"I know," Hall said, sharply. "That girl with the red hair."
"Excuse me," Pepe said. "I am not a doctor."
"You are too modest, _ilustre_."
"Have a good time tonight. I'll be waiting for you in the morning. Or,
if you change your mind, leave word with Fernando."
"Good. Until tomorrow, then." Hall got the key to his new room from the
clerk, as well as the packages he had ordered earlier in the day.
The new room was larger than the other one. His clothes and bags had
already been moved in, and the chambermaid had made a creditable effort
to put them away as Hall had previously done. Hall went to the window,
saw that it looked out on the Plaza. He adjusted his window shutters for
privacy. The wall between his room and Ansaldo's sitting room had only a
bureau against it. Hall moved the chest slightly to one side, made room
for a small, solid chair. Then he took his bath.
He was shaving when he heard Ansaldo return to the Bolivar. He wrapped a
towel around his middle, put the plastic prongs of the stethoscope in
his ears, and sat down on the little chair facing the wall. The hearing
end of the stethoscope picked up only footsteps. The sounds told their
own story. The man in the next room was walking to the window, then
opening the shutters, then sitting on the couch. There were other
footsteps, lighter and less pronounced. Perhaps another person in the
room was wearing soft slippers or going barefooted, like Hall himself.
"Are you tired, _ilustre_?" It was Marina.
"No. Why should I be tired?" Ansaldo.
Marina giggled.
"Did you find out?" Ansaldo asked.
"Not yet, _ilustre_. What was it like to examine Tovarich Tabio?"
Ansaldo laughed. "Let me take care of the Tovarich, please. And don't
act too happy at the Embassy tonight."
"I am not a fool, _ilustre_. Didn't the Caudillo himself personally
decorate me for bravery?"
"Now you are being a boor. I detest boors."
"I am sorry, _ilustre_."
"Try to find out if they are coming in tonight."
"They would not be coming by Clipper," Marina said. "Too dangerous."
There was the rustle of paper, followed by the padded footsteps. Then
someone--Hall guessed it was Marina--sat down in a creaky armchair. The
man with the shoes got up and walked in the direction opposite from
Hall's room. Hall heard a door open, followed a few seconds later by the
rush of water into a tub. He remained in his chair, his stethoscope
still against the plaster.
The phone near Hall's bed started to ring. He got up very quietly,
tiptoed over to the bed. He hid the stethoscope under his pillow before
he answered.
"Hello, it's me."
"Yeah, Jerry."
"Speak louder. I can't hear you."
"Sure." He went on speaking with his hand around the mouthpiece to
muffle the sound. "Can you hear me now?"
"Just about. Listen, I've got lots to tell you. I was with Doctor when
he examined the President, and he was magnificent!"
"The patient?"
"No, you dope. The doctor. What are you doing now?"
"Nothing. Getting dressed."
"Me too. Buy me a drink and I'll tell you all about it."
"Right now?"
Jerry laughed.
"I know," he said. "You're not wearing a thing at the moment."
"Just a second. There. Now you're right about one thing, anyway."
"Don't tempt me," he warned. "I might decide to check up for myself."
"Not now you won't! Meet you downstairs in about twenty minutes. O.K.?"
Hall finished his shave and dressed, toying all the while with the
notion of walking down the corridor to Jerry's room before she had a
chance to leave. Pepe would heartily approve, he thought, and, besides,
since that hour in the woods on top of Monte Azul, Jerry had not exactly
indicated that he would be unwelcome if he made a try. But while he
speculated, Jerry phoned him again from downstairs. "Daydreaming?" she
asked, and he answered, "Yes, about you."
She met him at the elevator in the lobby. "Come on," she laughed, "let's
go to that place in back of the Cathedral. The little Dutch drip was
around here a second ago. He wants to tell you the story of his life, he
told me."
"O.K. Let's just keep walking."
She took his arm as they left the hotel. "Miss me?" she asked.
"I did."
"You're a liar."
Hall winced. "Is that the best you have to say? How about the
magnificent doctor?"
