. I saw them."

"Who?"

Hall looked at the two young men sharing the front seat with Pepe. "Introduce me to your friends," he said.

Big Pepe grinned. "That is your right," he said. "This is my nephew Miguelito, and this is Juan Antonio Martinez. They're school teachers." The last he said with almost boastful pride.

The teachers were both slim lads in their early twenties. Hall shook their hands and got into the back of the car. "Let's drive out to the beach and talk," he said.

"No," Miguelito said. "It would not be wise. There are too many strangers there."

His colleague grunted. "Your pistol, Miguelito," he said. "Take it out of your pocket. It is digging a new hole in my arse."

"They talk that way all the time," Pepe said, tolerantly. "But they are very educated."

"I am sorry if I talk like a worker," Juan Antonio said to Pepe. "My father was only a miner. I apologize, Your Eminence."

"He is joking," Pepe said. "Miguelito, you are a Bachelor of Arts. Tell me, do workers joke, too?"

"Quiet, both of you," Miguelito said. "_Companero_ Hall will think we're all crazy."

Hall laughed. "I've seen boys like you before," he said.

"We were too young to go then," Juan Antonio said. "But if they try it here, the streets of San Hermano will run with blood before we let the fascists win."

"Juan Antonio is a Communist," Big Pepe said.

The boy did not deny it. "Remember my words," he said, "the flag of the Falange will never fly over San Hermano."

"Not if we are still alive," Miguelito added.

"Will you listen to these children?" Pepe asked. "As soon as you turn your back they put on the _pantalones_ and make the noises of a man!"

"This little dog of a fascist who followed you," Miguelito said, "who is his superior?"

"I don't know, _companeros_. It could be Hitler...."

"It could be Franco," Big Pepe said.

"He said that," Juan Antonio said. "He said Hitler, didn't he, Miguelito?"

"Quiet," Miguelito said. "This is no joke. You said you saw him with his superior?"

Hall smiled at the boy. "Listen, _chico_," he said, "men with more pistols than you have tried to put words in my mouth before. All they got from my mouth was my spit."

"_Ole!_" Juan Antonio punched Miguelito's shoulders with glee.

* * * * *

Souza was reading a fat book at his desk when Hall returned to the Bolivar. He greeted the boys with familiarity. "They are reliable," he said after they left.

"I know. I was sober when I called you before. But tonight your reliable boys nearly drank me under the table trying to find out who was with the little dog."

"The one who followed you to the Ritz?"

"The same one. They also told me that you are President of the Hotel Clerks Union."

"I am."

"Got a cigarette? Thanks. No, I've got matches." Hall looked around to see if he and Souza were alone. Quietly, he said, "Androtten was the man I saw with the little dog."

Souza's face grew grimmer. "I don't think I am surprised."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know. But I don't trust him."

"Maybe this will help you." Hall handed him the license number of the Renault. "It's the number of the car they used."

"It will help," Souza said.

"What time did Ansaldo get in?"

"He did not get in, yet. Why?"

"Androtten was following his car, I think."

"Androtten is out, too."

"Maybe we have something."

"You have a message in your box." It was a note from Jerry. She was going to work all day and had to attend a party at the American Embassy in the evening. But she would call him in the morning.

"I am watching her," Hall explained.

The trace of a smile flitted across the long face of the night clerk. "I know," he said. "Pepe told me."

"I'll kill him," Hall laughed. "I'm going to bed. Leave a note in my box about when they get in."

He went to his room. When he turned on the light, he saw that a note had been slipped under his door. It was from Jerry. "Thanks for a lovely day," it said. "I will call you before I leave for the lab."

_Chapter five_

He was dreaming of the crowds in the bull ring at Badajoz, but there were no bulls on the sand. It was the day of the massacre, the day when the Portuguese troops herded the _milicianos_ and their families and handed them over to the waiting _franquistas_ on the Spanish side of the border. It was the day the _franquistas_ shoved the Republican families on to the sand of the bull ring at Badajoz and set up the heavy machine guns in the boxes and fired away until every human being on the field lay choking and dying in his own blood. In his dream Hall saw grand ladies in mantillas in the boxes that day tossing roses and perfumed kerchiefs to the animals at the machine guns, and in his dream he even knew that the perfume on the kerchiefs came from a certain shop in Barcelona.

