"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.