"He's really good, Matt. I'm not kidding. I've worked with some corking
medics in my day, but this guy is tops." She told Hall about the
masterly way in which Ansaldo had taken command of the situation,
kicking all the San Hermano doctors out of the sick room and examining
Tabio only in the presence of Marina, Jerry and Tabio's son.
"What's the matter with him?"
"Ansaldo has an idea. But he has to make certain."
"What does it look like to you?"
"It could be many things. What's good to drink here?"
"Anything. Scotch and soda?"
"Oke. But really, Matt, you should have seen Doctor in that sick room."
She launched into a long and enthusiastic account of the doctor at work.
The girl was on the point of repeating herself when Hall cut her short.
"Listen," he said. "Let me tell you something about Anibal Tabio and his
generation of young democrats who walked out of jail and started to make
history." He told her of the schools and the hospitals which had been
built in the country in the last decade, of the minimum-wage laws, of
the work of Tabio followers like Dr. Gonzales.
He told her how he first met Tabio in Geneva. "His was supposed to be
just a small voice in the League; a little South American dressing to
make the whole show look good. But a month after he got there, Mussolini
started to pop his goo-goo eyes at Ethiopia. Hoare and Laval and Halifax
were so nice and ready to give the Italian steamroller a healthy shove
downhill to Addis Ababa. Then one afternoon Litvinov got up to fire some
heavy shots. But that was expected. Then del Vayo started, and the fun
began. Because, when Vayo was through, it was Tabio's turn. And lady,
what Anibal Tabio did to hot shots like Hoare and Laval without even
raising his voice was just plain murder."
Jerry put her hand on Hall's arm. "I suppose I read about it in the
papers at the time. It didn't mean much to me then. I'm afraid it didn't
mean much to me until right now, Matt."
"Weren't you interested in what happened in the world?"
"Not too much, I'm afraid. I was interested in myself. I was making up
my mind to go to Reno, and then I sat in Reno for six weeks cramming on
my old school books, and then I was off to nursing school."
"Didn't Ethiopia, and later Spain, make any impression upon you?" Hall's
question was very gently stated.
"Of course it did, Matt. I was sorry for the Africans and I was sorry
for the Spaniards. I wanted Mussolini to get licked and I wanted the
Loyalists to win. But most of all I wanted to get through nursing school
and then earn enough money to study medicine."
"In other words, if Geraldine Olmstead got her M.D., all would be right
with the world, eh?"
She avoided his eyes. "It sounds stupid and mean," she said. "But I
guess I deserve it. I'm afraid that was the idea."
"When did the idea die?"
"About ten seconds ago, when you put it into words," she admitted. "I
never thought of it in that way before. But I wasn't the only one,
Matt."
"Hell, no! You were in a majority when the war started. The whole
country was sitting back and, as it thought, minding its own business.
We thought we were wonderfully immune until the bombs began to drop on
Pearl Harbor."
"Now you're being gallant," she laughed. "There were plenty of people in
the country like--like you, Matt. Have we time for another drink?"
Hall was staring into space. Suddenly he exploded. "_Madre de Dios!_ Now
I remember!"
"Remember what? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I have." Hall tapped his head. "In here."
Jerry laughed. "I wish someone would come along and tell me what this is
all about."
"There's no time. Let's get back to the hotel. I've got to change
clothes and there's a guy I want to see before I go to the party."
"But what's it all about?"
"I'll tell you later."
Walking back to the hotel, he asked Jerry if she had ever found the
solution to a problem in a dream. "Because just now I did. Do you
remember when you woke me up this morning that I sounded like a guy in a
fog? Well, I was. But just a few minutes ago at that table on the
sidewalk, the fog lifted."
"And now you feel better?"
"Sure. It's all over."
"I think you're lying. I think that whatever it is, it's just
beginning."
"No. It's over."