Then Hall spotted a crowd of German and Spanish officers in another box and he leaped at them, his right hand gripping the ugly clasp knife in his pocket. There were nine officers in the box, four of them Nazis and one a gaudy Italian colonel and the rest were Spanish fascists in capes and one of them wore a Requete beret, although his cape carried the golden embroidered five arrows of the Falange. They began to flee from their box in a panic, but Hall managed to get a quick look at one of the Spaniards and then flung his knife at the Spaniard's retreating back. Then the bells began to toll in the churches and carabineros left their machine guns and ran barehanded after Hall but the clang of the bells started to blot everything out and the church bells of Badajoz blended into the steady drone of a smaller bell in Hall's ears and he awoke to the phone bell which had abruptly brought him back to San Hermano.

"Did I wake you up?" It was Jerry.

"Yeah. What time?"

"Stop groaning. Wash your face and I'll call you back in five minutes."

Later, she asked him if he had been having a bad dream and he said it had been closer to a nightmare in technicolor. "About the war?" she asked, and he said it had been about the war.

"Darling," she said, "I wish you never have another nightmare as long as you live."

"Thanks," he said. "Do we have breakfast together?"

"No. I'm leaving with the doctors in a few minutes. Work all day."

"Dinner tonight?"

"That's out, too. I have to go to a party with the doctors at the American Embassy."

"Good. I was invited, too. I'll see you there." There was a long pause at the girl's end of the wire, and Hall said, "Jerry? Are you still listening?"

"Sure," she said.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. You're a darling. I've got to hang up now. I've got to be out of here in ten minutes."

"O.K.," he said. "See you tonight."

He reached the lobby at half-past eight. There was no message in his box, and he could see that Jerry's key was already in the cubicle. "I'll be in the dining room if anyone phones," he told the day clerk. He bought a paper from a boy standing near the entrance of the Bolivar and went in to eat.

Hall was having his second cup of coffee when Androtten entered the dining room. The little Dutchman smiled happily when he spotted Hall.

"Good morning, good morning," he shouted. "Hell of a nice day, no?"

"It's nice and sunny," Hall said. "Eating alone? Take a chair."

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Hall. Damn nice of you."

Hall wanted to shove the incongruous hells and damns down the pink face of the Hollander. "Not at all," he said. "I like company." But the beaming Dutchman brought goose pimples to his spine this morning.

"Excuse me," Hall said, rising. "I'll be back in a minute."

He went to the desk, picked up a pad of cable blanks and an indelible pencil. Then, at the table, he sat with pencil poised over the pad and smiled at Androtten. "Mine is a funny business," he said. "When you get to the capital of a country you can't go right to work, you know. Far from it, Androtten. First you smooch around the town like a prowler, talking to taxi drivers and bartenders and ..."

"Pardon my ignorance, Mr. Hall. But _smooch_? Is it a real word or journalists' slang?"

"I guess you'd call it slang. I mean you have to mingle with the little people to get an idea of the currents."

"And when you get this idea?"

"When you get the idea, you can go to work." Hall wrote the name and address of the editor of one of the big weeklies in the States on the blank. "Vice-President Gamburdo is man of hour here today," he wrote. "Tomorrow may be man of hour in all Latin America. Arranging for interview. Can you use? Matthew Hall."

"And now you are working?"

Hall turned the blank around so that Androtten could read the text of his cable. "I'll let you in on my secret," he laughed.

The Dutchman read the text. "Interesting," he said. "Damn interesting."

"I'm afraid it's just routine."

"Oh, never that." The Dutchman sighed. "When such vital personalities as Senor Gamburdo are routine to you, Mr. Hall, I imagine that my story has only a small chance of ever being told. But I suppose that is merely as it should be."

"Hell, no, Mr. Androtten. I'll tell you what we'll do. As soon as I have my interview with Gamburdo, we'll sit down and have our chat and then I'll query the _Saturday Evening Post_ or _Collier's_ and whatever they offer we'll split down the middle."

"You make me happy as hell, Mr. Hall. But please, money is no object. Please keep all of the money."

Hall shook his head. "We'll fight that out later," he said. "Cigar?"

Androtten demurred. His heart was not strong enough for cigars that early in the morning, he explained. "In Java I was healthier than an ox," he said. "But the damn Japanese ..." He let the rest of the sentence remain unspoken.

Through the open window of the dining room, Hall saw Pepe's LaSalle drive up to the Bolivar.

He excused himself with an "I'll be seeing you," and walked out to the desk. He handed the cable blank to the day clerk. "Send it press rate collect," he said.