Jerry was right. But what she did not know was that the fog had lifted
on Dr. Varela Ansaldo. The doctor was the Spanish officer of Hall's
dream, the one at whose back Hall hurled the knife. And at the table,
sipping his second drink, Hall had recalled in a flash where he had seen
Varela Ansaldo before. It had happened in Burgos, in April of 1938,
during a review of the 12th Division of the fascist army. Ansaldo,
wearing the uniform of a Franco major, with a big Falange yoke and
arrows sewn over the left breast pocket, had shared a bench on the
reviewing stand with an Italian and a German officer. Directly behind
them, on that day, had flown the flags of Imperial Spain, The Falange,
Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Hall remembered the tableau vividly,
remembered so clearly perhaps because while watching the review from the
sidewalk he had been annoyed by the staff photographer of Franco's
_Arriba_, who must have shot a hundred pictures of the officials in the
stands that day and who had also shoved Hall aside or stepped on his
toes before shooting each picture.
"I'll see you at the Embassy tonight," he said.
"Oke. But get that scowl off your face first," she smiled. "You promised
to be nice tonight, and right now you look as if you are planning to
kill someone with your bare hands."
_Chapter six_
The American Embassy was three blocks beyond the Presidencia. Hall
wanted to walk to the party, but when he reached the street he became
self-conscious about his palm-beach tuxedo jacket, and he hailed a
strange cab.
The Embassy was housed in an old Spanish palace which a former
Ambassador had left to the United States Government in his will. After
the first World War, when the government had taken title to the palace,
Washington sent an architect and an office efficiency man to San Hermano
to redesign the structure. The outside remained more or less intact. But
inside, many changes had been effected. The spacious street floor,
designed as the slave quarters in the seventeenth century and later
converted to storerooms and servants' quarters, was now a hive of
offices and waiting rooms. The second floor was devoted largely to a
tremendous ballroom, a state dining room, and the tapestried private
offices of the Ambassador himself. The living quarters of the Ambassador
took up the third floor, while the low-ceilinged fourth floor,
originally designed for soldiers, was now given over to servants' rooms.
A secretary at the entrance checked Hall's name off against a list on a
teak table. He took the carpeted stairs to the ballroom. Two butlers
stood at a screen in the doorway to the big room. The first butler
announced his name, but not loud enough to disturb any of the
Ambassador's two hundred-odd guests. The second butler nodded to Hall,
and led the way through a maze of dignitaries, diplomats' wives, and
young people trying to dance to the music a rumba band was producing
from a bandstand in a corner. Hall followed him patiently, looking for a
sign of Jerry's red hair. The butler nodded gravely at a young girl
dancing with a thin Latin in tails. She left her dancing partner and
advanced on Hall with an outstretched hand.
"Mr. Matthew Hall, Miss Margaret," the butler whispered.
"I'm so glad you came, Mr. Hall. I'm Margaret Skidmore." Her hand, thin
and remarkably strong, was covered with a white net glove that reached
to her elbow.
"It's nice of you to have me," Hall said.
Margaret Skidmore took his arm. "We must get you a drink," she said,
"and introduce you to some of the more interesting people here. And oh,
yes, to my father. But I warn you, he's not in the first category." She
was short; much smaller than Jerry, Hall thought, but a bird of a
different color. As they crossed the room, a wisp of the black hair
piled on top of her head dropped over her eye. Hall was amused by the
way she blew the hair to one side twice before deciding to lift it with
her gloved hand.
"This is my Dad's favorite punch," she said at the buffet table. "I
forgot to tell you that the party is to celebrate the third anniversary
of his mission."
Hall ladled out two cups. "Here's to the next three years," he toasted.
"The next three years are the ones that will count," Margaret Skidmore
said. She was smiling at Hall and at some other guests when she said it,
but it was not polite banter.
"The Press Secretary of the Embassy is sore at you," she said. "He's
angry because you tried to get to Gamburdo without him."
"I'm sorry," Hall said. "If you'll introduce me to him, I'll try to make
amends."
"Don't bother," she laughed. "Smitty's a stuffed shirt who needs to be
taken down a peg or two. But I must say that you look a lot different
than I thought you would, Mr. Hall."
"I know. I'm supposed to look like a hero and I have the face of a mugg.
Or a gorilla." He was still looking for Jerry. "You're a surprise, too."
"Am I so different?" There was coquettish amusement in her hazel eyes.
She tilted her fragile doll's nose, forced a haughty cast to her
small-girl's face. "Is an Ambassador's daughter supposed to be a
high-and-mighty lady like this?"
"No. I like you better the other way."
"Thanks. It's my only way."
Hall spotted Jerry on the dance floor with Varela Ansaldo. Jerry looked
very happy, and Ansaldo had lost some of his undertaker's grimness. He
tried in vain to catch her eye.
"Here comes my father."
Hall found himself shaking hands with a portly, middle-aged American who
wore tails as if to the manor born. J. Burton Skidmore had the most
imposing head of wavy gray hair in the entire hemisphere, and he knew
it. His face, still ruddy and youngish, was pink and smelled of fine
cologne.
"_Con mucho gusto_," the Ambassador said, holding Hall's hand and bowing
slightly from the waist.
"I'm glad to meet you, sir," Hall said.
"Father, Mr. Hall is an American. He is Matthew Hall, the writer. You
know. Matthew Hall." The childish, well-bred-daughter smile on Margaret
Skidmore's face could not conceal the acid contempt in her voice. "Mr.
Hall is an American, from New York."
"Oh, yes, oh, yes, indeed. Hall. Of course, Mr. Hall. Been in San
Hermano long, Mr. Hall?"
"No, sir. Less than a week."
"Fine place, Mr. Hall. Fine people. Have you met Smitty yet? Dear, have
you seen Smitty? I think he and Mr.--Mr. Hall could find much in common,
Margaret."
"Tomorrow," Margaret Skidmore said, and the Ambassador helped himself to
a cup of punch.
"_Amigo Mateo!_"
Without turning around, Hall said, in Spanish, "Only one man in all the
world has a scratchy voice like that," and then he turned around and
embraced Felipe Duarte.
"What brings you to San Hermano?" he asked Duarte.
"I am now a diplomat. First Counselor of the Mexican Embassy in San
Hermano and guest professor of literature at the University."
Hall and Duarte had last met in Spain, where Duarte had served as a
Lieutenant-Colonel with the regular Spanish People's Army. "_Coronel_
Pancho Villa" was the name his men gave him, and the thin, gangling
Mexican scholar had fought like a terror to live up to this name. Of
Duarte, the General Staff officers said that he was as bad a strategist
as he was brave a man, which would have made him one of the worst
strategists in military history. But during the Ebro retreat, Duarte had
taught the veteran professional officers a few things about the tactics
of guerrilla warfare which raised his standing as a soldier.
Duarte took Margaret Skidmore's hand and raised it to his lips.
"_Enchante_," he sighed, and she knew at once that he was laughing at
her.
"Senor Ambassador," Duarte said, speaking rapid Spanish, "this is one of
the most magnificent parties I have ever attended. How do you manage to
give such splendid parties with only your chit of a daughter to help you
shove food down the ulcerous throats of these sons of whore mothers,
dear Senor Ambassador? It is stupendous. It is colossal."
The Ambassador smiled, shook Duarte's hand, and bowing slightly, he
murmured, "_Con mucho gusto_." Then, still smiling, he turned and walked
away.
"Don't let this guy fool you," Hall said to the Ambassador's daughter.
"He speaks English as well as we do."
"Better," Duarte said. "Ah learned mah English in Texas, Ah'll have
yo'all know, suh. And Mateo, don't let Margaret's innocent smile fool
you. She knows almost enough Spanish to know what I just told her
distinguished papa."
"Some day I'm going to know enough," Margaret laughed. "And when I do,
you're going to get your face slapped in front of everyone, I'm afraid.
Tell me, Mateo, does _hijos de la gran puta_ mean what I think it does?"
"That sounds like slang to me," Hall said. "I learned my Spanish on the
Linguaphone."
"You're a fast boy, Matt," she said. "Call me Margaret, if you wish."
She straightened Hall's tie with a perfumed glove. "I'll give you a
little time with Felipe, and then I'll steal you back. There are many
people here tonight who want to meet you."
"Hurry back," Duarte said. "He bores me stiff when I have him on my
hands too long."
"You bastard," Hall said. "You're a diplomat now. Don't you ever stop
clowning?"