Pepe had a message for Hall from Souza. Ansaldo had returned to the Bolivar at 3:14 A.M., twenty-three minutes before Wilhelm Androtten. They had both left calls to be awakened at eight in the morning.

"That all Souza said?"

"That is the complete message."

"Well, it's something, anyway." The papers said that Ansaldo was to spend the morning at the bedside of President Tabio.

"Where to?"

"Gobernacion Building. But not right away. Drive somewhere where we can have a coffee together. I'd like to talk to you first."

Pepe took him to a little workers' restaurant on the edges of the business section of New San Hermano. It was evident that he had had little sleep.

"Tired?" Hall asked.

The driver whistled, softly. "Like a corpse," he admitted.

An amused grimace distorted Hall's face. "What a corpse!" he said. "Why didn't you tell the boys who followed the teachers and me from the cafe last night to be better than the little dog?"

"You saw them?"

"I kept tripping over them all the way home."

Pepe thought it was very funny. "They pledged their lives to protect yours, the bunglers. Reliable, but clumsy."

"I am not angry," Hall said. "I am grateful."

"For nothing," Pepe protested.

"Pepe, do you know why I came to San Hermano?"

The big Asturian shrugged his shoulders. "You never told me, or Fernando. Miguelito and his friend said you have the mouth of a clam."

"Do you want to know why?"

"I never question friends. You are a friend."

Hall looked up at Pepe Delgado and wanted to tell him how much he reminded him of the best of the men he had met in Spain, the best of the officers and _milicianos_ who never, even in the heat of battle, forgot the feelings and the sacred _dignidad_ of their fellow men.

"Mother of God!" Pepe laughed. "Don't look at me as if I were that girl with the red hair."

"You are a good _companero_," Hall said. "In a few days, perhaps I can tell you."

"I never ask questions of friends," Pepe said.

"I know. Did Souza tell you what I told him last night?"

"No. Only about when Ansaldo and Androtten came back."

"Can you reach Souza today?"

"Of course."

"Then listen. Tonight, he must find some excuse for moving me into the room next to Ansaldo--if there is such a room. Do you think he can do it?"

Pepe grabbed the check for the coffee, refused to relinquish it to Hall. "This is my table," he said with quiet dignity. He also refused to discuss his fee for driving Hall around San Hermano for days. "_Manana_," he laughed. "But about the room. I think Fernando can arrange it. The wife of the owner of the Bolivar is a member of the Centro Asturiano. She is also a first cousin of Dr. Gonzalez."

"I hope he can do it," Hall said.

"_Hola!_" Pepe boomed. "_Que tal?_" He exchanged loud pleasantries with a chauffeur who came in and sat down at a table in the corner.

"A Gallego," he explained to Hall. "But otherwise a pretty decent man."

"There are many decent Gallegos," Hall said.

Pepe whistled through his teeth, shook the limp and dangling fingers of his right hand, and looked behind his back. Hall grinned. Pepe's gesture was as old as Spain.

"Listen, Pepe," he laughed, "we have much to do. And all in a very short time. I am going to see the Press Secretary in the Gobernacion. I am requesting an interview with Gamburdo."

"Gamburdo is a _cabron_," Pepe said.

"I know. In my eyes he is an _hijo de la gran puta_. But for the present I want Gamburdo and his friends to think that I am an admirer of the _cabrito_. Clear?"

"I think I understand."

"Good. Tell all of this to Souza when you drop me at Gobernacion. When can you see him?"

"I will try to see him at once."

"_Bueno._ Let's go, then."

In the car, Hall had a fresh idea. "This young Juan Antonio, the teacher. Is he really a Communist?"

"Yes."

"Member of the party?"

"Of course. He writes for _Mundo Obrero_ regularly."

"Good. If you see him, ask him to go to the Communist headquarters and from there to telephone a friend. From there, understand? Tell him to call any friend. No, wait. Make it a friend in the office of _Mundo Obrero_. I want him to denounce me to this friend as an admirer of Gamburdo and an enemy of Tabio."

"But why?"

"I have an idea that Gamburdo has made some changes since he became Acting President," Hall answered. "If he has, he's got some Cross and Sword bastards listening in on all Communist phones."

"It is possible," Pepe said. "I will discuss your idea with Juan Antonio."

"Talk him into it, Pepe."

Pepe stopped the car in front of the Gobernacion building. He promised to meet Hall at the Bolivar in two hours.