"Sure. When I kill fascists I am very serious. You know that, Mateo. But
here, if I did not clown, I would die of boredom. For example, when
Skidmore gives a party, the politicos in my Embassy, they all find
reasons for being out of town. I am not a politico. I am a professor of
literature and a killer of fascists, by profession; a diplomat because
someone wanted to do Lombardo a favor and at the same time remove my
face from the domestic scene. _Claro?_ So it is clown or die. And if I
must die, I prefer to die having a second crack at Franco."
"_Claro, amigo._ But must you wear a suit like this one?"
Duarte's evening clothes were his cloak of independence. He wore a cheap
tuxedo he had bought in New York for twenty dollars and a pair of worn
patent-leather shoes that creaked as he walked. On state occasions, he
wore the medals he had earned on the battlefields in Spain. For private
parties, he simply wore an enameled gold Mexican flag on his lapel.
Tonight, he wore only the flag.
All this he explained to Hall in his gay, rasping Spanish. "When the
Falangist Embassy was still on good terms, I wore my Republican medals
all the time. But just before Don Anibal took sick, he insulted the
Caudillo in a speech before the University faculty, and when the Franco
Ambassador called to ask for an apology Tabio told him that the truth
called for no apologies. So the Caudillo got sore and he called his
Ambassador home. The Embassy is still open, but a clerk is in charge,
and there isn't a Spanish diplomat in San Hermano of high enough
standing to be invited to any Embassy."
Jerry joined them, and when Hall presented her to Duarte, the Mexican
kissed her hand and murmured, "_Enchante_."
"Miss Olmstead is Dr. Ansaldo's nurse," Hall said.
"How very interesting," Duarte said. "May I have this dance with the
nurse of Dr. Ansaldo?" and before she had a chance to say that her feet
were killing her, the dexterous Duarte was guiding her through the steps
of an intricate rumba he improvised at that moment.
Hall took another glass of punch. Duarte was his friend, but at the
moment he wanted to break his neck. He wanted Jerry for himself, and he
hated the idea of admitting or showing it. He watched them so intently
that he failed to see Margaret return to the punch bowl.
"Deserted?" she asked. "Our friend Felipe would desert his mother for a
redhead."
"He's quite a guy," Hall laughed.
"Come on," she said. "There's a crowd that's been dying to meet you. The
country's biggest publisher and some of the more important business
men."
"Fernandez?"
"That's right. He publishes _El Imparcial_. Confidentially, his paper is
getting the Cabot Prize this year. Dad arranged it."
Fernandez was standing with a group of three Hermanitos and a blonde
fortyish woman in a tight dress whom Hall recognized instantly as an
American. "I'm Giselle Prescott," she said, her smile revealing flecks
of lipstick on her yellow teeth.
"Take care of the amenities, will you, Gis?" Margaret Skidmore said.
"Dad is flagging me over at the other end." She picked up her skirts,
hurried to her father's rescue.
Giselle Prescott introduced Hall to Jose Fernandez, tall, handsome, in
his early fifties. Fernandez presented him to Segundo Vardieno,
Francisco Davila, and Alfonso Quinones. Davila was a man of one age and
build with Fernandez, the other two were shorter and about ten years
younger. Breathlessly, Giselle Prescott told Hall that Vardieno and
Quinones were among the ten largest landowners in the nation, and Davila
its leading attorney. They all made modest denials.
Quinones asked Giselle to dance, and she accepted gladly. Her myriad
blonde ringlets neatly blocked her partner's forward view.
"Very accomplished writer," Hall said. "In the popular magazine field,
Miss Prescott is supreme."
"She is very able," Davila said. Like Quinones and Vardieno, he wore the
emblem of the Cross and the Sword in his lapel. Fernandez wore only the
ribbon of the French Legion of Honor.
"My niece told me that you had some difficulties at the Press Bureau
today," Vardieno said.
"Your niece?" Then he remembered the golden Cross and Sword dangling
from the thin golden chain. "Oh, yes, the young lady who speaks English
so well."
Vardieno explained to Fernandez that Hall had been unable to arrange for
an interview with Gamburdo. "Don't you think you could help Senor Hall?"
Davila asked, and Fernandez assured the three men that the matter would
be taken care of in the morning. Of course, it might not be possible
until after the Congress convened, but then politics in San Hermano
being what they were, the illustrious colleague from North America would
surely be understanding.
"What's the inside on the political picture?" Hall asked, and the three
men, talking in unison and talking singly gave him one picture.
Their picture was very detailed. "El Tovarich--our Red President, you
know," had lined up the unruly elements behind a dangerous program of
confiscating the estates of their rightful owners and turning them over
to communist gunmen. In addition to this land-piracy scheme, Tabio also
intended to drive the Catholic Church underground and impose heavy
penalty taxes on the parents who sent their children to Catholic
parochial schools. To aid in this program, Tabio was throwing open the
gates of the nation to Red agitators disguised as Jewish and Spanish
refugees.
"So it's as bad as that," Hall said.
"Worse." Fernandez looked around him. "Come closer," he said. "There's
something I must tell you about your own safety."
"My safety?"
"Yes, Senor." Fernandez had his right hand on Hall's shoulder. "Late
this afternoon I received a confidential information that the Communist
Party in San Hermano had privately denounced you to its members."
"Denounced me? But why?"
"Yes, Senor. And it was a most dangerous denunciation, too. A prominent
communist leader telephoned the editor of the official Red paper and
denounced you for being an enemy of Tovarich Tabio and a supporter of
Senor Gamburdo."
Hall smiled. "But that couldn't be so bad," he demurred. "The Reds are
always denouncing someone. Tomorrow the Communist Party paper will
attack me as a fascist, and I guess that will be the end of the whole
thing."
"No, that is not what will happen," Segundo Vardieno insisted. "Tell him
the rest of the information, Don Jose."
Again Jose Fernandez looked around to make sure that he was not being
overheard. "Senor Vardieno is right, my friend. You see," he said, "the
Red who phoned the _Mundo Obrero_ ordered the editor _not_ to print a
word about you--yet. Do you understand what that means?"
Davila, the lawyer, explained. "What Don Jose means," he said, "is that
a secret denunciation generally precedes an assassination. You see,
Senor Hall, if the Reds denounce you in their press, you would be marked
before the world as an enemy of the Tovarich. Then, if anything happened
to you--they are not only blameless, but even after killing you they can
make great propaganda about how the alleged fascists killed you because
you are a noted American patriot who stands for free enterprise."
"Pretty clever," Hall said.
"Jewish cleverness!" Segundo Vardieno was shaking with rage. "Give a Jew
a hundred pesos and in a day he has a thousand and you'll never know how
he did it. But will he apply his cleverness for the good of the country?
No! Only for communism."
"Is Tabio a Jew?" Hall asked.
"Confidentially," Vardieno answered, "El Tovarich is a Sephardic Jew.
But we're not making it public because we are gentlemen."
"And only because we are gentlemen," Fernandez added. "I don't think El
Tovarich will be among us much longer."
"Is he really that sick?"
"Oh, yes," Davila said. "You know what happened to him, don't you? No?
Well, it's almost like the Hand of Divine Retribution." He told Hall
that Tabio had turned over to one of his henchman a vineyard confiscated
from an old family, and that in gratitude the henchman had started to
distill a special brandy for the Tovarich. "And now, the excess alcohol
from too much of the stolen grape has taken its toll."
"Well, what do you know!" Hall said.
"It is the gospel truth," Fernandez said. "I have ways of confirming the
story."
"Some mess, isn't it?" Hall said.
"It is filled with dangers," Vardieno said. "Your calmness is admirable,
Senor Hall, but you had better watch out. The Reds are out to kill you."
Hall accepted a cigar from Jose Fernandez, took his time about lighting
it before answering Vardieno. "Oh, I don't know," he said, casually.
"Perhaps you might know that earlier in this war, I was on board a
British warship which the Nazis sunk with aerial torpedoes. I not only
survived, but I came through without a scratch. Since then I just can't
get too excited about a threat." He looked at the three men to see if
his braggart's act succeeded. Fernandez was obviously the most impressed
of the three.
"_Bueno! Muy caballero!_" Fernandez said. "But you had better be
careful. The Reds in San Hermano have none of the sporting codes of the
Nazi airman."
"Well, now that you mention it," Hall said, "I did catch some bastard
following me the other day."